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The breakfast table was usually quiet. It was too early for bickering and getting more than a grunt out of Bruce that early took a global emergency, and sometimes not even that got him talking— just moving.
It had been Bruce, not Alfred, that had put his foot down about breakfast. Once a week, in addition to the case report breakfasts everyone physically able to attend came to, anyone living at the Manor was required to have breakfast in the formal dining room.
Whether this was an attempt to preserve some semblance of polished manners and habits, or something Bruce genuinely looked forward to, was unclear; he never missed one unless seriously injured or off-world, precise and disciplined in this as he was in most things outside of crises.
The other five days of the week were left up to the individuals. Bruce ate breakfast in his room; Damian, too. Tim, if he was awake in time, slipped into the kitchen for coffee and a few minutes chatting with Alfred while scrolling news on his phone. Half the time, he slept through his first two alarms.
One day (okay, two if you counted the reports, which Tim didn’t) a week wasn’t much to give up if it made Bruce happy. Plus, Damian tended to leave him alone this early in the day (morning person? too exhausted? Bruce’s proximity? Jury was still out), and Tim left him alone in turn. It wasn’t that bad.
So, they sat in silence, eating. It might have been worse if Bruce was the sort of parent who forced discussions, but he just drank his coffee and looked like a slowly rousing statue. Tim thought of the slumbering giants of Jinn sometimes, frozen with goblets in their hands.
Tim had his phone and his tablet and Damian usually brought a book. It was kinda actually…pleasant? There were things Tim liked about living alone, when he’d lived in his apartment in Gotham full-time, but it was mornings like this one where he thought of meals he ate with a glowing screen for company and ached to have someone, anyone, around. Those were times he ate quickly, pitching takeout containers into the trash and fork into the dishwasher ten minutes after the first bite had passed his lips.
He was glad Alfred didn’t know about that.
This particular morning, he was pouring a second cup of coffee from the silver carafe when Damian cleared his throat. It was a small, tight sound— determined.
“I would like to volunteer at the Bristol County Humane Society,” he said. Tim, sitting next to him, could see the kid’s hands twist nervously in his lap even while he was looking directly at Bruce with a calm, expectant expression.
Bruce blinked at him and finished chewing before answering. “Are you current on your school units?”
Tim sort of, a little bit, wished he’d gotten to do the solo homeschool thing. He might have taken it to the Tower, like he’d done with homework, and finished stuff while gazing over San Francisco and talking to Kon during the day instead of squeezing it in the few hours before patrol, or not at all.
“Yes,” Damian said briskly. “I have rectified the earlier lag. There’s a summary on your desk.”
“Hn,” Bruce said.
“I require your signature for the liability forms.”
Tim choked on scrambled eggs. He covered by coughing and sipping coffee to wash it down. Bruce’s eyebrow raised in a perfect arch and he met Tim’s eyes for the briefest of moments before his full attention flicked to Damian. Apparently, this was what it took for him to wake up. Damian all but saying, “I cared enough to not forge your signature.”
“That…could be a good thing,” Bruce said, slowly. “But you’re juggling a lot right now. The Tower and school are both big responsibilities.”
“So are you,” Damian shot back almost instantly. “You have the League, Gotham, Wayne Enterprises. And that isn’t even all of it.”
The flash of irritation in Bruce’s face was clear to Tim; Damian must have read it, too, because his hands stilled on his lap and balled into fists.
“I’m an adult, Damian,” Bruce said evenly, sounding very much awake and alert.
Tim resisted the desire to sigh. Bruce was too seasoned to lose his temper at such a small provocation, but even if nobody raised their voice the entire mood of the breakfast was dashed on the rocks and ruined.
Then, a thought occurred to him.
Later, he’d feel a pang of guilt over how self-serving his motive was, but in the moment he worked on instinct. Damian volunteering somewhere meant a few hours a week when he wasn’t home, which meant Tim could check his schedule and actually have hours at the manor where he was guaranteed to not run into him.
“I think it’s a good idea, Bruce,” Tim said, throwing in his weight with that of his younger brother. It also carried the bonus of interrupting Damian’s argument, which would have probably been a lot angrier and loud.
“You do?” Bruce and Damian asked in unison, one voice low and the other high, both surprised.
“It’s an interest, right?” Tim offered. “It’ll look good on college applications, even if he doesn’t really need it. And it’s good experience. Patience, character, service. It’s early, but it’s networking in a potential field, establishing some contacts.”
