Chapter Text
Dick was on his feet before he had even fully processed Tim’s words.
“No,” he said, stepping out from around the table and brushing past Tim.
“There’s an entrance to the underworld beneath Gotham,” Tim said, words spilling out of his mouth at lightning speed. “The existence of heroes like Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman sets a precedent that there’s a certain amount of truth to ancient mythologies, and we have no way of knowing how far that precedent extends. If it extends to the gods, why not the heroes? What reason do we have to believe that heroes like Heracles and Orpheus didn’t exist?”
Dick’s mind was slowly filling with static, a painful, ever-growing pressure against the inside of his skull that threatened to overwhelm him. He grabbed Tim’s sneakers from their spot by the door and shoved them into the boy’s chest. Tim’s hands reflexively flew up to receive them, and Dick sidestepped him and grabbed his backpack from the floor.
“Just listen to me,” Tim said, clutching his shoes tight to his body. “I’ve already done all the research, and I’ve narrowed down the three most likely locations for the entrance. If you’d just let me show you my findings—”
The sound the bag made when Dick slammed it onto the coffee table was enough to momentarily silence Tim. His eyes flew wide open, and he stared at the bag like it might burn him.
“No,” Dick said again, picking up Tim’s photo sleeves and shoving them back inside the bag. “And I think it’s time for you to leave.” He zipped the bag up and heaved it towards Tim, who barely managed to grab it.
“When Eurydice died, Orpheus realized he couldn’t live without her, so he went after her,” Tim said. The panic in his voice was mounting, his pitch growing higher as his face grew redder. Dick placed his hands on Tim’s shoulder and started pushing him towards the door, but Tim resisted. “Hades allowed him one final chance, to lead Eurydice out of the underworld—”
“It’s a myth, Tim,” Dick said firmly, trying to ignore the rush of blood pounding in his ears. He pushed Tim again, and his sock-clad feet slipped against the floor, unable to find a hold.
“And the only reason he was given that chance is because of how much he loved her!” Tim’s voice, tireless, slammed through the room like a freight train. “Because he loved her so much that he couldn’t live with out her, because he went all that way to get her!”
“It’s a myth!” Dick repeated, voice steadily getting louder as he unlocked the door and swung it wide open. “A made-up story!” He shoved Tim out into the hall, but Tim barely sumbled before he was barrelling his way back inside, shoving his whole weight against the door and refusing to let Dick slam it shut on him.
“You’re not listening to me!” Tim’s voice echoed around the empty hall, a high wail reminiscent of an ambulance siren. “Your brother needs you, and you won’t listen to me!”
“MY BROTHER IS DEAD!” Dick shouted, gripping the door so tightly that he thought it might splinter beneath his fingers. Silence fell between them, maintained long enough for Dick to take once short breath. “He’s dead.”
Tim was completely still, staring up at Dick with a kind of steely determination that was completely out of place on his young face. “I’d just go get him myself if I could,” he said slowly. “But Jason needs someone who loves him. Someone who loves him enough to go after him and drag him out of the ground. I can’t go to Bruce about this, but you’re his brother. I thought if there was anyone who loved him like that, it’d be you.”
Dick tried to swallow, but his mouth and throat were completely dry. The static in his head had reached a fever pitch, a force that pressed at the spaces behind his eyes, at the back of his throat. His nose stung.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said hoarsely. “You can love someone to the stars and back, and it doesn’t mean you get to keep them.”
Love alone wasn’t enough, had never been enough, would never be enough. If it were, then Dick would have had to be dragged away, kicking and screaming, from every great loss of his life. If it were, then all of Dick’s howling grief would have meant something.
Tim opened his mouth, and then closed it. No clever retort flew from his lips, no confident rebuttal. Nothing but empty breath.
A sharp vibration against his thigh, accompanied by a piercing ringtone, jolted Dick back into the moment. He relaxed his grip on the door, but didn’t move from his spot. Slowly, he pulled his phone from his pocket and accepted the call.
