AN: Heya, guys! Salaam/Shalom. I decided I wanted to go ahead and cross-post at least one of my stories so that folks who use would be able to find myself and my work via this site.
To get the full experience for most of my works (special aesthetics, clickable footnote links, embedded YouTube videos, et cetera) and see my full fanfiction bibliography, you'll need to visit my profile at Archive of Our Own. It's linked in my bio.
But in the meantime, here we have what is currently my most popular fic: Nervous Breakdown.
As far as content/trigger warnings go for this chapter, there's not too much to worry about aside from some prolific profanity plus a character dealing with symptoms of poison exposure and some mild-to-moderate injury as a result—but nothing graphic.
Soup was the first thing Jay noticed when he stepped inside the Manor. The spicy aroma wafting through the air was rich and heady. Alfie's special recipe. A bittersweet wash of nostalgia floated on those same air currents; there was no escaping the memory of coming home after long days of patrol, soaked and chilled yet again by Gotham's perpetually pissy weather. The hot showers helped, but it was always the food that truly swept the chill from his bones and reminded him that, even if just for now, he had a home to keep the cold out, no matter how bad it got outside. He had people to keep the cold out.
Jay left the entryway, not entirely tamping down the smile tugging at his lips.
Whatever appetite had been starting to scratch and claw at his stomach died the moment he discovered the location of the soup. "What the hell?"
The kitchen floor was awash in splotches and splashes of red that instinctively triggered a very different feeling in his stomach. Jay grimaced and tried to ignore the suddenly too vibrant color. Streaks and blotches surrounded the epicenter, while smaller dots peppered the lower cabinets and the legs of nearby bar stools. "Looks like Hermann Rorschach beat the shit out of Jackson Pollock in here," Jay grumbled, tension crawling into the base of his spine and slithering its way from vertebrae to shoulder blades.
This is wrong. As much as he hated the mess in Alfred's pristinely maintained kitchen, it wasn't this that left a burn of acid in his stomach and cords of tension sewn through his muscles. It was the fact that no one was there to clean it up. The house was quiet. Since fucking when is it this quiet?
Normally a mess like this would've resulted in an all-hands-on-deck flurry of activity to restore the kitchen to its usual spic-and-span glory, lest the wrath of Alfred descend upon the household. It was one thing to make a mess—the Jason of years ago had been continually surprised and relieved by Alfred's infinite patience as he guided him through lessons in culinary preparation. It was another thing entirely to leave it there.
"All right, who am I going to have to kill today?" The words would've felt more fun to say if there hadn't been a pistol nestled in his grasp. Dickhead, probably. As far as he knew, Dick was in Blüdhaven again, but there was no guarantee he hadn't swung by for a quick visit. And if any of them was chaotic enough to cause a mess like this and scattered enough to somehow leave it there, Dick was a prime candidate. Most of the other family members were definitely in the thick of missions at last check, and the remaining candidates seemed incapable of such a gaffe.
Granted, the only time Dickhead got this clumsy was when illness had thrown a wrench in his Bat-honed reaction time and normally preternatural levels of grace. So maybe Jay would only yell at him half the usual amount once he found him. Wherever the fuck he was.
Normally he would've made a beeline for one of two places: family bedrooms, or the ever-popular secret subterranean hideout. But a prickling at his nape warned him he needn't go that far. It wasn't the danger one, per se. It was that universal proximity alarm humans had.
That tingle in the quiet that meant, You aren't alone.
Jay kept to the lower levels, sweeping from edge to corner on swift and silent feet. Rationally, there was little reason to believe the countless security measures and safeguards of Wayne Manor had been breached.
Also rationally, something was off, and if he'd had a fucking nickel for every time one of them had been attacked somewhere they'd thought was "safe"…well, Bruce might have had some competition in the obnoxious-rich-guy act.
A lean around another corner revealed a splash of light in the dimmed hallway. One of the spare bathrooms, then—door well ajar. A few moments of observation gave the silence time to be interrupted by a clatter that sounded like plastic hitting the tiled floor. Soon followed by the sound of soft cursing. Just one voice, quiet and subdued, but not distressed. Familiar as well, and clearly not hiding, based on the open door.
Though it wasn't until he finished his approach and did a visual sweep for himself that he finally holstered the gun. "Timbo. Don't tell me that shitty attempt at modern art on the kitchen floor was your doing?" Please say it wasn't. That was most definitely the prick of danger. Tim, the kid who still didn't seem entirely convinced he wouldn't be disowned over broken windows, had left a mess like that in the kitchen? In Alfred's kitchen?
