To call Jason and Dick's relationship tense is an understatement of Batburger proportions.
It's not immediately obvious to an outsider— in this case, to Tim, probably, because Dick suffuses the words Little Wing with open affection, but in all actuality, it's only Tim's presence that's keeping Jason from taking aim at his brother. He should've fucking known when the trap bullet didn't land its target that Dick was the culprit; he's loath to admit it, but the bastard's reflexes are as sharp as always.
Dick's fully suited up, all the way down to his fingerstripes, and his suit is nicked right above the shoulder as if something had clipped him on his way to breaking into Jason's apartment. In fact, he's bleeding a little bit, onto Jason's floor and everything. And sure, it's shitty, worn-down hardwood that probably hasn't been replaced since the Dark Ages, but Jason is going to be sure to bill Dick premium regardless.
"Timothy Drake?" Dick says, his words eclipsed by a sharp gasp. The sleepiness sloughs off of Tim immediately, and the kid blanches. "That is you, isn't it?"
"Nightwing?" Tim sort of squeaks right back, bright-eyed and shaky-voiced. Dick tends to have that sort of effect on the general populace. Jason can't imagine why; he almost always wants to throttle him.
"Hold on." Jason forgets his irritation for a moment as he blinks between Dick and Tim. "You know who Tim is?" It makes sense for Tim to know Nightwing, of course, but— " How?"
Dick pales, pressing his palm over the cut on his shoulder. "Because—" He flicks a trapped, wide-eyed look at Jason. "He's— I've seen him on TV, obviously."
Something clicks in Jason's brain, and he wants to smack himself. Oh. Of course. Tim lives right next door to Wayne Manor. But to reveal that Dick knows Tim through being his neighbor isn't an option, obviously.
Tim's looking between the two of them like he's not sure if he's hallucinating or not, his hands curled into the collar of his borrowed shirt tightly.
Dick starts. "Wait a second. Don't distract me." The puzzlement evaporates sharply from his words, his thoughtful expression smoothing out into something brisk and businesslike. "What on earth is he doing here?" His stance stays relaxed, but there's a line of tension up along the curve of his back.
And that, that needles Jason more than he thought it would; he knows Dick wouldn't think the worst of him, wouldn't think that, but in the wake of Jack Drake's accusation, it stings unexpectedly.
"I asked Jason if I could…" Tim begins, and Dick startles at Tim's use of Jason's name, blinking first at him and then at Jason in shock.
"What are you doing here?" Jason volleys right back with no small amount of irritation, cutting Tim off before he gives away too much information. He moves to stand side by side with Tim instinctively, even though Dick would never fucking hurt a defenseless kid, no way. He wouldn't even hurt a defensive kid. Still, something about the look on Tim's face sets Jason on edge.
"Oh, well—" Dick clears his throat, looking a little flustered as he extracts a piece of paper from one of his gloves. "I was investigating something that led me to busting one of Black Mask's operations, and there were murmurs of an informant within your ranks, so—"
"You broke in for that?" Jason blurts out incredulously, narrowing his eyes. "Why didn't you just knock, D- Nightwing," he corrects quickly. "For fuck's sake."
"You never open the door," Dick protests. "I was just going to sneak in, leave a friendly note—"
"You thought that would freak me out less?" Jason says, aware that his voice is rising in volume but unable to help it. Seeing Dick always shakes him; Dick's gestures of kindness like worrying about an informant, like trying to— care, or whatever it is he's doing, leave him feeling unsteady, off-balance. A restless prickle rolls through his blood and threatens to punch holes up through his skin.
"You aren't usually home at this time!" Dick says exasperatedly, matching his volume. "Because you're a massive workaholic, you weren't even supposed to be here. I wouldn't have been caught if your trick gun hadn't gone off—"
"Oh, you're one to talk about being a goddamn workaholic." Jason says with a humorless scoff, throwing his hands into the air incredulously. He nearly smacks the lightbulb doing it. "Let me guess, this is just another attempt for B to indirectly check up on me through you—"
"Jason, it's not always about him—"
"—And obviously, I wouldn't be roaming around, because obviously, there's a kid here." Jason says harshly, slamming his palm down flat against the table with a sharp bang. And then that really sinks in, and he feels like he accidentally swallowed an ice cube.
A kid.
Fuck.
He lets his hand slide off the table and turns, a chill snapping whip-sharp through his chest. He doesn't know at what point during the heated conversation Tim checked out, but one glance at the kid tells him that Tim hasn't been around for a minute. The kid's flattened himself back completely against his door and gone completely still, like he's trying to play dead or invisible or something, and a muscle in Jason's jaw ticks sharply.