“Hello?”
“Got a takeout order for John Gray,” a low voice came from the other end. “I’m at the front door.”
“That’s me,” Dick said “I’ll be down in a minute.” Then, with a shaking finger, he hung up before the delivery driver could reply. He raised his eyes to meet Tim’s.
“I’m gonna go pick up our food,” he said. His voice came out almost robotically. “You should…you should wait inside.”
A look of relief burst across Tim’s face. “You’ll listen?”
Dick raised an unsteady hand, and Tim fell silent.
“We’re going to eat dinner,” Dick said. “That’s it.”
He grabbed his wallet and keys from the table by the door, slipped into his shoes, and quietly strode away down the hall, leaving Tim and his stupid backpack staring after him.
The walk downstairs was excruciating. Every step rang through his body like a bass drum. He felt like he had been hollowed out, reduced to little more than a sheet on a clothing line: liable to be blown away at the slightest gust of wind.
He paid for the food and thanked the driver with a practiced nonchalance, wearing the persona Bruce had helped him perfect years ago. The one that made him untouchable.
The brown paper bag was warm in his arms, a low and steady heat that seeped into his body like a contagion. Dick only made it up two flights of stairs before his knees gave out.
He slumped onto the ground and instinctively pressed his back to the wall, like it could swallow him if he only pushed hard enough. He pulled his knees up toward his chest and squeezed the takeout bag tight to his body, holding it like it was his own heart and lungs. The heat was sickly against his stomach, contorting the comfort into something alien.
The tears that had been pressing at the corners of his eyes finally spilled over, like they’d been waiting for the first sign of weakness. Once they started, it was impossible to hold them back, and they came pouring out faster and faster, thick and hot and heavy. They burned on their way down his cheeks. It was like every single moment of grief he’d swallowed the entire evening came crashing into him all at once, powerful and painful enough to bowl him over. It was a sledgehammer to the gut, a brutal onslaught of regret he could no longer outrun.
His entire body spasmed with the force of his jagged, wrecked inhale. It sounded like the first breath he’d taken in far too long. It was hot and desperate, and it landed so oddly in Dick’s throat that he nearly choked on it. His stomach churned, his nose burned, and his eyes were squeezed so tightly shut that he was seeing colors that didn’t exist.
Dick had only just started to love Jason. He’d only just been getting accustomed to the idea of a brother, only just starting to get to know him. He’d thought they’d have years and years ahead of them, all the time in the world to make up for those first long and miserable months. It had still felt like somebody had carved a piece of him away when he heard the news.
Jason was dead. Jason had died, and Dick hadn’t even been on-world. Dick missed his own brother’s funeral because he was too busy with the Titans in space, and he felt sick every time he thought about it. He couldn’t even remember if he’d ever told him that he loved him. Jason might have gone to his death without ever knowing that Dick loved him. It ate at him, a painful and gnawing guilt that festered in his gut, especially painful on sleepless nights Jason had only been fifteen, and he had died alone and in pain, and he might not even have known that his big brother loved him.
Now here Tim was, with his backpack full of grisly photos. Tim, who was an insensitive little stalker, who had gone to Wayne Manor intending to blackmail Batman, who cared so much about Robin that he was prepared to put on the suit himself if he had to. Tim, who would become Robin, one way or another, no matter what Dick did to try and stop him.
Tim, who had looked Dick in the eye and offered him another chance. Tim, who seemed to believe that somehow, love could be enough. That if Dick only loved Jason enough, he could have him back.
It was cruel. No doubt Tim hadn’t meant it to be, but it was. To even offer something like that was completely callous, especially when Dick knew it was impossible. Somewhere, deep in the most private recesses of his mind, a tiny spark of hope had flared upon hearing Tim’s words. That was what made it so horrible: the fact that Dick now had to live with that spark of hope, no matter how futile he knew it to be.