“I’m taking over father’s job at Wayne Enterprises,” Damian snapped, his upset redirected.
Tim might have snapped back if he wasn’t distracted by both his desire to win those couple of hours every week and the fact that he suddenly, startlingly, sounded very much like Jack to his own ears. That brought an ache in his chest that Damian’s prickly attitude paled in comparison to, couldn’t touch.
And then he saw the look on Bruce’s face and realized, seconds too late, his misstep. The ache mixed with apprehension.
“I’ll consider it,” Bruce allowed, tersely, to Damian. “Tim. We need to talk about college.”
“That sounds great,” Tim said, pocketing his phone and gulping his coffee. He pushed his chair back and stood. “But I just remembered I have a morning meeting I’ve already rescheduled once. I gotta go.”
“I think a few minutes wouldn’t—”
“Late!” Tim called over his shoulder as he left the room. “Maybe tonight?”
Bruce didn’t chase him.
Damian cornered him near the door to the garage fifteen minutes later, after Tim had rushed through a shower and changing from his tank top and flannel pants into a crisply tailored suit.
“I’m going to be the next CEO of Wayne Enterprises,” Damian said, arms crossed.
“You’re welcome,” Tim nodded to him, shoving by. “Because ‘thank you’ is what a normal person says when someone tries to help them.”
“You weren’t helping me.” Damian stepped in front of him again, his feet planted. “You were trying to keep me out of the company.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Tim said, because the temptation to correct the absurd accusation was complicated by the fact that he had, after all, had ulterior motives in trying to help. “I have a job, at WE, to go to. You have, what, like third grade to finish?”
He slammed the car door in the face of Damian’s shouting and gunned the engine to get him to step back. The garage door was already open and he peeled out, tires squeaking on polished concrete, annoyed to the core.
Why the heck did he sound like his dad about that, of all things?
So much for a good morning.
However the details were hashed out, Damian did start volunteering at the Bristol County Humane Society on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. Tim, without saying anything to anyone about it, went home early those days and enjoyed the peace.
Alfred probably noticed because he was Alfred, but he never gave Tim the Look that served as a warning, a precursor to those gentle but firm conversations the older man had down to an art form. It was unnerving how, with a few words and an expression of disappointment, Alfred could get nearly anyone to practically scold themselves while he just asked questions.
So, since Tim didn’t get the Look and Bruce didn’t ever bring it up, he figured they understood or didn’t blame him. And the other thing Bruce didn’t bring up again was college, at least during breakfast. Without the prodding of Damian’s request and challenge to wake him up, Bruce sat through breakfasts with his eyes half-shut.
The half dozen times Damian had returned to the subject of the company, Tim had ignored him. Those had been in the evenings, in the cave, hanging outside the door to his room at two in the morning. He’d finally dropped it after Tim had wearily mustered the reply, “Fine, Damian, I don’t care. I just want to be in charge of janitorial. It’s my dream job.”
“I will accept this as a compromise to keep you in the company, Drake,” he’d said, the sarcasm flying right over his head.
Weekly breakfast went back to being, well, breakfast. Calm. Pleasant. Non-verbal.
“I’ve been thinking,” Damian said, one evening, returning from the animal shelter.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Tim replied automatically, eyes locked onto the show he was rabbit streaming with Steph.
Damian said nothing, the silence stretching out long enough that Tim looked up and saw the quizzically wounded crease in Damian’s forehead. He had approximately half a second before that slid into fury or dismissal.
“Sorry,” Tim said, again automatically. “What.”
“There is a possibility that I may want to occasionally pursue…other work,” Damian said. “If that is the case, it would be useful if you would handle R&D along with janitorial.”
Tim’s heart skipped a beat. Damian was twelve and had no idea what he was talking about when it came to company positions or management, but that was already the division where Tim spent most of his time, and Damian offering him anything approximating kindness was a small miracle.
He slipped an earbud out.
“Why R&D?” he asked, cautiously.
“It would be disadvantageous to squander your strength only to let you flounder uselessly in another division,” Damian said, which was, sort of like a compliment? Kind of?
Tim decided he really, really liked the humane society.
“Sure,” Tim said. It was better for now if he sounded neutral still, it was harder to exploit a weakness that way.