"Yeah. Sorry." He didn't meet Jay's eyes, and his face stayed angled away and curtained by the carefully trimmed layers of hair. But his voice still gave him away, coming out watery and a little choked. He swallowed before adding, "I'll clean it up soon, I promise." It was a little less shaky this time, but there was a thin, reedy edge of pleading there that Jay hated.
Courtesy of the Drakes.
Whatever follow-up threats Jay might've made in this situation didn't get past his throat. This idiot would probably take me seriously. So Jay kept with silence for the time being, arms folded and hip leaned against the door frame as he observed Tim…proceeding to make a sequel to Rorschach Stomps Pollock, by all indications.
The kid was perched on the counter, with an array of supplies from one of their countless first-aid kits scattered next to him. When he reached for a tube of ointment—analgesic? antibiotic?—Jay found his eyes pulled at once to a far more pressing issue. "The fuck's wrong with your hand? Hands," he amended, because the tremors and irregular tension had affected not just one but both.
Tim flinched, curling into himself a little, shoulders becoming even more hunched. "Nothing. I'm fine."
"Your idea of 'fine' looks like mid-stage Parkinson's that apparently has a more rapid onset than the flu, because it hasn't been that long since I last saw your scrawny ass."
"Just—just nerve toxin."
…What? "I'm sorry…'just'…'nerve toxin'? Just?"
Tim blew out a sigh, broadcasting his irritation. "It's just a mild case. I'll be fine once it clears out of my system."
Jay closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose to push back the encroaching headache. And possibly the admittedly ironic desire to strangle this kid for his lack of self-care instincts. "Tim. Timmy. Answer me this. Where exactly is the old man? Actually, better question: Why in the ever-living hell is the answer to that anything other than 'right here'?"
Tim gave a huff that sounded more tired than defiant. "Because, like I said, it's a mild case and I don't need to be under observation. I already told Bruce the same thing I told you: I'm fine."
"And he believed that."
The disdain must've been clear in his voice, because Tim flinched abruptly before straightening his spine and finally turning to glare at Jay. "It's an important mission, Jay. I've already taken the antidote, and the tremors aren't even as bad as they were before. It's not gonna make me feel any better to have him stay here like I'm just a kid—"
Says the old man of seven-fucking-teen.
"—when there are way better things he could be doing."
Better.
His voice sounded the strongest it had the whole conversation, and the speech probably would've been pretty convincing, were it not for the red-rimmed eyes and sheen of sweat over his brow—both newly visible now that he'd finally turned to meet Jay in the eye.
He was going to kill Bruce. Priorities, though. "If everything is so peachy, care to tell me what you're doing with the first-aid kit now?" He arched a brow for emphasis.
Tim gave him a fawn-in-the-headlights blink, like he hadn't anticipated a Part 2 for the conversation. "Oh." Defiance slid into embarrassment. "The soup." He looked away, but couldn't hide the flush creeping up his skin. "I burned myself a little."
"Yeah, and how bad is 'a little' in your world, exactly?"
"Well, um." His hands found the hem of the black sweatshirt he was wearing, and clumsily pulled up the edge, revealing an angry, blotched patch of red that extended from halfway down his ribcage to just above his right hip. "It, it still…hurts a little bit, but—"
"I will fucking sock you if I hear the word 'fine' come out of your mouth again. That's a fucking second-degree burn, Tim!"
"I know! I already—I already used a compress on it. I just, just need to put this antibiotic cream on, and it'll be fine."
"And how exactly are you planning to do that with your hands shot to hell?" Jay snapped in response.
The items carelessly scattered onto the floor suddenly made all too much sense. Not only was the kid unable to grip anything well, he'd probably been in too much pain to bother retrieving the dropped materials.
"I'll figure it out. My hands aren't completely useless, Jason."
He didn't miss the real words underneath.
"I'm not completely useless, Jason."
He didn't hide the grimace as he watched the kid wrap stiff, trembling fingers around the latest tube of antibiotic cream and begin slow attempts to untwist the cap. He soon gave up on his hands, maneuvering the item to his mouth and using his teeth to bite into the plastic instead.
Jay shifted his weight before finally pushing off the door frame and turning to head down the hallway. "You have five minutes," he threw over his shoulder.
"Wha—"
"Five minutes, Timmy!"
The swears that followed him down the hallway just brought a small smile to his lips.