Come on, could it hurt to at least hear him out? that spark whispered, in a voice that sounded hauntingly like Jason's. Just to listen to what he has to say?
Yes, Dick told himself firmly. Because it would hurt. All it would do was fan that spark, maybe even coax it into igniting, and Dick couldn’t risk that. Not when he’d spent months mourning his brother, not when he still sometimes saw Jason out of the corner of his eye and heard his voice in the back of his mind. Not when everything was still so raw, so immediate.
Dick slowly uncurled himself from his position. The bag was crumpled and misshapen in his arms, echoing the contours of his grip where he had held onto it like a lifeline. He swallowed against a dry throat, wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve, and got to his feet.
The thing was…as much as Dick didn’t want to entertain the thought, Tim had a point. For fuck’s sake, one of his best friends in the world was Donna Troy. He’d be stupid to pretend that there was no merit whatsoever to what Tim was saying.
That didn’t mean Dick was ready to take him at his word, but he owed it to Jason to at least hear Tim out. Dick was a detective. He had to thoroughly examine all the evidence before he reached a conclusion.
With his mind made up, and that spark of fruitless hope bursting into a tiny flame, Dick started back up the stairs.
Tim had started pulling stacks of evidence out of his backpack the moment Dick left him alone. So what if he didn’t want to listen to his theory? Tim had worked himself halfway to death completing this research, and he was going to make Dick listen to him one way or another. Maybe he could start crying or something. Dick wouldn’t turn him away if he was crying, right? He’d call that plan B.
The coffee table wasn’t nearly big enough to spread out all the evidence on, so instead of laying it out neatly, Tim divided his documents into a few stacks. He frowned down at the array for a moment, dissatisfied. Then he rearranged them into different stacks, sorted by different criteria.
He sat back, looking down at the new arrangement. This one was wrong too. He let out a quick, annoyed sigh, and decided on a different approach. He took all his evidence from the coffee table and started laying it out (alphabetically by topic) on the floor, so that he wouldn’t have to worry about broader categories at all.
By this point, Dick had been gone for over twelve minutes, which was, realistically speaking, far too long. Tim glared down at the spread of papers on the floor before him, like it was somehow their fault Dick wasn’t back yet.
Five minutes later, just as Tim was finally starting to panic properly, the lock clicked and the front door swung open.
Dick’s eyes were slightly puffy, and his nose was red. It wasn’t all that visible in the low light, so Tim decided not to comment on it. He wasn’t the best at comforting people anyway.
The paper bag that Dick set down on the table was crumpled, and Tim looked at it curiously for a moment before looking back up at Dick.
Dick was staring down at everything Tim laid out on the floor, his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed. After a long silence, he muttered, “Plates,” and vanished into the kitchen.
Tim nodded, though Dick wasn’t there to see it, and sat back on his heels. He stared at the spread of documents before him. Research papers and city reports, blueprints and photographs, myths and rumors, and everything in between.
For the first time, he wondered vaguely if he might have gone a little overboard.
He avoided looking directly at Dick as the man carefully divvied out their food. He even made up a plate for Tim, and was careful to keep the different foods from touching each other. Tim didn’t even want to know how Dick had known how to do that. Maybe he really was that good of a detective, or maybe Tim just gave off the vibes of someone who didn’t like his food touching. Either way, it was nice. None of Tim’s nannies had done that when he was a kid, and one or two had even scolded him for crying about it.
“Okay,” Dick said, when he’d set both of their plates down and planted himself firmly in the middle of the couch. Tim shifted slightly so that he was facing Dick fully, the coffee table like a protective barrier between them.
“Okay?” Tim asked, when he didn’t continue.
Dick closed his eyes. “Make your pitch,” he said.
A lightness filled Tim’s lungs, and he let out a relieved breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “You’ll listen to me?” he asked, because he had to be absolutely sure.
“I don’t have anything else to do tonight,” Dick said, poking at his food with his spoon. “You went to all this trouble. The—” he cut himself off and pressed his lips together, looking harried. “The least I can do is listen,” he said at last.
