Chapter Text
“You…” Bruce mused.
“Me,” Tim agreed.
“Were on patrol…”
“Yes.”
“Against orders,” Bruce added, the words dangerous and slow.
Tim swallowed.
“With Jason,” Bruce finished. His suspicion hung in the air like a cloud of dark smoke, heavy and stifling. Tim found it strangely hard to breathe.
“...yes,” Tim confirmed.
Bruce mulled it over. In the ensuing silence, Tim could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears. His heart pounded in his chest, beating against the examination table he lay on as Alfred inspected his wound. Lying to Bruce Wayne never got any easier, even after all these years. Tim only hoped Alfred wouldn’t recognize the nervous tics for what they were.
“Tell me again what happened,” Bruce demanded.
“It was a narcotics bust,” Tim repeated, rattling off the story he and Jason had decided upon that morning. “It was supposed to be easy; run in, destroy the drugs, run out. No injuries, no casualties,” he added pointedly. “I was ambushed before I reached the rendezvous point, the guy had a knife.” Knives are kinda like swords, right? Not technically a lie… “I fought him off and Jason brought me back to his safe-house for treatment.”
“A job remarkably well done, I might add,” Alfred supplied, looking up from his examination. “That’s no small amount of stitches, Master Timothy - you were lucky not to end up in the hospital.”
“I know,” Tim agreed. “Jason was… a lifesaver, really.”
Bruce’s eyes narrowed, his gaze never leaving the long, thin laceration on Tim’s back, but he said nothing.
“Be that as it may,” Alfred continued, peeling the gloves from his hands with a crisp snap! “These stitches won’t be coming out for another two weeks, minimum.”
Tim groaned, his heart sinking.
“And another two weeks’ recuperative care after that.”
“A whole month?” Tim asked.
“At the very least,” the butler said sternly. “There’s no telling what sort of damage that knife-wound may have caused to the muscles below the injured fascia - any more trauma and we could have a much bigger problems on our hands, of the sort that cannot be fixed by simple stitches and bedrest. You, Master Timothy, need time to heal. And rest. We can confer in a few weeks to determine whether you can be cleared for duty again or if you’ll need more time.”
As much as he wanted to fight it, Tim knew full well that Alfred had made the right call. Hadn’t he come to the same conclusion upon seeing the wound the next day? The prognosis came as no surprise to him... even if he did dislike it. “‘Tis but a flesh wound,” Tim muttered bitterly.
Hearing the remark, the butler exhaled softly and gave a fond pat to Tim’s uninjured shoulder.
“You heard the deal,” Bruce declared. “Medical leave, four weeks minimum. No field work. No patrol.”
Sighing, Tim pressed his forehead into the plastic-coated cushion of the exam table. It’s the right course of action, he repeated to himself. He should consider himself lucky he hadn’t gotten any worse - if Bruce and Alfred had learned he had been fear-gassed, had seen the full trauma of that night, Tim wouldn’t be allowed within a hundred feet of his uniform for two months at least.
And not within an entire city’s breadth of Jason Todd.
“Fine,” he conceded, pushing off from the table. “No cape. I’ll rest up.”
~~~
Didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.
“Someone’s got a case of cabin fever,” Jason noted, glancing up over the top of his book and watching Tim from where he lounged in the deep-cushioned armchair of the Skyline study. Tim paced the wooden floor, back and forth, back and forth, rubbing at the back of his neck while scratching absently at his side with his free hand. Visibly, viscerally anxious. It made Jason’s skin crawl just watching him. “You keep going on like that and you’re going to wear a groove into the floor. Or scratch your skin off.”
“I can’t help it,” Tim grumbled. “I hate being stuck on the sidelines, I hate not being able to go and figure things out - Deathstroke is out there, Jason! How the hell did he even get involved? Who’s-”
As Tim passed in front of him again, Jason reached out and snagged Tim’s hand.
“Here,” Jason said. “Come sit with me. Grab a book, if you want. Just quit driving an Indy 500 around the room, you’re driving me nuts.”
Tim pursed his lips, then sighed, foregoing the book-route to sit beside Jason, curling his knees up to his chest. Without a word, Jason dog-eared the page and set his book aside, shifting so he could sprawl out across the armchair and pull Tim between his legs. Tim conceded, allowing Jason to move him as he would and then making himself comfortable, leaning back into Jason’s chest.
“This sucks,” Tim grumbled.