"Is he," Dick says regretfully, his tone immediately softening by several degrees. Jason holds up a hand to stay his brother, and Dick stills, balanced on the balls of his feet and keeping a watchful distance.
Jason sort of half-crouches until he's closer to Tim's height and carefully waves a hand in front of Tim's glassy, unfocused eyes gently.
"Tim, buddy? Can you hear me?" he asks quietly, and although Tim blinks at him vacantly, he doesn't react much past that. "Hey, look, we're not yelling anymore. We won't—" Well. "We'll try not to yell anymore, okay?"
Tim's shoulders hitch upward slightly, and his gaze drifts ever so slightly from Jason to Dick, who sheepishly retreats back a few steps to give them space.
"Nightwing's here," Tim murmurs, his tone distant and almost dreamy.
"That's right, kiddo," Jason says, and even though he goes for a reassuring little smile, the hole in his chest threatens to blow wide into something furious that craves Jack Drake's fucking blood. "He sure is."
Tim hums quietly, like the hum of a printer trying to process a command, and then blinks again. There's a little more awareness, now, in the lift of his shoulders, in the brights of his eyes. "Are you guys fighting?"
"We—" Jason clears his throat. "It's a little complicated," he says, strained, because he doesn't want to lie to Tim, but. The truth is somewhere in there, even if Jason isn't really sure what it is, exactly.
Tim finally, slowly, unsticks his frozen fingers from his collar and lowers his arms, his breath hitching slightly as he straightens up against the door. "I just— Um, I get overwhelmed sometimes," the kid says, trailing his pinky over the wood grains in the doorframe. "I'm sorry that I—" He blows out a harsh puff of air, mouth twisting into something a little wobbly as he averts his gaze from Jason. "—interrupted you."
"Hey, no," Jason says immediately. "We, uh. We shouldn't have…" He sighs. "It's okay, Tim. I'm not mad at you. He isn't, either, trust me."
Tim doesn't look like he believes him, and when he glances dubiously at Dick, Dick smiles reassuringly. It's hard to look right at Dick when he lights up like that, for many reasons, the primary one being that Jason values his fucking eyesight.
Jason doesn't take it personally when Tim seems to relax a fraction more. He doesn't take it personally, because Dick's fucking Nightwing, and Nightwing is a hero beacon or what the fuck ever, and Tim's only just coming to terms with the idea that Jason isn't the goddamn monster under his bed, so—
"Jason?" Tim says quietly, and there's the smallest fracture toward the end of his name. "My. I think I'm." He's struggling, and the frustration is written all over his little face, and Jason finds that he doesn't have the mental fortitude to hold onto any of his ire toward Dick. Not now, at least.
"Seems like you're still a little overwhelmed, dude," Jason says, light and conversational. "If you want, you can go back to bed. Nightwing and I just have to sort some stuff out."
"The traitor? In your organization?" Tim asks cautiously, now looking intently at the wood again.
"You caught that, huh?" Jason says, and straightens fully. "Yeah, we—" He glances back at Dick and sighs. Again. "Yeah, that's right. But that's for us to worry about, okay? And you," he says, nudging Tim very lightly with his hip, "should worry about getting some rest."
"Okay," Tim says compliantly, half the word lost to a yawn. "Goodnight, Jason." And then, a little shyly: "Goodnight, Nightwing."
Once the door closes behind him, Dick's friendly smile drops away sharply, and Jason actually feels goosebumps ripple over his arms at the blank, indeterminable look on his brother's shadow-drawn face.
"Jason," Dick says quietly, and Jason lifts a finger to his lips before gesturing down the hallway. It's not a conversation he wants to have outside Tim's door, no matter how discreet he knows Dick can be. He closes the door between the dining area and the kitchen itself, just to put another degree of separation between Tim and their conversation.
He ends up needing something to do to work off the residual anger from Tim's reactions, and that means making something; he angrily thwacks the flat of his knife down against a full head of garlic and minces it almost to liquid as Dick paces the length of the living room.
"So," Dick says, and Jason slices down so hard into a pepper that he almost cuts through the cutting board.
"I'm going to make some fucking pasta. You're going to have some, you're going to pay me for fucking bleeding on my floor because that shit does not come out easily, and then you're going to get out," Jason says flatly. He decimates the rest of the pepper and rips into a new one with cold precision, his arms shaking slightly as he tries to gather all of the bigbadwrong emotions and force them effortfully into a box.
"I could eat," Dick says warily, and wisely keeps his distance.
Jason grunts. He hadn't fucking wanted any of this. It's complicated enough keeping Tim around, but Dick adds a new layer of uncertainty and fuckery to it all.