Tim nodded. He looked down at his plate, picked up his fork and spoon, and then set them back down. “Right,” he said. Now that he had Dick in front of him, ready to listen, he suddenly felt completely lost for what to say. He’d rehearsed his pitch in his room, pacing and pointing to his evidence and practicing every line, but it seemed like all of his preparation had failed him at once.
Eventually, Dick’s gaze softened a little. “Start at the beginning,” he said. “Go one concept at a time, show me your sources, and then move on to the next one.”
“Right,” Tim said. He wiped his palms on his jeans and nodded. “Right. So the beginning—I don’t actually have evidence for the beginning, because it’s a personal account, but I have stuff backing up all my other claims, so I hope you don’t mind too much.”
Dick gestured with his fork for Tim to continue.
“Ever since Robin died, I’ve been having dreams,” Tim said. This was the hard part. Once he made it through this part, he could handle the rest. He tilted his head upward so he wouldn’t have to look at Dick while he spoke. “I only got them a few nights a week at first, but it’s every night now. It’s—it’s not that big a deal, they’re just normal nightmares. It’s just that, uh, Robin’s been my hero for years. So at first, I figured it was just my brain trying to like, process grief. But now I don’t really think that’s what it is, anymore. Because a week ago, I was following Batman on patrol, and he was trying to lose me—”
“Trying?” Dick asked.
“He can’t evade me for long,” Tim said. “Anyway, he took a detour through the sewers, so I went after him—”
Dick winced at that. “Tim, please tell me you don’t go into the sewers on a regular basis.”
“Usually only when Killer Croc breaks out,” Tim said. “But sometimes it’s the fastest way to get across town, if the rooftops are busy.”
“And what happens if you get hurt?”
“I deal with it. Besides, I haven’t had any problems, not recently. I nearly got tetanus the first time I went down there. Oh, and two years ago, I slipped and faceplanted in the water. But I spat it out, and I only had hallucinations for like three days, so it wasn’t that bad. I’m way more careful now.”
“Okay,” Dick said, obviously keeping a very tight reign on his tone. “We can circle back to that later. Continue.”
“Right,” Tim said. He pinched his lips into a small frown, quickly gathering the train of thought that had tried to escape him. “Uh, so I followed Batman into the sewers. But then I saw these…these symbols, I guess? On the wall. And I would’ve just written it off as Gotham being Gotham, only I’d definitely seen them before.”
“In your nightmares,” Dick said.
Tim blinked, taken aback. He hadn’t expected Dick to deduce that so easily. But then again, he had been trained by Batman, so maybe it wasn’t that surprising. “Yeah,” he said. “In my nightmares.”
He quickly scanned the evidence. “S” for symbols. He grabbed the photos he’d taken that night, set the stack on the table, and slid it towards Dick.
Dick looked down at it, chewing his food with a completely neutral expression on his face.
“They’re just—they’re always there, in one way or another, in my dreams. So when I saw them in the sewers, I freaked out a bit, but it also meant I had a jumping off point for my research, because—”
“Because you’ve got photos of them now,” Dick said He wiped his fingers on a napkin and gently shifted the top photo aside, revealing a closeup on the first few symbols in the sequence.
“Because I’ve got photos now,” Tim echoed. “So I started with the symbols, and it sent me down this huge research rabbit hole. I’d stake just about anything on the theory that they indicate an entrance to the underworld.”
“Okay,” Dick said. He shuffled through the stack, looking at each photo with careful scrutiny. Then he looked up at Tim, and there was a deep exhaustion etched onto his features that hadn’t been there moments before. “Okay,” he said again, leaning back on the couch and looking up. “I have…also been seeing these in my dreams.”
Tim’s heart did a quadruple somersault. “Shit, really?” he blurted, all decorum forgotten.
Dick laughed without any real amusement. “Since Jason died.”