“Yep,” Jason agreed, wrapping his arms around Tim and taking Tim’s hands into his own. His hands were warm, unusually so, Jason noted with surprise. Leaning forward, he slid his chin over Tim's shoulder and pressed a kiss to Tim’s temple.
Warm as well, but not feverishly so, Jason decided, smiling against Tim’s temple as Tim hummed happily at the touch. His skin wasn't damp either, like it might've been if Tim had been sick; instead, it was dry, and reddened where he had been scratching. Jason shook his head. “Geez, Tim,” Jason muttered. “Haven't you ever heard of taking it easy?”
Tim grinned.
“Never.”
It didn’t seem like something to grin about several days later. By the end of the week, Tim felt like he was flying apart at the seams, not a single waking hour passing without him agonizing over the delays in his investigation, the answers he was almost on the brink of unearthing slipping through his fingers like smoke. To distract himself, he spent every day, from morning until late into the night, at Wayne Enterprises, and as soon as he got home he’d be clinging to his comm again, desperate for any whisper of news. Oracle had to update her security almost daily to keep Tim from hacking her feeds, eventually deciding - after the eighth morning spent repairing the breaches in her firewalls - to take pity on the benched vigilante and leave a backdoor for Tim to access whenever he wanted, keeping him company via video calls into the early hours of the morning.
Jason, for his part, did his best to keep off patrol as much as was possible without raising suspicion - partially out of concern for the early transformation, and partially to keep an eye on Tim. They spent the evenings of Tim’s convalescence in strained quietude, Jason reading calmly on the cushioned armchair with Tim beside him, or on the floor by his feet, or wandering around the kitchen island, or marching around the empty living room, typing away furiously at his laptop, researching who knows what. Jason often had to physically carry him to bed at night, listening to Tim agonize over possibly relevant case details he had gleaned from some obscure source as Jason rubbed lotion into the skin of Tim’s back, his calves, his thighs, his wrists, all dry and reddened from Tim’s absentminded scratching. Tim would be at it again before he was up the next morning, Jason knew, but he did what he could.
He just couldn’t shake the feeling that Tim was in this state because of him.
It was almost a relief once Tim got the go-ahead to get the stitches removed - the stretching and the exercises gave Tim something to do, something more physically productive than pacing or scratching or tapping. But newly reclaimed freedom also served to make him that much more aggravating.
“If B catches you in the field when you shouldn't be, you're on your own,” Jason warned when he caught Tim trying to sneak out of Skyline for the third time that week. “I'm not saving your scrawny ass a second time.”
“Bullshit,” Tim grumbled bitterly, letting Jason drag him back to the study. “You love my ass.”
“I do,” Jason replied. “Which is why I'm not letting you out there until you're fully healed and cleared for duty.”
“Come on, Jay, I’m dying here,” Tim groaned. “I’ll be fine.”
“Been there, done that,” Jason shot back. “You’ll get no pity from me.”
Tim sighed.
~~~
After a month had passed, Tim’s back was practically - if not fully - healed. All that remained from his encounter with Deathstroke were a handful of hazy memories and a thin pink, puckered weal. It would scar, but it wouldn't be the first wound to do so, nor the last, and with the only lasting damage deemed superficial, Tim was cleared to return to the field and was anxious to get back into the action.
So of course, that was the afternoon Jason transformed.
And as much as he resisted it, Jason was incapable of keeping Tim from staying in with him.
“Not gonna happen,” Tim insisted, ignoring Jason’s scowl as he plopped himself onto the armchair and sprawled out leisurely - a complete 180° from how he'd been acting just the day before.
“You've been itching to get back out there for weeks,” Jason reminded him.
“It's just one more night,” Tim replied.
“What if it's more?”
Tim tucked his hands under his head, rubbing idly at the back of his neck. “Then I guess I'll stay over for then too.”
“They'll be wondering why you're not out there,” Jason threatened.
“I can tell them I'm making adjustments to my suit.”
“More than the ones you already made while you were benched?” Jason demanded.
Tim smiled easily. “They don't know about those.”
Several tentacles flicked irately at Jason's sides. “You're incorrigible,” he muttered.
“We've already established that,” Tim replied with a smirk.
Realizing the futility of arguing further, Jason marched off with an angry huff and examined the bookshelves, taking a moment to select a book before settling in the empty chair opposite Tim. After a few minutes of griping silently to himself, he was finally able to focus on page in front of him, and began to read, the evening’s peace settling over his shoulders like a blanket.
