Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Usually, the mysterious tower hid away a princess, but Tim was still royalty, so he probably counted.

And there was no fucking way a completely normal frog just happened to crawl all the way up here, perch on his window, and scream its little frog voice hoarse until Tim woke up and gave it his full attention.

That was absolutely a cursed frog waiting for a kiss. One hundred percent. Not a single doubt in his head.

So, as an extremely bored prince with minimal actual social interaction, no shame to inhibit his decisions, he waltzed right over and offered his hand to his potential new cursed prince friend.

The squishy thing hesitated but leapt onto his palm, and Tim’s excitement overshadowed his instinct to cringe in violent disgust.

“Okay. One croak for kiss, two croaks for not kiss.”

Pause.

One croak.

Fucking score.

“Okay. Okay. Okay, I’m gonna do it, I’m—I can do this, this is fine, this—”

One impatient croak.

“Okay, alright, I’m doing it!” And then he did it, just a tiny little kiss, a quick peck.

And as he waited for a person to appear, he thought, Wait, fuck, what if he’s naked, what if he doesn’t fit my clothes, what if we don’t have enough food to last until the next visit from Mrs. McIlvaine, what if he’s upset I’m not a princess, what if—

None of those thoughts mattered when the little frog writhed in his hand, screaming and contorting as no frog should. Tim immediately dropped to his knees, lowering his hand to the floor so he wouldn’t drop his new friend too, but had to squeeze his eyes shut as a blinding light engulfed the frog’s body.

God, he wished he could watch this cursed magical girl transformation. But he would lose his mind if he couldn’t even read or look at pictures, so saving his vision took priority.

Anyway. When he could finally open his eyes…It was not a naked prince. Not a magical girl, either.

No.

That was a wholeass fucking dragon. Like, wings, scales, horns, everything (and more than big enough to ride on, if Mr. Dragon were so generous). Holy shit.

Staring straight up from where he was still kneeling, Tim simply said, “…Uh, hi.”

…Hi.

Telepathic fucking dragon! In his one-room castle! Full offense, but this was so much better than a stupid cursed prince with two legs and no wings and full fluency in the rules of human society.

Oh, this was the best day of his life.

Chapter Text

If this wasn’t such a serious situation, Timothy might’ve started laughing his ass off. He knew this mission was going too well.

Rather than a consciousness swap across universes, it was a regular old bodyswap—with himself, in another universe. Incredible. At least he had experience with fixing this.

He wanted to check on Tim, but his body selfishly refused to move as he enjoyed the lack of…everything. He laid there on the dusty floor, breathing deeply without his ribs reminding him of badly healed breaks. His arms and legs didn’t ache to the bone, and his hands flexed evenly without notable scarring or repeatedly broken fingers. He listened to the sound of Tim shifting around with perfect clarity, not muffled by damage from explosions and gunshots.

Tim slowly dragged himself up onto his hands and knees, visibly shaking from the effort. He felt like one giant bruise. All his senses were slightly off, filtered in ways he couldn’t properly describe. He meant to ask Timothy if he needed help to manage the pain better (once they were back in their own bodies) but what came out was: “You live like this?”

“Well…it happens slowly; you get used to it,” Timothy replied, still not moving an inch. He just needed a minute to remember how he felt Before.

(And honestly, maybe feeling the some of the consequences of being a vigilante would dissuade Tim from following the same path. Timothy wasn’t even that old, but the permanent damage had racked up quickly—though perhaps that was just the kind of vigilante he was.)

Tim sat up and almost leaned against the bookshelves before he caught himself, immediately crawling away from any more potentially touchy tomes. “I’ve decided to agree with Batman about one thing: I hate magic.”

Or at least, he hated unexpected magic.

He probably would’ve thought this was the coolest thing ever if he had volunteered to swap bodies with Timothy. But as of now…he was simultaneously over and understimulated (the understimulated part being the only reason he could still take in his surroundings), suffering from several different pains in different places, and he wanted to become unconscious immediately.

“Do you want to try to fix this the fast way and mess with more magic,” Timothy asked, “or the slow way and ‘live like this’ for a while?” The thought of letting Tim suffer longer than necessary didn’t please him, but it was always less risky to follow the rules of a spell rather than force a shortcut.

(And Tim chose which risks they took.)

“…Is real life bodyswapping the same as fics where there’s some lesson you learn about each other?” If he ever wrote self-insert bodyswap fanfiction about switching places with Robin, that was no one’s business but his own…and Timothy’s.

Timothy turned his head toward the innocuous-looking cause of this situation, a simple leather book without any of the fancy Do Not Touch warnings like most of the other cursed shit. It sat ominously on the floor between the two of them, just daring them to try something. “Sometimes there’s a lesson…but not always. We’ll have to read to see what we’re working with.”

“Then screw it, I can endure your pain to get the hypothetical magic lesson,” Tim decided.

He wanted to know everything there was to know about Timothy, so who was Tim to decline a bit of magical help? Sure, his whole body hurt right now, and he really didn’t want to move a single muscle, but if this accidental swap let them understand each other even more, it would be worth it.

If it helped him take better care of Timothy, it would be worth it.

“You’re taking your first bodyswap surprisingly well,” Timothy said absently. Considering I got the better end of the deal.

“First—?” Tim shook his head and immediately regretted it. Every movement was hell. If not for the pain, then for a feeling like patches of dried glue tugging at his skin from all angles. Did Timothy’s neck actually have full range of motion? Tim added that question to his recently discovered list of Bodily Things To Address That Timothy Probably Didn’t Know Were Worth Addressing. “I came back from boarding school to meet a future vigilante self from a doomed universe who wanted to stay with me instead of rejoining Batman. And now I get to live in a comic book. Nothing will ever shake me again.”

(Well, nothing like this, no feats of magic or science or less definable things. But Timothy shook him to his core just a few days ago by saying he missed him, so he could definitely still be shaken.)

Timothy breathed out, “That’s fair.” Then he allowed himself one more slow inhale before he sat up and got to work, nearly teleporting in front of Tim—or maybe he just wasn’t fully conscious of his movements. “Okay, what hurts the most?”

“Everything,” Tim reported, tipping forward until his forehead hit Timothy’s shoulder rather than raise an arm. But he jerked away when a small hand touched his hair. “Wait, stop!”

Timothy paused and waited for elaboration.

“If you do that then I’ll fall asleep and I can’t fall asleep in a freaking crypt of a library,” Tim said. “That’s how you get locked in and lost for centuries, unaware of the passage of time.” Exhausting pain was safer than exhausting comfort right now; they needed to get the hell out of here before they couldn’t leave at all.

Gently retracting his hands, Timothy simply nodded. “Okay, pain management later. Let’s pack up and go.”