It felt like Tim’s heart was going to hammer directly out of his chest. “That’s not a coincidence. That’s not a coincidence, it can’t be.”
“It’s not,” Dick said, though he sounded less than pleased about this fact.
Tim nodded for a bit longer than was strictly normal, reeling from the revelation. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Awesome. I mean, not awesome, obviously, but—” But it was a little awesome, that he’d been having the same creepy, obviously-magical nightmares as Dick Grayson. “I’ll…I’ll explain my research now?”
“Be my guest.”
“I’ll get to the symbols later, once I’ve established a few more things,” Tim said, reaching for his array of documents. He was glad he’d taken the time to sort them alphabetically when his fingers quickly found the first thing he was looking for. “U” for undead. He set the packet on the table between them.
“Gotham faces statistically significant amounts of undead interference,” he said, gesturing to his graph. “Especially when compared to cities of similar populations worldwide. This is partially because Gotham is…y’know, Gotham, and partially because of our higher death rates and lower life expectancy. Our cemeteries are fuller, so the odds are just higher overall. But there’s more than that. Even accounting for these statistical influences, there’s a significant enough margin that it’s worth recognizing.” He pointed at each of his graphs as he spoke, flipping through the pages he’d stapled together. “The ratio of undeath to death is higher in Gotham than it is in most other places worldwide. Not everywhere—there’s actually a city in Greece that’s got a higher ratio, and one in Illinois for some reason, but I don’t think that disproves my point. If anything, the city in Greece only acts as another point in my favor.”
Dick spent a long time flipping through the graphs. He chewed his food, gaze laser-sharp. “You’re thorough,” he said.
“I don’t like it when people don’t believe me when I tell them something,” Tim said firmly, spooning a mouthful of food into his mouth quickly. “I try to avoid giving them any excuse to doubt me.”
“Okay,” Dick said. “Higher rates of undead activity. I buy that. But that’s just Gotham, isn’t it? Everyone says the city’s cursed. I don’t see how that immediately screams underworld. ”
“I’m getting there,” Tim said, returning to his sources. He was starting to relax a little more, now that it seemed like Dick was taking him seriously. He picked up three more documents. “Let’s talk pH fluctuations in Gotham soil, sewer layout, and foundational architecture.”
To Tim’s total shock, Dick stayed attentive the entire way through. He asked relevant questions about the soil, made thoughtful noises as he flipped through the sewer maps, and even nodded seriously at Tim’s points about the architecture. From there, Tim moved on to weather patterns, local lore, the city’s history, and records of archeological digs that had unearthed artifacts that definitely should not have been found in Gotham. Dick had gotten off the couch by this point, and had joined Tim on the floor, staring down at the slowly-building pile of documents on the table. What was left of the food on their plates was set to the side, completely forgotten.
Tim found himself getting lost in his presentation, especially as Dick slowly engaged more and more, developing it into a dialogue. His sentences came out faster, formed with less care and professionalism, and Dick didn’t even seem to mind.
When Tim started bringing out the first-person accounts, the anecdotes he’d found from scouring web forums and blogs, Dick actually took the lead. He read through them, pointing out a few inconsistencies in certain stories that Tim hadn’t picked up on even after hours spent staring at them. Then, Dick pulled out his laptop and brought up a few police reports, cross-referencing the details and getting more and more excited the more he found.
Finally, Tim set his last few documents on the table—his research on the symbols that had plagued his dreams for months.
The symbols were ancient, had obviously been carved long before Gotham’s founding. Symbols from all over the world, and a few from places beyond the “real world” entirely. Symbols meaning death, rebirth, journey, afterlife, loss, magic, and countless other things. There wasn’t a single repeated one, just an endless parade of them, one after the other. Along with these, Tim pulled out the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, told over and over again over thousands of years, played out in parallel by countless different people with no knowledge of or connection to each other. Dick didn’t even need Tim to speak at all. He immediately latched onto the same things Tim had seen—the locations, so similar to Gotham. The surrounding circumstances of the descent, which could have been a written account of a stroll through Gotham’s sewer system for all their similarities. The weather patterns, the issues with the soil, the lore from the area and time period. All the details that tied them all together, upwards of thirty stories that should have had nothing to do with each other, but inarguably did.