Damian nodded and disappeared from the room.
“Nerdbrain, you still there?” Stephanie’s voice asked in his ear. The show on the screen was paused.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “I don’t know what just happened.”
“He hasn’t called me fatgirl in over two weeks, you know,” Steph said. So, she’d heard most of it, he guessed.
“Maybe the Humane Society is humanizing him,” Tim joked. “Who knew all he needed all along was a wolf pack?”
“It’s good for him,” Steph said. “Don’t blow it.”
“Just push play,” Tim answered.
Within a month, Tim had gotten a ‘formal’ offer to fill in as interim CEO when Damian was away on ‘business.’ Tim still wasn’t sure if he meant actual business or Batman work, but he guessed the latter. He wondered if someone should tell Damian that literally replacing Bruce someday wasn’t his job, but thinking about that meant thinking about Bruce being gone, which led to a nightmare about a bloodied body in an apartment, and remembering suddenly that Jack was never going to see him graduate even if he did go to college, and in the end Tim decided that was a conversation someone else would be better suited to handle.
Breakfast was still breakfast.
Then, two times in a row, Tim’s blissful afternoons were ambushed by Damian coming home in a foul mood. He’d started using the time to catch up on sleep, which put him right in the kitchen pouring a post-nap cup of coffee when Damian stormed in like a thundercloud and stomped upstairs, then back down a few minutes later toward the cave, while Tim watched with bleary, wary eyes.
Then it happened again and Tim grew concerned for both the Humane Society and the preservation of his Tuesday and Friday blocks. When he descended to the cave to suit up, Damian still looked ready to tear someone’s head off, so Tim decided to give it the weekend.
Tuesday morning was breakfast. After Monday had seen little improvement in Damian, Tim promised himself he’d call Dick to intervene if breakfast went poorly.
Bruce’s arm was in a sling and he looked even more out of it than usual, a glass of water in place of his regular coffee. Alfred was stopping in the room more frequently, which probably meant Bruce hadn’t slept at all, and Tim spent a solid five minutes fervently willing Damian to not cause problems.
He buried himself in a news aggregator on his phone, casting surreptitious glances at Bruce to make sure he wasn’t falling asleep at the table.
“You aren’t going in today, right?” Tim asked, breaking the silence, Damian momentarily forgotten. “Because you need to sleep.”
“I’m…” Bruce’s mouth hung open for a second in a dazed o, and then he pressed his lips together. “It’s fine, Tim. Just a cross country skiing accident.”
“That you are sleeping off today, while I explain that to the office,” Tim said.
Bruce squinted in something that might have been a drugged attempt at a glare, and then he sighed. “Yes. I’ll sleep it off.”
Movement beside him stole Tim’s attention; it startled him because he’d been so focused. It was just Damian setting his sketchbook on the table. He was staring, in an absorbed way, at sunbeams falling on a tea service on the serving board across the dining room. A charcoal pencil was in one hand. He flipped through pages— dogs, trees, cats, small birds, a few insects, dogs again— and then went absolutely still.
Tim was still watching with a detached curiosity, relieved at Bruce’s easy agreement, and he saw it the second Damian did.
A sketch of a dog and, in heavy marker, the word TERRORIST was scribbled like an ugly scar marring the work underneath.
The book was flipped shut with lightning speed and the only reason Tim saw the tears standing in Damian’s eyes and the rapid red flush of his cheeks, was because the younger boy shot a quick glance down the table to see if Bruce had noticed the page. Bruce did look almost completely asleep and Tim reached out and slid his plate away, in case he slumped forward.
Tim’s throat was dry despite his coffee, cold rage swirling in his gut like north coast riptide. Damian finished breakfast by shoving food around, his head bent, and then quietly excusing himself.
Irony of ironies, Tim did actually have a meeting he was going to be late for if he didn’t leave soon, but once he was out of the dining room he made a beeline for Damian’s room. The door was locked and Tim knocked once, twice, and Damian shouted at him, “Go the fuck away, Drake!”
Tim went away.
He came home early, while Damian was still gone, shed his work clothes in a pile at the end of his bed and picked the lock to Damian’s bedroom. It was meticulously clean in every way except the desk— school and art supplies covered the surface and the drawers were each packed full of sketchbooks, notebooks, an assortment of knives, a few tea bags and packs of chocolate covered blueberries.
