They ascended through canyons for twenty minutes before the road broke onto the top of a plateau. Fields and a few sparsely-populated junctions followed, then petered out into broad stretches of wild grassland. Eventually they began to rise again, hugging the side of a hill fraught with switchbacks and stunning vistas. Near the top they came upon a straightaway that was, for some reason, lined with cars on one side.

"...Wonder what they're looking at," Dick mused aloud as his foot pressed teased the brake. "Should we find out what all the hubbub's about?"

"'Hubbub,'" Tim repeated, amused by the word. "Sure. Let's check it out." He might not have wanted to to dive into the mystery of what was bothering Bruce, but the case of 'what's everyone staring at?' seemed manageable enough.

He found his solution almost before they had stopped. "Hey!" he exclaimed as he spotted a wooly black body several hundred yards away. "It's buffalo!"

"No way?!" Dick sounded just as ecstatic as he felt, and craned around the steering wheel to see. "...All I've got from here is the guy ahead's spare tire. Want to get out?"

"Hell yes!" He was already been halfway out the door as it was. "Wish I'd grabbed my camera," he mumbled a moment later as he approached the guard rail. "...Oh, man..."

A low whistle sounded. "Yeah," his brother agreed as he joined him. "Man, oh man..."

Twenty or so huge figures were lazily following the path of a broad, shallow creek, seeming completely unaware of the furor their appearance had caused. It was difficult to make out many details from a distance, but size differences alone showed that there were several calves among the group. 'Oohs' and 'aahs' rose from the crowd that had gathered, their cooing interrupted only by the snaps and clicks of their phones and cameras.

Judging from the animals' meandering pace that they wouldn't be going anywhere quickly, Tim tore his eyes away. "I'll be right back," he said, and returned to the car. We've barely been on the ground three hours, and we're already seeing things, a happy shiver ran down his spine as he dug in his bag. If the start was any indication, this was going to be the best trip of his life.

When he swiveled around, he almost ran into his traveling companion. "Hey. You're not done looking, are you?" He couldn't be, surely; Dick would gladly spend all day watching elephants, so bison had to merit at least ten or fifteen minutes of ogling. "I just want to get a few shots..."

"Chill, bro. I'm nowhere near done freaking out over those guys. But," he bounced his eyebrows, "I knew you'd come back for your camera, and I thought we might get a better view from up top."

"...'Up top'?"

"On top of the car."

"Oh!" It was a brilliant idea, but he hesitated. "You don't think we'll damage it, do you?"

"If our combined weight is enough to do that, we'd better really, really hope that we don't roll over."

"Valid point." He held out the device in his hand. "Hold this for me? I don't want to bang it on anything."

"You bet."

Stepping up onto the rear seat gave him the height he needed to lever himself onto the hot metal roof. The heat leached into his jeans, stinging enough to draw a hiss of mild pain but not enough to drive him back to the ground. "Careful," he warned when he leaned over to take his camera. "It's like being in a frying pan up here."

"Sweet. How's the view?"

He gazed out over the plain ahead. "...Amazing," he breathed.

"Huh?" Dick's voice was much closer now as he scaled the side of the SUV. "Ow! You weren't kidding about the heat."

"You okay?" he asked without looking. I hope the zoom is good enough for this distance, he fretted silently while he waited for an answer.

"Yeah. Just reddened my palm a little. No big deal, it'll go away. Good thing we're not in shorts, though. Wow...dang, this is a way better view than down below."

"It is." He fell silent, busy lining up a shot in his viewfinder. Crossing his ankles and lifting his knees, he created a makeshift tripod and zoomed in as far as he could. Here goes nothing, he thought, then blew out his breath and pressed the shutter release.

"...Niiice," Dick complimented.

Tim, though, wrinkled his nose. "The hills look fuzzy," he complained.

"It's just haze. It's a million degrees out; that's not your fault. I think it's great. Look, you even got baby buffalo butt," he laughed, pointing out a red-hued rump. "That's classic wildlife photography right there."

"They are kind of cute. Let's see if I can get one of their faces, though..." He took a few more pictures, but was less satisfied with them than he had been with the first one. "Aren't you going to take any?"