Once everything is sizzling on the stove, he finally manages to unclench his almost-white fingers from around the handle of the knife and release it. He rummages around in one of his drawers for a second before flinging an unopened box of Bandaids toward Dick, who catches it wordlessly out of the air.
"Tim's dad is a fucking prick," Jason says after a beat.
Dick inhales sharply. "Okay," he says simply. "Elaborate?"
"I don't know a lot of details," Jason says angrily, twisting slightly to jab at the sizzling vegetables with his spatula. "All I know is that I'm not fucking letting Tim go back there. You don't— You don't know what he told him. About me."
Dick's brows furrow together in confusion, and he absently peels the backing off one of the Bandaids. "What on earth would Jack be telling a kid about Hood?" he asks.
"He told him that if he misbehaved," Jason seethes, scraping savagely at an onion that refuses to come unstuck from his supposedly non-stick pan (those fucking liars), "that he would fucking sell him off to me, that I would— that I would— to a kid. " He half-chokes, his voice catching. Fuck, he can hardly even say it, it's.
There's a clatter behind him. Jason turns to see the box of Bandaids skitter away under a chair, and then snaps his gaze up to Dick's white face and almost-black eyes.
"He what." Dick says mutedly, like he's speaking from underneath water.
"Yeah."
Dick reels up. He's shorter than Jason now, but suddenly, it feels like the height difference has been completely eclipsed by Dick and the magnitude of his fury.
"I always thought," Dick says between gritted teeth, crumpling the Bandaid into a tiny wad in his fist, "there was something— off about him, about." He turns sharply, movements jerky, like he's not fully in control of himself at this moment. "He said that about you?"
"Hm." Jason hums, only because he isn't sure he won't scream if he opens his mouth.
Something bright and blazing crackles in Dick's face, sharper and more dangerous than lightning. The liquid black shadows in Jason's apartment drape over Dick in a way that makes him appear almost haunting in the small room. He'd looked at Hood like this before, before he knew he was Jason; Jason had been glad for the helmet, because every hair on the back of his neck had stood straight up when Dick had turned to look at him directly. It's hard to look at him when he looks like this— apoplectic , in a way that doesn't often see the light.
A beat passes, where the gravity in the room almost smothers Jason; then, Dick dials the intensity back ever so slightly as he seems to come back into himself, his expression condensing back into something controlled and contemplative.
Then— Dick quietly says what Jason's been afraid of.
"That feels like too specific a threat, Little Wing."
It's not like Jason hasn't considered it, but it still makes the floor spin out underneath him for a second.
"...Fuck, I know," he says, nearly snapping the spaghetti. "It's just— How the fuck do you ask about that? You saw him today. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm going to say something and that's—"
Something Dick had said earlier clicks, all of a sudden.
"You thought there was something off?" he echoes incredulously, and Dick's mouth purses tightly. Jason slams his knife down so hard that his wrist protests, and his fingers twitch. "Why the fuck didn't you do anything about it?"
"It wasn't… This," Dick says, stilted. "B talked to me about it, it was… After one of the galas. It wasn't— it really wasn't this." He says it almost like he's pleading, and something in Jason's chest squeezes, like phantom fingers are wringing him out. "It was just that he had a lot to say about your circumstances. B hated it. He overheard him talking about you, talking about how you were just a street kid, out for B's money, for his inheritance, just. Bullshit like that, talking about your pedigree or whatever, like you were an animal . B was pissed. He didn't want Jack anywhere near you after that." He rubs his eyes and sighs, looking unusually tired. "Neither of us ever thought it would be like this. We didn't think he'd treat his own son like that."
Jason's beyond giving a shit what Jack Drake thinks about his pedigree. Even still, his stomach curdles sourly as he mixes everything together into a pot. He also doesn't know what to say to that, yet, because he doesn't want to talk about Bruce, and he definitely doesn't want to talk about Bruce protecting him in any fuckin' capacity. He shifts tracks.
"The informant," he says, channeling his irritation toward that brewing mess instead. He pitches the knife sideways into the sink with a discordant clatter and turns, leaning his back against the counter. "Who is it?"
Dick blinks at the change in topic, but seamlessly shifts gears. "Right, um— apparently, his name is Marco."
Jason blinks at him blankly for a moment, and then snorts. Loudly.
"Yeah, that checks out," he says, and despite himself, some of his humor is summarily restored.
"What do you mean?"
"Marco's a double double agent." Jason clicks his tongue, piling a bowl full of pasta. "He has a lot of aliases in and around the Alley to gather information for me. I'm surprised he made it this far, though… I thought he'd get sniffed out by someone way earlier. You'd better not have blown his cover, I've been setting this up for ages."