A little backtracking and a jaunt up the stairs quickly brought him to the target room. Jay took a second to survey the space. Pens and pencils lay scattered across the desk, stripes of dark punctuating a rumpled field of white. How the kid ever found anything amongst the stacks of notes and case files and comic books, Jay still couldn't fathom.
The computer equipment taking up much of the room's other half was similarly buried, though a little less suffocated. And in between lay a field of clothes, action figures—Jay smiled in spite of himself—and books. The smile vanished. He was going to kill the kid.
Once he was better.
"No fucking respect," he grumbled, snatching up the nearest one. Odd Thomas, by Dean Koontz. All right, excellent choice, Timmy. He might have to get the kid the next book in the series. Or the whole rest of it. After a lengthy lecture about storage conditions, of course. But it was the kid's birthday soon, right? Shit, who cared—he'd come up with an excuse.
His lips stayed pursed as he continued rescuing the lost literature, but his mood was further mollified by what he didn't see as he worked. Not a single food container or plate in sight, aside from a single mug and thermos of tea on the bedside table. "Well, isn't that just a Christmas miracle in July. Halle-fucking-lujah."
It was the single thing he'd requested—okay, demanded—of Tim regarding his pigsty of a room. Clutter was one thing; vermin traps were nothing but unacceptable.
Points for Timbo. This would cut the book lecture down by a nice 40 percent or so. Maybe.
Jay continued keeping a tally in his head as he stripped off the bedclothes, bundled them with the other neglected laundry, and cleared the rest of the sundry items from the floor and other surfaces.
No way in hell was he organizing the boy's files for him—that probably would've backfired anyways—but he could get the shit cleared off for later sorting.
By the time he returned to the bathroom doorway, Tim had succeeded in removing the ridge-lined plastic cap and now had the tube itself carefully clenched between his teeth in lieu of trying to squeeze things out with his weakened hands.
Not bad.
That was the extent of his triumphs. He had the hem of his shirt awkwardly pincered and twisted between his right middle, ring, and pinky fingers while attempting to apply the medication with his left.
Sweat still beaded across his brow, and for someone who was supposed to be recovering, he looked markedly like his trembling had worsened in Jay's absence.
As if to confirm the grim impression, a stray spasm jerked Tim's hand, causing a fingernail to snag on his already wounded skin and draw blood—actual fucking blood. Tim couldn't fully suppress the pained cry that escaped his lips then, dropping the antibiotics as he doubled over in pain.
"That's it. That's fucking enough, Tim," Jay gritted, grabbing Tim's wrist to keep him from injuring himself further.
"I still have one minute left," Tim shot back, his bared teeth and glare in stark contrast to the pained tears shining in his eyes and now beginning a glistening path down his cheeks.
"So ask Dad for a lawyer and fucking sue me," he growled, even as he wrapped his other arm around the kid's shoulders. "Now breathe," he whispered, pressing the kid's head into his shoulder as he waited for the new wave of trembling to recede.
The kid sniffled harshly, clearly reluctant to shed any more tears. "Asshole," he whispered, but he didn't fight anymore. The exhaustion wafting off the kid was so palpable Jay could almost feel it seeping into his own skin.
"Yeah, this feels like a familiar conversation," he replied, letting his cheek rest against the crown of Tim's head while he slowly smoothed a thumb along his mussed hair. "Always fun, though. You call me an asshole, I confirm that I am, and we go from there."
A watery huff from Tim, but Jay didn't miss the humor in the noise.
They stayed there for a long minute, until the trembling had returned to more stable levels. Jay would've gladly held on to the kid longer, but there was no treating his pain without finishing the first aid, and the sooner the better.
He gave him a little squeeze before withdrawing, not missing how Tim suddenly flinched back himself.
"Sorry," the kid mumbled, turning away and swiping a quick forearm across his eyes.
Jay sighed. "Dunno what you're apologizing for, Timbo," he said in a quiet voice as he squatted down to retrieve what was now a small collection of dropped items. He gave a quick glance upwards to find a flush darkening the kid's cheeks and neck.
"Everything, I guess." His breaths still sounded a little shaky. "Wasting your time?"
"Ya know…"—Jay resumed his gathering and then paused to look the kid fully in the eyes. He needed to get this—"…if you're going to apologize for shit that never happened, I don't really see the point." He straightened to return the items to their proper places in the case, leaving out the antibiotic cream and extracting the gauze. A pang of guilt flashed through him as he recalled none too distant memories. "And I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm trying to be a little better than that now."
Tim only flinched again. "Sorry."
Apparently, guilt was fucking contagious in this household.