Tim didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly, but like a good detective he was hunting for details. The sketchbook Damian had brought to breakfast was missing, and Tim poked through the desk’s contents with blue latex gloves on, careful to not misplace anything.
Finally, he sat back on his heels from the bottom drawer and frowned. The only other option was the one he should have started with, and he grumbled at himself for trying to take a shortcut.
An emotionally safer shortcut, but still a shortcut.
He threw out the gloves in his own room, changed into work out gear, and went downstairs to wait. The cave was empty this time of day, and Bruce was still sleeping upstairs somewhere. Days like this, he tended to sort of pass out various places around the house in a progressive track toward his actual room as Alfred nudged him onward. Tim didn’t expect to see him in the cave until late at night, if at all.
Damian, however, showed up exactly five minutes after Tim knew he’d arrive home, and Tim’s heart sank straight to the floor when the kid stepped off the elevator. He wasn’t a hurricane in human form this time; he was a dreary rain dragging his feet and slumping his shoulders.
“What’s his name?” Tim asked, and Damian’s head snapped up.
“What?” he spat, his lips curled back in a sneer, like Tim was an idiot who had asked something so ridiculous it was offensive.
“The guy bullying you,” Tim said, undaunted. “What’s his name.”
“Nobody’s ‘bullying’ me.” Damian scowled and kicked his shoes off, on the edge of the mats. “I wouldn’t allow it.”
“That’s what I’ve been wondering. Why haven’t you hit him yet?” Tim said, and he just barely caught Damian’s fist thrown at his face.
“I’m not a coward!” he shouted, and Tim put energy into blocking the flurry of blows. It was a meltdown if he’d ever seen one, but like something scripted— Damian never moved past sparring into actual dirty or desperate fighting, so Tim let him keep going.
Finally, Damian staggered back, his chest heaving, and protested, “I can…handle…it myself.”
“What’s. His. Name.”
Tim had a vague awareness that he sucked at this big brother thing. Dick would have handled every aspect of this so much better but at some point in the past few months, Damian’s awkward offer of sharing the future theoretical WE duties had internalized for him as a kind of olive branch. The kid had been trying. So, it was so laughably far from the truth and at the same time, so very close to what the truth used to be, that Damian’s next jab glanced off him like a blunt arrow skittering off heavy armor.
“Why? Are you attempting to recruit an ally?”
Tim stopped. Damian glared at him, panting like a wounded, furious animal. His cheeks were bright red again, the flush seeping down his neck and onto his ears.
“Damian,” he said softly. “Whoever did that to your sketch was wrong. It’s reprehensible. And if you aren’t going to defend yourself, I want to know his damn name so I can stop it.”
The boy narrowed his eyes and Tim waited. Damian sank to his knees on the mat and scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, then pushed sweat back into his hair.
“If I fight him, they might not let me volunteer. I’m younger than they usually allow. I don’t want to stop. And I’ve been repeatedly cautioned to be careful about use of my training while out as Damian Wayne. Father would likely ground me.”
“Didn’t you think about trying to…talk…to someone about this?”
“Who?” Damian asked. “Father would tell me to ignore it. There’s a chance he will handle it by forbidding me from volunteering. You know him.”
Tim did, in fact, know Bruce and his attitude toward ignoring anything newspapers or columns said about him, but he didn’t think it would apply to Damian the same way Damian seemed to think. It still surprised him, sometimes, those glimpses of how Damian’s perception of Bruce was filtered through his own assumptions or expectations.
Tim wondered how often he did that about Damian, with a nagging sense of self-reproach.
“Bruce would—”
“If you tell him anything, I will deny it,” Damian said vehemently.
“I don’t think he’d react like you think he will,” Tim said, with a frown of concentration. He couldn’t really be too hard on him for wanting to hide things from Bruce; Tim had hidden his share of things from Bruce, and from Jack. More from Jack. They’d eventually sorted things out, kind of, but the fallout had initially been just as bad as Tim had feared. So, he understood the desire to handle things alone.
Damian crossed his arms tightly. His mimicry of the batglare was improving.
Maybe your boss?” Tim suggested. “Someone in charge at the Humane Society?”
“His father donates large sums. I doubt any serious action would be taken.”
“Damian, you can’t just…ignore it,” Tim said lamely. “What else has he even said to you?”