"Nah. I like to have people in my pictures. Don't get me wrong, I love the stuff you take, I'm just no good at framing unless I have a person to focus on."

"Please tell me that doesn't mean we'll be stopping for selfies every fifty feet once we start walking."

"Nah, that's no fun. There're just going to be a lot of pictures of you walking ahead of me, that's all."

"Heh. Oh, great. Ass shots."

"Your Facebook page will blow up with women after I post all of them," Dick laughed back.

"Why? All you'll be able to see is backpack!" As he jested, he tucked his brother's comment away in the back of his mind. The other man had a bad habit of finding ways to get photos of his friends and family without ever being in them himself. Bruce hated it, he knew, and he couldn't make much sense of it himself either. Dick was by far the most gregarious of all of them, and was a far cry from unphotogenic besides; he should have been in every shot. It won't just be pictures of me having fun that come out of this, he swore silently. You're getting captured, too, whether you like it or not.

"Maybe you'll net a neat freak who appreciates how well you packed," a retort pulled him back into the conversation.

"We'd never be able to go anywhere because we'd constantly be reorganizing each other's stuff. That won't work. And it can't be an outdoorsy chick, because she'll want to butt in on our hiking trips."

"...You say that like you already know you're going to want to go on others," Dick pressed hopefully.

"If the beginning of this one is any indication of how the rest of the week will be, we might have to make two trips a year." He could feel the beaming smile that he'd caused without having to look at it, and his lips curved upwards more than usual in reply. "I mean, animals already? And bison at that? Damn, that's promising."

"Awesome, Timmy. Totally awesome." Dick's arm wrapped around his shoulders, squeezed, and retreated. "Speaking of animals...we never settled on our bets."

"Oh, yeah. Hmm...are we including birds? Because that could get tedious, trying to figure out every species we see."

"Um...let's not, I guess."

"Should we stick to mammals? Maybe just ones larger than house cats? I don't really feel like squirrels and chipmunks qualify."

"Yeah, they're pretty much a given. Okay, so mammals larger than a house cat...I'm going to say eight. We've already got one, so I think seeing one new thing a day is a pretty good estimate."

Tim hummed for a moment. Eight had been the number he'd chosen when the wager was first suggested, but the huge variety of animals he'd seen in the sporting goods store had made him more optimistic than was normally his wont. "I'll say twelve," he announced. "And I'll add that I hope one of them is a bear. From a distance, so you won't be tempted to run up and pet it."

"Ha, ha," Dick nudged him playfully. "Okay, eight and twelve. Winner is whoever's closest without going over?"

"You want to use 'Price is Right' rules?"

"Hey, they've worked for this long."

"True. Sounds good." The bison, he noted, were beginning to move further away from the road. Since they'd already been near the end of his camera's zoom range, he replaced the lens cap and stretched his arms over his head. "Mmm. Should we keep going? They're wandering off, I think."

"Yeah, let's get back on the road. I'm sure we'll see more bison later on. And if we don't," he shrugged, "these guys were cool."

They climbed down and reclaimed their seats in the car. As they pulled away, Tim scanned through the several photos he'd taken and decided that the first one was, in fact, the best. After deleting most of the others he tucked his camera into the vehicle's center console, wanting it close at hand if they encountered something else worthy of capturing. It came back out a few times for drive-by landscape shots – Dick always offered to pull over, but he demurred – but for the most part the rest of the drive consisted solely of music, cherry candy, and talk.

But oh, the talk. There had been only one time in the span of their acquaintance that they hadn't been willing to speak with one another on just about any topic that came to mind, and it was well past. The opportunities for them to talk freely without worrying about someone overhearing had become fewer and further between with each progressive year, however, stifling their verbal bonding. Now, going sixty miles an hour across the high plains, they had no inhibitions. Words, and with them unspoken but easily interpreted meanings, flowed as easily as the water in the creeks they passed over.

By the time their tires crunched into the gravel lot of their hotel, it felt to Tim as if he had traveled not across the country but rather back in time. The last bits of rust had fallen away from their relationship, leaving it as limber and easy as he had remember it once being. He could only imagine how well-oiled it would be after another nine days alone together, but he didn't dare think about it for too long lest the tight ball of joy in his chest explode and kill him before he could find out for sure.