Jay clenched his hands on the counter before scrubbing a tired hand across his face. "You don't need to apologize for something I did, or for reminding me of it. Especially when I brought it up in the first place."
He let out a heavy sigh before dropping a knee to the marble floors. "You're not attached to that sweatshirt, are you?" His hand closed around fiberglass-reinforced nylon even as he asked the question.
"What?"
"Sentimental value or some shit."
"…No?"
"Good," he replied, rising to his feet again with the mirror showing a grin almost as sharp as the Kershaw now gripped in his hand.
Tim's eyes seemed to instantly double in size. "What are you doing with that?" he asked, an audible gulp sounding from his throat.
"Not putting you through more fucking pain."
The look and tone alike plummeted from frightened to flat. "…I don't think that's how knives usually work."
"Oh, but I'm a man of many talents. Never doubt that, Timbit." He set to work swiftly, hands moving with a practiced precision that he hoped would've made Alfred proud. The garment was flayed open within moments, Jay silently shooting off a quick prayer of thanks to the Eye in the Sky that none of the fabric had stuck to the burns.
The kid had enough going on without any further complications, and Jay really didn't want to put him through the experience of a Goddamned debridement—now or ever.
He'd already caused the boy far too much pain, and the thought of inflicting any more, even to help, sent his stomach in loops and turns that would've spiked nausea through even a bat—the honest-to-God, fur-covered kind. And those things chased fucking moths for a living.
Actual moths, not the explosives-happy kind.
With the shirt cut free, he set to work. A visual inspection confirmed that what Tim had shown him earlier was the full extent of the injuries. Which was still plenty. A grim victory, but Jay wasn't exactly in position to choose. He took the win.
Naturally, Timmy chose now to pipe up. "Maybe I can—"
"No." It was Jay's turn to shoot him a flat look and equally flat tone.
"You didn't let me finish—"
"Suggesting something stupid? Nope," Jay shot back with his patented wolf grin—friendly, but too much fang to not also be mildly threatening.
"Fine," he grumbled.
"Good boy, Timmy."
Tim's pursed lips pulled back into a grimace as Jay began applying the topical medication with one hand, his other braced against the youngster's shoulder to keep him steady.
Jay gritted his own teeth in sympathy at every choked noise and gasped breath the younger boy couldn't fully keep down. How the hell had the idiot thought he could do this on his own? And why in the fuck did he not think that any of this counted as important?
Yeah, Bruce was gonna have "better" things to do, all right. Like pulling Jason's foot out of his—
The previous fury stirred and flared in Jay's gut, but he made damned sure it didn't reach a fingertip as he finished applying the medication and moved on to the gauze and bandaging.
By the time all was complete, the younger boy's complexion was even paler than usual, and he'd reluctantly come to slump most of his weight against Jay, unable to maintain balance by himself any longer.
"All right, down you go," Jay prompted, shifting to slip against the uninjured left side, looping an arm underneath Tim's shoulder to take most of his weight.
He normally would've just carried the kid without a second thought, but he knew that, even being careful, the position would've curved the kid's spine too much in the process, sending additional pain flaring through the burns. For now, walking and keeping his torso as straight as possible were Tim's best bet.
And this time he didn't argue.
The only words to leave his lips as they began a slow but steady trudge down the hallway were a simple, "Thanks, Jay."
"Don't mention it."
Of course, the next words to leave his lips were, "I knew you fucking cheated! You bastard."
"Whoa, language, Timbo," Jay replied with a grin, puzzled but amused by the outburst. "And I think the appropriate words are, 'Thanks, O Great and Powerful Brother who cleaned my pigsty of a room.' "
"That's what I'm talking about!" Tim snapped in response. "There's no way you did all of this in under 5 minutes." He shot an accusing glare as Jay led him over to the wall, letting the kid slump against it for support.
Jay had to chuckle at that. "First of all, Tim-Tam, never underestimate my cleaning abilities." Once certain the boy was stable, he turned away to do some last-minute fluffing with the pillows that lay scattered atop the freshly made bed. "Second of all"—he laid a hand on his hip and surveyed the scene before beginning to arrange a few of the pillows in short stacks—"if I had taken extra time, that would mean I was cheating in your favor, because it would mean you had more than five minutes to work."
Tim stiffened and gave him an owlish blink, considering.
"Starting to think maybe that toxin didn't just go to your hands." He folded his arms and shot a grin as the younger boy put things together in record-slow time.
And colored yet again. "I'm tired," he mumbled, looking away with a poorly hidden wince.