“I’d be an imbecile to provide you with additional ammunition,” Damian said bitterly, rising to his feet. He’d picked up his shoes when he halted, his back to Tim.
Tim felt cold all over.
“I’m…I didn’t mean that,” Damian said quietly, stiffly. “I’d rather not repeat the things he’s said.”
“Damian,” Tim said helplessly, sunk in a mire of fear. He tried to claw his way out. “I’m sorry, if I’ve ever…”
“We antagonize one another,” Damian said. “It’s not the same. I’ll be fine. It’s only until the end of his semester.”
The chill was replaced by dull anger, draped over every part of him. He watched with a heavy heart as Damian stepped onto the elevator.
The heaviness persisted even when he picked the lock to the Humane Society office that night, the itchy polyester blend of a cheap balaclava making him appreciate his usual cowl. He wasn’t sure he could articulate exactly why he hadn’t put the Red Robin suit on. He told himself that he didn’t particularly want to draw vigilante or rogue attention to a suburban place Damian was working at, but it might have been closer to the simple fact that it wasn’t a Robin issue at all.
It was a Wayne one.
He tripped the last tumbler and rolled his tools back into their cloth bag; they were his practice set and not the one he kept in his belt. The office was dim but it was easy enough to find filing cabinets with a flashlight.
It took a few moments of hunting to find the folder of volunteer liability waivers. The building was cacophonous with the barking of dogs, so Tim worked quickly in case the noise drew attention. He narrowed his search down first by age range, and by names he recognized from the area.
There was one that stuck out— a kid with a Bristol address and a Gotham University volunteer record clipped to his waiver. Tim recognized the name as a boy who’d been a year ahead of him at Brentwood, notorious for spending afternoons in study hall detention for picking fights and on academic probation from the lacrosse team.
It looked like David Halbert hadn’t changed much.
Tim replaced all the files and relocked the office on his way out. He was in Gotham as Red Robin within an hour, no one the wiser, while he bided his time to decide what to do with the information.
First, he needed to confirm identity before he actually did anything else. Probable guilt wasn’t definite guilt and he might have overlooked someone or been wrong about a detail. He could afford to wait, especially since Damian had told him to stay out of it. It didn’t sit well with him, but they had some sort of fragile truce at the moment and Tim wasn’t sure how much he could risk disrupting it without making it worse for each of them in the long run.
But Tim was good at being whatever the situation required and if he needed to be patient, he could be patient. If nothing else, he could at least try to convince Damian to talk to the volunteer supervisor at work.
Normally, Tim liked finding the calmest, most rational and clean solution he could. This time, he sort of hated that idea.
In the end, David Halbert forced his hand.
Damian avoided Tim like it was an art form for the rest of the week and Tim gave him his space. It was likely the thing that kept Bruce or Alfred noticing that anything was off, because generally managing to not have to speak to one another for a few days at a time was their usual mutual modus operandi.
Friday, he spent the afternoon home early from work puzzling over both Damian’s situation and how to deflect Bruce’s increasingly frequent attempts to discuss college without outright saying “I don’t want to go to college, Bruce.” Maybe if he scheduled a month-long visit to the Hong Kong office and took Cass with him, it would be a good delay.
Forty minutes before Damian was supposed to come home, Tim’s phone rang and he answered it while looking over Hong Kong R&D reports for a good excuse.
“Drake.”
The high-pitched lilt of the syllable had him snapping his laptop shut, even before he got other details.
“Damian?”
“I need you to intercept Pennyworth and come in his stead. Before I kill a man.” There was a small, tight gulp on the other end of the line, and a sniffle.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Tim didn’t bother with a farewell or trying to get more out of Damian over the phone. He was hard to read in person, even harder to read over the phone, when the current wasn’t just anger. He was like Bruce a bit, that way.
Tim left his laptop in the den and ducked his head into the butler’s office, where Alfred was finishing up some task at his little neat desk, a place Tim respected as the general center of everything household related. “Hey, Alfred, I have some stuff I need to do out, so I’ll pick up Damian.”
He left without waiting for an answer, knowing that the older man would be suspicious and curious but wouldn’t immediately interfere in anything that might involve the two of them getting along.
Damian was waiting on a bench outside the Humane Society front doors, his hands white-knuckled on the little satchel he recently started carrying everywhere as a civilian. When he saw Tim’s car, he rose and strode across the parking lot. The passenger door slammed after he climbed in.