Dick frowns as Jason thrusts the bowl at him. "Aren't you worried he'll betray you?"
"Marco, betray me?" Jason doesn't exactly smile, but his mouth does twitch as taps his phone. "I told him to hold down the fort while I took a day off for the kid, and he's been texting me updates every fifteen minutes. I don't think he slept." Half of them are about the spreadsheet; Marco had figured out about the baby blue debacle and had taken to calling Jason increasingly creative names with each message.
"Sounds like you should pay him more," Dick says. He's already halfway through the pasta, which figures; Dick, much like the rest of their dysfunctional fucking family, never eats as much as he's supposed to. With his fucking metabolism, too. Dick will either spend four hours carefully trying to make one uselessly complicated recipe or go the whole damn day without eating anything and then raid the fridge for a bag of shredded cheese on top of a raw tortilla at 3 A.M.
"Fuck's sake, not you too. He's getting money from everyone he's pretending to work for. He doesn't need a raise."
Dick shrugs, his relieved smile a little entertained. "Whatever you say, Wing."
At the nickname, Jason remembers that he's pissed. He doesn't like to fall into domesticity with Dick, because it's like taking one step into the shallows, ending up ensnared by the tides, and then getting tossed face-first into the ocean.
"What're you going to do with Tim, then?" Dick asks, his expression shifting into something more somber as he stretches out long strings of cheese with his fork. There's something oddly stilted about his movements, something unusually tight at the corners of his mouth. He's staring intently at the cheese as if half his mind is in the room, and half is miles away. "I mean, won't his dad start looking? I can help with that, if you want," he asks, too nonchalant for Jason to buy the facade of harmlessness.
"No, he won't." Jason says shortly, shoveling the leftovers into a box to give to Tim the next day (and fuck, when did he start thinking like that?) . "His dad isn't even coming back for like, a month or something." He slams the lid down a little too hard and buries his face into one hand, swiping back errant white locks that hang loose over his forehead. "Fuck, Dick, it's so fucking messed up. It's messed up to me. The kid just sits at home all fucking day. Alone. I'm positive he doesn't even have a babysitter."
Dick tilts one shoulder up thoughtfully. "I think you're already doing what you can, Wing."
"What do you mean," Jason grumbles, half through his hand.
Sighing, Dick reaches out to rinse out the bowl, and Jason immediately smacks his hand to try to take it away from him. They quietly spar over it for a second, but the tiny kerfuffle ends with Dick slithering around him like an annoyingly flexible eel and flicking the faucet on with a smug smile. Jason makes sure to smack him across the shoulder with the spatula and then throws in all the dishes he hadn't done earlier, because if Dick's gonna be annoying about it, he might as well do the rest of them, too.
Dick's stupid grin doesn't falter at all as he happily flies through the dirty dishes. Jason wants to hit him, so he does, and is tremendously satisfied by the little "ow, fuck" he gets in response.
"What I meant earlier, is— you already seem like you're trying to, I dunno." Dick looks pointedly down at the pasta container. "Keep him around?"
"Not a long-term solution, Dickhead." Jason says wearily, frustration bleeding into his voice.
"Then take it one step at a time." Dick says, all wise and annoying and shit, and Jason abruptly decides he's had just about enough of Dick being in his apartment and Knowing Things. He's exhausted, anyway; cooking and getting unequivocally pissed tends to have that effect on him.
"Thanks, Yoda. Now get out. You've overstayed your welcome," he says crossly, pointing at the window.
"Idiot, that would be 'it one step at a time take,'" Dick scolds, stretching his arms out over his head as he climbs back out of the window. Before he does actually grapple off, he adds, "Thanks for the food. And… Just, really take it one step at time, Wing."
Dick's face does something funny and complicated; Jason doesn't know how to place it, but something about it makes his chest sting for some reason.
"He needs to feel safe now. That's the most important thing," Dick says quietly, and then like a shadow, he's gone, lost to the night.
Jason quickly realizes how fucking weird it is to maneuver around a small being suddenly in his space.
One day prior, he'd been doing what the fuck ever, leaving weapons out in the open, not bothering to watch how much space he was taking up, saying anything and everything that came to mind out loud.
Now, all of a sudden, it's— he has to carefully comb through his apartment and disable every single item that could cause any harm. He even finds himself eyeing the kitchen knives, but quickly decides that'd probably be insulting to Tim; the kid's eleven, not four, and he's clearly self-sufficient enough to have been home alone for God-knows-how-long. He's a regular Matilda, but less in a charming way and more in a somewhat horrifying way.
Self-sufficient though he is, Tim doesn't much advocate for his own space, as Jason comes to discover.