Jay snorted. "When the hell aren't you?" he replied, stalking back over to the kid and slinging an arm around him again. "Now, come on, let's get your bony ass in bed.
"You haven't taken any meds yet, have you?"
Tim shook his head. He seemed to have faded just a little more in the couple of minutes—was it even a full hundred and twenty seconds?—between leaving the bathroom and approaching the bed.
"You'll need to eat something, too."
"Not hungry anymore. Too tired." They had reached the bed, but Tim simply stood staring at it like he expected the thing to zap him if he touched it.
This time Jason did pick him up, with nothing more than a quick, "Up you go." Enough notice for warning, not enough for argument.
He swept the boy up as smoothly as he could, holding him a little further out than usual to avoid contact with the seething red burns.
Tim held his breath the whole time, eyes shut tight and jaw clenched even tighter, not exhaling until Jay had settled him on the bed.
And it took a moment longer before he was relaxed enough to let go and let his arm slip from where it had been braced against Jay for dear life, his hand itself still too weakened to provide a useful grip.
Jay didn't rush him. But he did distract him. "Your input is acknowledged and discarded," he offered, serving up a phrase that Timmy had directed his way on more than one occasion.
"What?" Tim asked, bleary eyes tracking Jay as the elder of the two began adjusting the pillow piles, methodically using them to prop up his right arm so it could stay in a comfortable resting position without further aggravating his side.
Dear God, did this count as building a nest? Glad Dickhead isn't here to see this. He'd never shut up about it. Jay wasn't embarrassed in the slightest about the caretaking, but there were only so many bad puns and jokes he could tolerate in one day. And for someone who fancied himself such a comedian, damn if Nightwing didn't use some obvious and pedestrian material.
Jay instantly resolved to tell him that the next time he saw his perfect face. Well, only if he was being annoying again, maybe. Which definitely meant the next time he saw his perfect face and heard anything even vaguely resembling humor coming from those lips. Problem solved.
"Jay? What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about getting you some food so you don't puke all over the sheets when you take your medicine."
"I told—"
"Acknowledged. Discarded," he said, making sure to sound as much like a pissed-off kindergarten teacher as possible.
Tim responded with a glare that probably would've been perfectly withering…were it not obscured by a film of pain that dulled the look in his eye from a probable one of sharp reproach to a definite one of put-upon misery. He didn't break away when Jay simply responded with a flat look of his own, but he did finally let his head fall back against the headboard. Just a little too hard, of course, because clearly this would be just the perfect time to get another injury, jostle some more half-scrambled brain cells, or both.
Jay had already stacked some pillows behind the kid, but increased the height of the pile now. Okay, so maybe there was a good reason to have five thousand fucking throw pillows per bedroom. Not that he was going to tell Bruce. Bruce didn't deserve any positive reinforcement for at least a week. Or a year. Fine, maybe a month was fair.
And Jay was definitely taking a red marker to that "World's Greatest Detective" t-shirt he'd gotten Bruce as a joke for Father's Day. A big, neon-red, scratch-out-errors-with-fire-and-brimstone marker.
"Food. Medicine. Sleep," Jay ticked off on his fingers. "That's your agenda for the day. Back in ten." He left the room, then backtracked after a short few strides, peering around the doorframe. "Oh, and try not to give yourself a concussion. Can't forget that, Whiz Kid."
The look Tim gave him probably would've been accompanied by a pair of raised middle fingers. But, you know.
Hey, silver linings in the Wayne family were just too rare and valuable to let pass unappreciated.
By the time he returned—and in only half the promised amount of time—Tim seemed significantly more relaxed, eyes closed and breaths in a steady rhythm that sent vague prickles of recognition up Jay's spine. Not asleep…meditating? That was it.
Jay nearly started matching the rhythm himself, habit tugging at him with a strength bolstered by years of practice and years of panic.
He was half-disappointed that the kid wasn't actually asleep—exhaustion dripped from every line of his face and frame like water from the wrinkles of a soggy t-shirt—but he knew he couldn't actually let him drift off without some proper nourishment and sufficient medication.
A canister of water in one hand, thermos in the other, and plastic cup of tablets pinned wrist-to-chest, Jay simply used the tip of his toe to shove Tim's rolling chair away from the desk and over to the side of the bed before plopping down on it. "Rise and dine, Sleeping Beauty."
Tim cracked open one eye in pronounced semi-compliance. And wrinkled his nose, looking very much like the child he still actually was. "What exactly is that?" He cyclops-ed the thermos with all the suspicion he could muster from a single eye.
