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“Quick,” Nightwing hisses. “Get in.”
Tim barely hesitates before diving into the open window. It’s some ratty, corner, shoe-box of an apartment in one of Blüdhaven’s many buildings, one that actually doubles as Red Hood’s safehouses on the outskirts of the city.
Dick steps over Red Robin’s sprawled form on the floor, drawing the blinds behind him as he enters. “We should be safe here,” he informs Tim, moving further into the cramped space. “We can head back to my apartment once dawn hits. I don’t think these guys are going to wait around for that long.”
Not to mention, the vigilantes did lose them pretty far out. It was strange, though. Very unlike the norm where goons just tended to shoot bullets rather than tools that were specifically made to take down a person. Tim revisits the thought that their adversaries tonight were just trafficking weapons. You don’t need bolas and human-sized nets for inanimate objects, after all.
Which now means that this case takes more priority, and that means Tim probably needs to stay in Blüd for longer, considering how swamped the older guy is with his other cases, and this thought both bothers and thrills him.
On one hand, Dick Grayson. On the other, Dick Grayson.
Tim peels himself off the floor and sits against the wall because this deserves upright thinking. He adores Dick, of course, but Tim has found himself having a recent obsession with a design element on Nightwing’s suit of the week: the finger-stripes.
God, the finger-stripes. Tim can barely think when he sees the electric-blue that stretches along Dick’s arms.
It’s times like these where he just wishes Dick would choose the Discowing suit. At least that’s embarrassing enough that Tim can shove away any feelings about Dick’s hands and how lovely they would look on Tim’s body.
“Do you have any missing persons cases?” Tim asks abruptly.
“A couple,” Dick replies from where he’s rummaging through a supply closet that’s probably smaller than him. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, why does Hood have so much crap in here? He has a trash can for a reason— Oh, sorry, the cases don’t have a recurring theme, last I checked.”
“Those things that they were shooting us with— they were meant for incapacitating people, probably shorter than six feet considering the area of the nets,” he muses, ignoring Dick’s groan of irritation of whatever he finds in the closet. “And weapons dealers would have weapons with a stronger focus on killing rather than stopping someone from running.”
Dick turns to Tim. His Nightwing’s mask still in place, but the white-outs are lowered, letting Tim see the storm in Dick’s blue eyes. “You’re right. We can double-check my files when we get back, see if there’s something I missed that can be matched up with this.”
He hums. Then, something occurs to Tim. “Doesn’t Jason sleep naked?”
The man’s eyes shutter shut, head thudding onto the doorframe and face creasing into a slightly murderous scowl. It smoothes out a second later. He sighs. “I’ll strip the bed.”
“I’ll check for food,” Red Robin peels his cowl off, ruffling his hair from the no-doubt horrific mess it is on his head. He gets up, drifting to the kitchenette to Dick’s muttered complaints about Jason’s living style, and after Tim’s inspection of the cabinets, he’s inclined to agree.
How does a man that’s literally a crime lord with a shitload of money only have granola bars and Lipton tea? And not even the Bat-approved bars, but the ChewyTM granola ones with chocolate chips and peanut butter.
When Tim gets back to Gotham, he’s going to bribe Oracle into getting a list of Jason’s most frequented safehouses and replace his fresh groceries with a college kid’s heaven; cheap ramen, shitty coffee, and the same granola bars he’s finding here.
“Please, tell me there’s actual food,” Dick breathes from the entrance to the bedroom. His mask is completely off now, as is his weapons belt. “I’ll even take ramen.”
Tim tosses the box of granola bars to him, watching intently as the clever fingers pluck the box out of the air with ease. “Hope you like peanut butter,” he deadpans, knowing full well that Dick has a mild aversion to it.
The man predictably groans. “Seriously?” he flips the box over, checking something, and huffs. “And of course, it’s expired, too.”
“Why does he live like this?” Tim asks, baffled. Even he has enough pride to not depend on expired granola bars and iced tea bags as his only meal.
“To be fair, he hasn’t visited this safehouse in like a year, or something,” Dick says, tearing into a bar’s packaging with his teeth.
“Animal,” he accuses and tries not to find that hot.
The guy just winks, walking to Tim and handing the box back. “Only in bed.” He leans against the cabinets beside him.
Tim has no fucking idea what to say to that. They eat their early morning snack in silence, but Dick looks completely at ease, just tired, and Tim is the only one that feels the awkwardness. He gives up and just sits on the floor.
It’s dusty, but a relief compared to Blüdhaven grime on his feet.
When Tim takes his last bite, crinkling the packaging in his fist, Dick nudges him with his foot. “You good?” he asks after a beat. His hand hangs right by Tim’s head, fingers splayed as an offering of help.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Tim says, avoiding the proffered hand just out of worry that he might stroke it or something equally as stupid and creepy. “Can’t wait to get some sleep, though, on a surface untouched by Jason’s balls.”
“Yeah, about the sleep-thing,” Dick grimaces, raking a hand through his hair. “Sorry to say, bud, but there’s only one bed.” The blue fingertips peek out through the dark strands, tugging on the knots, the sinews in his upper arm stretching delectably.
Tim whimpers in his head. He’s going to fucking kill himself if he sees those hands again. Especially in bed.
“That’s fine,” he says instead, his voice so breezy that he nearly believes himself. “I’ll take the floor.”
He scoffs. “Yeah, no,” and Mother-Dick is at the forefront, and Tim tries his damndest to not notice the veiny forearms that cross over the emblem, finger-stripes tapping against his muscled arm as Dick lectures: “You have multiple bruises along your back from yesterday, and I know for sure that you took a hit to your shoulder tonight. You know how bad it’s going to be tomorrow if you don’t sleep on a proper bed, and frankly, Tim, I don’t like the idea of putting you through so much pain.” He looks consideringly back at the bedroom and nods decisively. “I’ll take the floor.”