The kid doesn't actually say he wants to sit next to Jason on the couch; instead, he scrunches himself up into a corner of the room as well as he can with his splint— as if he's trying to prevent anyone from remembering he exists —and peeps tentative glances toward the couch until Jason catches on and invites him over.
"You know you can sit here whenever you want, right?" Jason asks him, swinging his legs off the couch; Tim makes his way over uncertainly and scrunches himself up into a corner of the couch instead of the room as a whole. Baby steps, Jason supposes.
Tim doesn't look at him, and instead focuses on the threads of one of his scarves. He's bundled himself back into them and another one of Jason's shirts, and Jason automatically finds himself reaching over the back of the couch to adjust the heating. He'd kind of forgotten about it— because he tends to run so warm —but Tim looks like a Push Pop, and he doesn't want the kid to freeze to death in his apartment.
"You were stretched out on the couch. I didn't want to make you move," Tim says vaguely, after a moment, and Jason's brain just whirs uselessly at the words for a moment.
"It's okay to ask," Jason says, feeling like an idiot, but Tim just gives him a baffled look before returning his gaze to the couch.
"This couch is new. I noticed last night," he says with a frown, running the pads of his fingertips over the fabric. Jason sits up a little bit more, and carefully scoots just an inch closer to the kid. It's clear Tim notices, judging by the way his gaze flicks over to Jason, but he doesn't flinch, which Jason takes as progress. In a way, Tim's comfort with Jason seems to reset a little bit with each new morning; he thaws more over the day, which has Jason wondering if Tim gets a really bad case of anxiety at night that has him freezing up the next day.
"You're right," he praises, impressed; Tim had only been in Jason's apartment once before this, after all, and hadn't even slept on the couch. "It is a different couch. You're pretty observant, Tim, has anyone ever told you that?"
Tim shrugs one shoulder, but the line of his form relaxes slightly as he tilts his head to look at Jason. "Not in a good way," he says ruefully, and Jason bites the inside of his cheek to keep from swearing.
"It's cool to me," Jason says, in an effort to hold onto the moment of levity. "I bet you'd be really good at trivia."
Tim pauses in his ministration of the scarves. "Some trivia," he says hesitantly, and then peers at Jason warily as if Jason is going to tell him to stop before he's even started. Jason keeps his pose as relaxed as he possibly can, considering he's actually fairly tense with frustration. Not at Tim— never at Tim —but at the shitty, shitty circumstances that seemed to lie beneath every one of Tim's behaviors like a viper waiting to strike.
"What kind of trivia?"
And on that sunny, cold Saturday, Jason finds out that, given a very special cocktail of interest, warmth, and an open ear, Tim does talk— and talks a lot.
During breakfast, while Jason attempts to make pancakes with mayonnaise and sour cream, Tim launches into a careful, incredibly intricate explanation of the ten most venomous animals on earth, starting with the box jellyfish– "And did you know there are over 51 species of box jellyfish? They actively hunt prey instead of just kind of bumping into it like other jellyfish do." (This, he pairs with a wiggly hand motion and two fists bumping into each other gently, and Jason turns his head to smile into his hand).
That afternoon, while Jason gets fancy with French toast and strawberries— what the hell, it's the weekend, and he's feeling unusually indulgent —Tim enthusiastically informs him of the saw-scaled viper, belonging to the genus Echis. "Their deadly serum contains a whole bunch of toxins," Tim says, wiggling his fork-pierced strawberry toward Jason. "Like, neurotoxins, cardiotoxins, hemotoxins, cytotoxins— I mean, can you imagine if Scarecrow ever got his hand on a saw-scaled viper," he adds, shuddering, and Jason can't help the unpleasant shiver that darts up his spine as well.
Creeping into the early evening, Tim's halfway through a detailed breakdown of cone snails ("Their stingers are like needles, and they're super precise and really pretty. Don't worry, though, they're not usually lethal to humans, so you're probably okay. I mean, unless you find yourself in Indo-Pacific waters and you specifically pick up a very big and potentially cranky one—) when he abruptly stops.
Jason, who'd been half-listening and half-fighting his microwave to heat at least one fucking dish evenly, turns to see Tim blinking rapidly, his expression shuttering into something distinctly petrified.
Jason's finger stills against the number pad of the microwave.
"Tim?"
"I—" Tim says, his breathing picking up slightly. "I'm sorry. I talked so much, I— I'm sorry." And fuck, Tim's breathing isn't just picking up, it's full-on teetering into these gulping, shuddering gasps that scrape out of the kid's lungs like heaving waves. Jason immediately abandons the microwave. "I won't— I'll be quiet, I will. I can be quiet, so you don't have to—"
Jason's horrified by where that sentence might be going; his brain sort of gibbers out something half-comprehensible as he crouches beside Tim. He needs to stay calm, for fuck's sake, and there's a negative guarantee he will be if Tim finishes that fucking sentence.