"Poison. I know I just spent the last half-hour patching you up, but I looked at the mess in the kitchen again, and I changed my mind. Fortunately, Alfie keeps the rat bait handy." He set the water and pills down and doubled-checked the lid on the thermos. "Of course, I'm not a complete philistine here." It had a straw built into the lid, so even if dropped, there'd be minimal spillage as long as the lid was secured. "I took the liberty of adding some lentil puree and lemon juice to the bromadiolone."
Tim's lip twitched ever so slightly. "Still no."
"Timbo, I just heard your stomach growl. And I'm pretty sure say a cuss word or two. Now, eat." He punctuated the sentence by shoving the straw an inch away from the hungry birdling's mouth.
With a small snarl—geez, the kid had to feel awful if he was being this uncharacteristically pissy about it—he finally uncurled both hands and slowly clenched them around the thermos. And then rolled his eyes. "Let go, Jay. I thought you wanted me to drink. Not gonna if I don't say please?"
Jay narrowed his eyes. Okay, now you're sounding like me. "Kid, I know your brain's a little scrambled right now—"
"I don't need you to feed me. I got it. Thank you, Jason," he said, the last word hissed like a curse.
Jay felt his lips press into a line, but he refrained from commenting, instead simply sliding his hand from the thermos—slowly—as Tim shakily attempted to tighten his own grip.
And whaddya know—the kid managed to keep the heavy container aloft.
For all of four seconds.
"Oh—"
"Shit!" Jay reached out to intervene, but there was still something to be said about the reflexes of even an injured Bat.
Before the container could fully escape his grasp, Timbird had managed to snap his left knee up to support the bottom of the container. A precarious enough perch, but the hands that weren't strong enough for a solid grip were strong enough to keep the thermos stabilized now that it had support from underneath.
Of course, it wasn't lost on Jay that he'd be on cleanup detail yet again were it not for the lid that had kept all the sloshing from having consequences. Speaking of which.… No—later. Jay found himself abruptly grateful for the fact that Baby Bat had taken both of the indoor pets with him. Otherwise Titus's klutzy ass probably would've ended up tromping through the soup by now and making tracks across the lower level, bless his exasperating heart. And Pennyworth Cat, who theoretically should've been graceful enough to easily avoid it, probably would've walked through it, too—just to be an asshole. Jay snorted.
"I'm glad you find this so entertaining," Tim cut in sharply, breaking Jay from his thoughts.
Jay caught the sharp glow of defiance in the younger boy's eyes when their gazes met, but there was still a roil of frustration and maybe embarrassment that leaked out all the same. "…Wasn't laughing at you."
It was Tim's turn to snort. "Sure, bet it's not satisfying at all—seeing me have to do circus tricks because I wouldn't listen, right?"
Jay lifted a brow. "…Not particularly, no. And don't diss the circus," he added as an afterthought. "Dickie'd have both our heads for that."
Tim blinked at that, looking a bit regretful, then furrowed his brows. "Then what were you laughing at? And aren't you the one who calls him a circus freak all the time?" he added, leveling a narrow gaze at Jay.
"Yeah, but the difference is he already knows not to take anything I say seriously." He flashed his best shit-eating grin, prompting an eye roll from his younger brother. "I honestly don't think he'd be able to tell it was a joke coming from you, Timbert."
"So you just have a monopoly on circus references, then?" He wrinkled his nose before finally managing a sip of his soup.
Hopefully the food would improve his mood.
"I should probably have a monopoly on all humor in this family. The puns that guy makes should come with some kind of parental advisory attached for sheer bad taste. Or for corn allergies, maybe."
"They're not that bad," Tim grumbled after pulling away from the straw a moment.
Jay gave him a look that he hoped was as flat as Larson's growth arc. "Yeah, new task for you, Timbo: try looking me in the eye next time you say that."
Nary a peep or a glance.
"That's what I thought," Jay commented with a quiet chuckle. "Oh, and for the record, I was laughing because I was thinking how much fun we'd be having right now if the pets were here. You really would be in danger if that cat managed to track shit all over the house."
"Oh," Tim replied, voice still a near-grumble and eyes fixed firmly on the cup in poorly hidden abashment.
Jay patted himself on the back for not commenting on how very Damian-esque the response was.
When a beat and a half more passed in silence, he finally settled back into the chair again, pulling up his phone to scroll through local news articles and maps. Analyses of crime hot-spots were an old favorite. He checked some national news briefly, but same story as always: Everyone was being a complete brain-dead idiot, a dead-eyed liar, or some combo of the two. Fucking riveting. At least Gotham no longer bothered pretending to be anything but a giant cesspool. Promises of anything better were the one scam it now rarely bothered with. He returned to local after barely a minute.