“Holy hell, Tim,” Dick concluded, setting the papers down and leaning back against the couch, looking dumbstruck.
Tim didn’t say anything, hesitant to halt the momentum they’d been building.
Dick laughed breathlessly and swiped his hands through his hair. “I mean, shit . Even if this turns out to be nothing, the amount of work you put into this is absolutely insane.”
“I can get kind of lost in my projects,” Tim said after a moment. “I like to keep busy, and I’ve only got, like, four hobbies.”
Dick stared down at the papers, still wide-eyed and winded, a lively grin on his face. “Which are…?”
Tim counted them off on his fingers. “Research, lying, arguing, and skateboarding.”
This made Dick laugh harder, bringing a hand up to his mouth. It didn’t do much to hide his amused expression. “You’re missing one,” he said, eyes crinkled with mirth. “What happened to stalking?”
“That’s just a subcategory of research,” Tim said, waving a hand dismissively.
Dick tipped his head back, eyes closed, grin wide. His shoulders shook with silent giggles. “Man, you’re something else,” he said eventually.
Tim smiled, the most relaxed he’d been all evening. “In a good way, right?”
“Only time will tell,” Dick said, shaking his head. He turned his attention back to the stacks of paper on the table. “All right,” he said. “I think your theory’s solid enough to warrant further investigation.”
Warmth flooded Tim’s chest. It felt better than taking that photo with Dick and his parents at Haly’s. It felt better than discovering Batman and Robin’s identities, better than snapping his first successful photo of the duo, better than landing his first kick flip on his skateboard, better than winning that junior photography award, better than every time his father tucked him into bed at night, better than every time his mother complemented his grades. It was like all the good in his life up until that point had been compressed into a single shining firework that built up and exploded inside of him.
Dick thought his theory was good. Dick Grayson—Nightwing—Robin—thought Tim’s theory was worth investigating.
“Wow, holy shit,” Tim blurted. “Are you serious? You mean that?”
Dick laughed, but it wasn’t unkind. If anything, he seemed almost as caught up in the joy of the moment as Tim did. “Of course I mean it! You did really good work, J—”
The man’s face froze. He was suspended in a moment, eyes wide, mouth half-open. He was still looking right at Tim, but there was something else behind his gaze. Like he’d retreated completely into himself and wasn’t seeing anything.
Then, his eyes shuttered, and his mouth fell closed. “I’m gonna clear these up,” he said quietly, reaching for his and Tim’s abandoned plates. Tim watched as he stacked them carefully, and then picked them up in one hand. On his way out of the living room and into the kitchen, his free hand found the top of Tim’s head and absentmindedly ruffled his hair, like he was on autopilot.
Tim turned as soon as Dick’s hand left his hair, watching the man’s retreating back as he vanished into the kitchen. All the excitement from the previous moment had drained in an instant, leaving behind a heavy uncertainty that sank into Tim’s stomach like a stone.
An alert chimed from his phone, and he pulled it from his pocket. Just a notification reminding him to extend his Duolingo streak before the day ended. Tim was about to silence his notifications and put his phone away when the time at the top of the screen caught his eye. It was almost eleven at night, which meant that he’d already missed the last bus home.
“Oh fuck,” he blurted, panicked.
Dick emerged in an instant, on high alert, braced as if about to leap into battle.
“What?” he asked. “What happened?”
Tim stared up at him, the words stuck in his throat.
“What is it?” Dick asked, coming to kneel right in front of him. “Are you all right?”