"Tim, it's okay," he assures, moving his hands in what he hopes are calming motions; the second he even lifts his arms, though, Tim just stops. Breathing. His mouth snaps shut so tightly Jason thinks he hears his jaw click, and he's staring dead at Jason's raised arms as if waiting for the guillotine to come down on his throat.
Jason freezes, too, because this is so fucked up, he doesn't even know how to process it. He's trying not to give into the rage and just explode, only for Tim's sake, but out of the corner of his eye, he can see his own arms shaking when he very, very slowly lowers them.
"I'm not going to—" Hit you? Yell? He doesn't know what Tim expects him to do, but the kid is in no state to answer questions; he's drifted far out of Jason's grasp by now, locked away somewhere in his own head, and Jason—
Jason finds himself facing down a sort of abject, bottomless fear. Like something inside of him knows he has to dive down into the deep end and dissect each ordeal Tim's been through, but the child inside of Jason doesn't want to. Fuck, he doesn't want to. He's— he's afraid of what he's going to find down there.
Unexpectedly, and for just a brief, sharp moment, Jason finds himself wishing Dick had stayed (and then he hates that he thinks that, because he can do this, he can. Once, he'd also been—).
"Tim," he says, and it comes out like a plea, like a prayer. "I'm not going to hurt you, it's okay." He doesn't really know what to do, so he finds himself retreating to something familiar. "You, um— Hey, you're a Nightwing fan, right?"
Tim doesn't respond. He doesn't acknowledge Jason whatsoever, but Jason pushes on regardless, wiping his palms down his jeans with a shaky exhale.
"Remember how he was here earlier? He, uh. Sometimes he drops by. Mostly to annoy me," he mutters, rubbing the back of his head. "But sometimes he drops by to help me, or give me information, or once, he, uh. I dunno. He brought me some— A friend of mine makes really good chocolate cake, and Nightwing once, uh. Anyway." He folds himself into a criss-cross across from Tim, and taps his fingers restlessly against his knee. "He thought there was a traitor, this time. Not sure how he got the information, but that's probably how he got injured. Which sucks for him, because the informant wasn't really an informant."
It's hard to talk about Dick, he realizes belatedly. He should've picked something else, but Tim's at least sort of looking at him now (or somewhat to the left of him), so he's officially stuck in this specific trap.
"I get frustrated when he pops in like that," Jason admits, angling himself so his knee is almost touching Tim's, trying to carefully introduce himself back into the kid's space. Tim's methodically tracing his finger over the gouges in the wood floors, but Jason isn't sure if he knows he's doing it so much as doing it out of habit. "He just represents… I don't know. A different life, a different me, I guess. It's hard to deal with that, sometimes, because I'm different now, but it feels like he's…."
He blinks. When he looks up from his hands at Tim, the kid's watching him, half-lidded and hazy.
"Is that why you guys were fighting?" Tim asks, hushed, and his arms come somewhat unknotted from around himself.
Relief floods into Jason's parched lungs like the cool reprieve of water. "Yeah, that's right," he says softly. "Sometimes he and I don't see eye to eye, that's all." He clears his throat. "You back with me, kiddo?"
Tim shrugs listlessly. "I'm sorry for—"
"None of that," Jason says, because hearing the apologies makes him feel more than a little ill. He clears his throat and wraps his arms around his knees, giving the kid a careful once-over. "Tim, listen... I asked you about the trivia. That means I wanted to hear about it."
Tim's eyes go a little glossy, a little bright. His throat bobs as he lowers his knees from where they'd been wedged underneath his chin awkwardly. "Really?"
"Yeah, yes," Jason says, his words half-swallowed by an incredulous laugh. "I wanna hear about the jellyfish, the— the vipers, the cone snails."
"Really?" Tim repeats, awed, like it's an unfathomable thing to imagine that someone would be interested in what he has to say. Jason wants to bang his own head into the nearest wall.
"Yes, really."
Tim just sits there for a long moment, slightly hunched over, carefully studying Jason's face as though trying to eke a lie out of his microexpressions; Jason waits patiently, trying to keep his expression as open as possible.
"Um," Tim says after a moment, and scoots ever so slightly so that his knee bumps against Jason's. "Then— Um, then, do you want to hear about how the— um, how the cone snail's harpoon is actually evolutionarily modified teeth?"
Jason snorts, and nudges his knee right back against Tim's. "Why don't you tell me all about it over pasta?"