“What happened?” Tim demanded. Damian stared straight out the windshield and handed his bag over.
With a questioning knit of his brow, Tim undid the brass buckles and flipped the waxed canvas flap open. Inside, there was the shell of Damian’s sketchbook and a crushed jumble of torn pages. For a moment, he frowned at it, trying to understand if Damian was offering it as proof he’d taken out his rage on some inanimate object.
Understanding seeped over him like a gathering storm— with a thunderclap, and a downpour.
“He destroyed it,” Damian said, in the same second Tim knew on his own.
Tim picked up one of the crumpled papers, tried to smooth it out on the wheel while glancing sidelong at Damian. The kid’s lower lip trembled and his clenched hands were shaking.
“How…” Tim asked stupidly. It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but he was thrown by the tear tracking down Damian’s oak brown cheek.
“It was like that when I went to get my bag.”
Tim rifled through the papers and then, with a cautious slowness, closed the flap and snapped the buckles into place. The twin clicks filled the hollow air in the car.
“I don’t care if he hates me,” Damian said. He’d crossed his arms again, and Tim could see his fist under his elbow, his thumb and index finger pinching the fabric of his cotton shirt, rolling it tightly back and forth.
“You shouldn’t—”
Damian kept going like he hadn’t heard Tim start. “But I want him to leave me alone. This was supposed to be my reprieve. I enjoy it here, despite initially doubting Jon’s suggestion.”
“Jon Kent told you to do this?”
“He merely suggested I find an outlet working with animals,” Damian said, with a hard sniff. He unfurled his arms to press his palms against his eyes. “I just want to do my work. I want him to leave me alone.”
A swell of indignation rose in Tim. He turned the car off and threw open his door. “Let’s go. We’re talking to someone.”
“No!” Damian half-snapped, half-pled. “Drake. If we do, he might tell Father, and he won’t…he won’t understand. These things don’t bother him. I merely need to…I have to learn…”
Tim looked at the building.
The front door opened and David Halbert stepped out, shrugging his arms into a jacket. He only looked a little different than he had at Brentwood. His hairline was already receding, he looked like he’d packed some muscle on. Their eyes met and David flinched at whatever he saw in Tim’s face.
Then, as Tim stood, David forced a smile and walked directly toward them. Tim heard Damian curse under his breath in the car.
“Hey, Tim, right? Sorry about the kid’s book. That dog just wouldn’t let go.”
“A dog,” Tim repeated flatly.
David Halbert hesitated and changed course. “We should catch up sometime. Where are you going to school?”
“I’m not going to school,” Tim said. “I work.”
“Oh, that sucks,” David said, confusion flickering across his face. “The kid’s cool. You babysitting?”
“He’s my brother,” Tim said.
“Nice, nice,” David said, his visible discomfort growing by the second. “I’ll see you around?”
“Yes,” Tim said crisply. He pulled the door shut with a hard jerk as soon as he reclaimed his seat.
“He was lying,” Damian said fiercely, with an undertone of panic.
“I know,” Tim said, and Damian’s shoulders sagged a little.
“Can we go,” Damian said. It hovered between an order and a question.
“Is he mean to the animals?” Tim asked.
“He is not cruel or kind. He does the bare minimum of physical care.”
“I’ll take care of this,” Tim said. “On the condition that you don’t ask me any questions and you stay out of my way.”
“I…okay. Fine.” Damian said, buckling and slouching down in his seat. He held his bag with the ruined sketchbook inside. “Let’s go.”
“It hurts Bruce, too,” Tim said, his hand on the key. “When people say things about him. To him.”
“Bullshit,” Damian said, his voice cracking. He looked out the window and refused to turn to face Tim.
“It does. I’m just saying, he’d understand more than you think.”
Damian didn’t speak again the whole ride home.
David Halbert was a 2.4 GPA student at Gotham University with a schedule of partying, partying, and more partying. His paper address was his family’s home in Bristol, where even his dad’s money hadn’t been enough to make up for his crappy test scores and get him into an Ivy League school.
As far as Tim could tell from social media stalking, he spent most of his time at a frat house. It was there that he found him, at almost midnight. Nobody noticed him or said anything when he let himself in during the noisy house party, and he accepted a cup of beer he didn’t drink, to stand behind a couch and listen to David hit on a girl who was only slightly more drunk than him. He was trying to convince her to come back to his house in Bristol, promising a better bar and an indoor pool. It seemed to be working.