It didn't take long for that same peace to leave Tim behind completely.
It started with his feet - those restless, twitchy jitters - and quickly traveled upward, growing in intensity until Tim was shaking his whole leg, his knee bouncing up and down like a jumping bean on overdrive, the rhythm of his tapping foot quick and incessant. Tim did his best to stifle the shaking by pushing his leg down with a palm, then crossing his ankles, then sitting on his feet, but to no avail.
He'd stay here with Jason, but by sugar and circuitry, he had to do something.
“Jay,” he said, bouncing to his feet. “Fight me.”
Jason glanced at him, an eyebrow quirking upward. As if to reply, he cast a pointed look at his comfortable position on the couch, then down to his side at the tentacles that had sprawled out over the armrest he leaned against, then looked back to Tim dismissively.
“Jaaaaason, come on,” Tim wheedled, drawing the words out. “I've spent the last month on your couch and I'm bored.”
“I'm not the one who decided to stay here,” Jason reminded him. “If you want a punch-up so bad, go on patrol.”
“I don't want a regular old punch-up,” Tim argued. “I'm out of practice. I want to spar. Here. With you.”
“Can't you see I'm busy?” Jason grumbled, trying - and failing - to keep the grin he was holding back from pulling at the corners of his lips.
“You've read that book like what, five times? Six?”
“Twice,” Jason countered. “And it's still just as good the third time.”
“And it will still be there when I'm finished with you,” Tim replied. “Fight me.”
“Fight you?” Jason snorted. “Really, Timmers? First night back off the bench and you want to fight the biggest baddie in all of Gotham?”
Tim rolled his eyes. “More like the city’s biggest softie,” he retorted, stripping down to an undershirt and a pair of athletic shorts. “Don't pretend you're not thrilled to spend another scintillating evening in my company.”
“Bad guys don't enjoy scintillating evenings with pretty boys,” Jason shot back. “I'm more of the ‘take you back to my lair and debauch you’ type.”
“You'd have to beat me first,” Tim challenged.
“...that can be arranged,” Jason replied, pushing up from the armchair and letting his ratty bathrobe fall from his shoulders, the tentacles unfurling around him like the petals of some strange, exotic flower.
Tim grinned.
“Go set up the mats, menace,” Jason told him. “I'm gonna go change.”
“Is that how they say ‘cower in fear’ on the streets these days?” Tim teased.
Jason flipped him the finger and then disappeared into his room.
Still grinning, Tim sauntered over to the open area by the entry of the loft, a space empty except for a stack of black tumbling mats stacked up against the wall in the corner of the room. Tim maneuvered them easily, unfolding each one and laying them across the dark hardwood until the entire floor was covered. Once he had lined the last square up with the others, he put his hands on his hips, admiring his handiwork - there were few better places to spar, he decided, than a loft overlooking the city. Even with the heavy, gauzy dark curtains hung to prevent any onlookers from getting a look inside, Tim could still see the glints of sunlight reflecting off the buildings and rooftops, warm and hazy in the late afternoon.
Hands circled around his wrists and gripped Tim tightly, pulling him in close. “You lose,” Jason whispered into Tim’s hair. His breath was warm against Tim’s scalp, but still managed to send goosebumps prickling down his neck.
“No fair,” Tim muttered, tugging against Jason's hold.
Jason chuckled, then let Tim go. “You expected fair?” he asked, grinning openly as he watched Tim whirl and hop backwards, settling into a fighting stance a few paces away.
“I suppose that was foolish of me,” Tim replied. “You can take the scrapper out of the streets, but you can’t take the streets out of the scrapper.”
Jason grinned. “Watch it pretty-boy,” he warned, pointing a finger at Tim. “This ‘scrapper’ is gonna lay you on your back.”
Tim smiled slyly in response. “I certainly hope so.”
Jason blinked, caught off guard by the words, the tone - exactly as Tim had intended. Tim was on him in an instant, taking Jason’s surprise as an open invitation to leave a barrage of rapid, open-handed strikes across Jason’s flank and thighs before rolling out of the reach of the tentacles that swatted after him in return.
Jason whipped around, trying to retaliate, but Tim was already moving, dodging to Jason’s side and attacking him as he passed again, chuckling as he did so.