Tim frowns. “Dick!” The older man shoots him a reassuring look that says don’t worry, I’ll be alright, but before they’d driven up to Blüd, Cass had put Dick through a grueling spar that would leave anyone’s muscles sore beyond belief, and it’s Tim’s fault that they’re stuck here now instead of the apartment.
He’s going to regret this so much, he anguishes. “We can share,” Tim offers.
Dick perks up. “Really?” his voice is so full of hope that Tim feels guilty all over again for his lack of enthusiasm. “Are you sure that’s okay?”
“Yeah,” Tim swallows and smiles in what he hopes is a reassuring way. “No problem.”
Words cannot describe how much of a problem this is.
The bed is so tiny, only meant for the bare minimum of one very-buff Jason. There’s barely an inch of space between them. There’s barely an inch of space between them.
Dick is a side-sleeper, already dead to the world in an ungodly position, and they’re both stripped down to the base of their suits, and those fucking finger-stripes taunt Tim’s self-control and patience and the general sanctity of sleep as his mind runs through everywhere Dick’s hands could be right now.
Tim is going to set himself on fire and tackle the Joker because good God, he cannot do this any longer.
He breathes in deeply, ignoring the warm huffs of Dick’s breath against the side of his neck.
He breathes out.
He’s calm, he reminds himself. Because he’s going to go to sleep.
And literally five seconds later, Dick shifts in his sleep, flopping an arm around his stiff body, and Tim nearly throws up in panic at his hands being right there, and yeah, no, this isn’t working.
He slips out from the so, so, so warm embrace, nearly tripping on the weapon pouch by his feet, and heads to the bathroom.
Maybe he can drown himself in the shower or something. Logically speaking, it really won’t take much to do it, and Tim’s dignity is already at an all-time low.
Tim very staunchly doesn’t think about the guy while he’s in the bathroom.
He strips out of the suit, thanking past-him for having the sensibility to wear two sets of boxers (he doesn’t know why but hey, he has a clean-ish set of underwear?). The water knob is turned up to the highest setting, but Tim is fucking freezing in the shower because God forbid, Blüdhaven has good water pressure.
The shampoo is from a Marriott, probably swiped from the one in New York because certain people who used this safehouse (Jason) were just that cheap. There’s no towel, Tim notes, which means he’s probably going to end up drying his body with toilet paper and letting his hair air-dry, which is such a bother. The last time Tim slept with wet hair, his shitty immune system began to rebel against him and launched him into a nasty three-day cold, and he’s not eager to go through that again.
He runs through his entire to-do list for the next month, resolves a couple issues in his head, and couple minutes later, starts to mutter the periodic table under his breath. And then, finally, all the soap suds are gone, and he steps out.
The toilet paper is very thankfully three-ply. One-ply would be murder for drying his body. It takes nearly half a roll to finish the job, and Tim doesn’t think about how the other half would be drying Dick’s body if he chose to take a shower, licking up every drop of moisture from the grooves of his muscles, and, and, and—
He throws the wad of toilet paper at the trash with too much force, fuming at the way it clatters on the tiles for the barest second. Why?
Why is he like this?
Yanking on his boxers, he grabs the rest of his dirty things and chucks it into a small corner, and tries not to cry.
Why does he have to be like this?
He just drops against the linoleum, face smushed in his knees and fingers tangled in his hair. It’s so deeply uncomfortable that it grounds him a little.
This is ridiculous. This is so stupid of him. Dick has already set the clear boundary of brothers between them— multiple times, even. Tim has lost feelings for less, and he knows how to shut himself down if there’s even an inkling of a romantic feeling for anyone, and there’s about a sinkhole in his chest right now.
Tim still finds himself tripping over his words when Dick comes out of the shower, or waking up from a wet dream like a fucking teenager, or slips into daydreams of Dick’s grin over candle-lit dinners and the way he smacks an obnoxious kiss against Tim’s face before he leaves and the way his hair musses in the wind and how he laughs and how his suit leaves him looking delicious and those finger-stripes highlight the his arms gloriously— god, those fucking finger-stripes haunt his life and might lead to his death with the amount of time Tim spends staring at them.
Every part of him that operates on logic gleefully swan-dives off the Wayne Tower when Dick Grayson is involved, and it’s so frustrating how this crush never dies, and it’s so icky because here is Tim having unrequited feelings for a man who calls him a brother.
He doesn’t know how long he lays there trying to get his shit together and claw the remains of his self-control into something workable.
“Tim?” Dick’s groggy voice echoes through the door. There’s shuffling and then Tim can see the outline of feet from under the door. “Are you okay?” He sounds exhausted, and Tim really does want to throw up out of guilt now.
“Yeah,” he lies, still stuck against the bathroom floor. “Can’t stop thinking. Took a shower instead.”
He gets a hum of acknowledgement, and there’s a shift against the bathroom door, and Tim averts his eyes when he realizes Dick’s ass is right in his line of sight.
He isn’t religious in the slightest sense, but he prays: God, give him strength.
“Let me know when we’re going back to bed,” Dick yawns. Tim winces.
And this is why he will always be in love with Dick Grayson because despite everything, he still makes an effort to be there. He always tries. No matter how many times Tim has tried to avoid him, or how betrayed he was after being kicked out of Robin, Dick still tried and tried, and Tim can’t ever stop thinking these things as long as he’s there.
Tim sighs. He’s cold, the misery evaporating into the mist, and he just feels hopeless. “Gimme a sec.”
Gotham has grey skies, the world keeps spinning, and Tim gets out of the bathroom, damp hair and all, and moons over Dick Grayson like he will for the rest of his life.