Granted, even that couldn't fully keep his attention today. He found himself spending nearly as much time trying to nab discreet glances at the baby bird. It had taken Jay some time to notice that he'd gotten into this habit over the past months, and even longer to figure out why.
In a nutshell? Fuck the Drakes.
Even with the time that had passed, and even with Jay's additional training for him, there was still a subtle sense of frailty that prickled at Jay sometimes and left a whisp of unease in his gut when he watched the kid.
And it had been far more than just a whisp the day Jay had first realized it:
He reminds me of me.
Fury and nausea had roiled together in his stomach like a toxic stew, because it didn't make any damn sense.
When it came to Jay himself, it had sadly made nothing but sense. He'd eaten…just barely enough…during the years with Willis. Although the continual stress of running for his fucking life every day and constantly recovering from injuries had still left him wiry as fuck and burning through calories even faster than the average kid.
And then once Willis had fucked off to jail (and then a frankly well-deserved death), the stress had continued and taken on new forms, with Jay being left the task of paying adult bills with a child's body.
0 for 2 in the war against hunger.
Follow that up with finally being orphaned and homeless after the drugs had exacted their final blood fee from Catherine, and yep, it made full and perfect sense that he'd ended up a scrawny little drowned rat of a 12-year-old. And he'd made progress once his old man and Alfie had taken him in—as always, God bless Alfie—but he'd still been playing catch-up by the time it had…ended.
But.
How.
In the actual fuck.
Did this make sense for Timothy née Drake?
At first Jay had just wondered if it were a hereditary thing, if Tim was always destined to be travel-sized, as Jay liked to jokingly call him when he was actually calm enough to joke about it.
But an inspection of family pictures had made it clear how unlikely that theory was.
And in more than one way, it was the family album rather than the family tree that had helped solve the mystery.
It was there, in all the pictures the Drakes didn't have with or even of their son.
It's not like Jay thought or expected all people of means would have their kids on obnoxiously detailed meal plans, complete with private chef to execute it with exacting accuracy.
But for the love of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Moses, and Muhammad, how the hell did you manage to have that much money and still end up with a child suffering from malnutrition?
And while the Lazarus Pit had ultimately corrected and possibly overcorrected Jay's early in life neglect, leaving him nearly Bruce's equal in both height and heft, Tim hadn't had any such luck, and Jay was pretty sure the seventeen-year-old had gotten as tall as he'd ever get by now.
Jason bitterly wondered to himself how many proverbial children in Africa could've been fed with all the meals the Drakes hadn't fed their own child.
So…yeah. Fuck the Drakes with an artisanal barbed-wire cactus.
And even with his years under Alfie's care, the kid—
"What?" a waspish voice cut in.
Jason looked up to see Tim staring at him, brows pinched and mouth set into a thin line.
"Excuse me?" Jay replied, lifting a brow.
"You're sitting there glaring at me, so I assume you still have something you want to say?"
Jay suppressed a snort. A hell of a lot, actually. But as much as he was tempted to make a snappy—or snappish reply—he could see past the kid's sharpness and read the stiffness in his frame. Hear the undercurrents of tightly bound fear in his voice.
All right, so it was entirely possible some of his more homicidal emotions just then had filtered through to his expression. Oops.
He could explain it to the kid, but somehow he suspected Tim wasn't in the mood to revisit the topic of his beloved cell donors just then, and any attempts would go over about as well as the tomato soup currently decorating the kitchen.
So Jay settled for the eloquent reply of, "…Nope."
Which Tim promptly echoed. " 'Nope'? That's all you're going to say?"
"Yep," Jay replied with a short nod and shorter smile, pushing to his feet and taking a moment to try and stretch the tension from his neck and shoulders. Didn't feel like much of a success, but hopefully he looked a little less battle ready then. Or strangle ready, as it were. Because that was definitely top of the list if he could only get ahold of the wealthy and now literally rotten bastards who couldn't even have been bothered to hire a nanny to feed their neglected goldfish of a son.
Okay, yup, anger again. Jay cleared his throat. "Looks like you were right. Clearly got that handled." He made a small gesture at the thermos. "Make sure you drink at least half of it and then get those pills taken." He stuffed both hands in his pockets, giving the room a quick scan. "Yeah, so…that's it, I guess. I'll go, let you finish your shit without me staring at you the whole time like a gorgon."