Tim’s cup crumpled in his hand after he dumped it out in a bathroom sink. He pitched it in the trash and went outside on the front porch, took a breath, and jogged down the steps. He ignored a call from Steph on his phone and went around the block to where David had parked his sleek Mercedes SUV.
He waited.
When David came down the block, holding the hand of the girl while they both laughed too loud, and too long, at something Tim didn’t hear, Tim pulled the cheap balaclava mask over his face again.
This was not Robin business.
This was about his brother.
“Hey,” Tim said, and they both froze. The girl’s eyes were wide and she looked far more sober than she had inside. David stepped back, a half step behind her, and when she realized she was the one shielding him she let out a tiny whimper.
“I don’t, ohmigod, I don’t have…I don’t have cash,” she said, closing her eyes.
“Move,” Tim said, the command sharp. “Please,” he added, to soften it, because he felt bad for her.
She scurried to the side, stumbling into the narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb.
“He’s an asshole,” Tim said, to her, and when he lunged forward toward David the other boy wasn’t nearly fast enough to get away. His fist met face with a wet crunch and Tim hammered it down again, and again.
Straight white teeth cut his knuckles and he dropped his hand, caught David under the arm, and shoved him to the ground so forcefully that it dislocated his shoulder with a pop. David screamed, a thick sound past the blood filling his mouth and nose. Tim dropped him.
He was hoping an arm injury would make David drop the volunteer commitment, but if not, he’d try something else. He looked at the girl, who was crying now but still there, feet frozen in the grass.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Tim said. “But I promise he deserved this.”
He resigned himself to living with the fact that he’d terrified her. He resisted the desire to solidly kick David in the stomach and he walked away, hopping a fence to cut through an alleyway before peeling the hot mask off.
The drive to Wayne Manor took almost forty minutes and halfway there, he remembered the crumpled sketches and the look on Damian’s face and his lingering anger ebbed while he tried not to cry.
Morning sun streaming through open windows and Alfred’s steady voice woke Tim the next morning. He usually slept in on Saturdays and even though he hadn’t gone out on patrol, it felt too early.
“Master Bruce requests your presence at breakfast,” Alfred said, collecting Tim’s abandoned various coffee mugs as he worked his way around the room.
Tim covered his head with his pillow.
“I’ll get those, Al. And it’s not a breakfast day?”
“Nevertheless, he asked me to insure you and the young Master Damian both attended.”
“Ugh,” Tim groaned. He didn’t want to get up but also, how had Bruce found out already? He’d been planning on talking to him but it was a little infuriating how much his Dad radar for trouble had improved. And Tim was also a little surprised he hadn’t noticed sooner— Tim had noticed, after all, and had Bruce been acting weird the past month or so?
Breakfast was as good a time as any to check, he supposed, and he rolled out of bed with a grumble and kept the loose top sheet wrapped around his shoulders.
He went downstairs in boxers and a sheet because if Bruce was allowed to be a disaster around the house sometimes, Tim could be, too. Especially on mornings where his rare chance to sleep in was interrupted.
Tim plunked himself down at the table with a groggy scowl and after a silence, Damian stood and poured a cup of coffee and slid it to him. That’s when Tim looked up and saw not the bemused tired reproach he was expecting, but a fairly beat up Bruce. His arm was back in a sling, one side of his mouth was swollen and stitched.
“Hi,” Tim said hoarsely. He reached out for the mug of coffee. Damian’s gaze lingered on the split knuckles, cleaned but uncovered, the dark red dents offset by the the puffy surrounding skin.
“Morning,” Bruce said. “I’ve been advised that a vacation may be in order.”
That was code for “Alfred lit into me because I’ve been reckless and need a break from seeing dead bodies.” Tim thought back on the past couple weeks and concluded that maybe, possibly, he’d been a little distracted by his own things and then Damian’s situation more than he’d admitted to himself.
“So, hold down the fort at WE?” Tim asked, still holding on to the desperate hope he could crawl back in bed. He wanted— needed— to talk to Bruce but it could wait a few hours.
“No,” Bruce said. “I want both of you to come with me.”
Tim blinked. He exchanged a look with Damian, and when had they started exchanging looks? He blinked again.