“Yes!” Tim said quickly. “Yes, of course I’m all right. I was just supposed to be at my friend’s place by now.” He scrambled quickly to his feet, mind racing as he tried to calculate whether a night in a motel or the taxi fare for the trip back would cost more.
“I’ll drive you,” Dick said immediately, standing too.
Shit. Abort mission. “It’s not far, not worth driving!” Tim said. “You’re probably tired, you just go to bed, I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll walk you, then,” Dick said. “You shouldn’t be out alone in Blüdhaven at night.”
“He’s—he’s in this building,” Tim said.
Dick’s eyebrows furrowed. “All the more reason for me to walk you.”
Tim was feeling more and more like a cornered animal. “Please don’t,” he said.
A tense moment passed. Then, “You don’t have a friend in Blüdhaven.” It didn’t sound like a question.
For a few seconds, they held each others’ gaze. Then, seeing no clear way out, Tim let his shoulders drop. “I missed the last bus back to Gotham. I didn’t think this would take so long.”
“Tim,” Dick said slowly. “Are you sure that your parents know where you are?”
“They paid for my bus ticket,” Tim repeated the same lie he’d told earlier. “You think they’d just let themselves lose track of me for an entire afternoon? I was just gonna tell them I felt sick and my friend’s mom sent me home on the bus.”
“Cool, okay,” Dick said. “So they were alright sending a thirteen year old alone on a bus to Blüdhaven, the only city in the world that might be worse than Gotham, so he could spend the night with a friend that they’ve never met or even verified the existence of?”
“It sounds bad when you say it like that,” Tim mumbled.
“It sounds bad because it is bad,” Dick said, looking genuinely angry. Tim swallowed. Things had been going so well. Dick had listened to him, engaged with his theory, told him that it had merit. They’d been getting along—or at least, Tim thought they’d been getting along. Now he’d gone and ruined it by lying to him. And he was still lying to him, digging himself into an even deeper hole.
“I’m sorry,” Tim said, trying to hide the desperation in his voice. He just wanted Dick to stop looking so furious.
Dick ruffled Tim’s hair again, still not looking like he was completely aware of what he was doing. “It’s not you who needs to apologize,” he muttered, eyes distant. He looked down at Tim, and seemed surprised to find his hand in his hair. “Uh, sorry,” he said, pulling his hand back.
“It’s okay,” Tim said quickly. “I didn’t mind it.”
For another long, painful moment, Dick just looked at him. “Okay,” he said. He really seemed to like that word. “It’s late, and you’ve had a long day. I can drive you back to your parents now, or you can crash in my guest room and I’ll drive you back in the morning.”
Tim jerked back, hardly daring to believe he’d heard Dick correctly. “What are you— what?” he spluttered.
Dick rubbed at his face, looking ten years older and twice as exhausted. “To be honest, I’d rather you stayed the night, because I’m really tired, so I’m not convinced I could drive safely, especially since it’s a forty minute trip. Well, might be thirty, this time of night…”
“You don’t have to drive me.” Tim held his hands out in front of him in protest. “That’s way too much, I can’t ask you to do that. I can pay for a taxi or something, or I can get a hotel and catch the bus in the morning.”
A loud groan escaped Dick’s mouth and he tipped his head back, covering his face with both of his hands. He spoke under his breath, words muffled. Tim couldn’t make out everything he said, but he caught a few phrases. Things like, “fucking can of worms,” and “couldn’t just be a creepy little genius stalker, had to be fucked up too,” which—like—rude.
Tim elected to ignore whatever crisis Dick was having. He picked up his mostly-empty backpack and padded over towards the door, where he’d left his shoes. Just as he was starting to slip his sneakers on, Dick dropped his hands from his face and looked over at him.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused.
“Uh…leaving?” Tim asked, crouching down to tie his shoelaces. “You can keep the files, I’ve got my own copies at home. I’ll just need to check taxi fare and hotel rates, see which one would be cheaper—”
Dick let out a strangled little noise. “Take your shoes off and put your bag down,” he said.