Apparently it was Tim's turn to stare now; the kid followed his awkward shuffle from the room with a gaze worthy of a starved hawk. But he let Jay go without further comment. At least until he was already partway down the hallway and made out a late, quiet, "Th-Thanks."
Jay shook his head and allowed himself a smile then. "Just drink the damned soup," he threw over a shoulder as he strode to the kitchen.
Time to go fix the impromptu Viscera Cleanup recreation.
The work was slower going than it had been with the Hurricane Wayne bedroom, but Jay found he didn't much mind. The scrubbing let him work out some of his lingering anger, and the bitterness rinsed away with the suds. For a moment, at least. He couldn't do anything about the shit Tim had dealt with in the past, any more than he could rewind the wounds inflicted on himself over the years. But he could do shit here and now to work on it, and maybe he liked the thought that every minute spent on Tim, spent with Tim, was just another middle finger to Jack and Janet.
Truth be told, very few people in this world genuinely gave a fuck that they were even dead. And of those, most did so purely for financial reasons. But Tim? Timmybird? That kid had a hell of a lot of people who loved him—folks who would gladly have given their damned lives for him, and made the choice more than once if they'd needed to.
Jay didn't need a moment to consider he was on that list—he'd realized that much a long time ago. What could he say? The kid had won him over. As annoying as the stubborn little shit could be, he was aggravatingly sweet and selfless, and smart as all hell. Not to mention his devotion to people, and the unhealthily intense work ethic that just seemed to be a patented Wayne trait by now.
Honestly, the most fucking bizarre thing about the Drakes was that they'd been able to spend more than a day away from their kid and not just smothered him with attention every friggin' second of the day instead.
The kid was a cuddler, for fuck's sake. Even if he hadn't been touch starved as all hell, Jay found it hard to think he would've been much different with a better upbringing. Less desperate, sure, but probably still the kind who stays linked to your hip and enthusiastically sponges up any little bit of attention you're willing to offer.
The standoffishness, the insistent independence—Jay recognized a little too well what it really was. It came by a different path than his, but from the same place. A need to prove his worth, and the resignation of choosing to tear the good things away before someone else can rob them from you.
He knew how much Tim hated feeling weak. And he knew he felt weak when he couldn't prove that he wasn't "clingy" or "needy" or whatever the fuck else the Drakes had managed to put into his head, because apparently they had managed to impart some things the two days per year they were actually Goddamned in city limits.
Jay leaned against the counter, a strange exhaustion sweeping through him as he surveyed the kitchen and wondered to himself how you get a kid to stop performing for his dead donors.
He needed to talk to Bruce. Well, yeah, he already knew he needed to yell at the dumbass, but maybe he needed to talk to him, too.
The kid still had a paranoid aversion to asking for help or favors when he needed them, and maybe not getting hugs when he needed them wouldn't kill him, but there were plenty of other ways to go instead. Hell, it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that the kid could've had a worse accident that day and not been able to call for help. Unlikely, but not impossible.
There were plenty of nice, sturdy tile floors to crack your skull open on, for one thing.
He scrubbed a hand over his face and released the stopper in the sink, giving the sink itself a quick once-over before he finally felt satisfied in calling the job done.
He did admittedly feel calmer than he had before he'd started, and he finally felt like he could manage the task of returning to the room and actually acting normal. Normal enough not to scare the hell out of his unofficial patient, at least.
He wondered if the kid had fallen asleep by now. Didn't find it likely, but he could hope. Lord knew the kid needed rest—he always needed to rest—and it currently seemed to be the only way he might stop stressing about his grave and despicable crime of being injured.
Jay gave a half-fond, half-weary huff as he trudged his way back to the pillow-padded birdcage.
AN: Well, guys, hope you enjoyed the chapter! You're welcome to let me know if you spotted any typos or continuity errors, or if you just have questions about the chapter. (Can't reveal spoilers, though!)
For everyone's sake here, I'm not about to promise or even attempt a regular update schedule (I've learned my lesson with other projects…), but the remaining two chapters for this short story should each be posted at some point in November 2022.
And as a quick bit of clarification, in case you were puzzled by the tags versus how the chapter played out: Bruce actually is meant to be a good, attentive dad in this world. But he does still make mistakes, as we all do—and dealing with children just as stubborn as he is makes things extra tricky. The results in this case are that he chooses to heed Tim's ill-advised stoicism and continue on a planned diplomacy-based mission, bringing Dami with him—and Jason's left to pick up some very important pieces in the meantime.