The last time he’d gone on a strict no-masks vacation with Bruce had been…with Dick. On a cruise. Years ago. It felt like a lifetime ago. It had been fun, enough fun that he’d later spent a few months trying to figure out how to suggest one to Jack and he’d never—
The coffee was too hot but it was a good excuse.
“Tim?” Bruce asked.
Why did he have to be so perceptive now?
“Okay,” Tim choked out, taking another gulp of coffee. He managed to get control of his voice. Damian was staring at his knuckles again.
“We can leave Monday,” Bruce said. “We’ll just take a week. Can the two of you manage a civil discussion about locations without making my headache worse?”
“Do you have a concussion?” Damian asked.
“Damian was being bullied and I jumped the guy last night,” Tim blurted out, when he’d meant to confirm they could have a civil discussion now, apparently. Or he hoped.
“What?” Bruce said, in a low tone like the deep ringing of iron, at the same time Damian hissed it.
“A college student was bullying Damian and I broke his nose and dislocated his arm. I was disguised but out of mask and I’m only telling you because Damian has some weird ideas about what he should put up with and I thought you needed to know.”
The room was so quiet that Tim could parse out everyone’s breathing. He finished his coffee and poured another cup.
“You were being bullied and you didn’t tell me?” Bruce asked. “What kind of bullying?”
Damian was scarlet red and he wouldn’t raise his head. Bruce looked to Tim for more.
“He said things,” Damian said before Tim could formulate an answer. “He defaced some sketches. And he destroyed one of my sketchbooks.”
“You didn’t…he said things and you…” Bruce’s words fumbled and died and he was still looking directly at Tim. Bruce looked like someone had stabbed him in the stomach. Tim gave a slight shake of his head.
“I took care of it,” Tim said.
“Damian, if anyone treats you like that again, I want you to tell me immediately. You don’t…you shouldn’t have to…what the hell did he say to you, anyway?”
“It doesn’t matter. You aren’t bothered when people write things,” Damian protested, head still bent.
“Of course I am,” Bruce said. “But that’s beside the point. You’re my son and nobody has my permission to make you feel awful. Of course it matters.”
Damian burst into tears.
Tim thought he could actually hear the drop of Bruce’s jaw and he scrambled to his feet.
“Well, have fun,” he said quickly. “Colorado might be nice, or maybe the Alps. I’m going back to bed.”
“Don’t move,” Bruce ordered, in that tone that Tim’s body obeyed before his brain processed it. Bruce scraped his chair back and crouched next to Damian’s chair. After a moment, he loosened the sling straps and threw it to the side. He put his arms around Damian and held him while Damian’s crying turned into hard sniffles.
Tim lingered awkwardly, with a hand on the back of his chair.
Damian gave a final sniff and rubbed his sleeve across his face.
“Tell me,” Bruce said. “If anything like it happens again. We’ll discuss this more after breakfast, in the study.”
Tim sat back down and drew the sheet more tightly around his shoulders while Bruce limped to his own chair.
“So, the Alps?” Tim gave a tentative smile. “Or Colorado.”
The idea of not being able to avoid a college discussion suddenly didn’t bother him much. Damian cleared his throat and drank most of his glass of orange juice.
“Colorado sounds pleasant,” Damian said quietly.
“Colorado, then,” Bruce said.
Tim finished breakfast with the full intention of crawling back into bed after. He took a detour to hunt for his tablet and was ambushed by Damian in a hallway.
After a breath, Damian shoved a piece of paper in Tim’s hand and then threw his arms around Tim in a hug so tight and brief and real that Tim was still gaping and bewildered when Damian was hurrying away down the hall.
Tim remembered there was a piece of paper in his hand and he looked at it. It was a still life sketch, full of detail work, of one of Tim’s old cameras.
The camera he’d photographed Batman with, back when Dick and then Jason were Robin. He blinked at it and then went into his room and pinned it on the wall.
When he woke from his second sleep, he found Damian in the den curled up against Bruce, who was asleep with his head tipped back on the couch while a documentary about wildlife played. Tim took an armchair, no longer feeling chased from the room by the younger boy’s presence.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, thinking again of the ruined book and all the words Damian wouldn’t repeat. “Good talk with B?”
“Yes. Thank you, Timothy,” Damian said, watching the television screen. “For taking care of it.”
“Anytime,” Tim said, and he wasn’t at all surprised to find that he now meant it.