Tim did no such thing, but he did pause.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I told you your options,” Dick said firmly. “Either I drive you back right now, or you stay in my guest room and I drive you back in the morning. Notice how I didn’t say a single thing about cabs or hotels?”
“Right,” Tim said slowly. “But…you’re not responsible for me, so I don’t actually have to do anything you tell me.”
“Okay,” Dick said, voice a little higher than usual. “Okay, sure, yeah. How about I put it this way: you are thirteen years old. I am an adult. If I let you go running off on your own, and something happens to you, then it’s on me.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to me!” Tim protested, quickly tying his second shoe and straightening up. “I do this kind of thing all the time, it’s fine! Missing the bus sucked, but that’s just because it’s way cheaper than a taxi all the way back to Gotham!”
Genuinely, Tim had no idea why Dick was reacting the way he was. Sure, another thirteen year old running off to another city on their own might be a little concerning, Tim could see that. A lot of his classmates probably couldn’t handle that kind of thing. But Tim wasn’t like that. His own mother and father trusted him enough to take care of himself on the weekends, and they were his parents. Dick had no real obligation to Tim, no reason to worry about his safety, and absolutely no business trying to boss Tim around.
“Okay,” Dick said again, voice even higher. “Okay! Right! Cool!”
He turned around and pressed his forehead to the nearest wall, eyes squeezed shut. It occurred to Tim that it was entirely possible Dick was having some kind of breakdown.
“Hey, don’t panic,” he said, trying to mimic the voice he’d heard both Dick and Jason use when comforting civilians on patrol. “It’s all gonna be okay.”
“Stop that, it’s creepy.” Dick pointed at Tim without opening his eyes or looking at him. “That’s a Robin voice, you’re not allowed to use it until you’re Robin.”
“Sorry?” Tim said, still confused.
Finally, Dick stepped away from the wall and approached him. He got down on one knee in front of him, so Tim was a little taller than he was. “Can I touch your shoulders?” he asked.
“That’s fine, yeah,” Tim said.
Dick’s grip on his shoulders was firm and warm, like a weighted blanket. He looked into Tim’s eyes, and gave Tim’s shoulders a squeeze.
“I am going to say this to you as simply as I can,” he said. “So I need you to listen to me, and to believe what I’m telling you. Can you do that?”
“I can’t promise that I’m going to believe you until I know what you’re trying to tell me, but I’ll listen to you,” Tim said, unable to keep himself from being a little pedantic.
“I’ll take it,” Dick said, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Okay. I want to personally make sure that you are safe, because your safety matters to me. It’s not that I don’t trust you to keep yourself safe, I would just prefer to keep you safe myself. Do you understand?”
Tim was tempted to lie and nod, but with Dick staring him down the way he was, he wasn’t sure he could. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“Okay,” Dick said. “You don’t have to understand. But do you believe me?”
“Sure.” It was hard not to, with the intensity in Dick’s expression.
“Then will you please stay the night in my guest room and let me drive you home in the morning? For my sake, if not for yours.”
Why would it be for his sake? What did Dick have to gain from that? Tim would just be taking up space in his apartment, and then taking up time when Dick drove him home. Tim would definitely be annoyed if he found himself suddenly responsible for housing and transporting someone else, especially an uninvited guest.
“I don’t want to inco—”
“If you say that you don’t want to inconvenience me, I am going to scream,” Dick said seriously. “That’s not a threat, it’s just the way that my body’s going to react if I have to listen to those words come out of your mouth.”
Tim stayed silent in Dick’s grip for the space of twenty heartbeats.
“Yeah, all right,” Tim said eventually, nodding. “I’ll stay over.”
Dick released Tim’s shoulders and stood, relieved smile wide on his face. “Cool. It’s a plan. I’ll show you the guest room, and then I’ll see if I can find you some pajamas or something.”
Still thoroughly baffled by this turn of events, Tim slipped back out of his shoes and let Dick lead the way.