From: Dickface
[link attached]
From: Dickface
[link attached]
From: Dickface
[link attached]
From: Me
Dick, if you don't stop sending me parenting articles, I'm going to fucking block you.
From: Dickface
:(
Jason's brother is, by all counts, a person who doesn't typically leave things alone.
Even still, Jason is less than amused when he returns back to the apartment on Sunday with paper bags full of groceries and finds Nightwing seated at the table opposite from Tim. He'd felt bad for leaving the kid at home, given the circumstances, but it had only been a fifteen-minute stint… Which even more leaves him absolutely flabbergasted that Dick managed to manipulate that opening to his advantage. It'd only been a day, goddammit.
"You know…" he says flatly, nudging the door closed with his foot. "This is why I booby-trapped my fucking apartment."
"Such a shame you can't do that anymore with Timmy around," Dick says, the whites of his eyes gleaming with a sort of delight that gives Jason chills. He's right, too, the bastard. "And besides, I knocked today, just so you know."
"For future reference, Tim, don't let this dumbass in," Jason says dryly, pointing at Dick with a baguette accusingly. "He's like a parasite. He'll suck out your life force.
Dick reels back as if he's been physically wounded. "You always cut me deep, Jay."
Tim ensconces himself into his little blanket cocoon until only his face is still visible. "Are you guys fighting again… Or, not seeing eye to eye?" he asks carefully, and even though his tone is deceptively light, his fingers tighten into the creases of the blanket. "Did I do something wrong?"
Jason closes a cabinet with the heel of his palm and exchanges a quick look with Dick. Dick rests his chin in his hands, giving Jason a look brimming with pure, unadulterated glee, and Jason valiantly resists the urge to nail him in the side of the head with an apple.
"No, you didn't," he says with a grudging sigh. "And we aren't fighting, Tim. This is just how we talk to each other." He drops down into the chair beside Tim and rests his arm against the back of the kid's chair, scowling at Dick from across the table. "What the hell are you doing here this time, then?"
"I just wanted to say hello to Tim again. Oh, but I did bring peace offerings this time," Dick says cheerily, sliding over a small Styrofoam box. Jason pops it open suspiciously, and is immediately greeted by neat stacks of Alfred's Earl Gray shortbread cookies. And fuck, if seeing their neat, rectangular edges doesn't make Jason's chest tighten with familiarity. "I told him to bake extra," Dick adds, and Jason pauses with his hand in the box.
"You didn't—" he starts, throat dry, and Dick immediately shakes his head.
"No, I didn't specify, don't worry. I think he just thinks you and I are sharing them." Dick shifts his smile from Jason to Tim. "Go on, kiddo. They're for you, too."
Tim glances at Jason, and Jason nudges the box toward him encouragingly. The kid's hand creeps out from underneath the blanket like a field mouse, skittering out to snatch a cookie before retreating again.
As Tim munches happily on the acquired treats, Jason turns his attention to Dick.
"How is A?"
"Long-suffering and overworked as always," Dick says, smoothing out the creases in his gloves and contorting himself into a pretzel on the chair. "And missing you, of course."
Jason leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, his brow furrowed. It's a bit much to process right now; he's still a bit mentally drained after yesterday's events, and one glance at Tim tells him the same. The kid hadn't managed to bounce to peak energy after he'd checked out the day prior, and even though there hadn't been any significant setbacks today, Tim had been quieter, more in his head than outside of it.
"I really didn't want to stay too long today," Dick says, stretching his arms out over his head. "I, uh." His forehead crinkles as he looks down at the box. "Have some stuff going on back at the nest." Code for getting into it with Bruce, Jason thinks wryly, and possibly over him. "What are you two going to do?"
"Well, it is a school night," Jason says, and Tim, halfway through his second cookie, makes a distinctly disappointed sound. "None of that, come on," Jason admonishes, rapping his knuckles lightly against the back of the chair while Dick watches on with what Jason is sure is an incredibly corny expression that absolutely doesn't fluster Jason in any way whatsoever.
"But we have to read Hamlet again," Tim says with a dejected, dramatic sigh, brushing crumbs off his cheek. "And half the stuff he says doesn't even make sense."
"Luckily, I can help you with that." Jason glances at the kitchen. "After a quick dinner."
One of Dick's articles had gone into annoying detail about how to help kids with their homework, but Jason won't be saying a goddamn thing about that. Mostly because then, he'd have to admit to Dick that he'd read the articles, and Dick would become henceforth intolerable. Either way, apparently he'd fucked up by directly translating Hamlet for Tim instead of guiding him through it, or whatever— now he's equipped, so he won't make that mistake again.