“Laugh all you want, babybird,” Jason huffed, lurching around - too late, again. The extra weight on his center made him slower, dulled his reactions, but if he could just time it right…
Thwap! A tentacle smacked across Tim’s abdomen, with two more slapping at his thighs before Tim danced back out of their reach, frowning. Thinking quickly, Jason turned to face him, shifting his weight forward and sinking lower into his stance, the tentacles fanning out around him automatically to prepare for Tim’s next attack.
It’s just like before, Jason realized. Trying to fight like he normally would was useless - there was too much to control at once, too much for account for. But Jason didn’t have to fight like he normally would. Not while he was like this. As loathe as he was to admit it, the tentacles were… a part of him. And he could rely on them, if he needed to.
Sighing in resignation, he closed his eyes.
Jason heard the instant Tim sprung into motion, heard his bare feet peeling from the mat, the sharp inhale at his left side - and without having to think, Jason leaned away the sound, counterbalancing for the tentacles that lashed out at Tim as he passed. Tim dropped to the mat with a surprised huff, tentacles tangled between his feet, and the sound of palms slapping the floor and the groan of vinyl told him that Tim had pushed to his feet and skirted out of reach, his attack foiled.
Jason grinned.
Tim ran at him again, but Jason was ready, a pair of tentacles snapping towards Tim’s knees before Tim could duck around him and attack from behind. Tim spun out of the way, evading the swinging limbs, only to get wrapped up in a third that came at him from the side and coiled around his waist like a snare. Tim yelped as the limb twisted and threw him to the floor with ease.
“You’ve gotten better,” Tim observed with a huff, gathering the hair off the back of his neck and tying it off in a stubby ponytail. A slight flush had gathered at his cheeks.
“So it would seem,” Jason replied slyly. “Is this your way of tossing in the towel?”
“You wish,” Tim shot back, and he lunged for Jason again, landing a palm-strike on Jason’s ribs before darting out of reach again. Jason staggered to the side, unprepared for the speed of Tim’s advance, and as he wheeled to regain his balance Tim struck again at the back and sides of his thighs, and one playful smack on his butt for good measure.
“Cocky, but can't cover your assets,” Tim teased.
“Very funny,” Jason grumbled, aiming a switch at Tim’s calves that Tim narrowly avoided by jumping out of the way. “Let's see how you like it.”
Jason re-centered himself and the tentacles snapped forward, three lashing at Tim’s feet while a fourth lay in waiting, striking only when Tim’s desperate swerve left him exposed to an attack from behind - an opening Jason couldn’t pass up, gleefully landing a wet-sounding smack on Tim's ass.
Tim jumped in alarm, peeling the limb off with a look of shock. “Did you just… sucker my butt?” he asked, affronted.
Another tentacle reached out and connected with a sharp thwack! Jason grinned wickedly. “Two for flinching, babybird.”
“Oh yeah?” Tim asked. Quick as a flash, he dropped to the ground and threw a sweeping kick at Jason’s feet. Jason leapt to the side but his balance was off, and he fell to one knee and rolled onto his back. “Then what do you get for falling?” Tim asked.
“Leverage,” Jason replied with a gasp, and he wrapped his hands around Tim’s torso and flung him over his head, sending him rolling across the mats. He landed on his feet a good distance away.
“You look good like this,” Tim said as he straightened, his gaze, for once, not scanning for openings and weak points but completely focused on Jason, intent and… admiring.
Warmth spilled across Jason’s face. “Good?”
“Yeah,” Tim replied, but he didn’t explain further, choosing to look away instead, a sheepish look playing on his face.
“Well, of course I look good,” Jason said with a snort, confused by the exchange, but not unpleasantly so. “I’m winning,” he declared. “I’m good at that.”
“Really now?” Tim asked coyly.
Jason grinned, noticing Tim lean subtly into the balls of his feet, preparing to spring. He braced himself.
“Really,” Jason replied.
Tim lunged, taking two bounding steps before launching himself at Jason in a flying leap.
It was a mistake.
Jason swiveled, throwing himself off the line of Tim’s attack even as tentacles shot out in the opposite direction to counterbalance the motion, wrapping around Tim in mid-air and throwing him bodily back down onto the mat. Tim went down like a stack of bricks and Jason was on him in an instant, dropping his weight onto Tim’s hips and moving on instinct to pin Tim’s hands over his head with two tentacles. Trapped. Jason’s head rang with the thrill of his triumph. He leaned forward over Tim, grinning smugly as he did so. “Yield,” Jason demanded.
“Jason,” Tim gasped. “Kiss me.”