"...Whoa, Dick, you didn't have to get us a suite," his jaw dropped when they walked into their room around four o'clock.

"Trust me, Timmy, this is far from the most expensive one they have here. I just thought we might want some space to spread out. Besides," he grinned, "I know you're going to go through your gear again tonight. This way you don't have to put it all in a pile while you run down your packing list."

"I don't know, I might leave it be. I've checked it, like, eight hundred times this week. I'm getting as bad as Bruce," he sighed as he dropped onto the couch.

"Does that bother you?"

"No, but it does make me jealous of people like you who can inventory once or twice and then just relax and know that everything's where it should be."

"I guess I figure that if I get where I'm going and something's missing, I'll improvise. I still check, like you said, but...I don't know, maybe you and Bruce are just more paranoid than I am."

"Paranoid? How so?"

"Well, do you think your sleeping bag is going to grow legs and walk away in the middle of the night?"

"No. Of course not."

"So the only other reason to check on it again the next day is if you think someone moved it when you weren't looking, right?"

"Or that I mistakenly marked it off the first time," he frowned.

"Yeah, but how many times can you mistakenly mark something off? You've checked your gear every day for the last three weeks, bro. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, I'm just saying that that's possibly even more obsessive than Bruce would be about it."

"Well...to be fair, all of our stuff was in the house with Damian. Who has every reason to want to screw with me," Tim pointed out. "...I don't know what I did to that kid to make him just... loathe me."

"He doesn't loathe you. He's just...complicated. And even if he had messed with your stuff, he wouldn't have taken anything that would have put us at risk. Something to make things inconvenient, sure, but he wouldn't want us to end up hurt or dead because of something he did."

"You," he corrected. "He wouldn't want you to end up hurt or dead because of something he did."

Dick blinked at him for a long moment, his face sad. "...There's got to be some way to bridge the gap between you two," he sighed finally. "There's just...I swear, that's practically my life goal these days, is figuring out how to get you two to some sort of understanding. I don't expect you to be best friends and take trips together," he grinned for an instant before his mouth turned down again, "but I'd like to get you to the point of at least tolerating each other for more than the time it takes to eat dinner."

"I don't see how you're going to succeed, Dick. We're just too different. But...can I say that I appreciate the effort you're putting into it without making you think that being friends with Damian is on my bucket list?"

"Sure," he chuckled. "But Timmy?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Something I've learned over the years is that our bucket lists often include things that we don't realize are there until we've achieved them."

He wanted to argue that there was no way a better relationship with the demon-child was skulking between the lines of his list, but he couldn't quite make the words come out. Maybe it was because he knew such an assertion would hurt Dick's feelings; maybe it was because there was a truth in the older man's comment that he wasn't ready to face. I've been willfully denying enough truth lately, he decided, and opted to believe that the first reason for the block in his throat was the real one. "...Well, I guess we'll find out sooner or later."

A gentle smile told him that his hesitation had been noted, but would be allowed to slide for now. "Yup. Sooner or later, everything comes out. Until then, though," his expression brightened, "what do you say to some dinner?"

"It's kind of early, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I'm starving. Besides, this way we'll have time to order room service dessert later. It's not like we need to worry about our waistlines, considering what we're heading out on tomorrow."

"True." Swinging his feet back to the floor, he pushed Damian, his bucket list, and everything that wasn't all about enjoying his reforged connection with his big brother out of his mind. "I could go for a burger, now that you mention it."

"Ooh...burger...yeah. That sounds good."

"Should we change, do you think?"

"For a burger? Nah. This place is nice, but it's not the Ritz."

"Let's go then." His stomach rumbled without warning, and he wondered for the briefest of seconds what secrets other than hunger were lurking within him. Stop it, he ordered himself without letting the smile on his face so much as twitch. "...Apparently I'm more into the idea of dinner than I realized."

Dick just smirked. "Funny how that works, isn't it?"

Author's Note: I've posted Tim's bison picture on my blog. Just a reminder, there won't be a new chapter on this story until Monday, since tomorrow I'll be posting the Father's Day chapter of 'Summer Shorts'. Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing, and happy reading!