"It's nice to see you getting back into English, Jay," Dick says with the sort of open sincerity that Jason always has a hard time facing head-on, so he automatically goes to check his phone instead with a non-committal grunt and an unkind finger aimed at an unperturbed Dick.
From: Marco
Jay SOS? I think Nightwing has it out for me bc i SWEAR i saw him following me earlier today but i can't prove it bc it's fucking nightwing
From: Marco
I mean, even if i say niGHTWING is following me who's going to believe me anyway? I wouldn't believe me
From: Marco
And he's not even hiding it? Which is scarier?
From: Marco
jay help I don't wanna be on nightwing's bad side
From: Marco
I mean i don't actually know if it was nightwing i guess. why would nightwing be following ME of all people
From: Marco
Maybe he's an imposter
From: Marco
jay help i don't wanna be on fake nightwing's bad side either
Jason's hand moves faster than his brain, and he sends the first throwable object— a cookie —flying across the table toward Dick, who snatches it out of the air, surprised. Tim watches on, bemused.
"Stop fucking tailing Marco, dumbass," he says bluntly. "You're scaring the shit out of him."
Dick tsks unapologetically as he rolls out of the chair in one fluid motion. "Well, I had be positive that he wasn't a traitor ," he says, and Jason narrows his eyes, outwardly unmoved by the display of care. "Though, you can rest easy, because I don't think he is one. If anything, I think he's way too loyal to you."
Jason sighs so hard that he's positive he dislodges something.
It's not that watching out for the small being suddenly in his space is easy by any means… but Jason would be hard-pressed to admit that it's a chore either.
Tim's shitty home life circumstances do make it harder to connect to the kid, but as they sprawl over the couch after dinner, both immersed in their separate books, Jason comes to find that there's something oddly— he can't place the exact word. Comforting, perhaps —about Tim just existing in the apartment with him.
It absolutely does catch Jason off-guard sometimes, to look over and just— see another person, since he hasn't shared his place in a while. Something about seeing Tim furrow his brow and glare balefully at the book does actually entertain Jason, though, in a way he can't describe. It feels like watching Alfred fret and fuss over the muffins, or watching Dick stomp around to try to find his missing shoe, or watching B—
Signs of life, in their uncensored simplicity, and Jason, a dead boy in the middle of them.
"Jason?"
"Hm?" Jason hums inquiringly, tearing his gaze away from Rosalind's monologue. "What's up, Tim?"
Tim's mouth purses up into a tight-lipped little frown and wobbles slightly. "Am I stupid if I can't understand this?"
Jason straightens up on the couch, letting the book rest loosely between his legs, and examines Tim for a moment.
"Who told you that?" he asks quietly.
The kid stares even harder at the book, as if it'll somehow cave under the pressure and bare its secrets to him; just by the expression on his face, Jason knows the answer.
Fuck, and he'd been doing such a good job with keeping the anger at bay. Fuck.
"Tim, I've been around you for like. Three days, maybe? And I already think you might be one of the smartest people I've ever met. And even if you weren't," he adds, bumping his shoulder against Tim's, "it'd be okay, too. Everything isn't for everyone, and you don't have to be good at or know everything. Case in point, I knew fuck-all about cone snails… Well, before yesterday."
That does actually coax a little smile out of Tim. "But you don't need to know about cone snails."
"Well, " Jason says, very seriously, "maybe I might happen to find myself in Indo-Pacific waters and specifically feel inclined to pick up a very big and potentially cranky cone snail with a giant tooth harpoon—" He wiggles his fingers mock-threateningly toward Tim, and the kid actually giggles, light and unbidden.
Jason's pretty sure it surprises Tim more than it surprises him, actually.
"Anyway," he says lightly, and taps the book, "it's okay if you don't get it now, and it's okay if you don't get it tomorrow, or ever. Everyone has their strengths."
Tim frowns again, and Jason can almost see the gears turn overtime in the kid's head as he processes the information he's just been given. After a moment, his shoulders slump acceptingly.
"At least it's kind of funny, when I do get it," Tim mutters, and Jason snorts.
"Tell me when you get to Act 3, Scene 2," he says wryly. "Watching Hamlet gaslight Polonius over the shape of a cloud never gets old."
He isn't sure how long he's been absorbed into his book when he feels a weight slump against his leg.
Tim's crashed completely; Hamlet, dislodged by the sudden movement, tumbles face down onto the wood with a small thump. Jason just blinks down at the kid for a second, and then glances up at the microwave clock.
Fuck. It's late, for a school night. They're off to a rocky start.
Jason reaches out to click the nearby lamp off and sighs, leaning back against the couch and scrubbing his hands over his gritty eyes.
There's no point in disturbing the kid now; he'll move Tim to his bed in a little bit.
For now... he lets him sleep.