in the dark valley, that as-yet undiscovered land - thescrewtapedemos - Batman (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Tim wakes up.

He turns his head and realizes he's woken up in a cage.

It's not a small cage, rough iron rebar and ancient rusty wire, not quite tall enough for Tim to stand up in if he could stand. The floor is old cement slowly flaking apart, the walls streaked with mold. The windows are papered over with cardboard and old newspapers. The chain holding the cage door closed is the only shiny, new thing he can see.

Something sits on his chest, a numb crackling weight.

Tim drags in a breath that stinks of mildew and old piss and then he screams.

He flies apart. He comes back in pieces.

The pain is—everything.

All-encompassing. The numbness is gone and strobing agony radiates from the hollow of his throat to the soft clutch of his stomach. He's twitching, he can't stop himself, and it hurts worse every time. He holds a sun in his chest, awful flaying hot misery. His arms flop like beached fish against cold concrete, knuckles stinging. He's kicking. He can't stop.

There are hands on him. Warm hands on his shoulders, right at the edge of the burn. A voice in his ear, husking and frantic. The words flow through his skull and out again without touching him.

Dark swallows him.

==

He's in the cage, still. It smells the same. A warm weight rests against his hip. The rest of him is achingly cold. There's pressure around his chest that edges towards pain without quite crossing over, and everywhere else is numb again.

The crackling had been fluid in his lungs. Is fluid in his lungs. It's still there.

"Are you awake?"

Tim opens his eyes. The mask is still stuck on, barely. Tears have dried underneath it, crackling and sore.

The woman staring down at him is barely older than a girl. Tim's age, maybe. She's pale, filthy, and beautiful. Too skinny to be a likely combatant. And not wearing nearly enough for how cold the cage is.

He recognizes her. She'd been there, before. She'd been screaming, that's what had caught Tim's attention. He'd been on his way back from patrol, a case on the docks he'd been checking out for Oracle, not his usual route. But she'd been screaming, these awful jagged shrieks of fear, and he'd responded because of course he had.

It had been dark in that alley, and he'd thought he knew what to expect from the kind of person that went after one of Hood's working girls. Small time crime means small time criminals.

And then something pale and awful had unfolded out of the dark and what he remembers after that is the stink of blood and the woman screaming and cold, numb agony.

"I'm awake," he tries to say, but what comes out is a hoarse grunt.

The woman tries something that she probably thought was a smile. It's more of a grimace.

"Hold on," she says, getting up to her knees and crawling away. Her accent had been all alley Gotham. It's comforting.

When she comes back, knee-walking gingerly, there's water in her cupped hands. Her hands are filthy, and Tim hadn't turned his head to see where the water came from. He hadn't heard a faucet, certainly. He drinks in greedy sips anyway, until the water is gone and he can breathe without feeling like the air is burning him.

He settles back and looks at her. She looks at him.

"Where are we?" he asks. She shakes her head.

"Gotham," she says with heavy irony, like it's an answer. It kind of is. They could be anywhere. "You're a cape, right? Any chance you've got some powers? Gadget hidden somewhere?"

Tim wiggles, just a little. Enough for something awful to move under the blank numbness clouding out the sensation of his upper body. He's bandaged inexpertly, probably the remains of his cape. His belt is gone, his staff and weapons and anything removable. Anything useful, especially since—

He tries to lift an arm, and rethinks that very quickly.

"Do you know who," he begins, and then a door opens somewhere above him and both of their mouths snap shut.

The figure that pauses at the top of the stairs to look at them, head co*cked to the side, is slight and pale and utterly nondescript. Bony to the point of androgyny, though the short brown hair has Tim tentatively classifying the person as a he . From a distance his eyes blend oddly with the rest of his face, a pale blue.

If it weren't for how the woman at his hip stiffens, Tim would have called out to him.

He descends in slow movements, the figure watching them. Little steps, hesitant and self-conscious like he's not quite used to being watched. There's something in his hand he's balancing like he doesn't quite know what to do with it.

He reaches the bottom. He's not very tall, Tim realizes when he steps closer, edges through the gloom of the basem*nt. He's built like Tim, slender and whip-muscled. His eyes are cloudy, a pale blue.

"Red Robin, I think," he says, and Tim flinches on principle.

His voice is scratchy, this stranger. Hoarse, wispy with disuse. A voice that hasn't been used in so long it's a surprise to the owner to hear, Tim recognizes that in the timbre.

"Red, to my friends," he says and manages a nearly convincing winning smile. It shivers at the edges. "And you are?"

The man smiles at him.

Tim swears, tries to scramble backwards and gets pulled up short by the flare of agony ripping from his chest.

Blades of bone flash in the dim light. They gleam wetly, lurid, hyperreal, and Tim feels something in his head slipping sideways in defense.

He's met aliens, metas, sentient animals— a vampire . The fangs are secondary, tucked back behind the man's canines. The tips bead with wetness—venom? They seem to get longer as Tim stares, as he fights himself to pull in a breath that won't come. They are getting longer, he isn't seeing things. Retractable fangs. The possible muscular configurations for that to be possible skitter through his thoughts. Venom glands, do they affect sinus capacity? Brain-pan formation?

A f*cking vampire .

His hand goes to his chest. The agony sits there under his palm and the insufficient wraps of, yes, his cape. He still hasn't looked at it. Is he missing chunks of flesh, or is he just cut up? Sliced apart by those bone razors?

Enamel. Keratin? He's spiraling. He doesn't remember what teeth are made of.

"Drink this," the vampire says, and extends a cup to him through the bars. A plain paper cup, something for sh*t gas station coffee.

The woman reaches for it. The man's eyes flick to her. She jerks away, recoiling out of Tim's sight.

Eventually, panting, sweating with pain, he gets himself upright and crawling to the wall of the cage. The vampire just watches him at it, head tilted, unblinking. Tim's seen his fair share of bodies before. What's watching him are a corpse's eyes.

Tim takes the cup. It's lukewarm, and full of thick fluid. Crimson, too dark to be blood. To be human blood.

It smells wrong. Like saline and artificial cherries.

He looks up at the vampire, bewildered. The vampire is smiling, close-mouthed and serene.

"I'm not drinking this," Tim tries and the vampire's lips part in a soft huff of laughter. Fangs flash. They're so f*cking big .

"You're too badly hurt to stop me from killing her," he says gently and his gaze flicks up again, past Tim. Behind him, a muffled little noise. "You have nothing to gain from being stubborn, Red Robin."

The threat, unspoken, rings between them. Tim steels himself and sips.

The taste is salt at first, fading nauseatingly into a cough-syrup sweetness that has him heaving, mouth flooding with saliva. The vampire does nothing but watch him as he sips, sips again and stops to gag. The cherry smell turns into a generic fructose flavor that lingers at the back of his tongue when he finishes the dregs and pushes the cup back towards the vampire with shaking hands. His heart is racing, his fingers are cold, and he doesn't know if it's the injuries or what he drank taking effect.

The vampire nods and rises in a graceless predatory lunge that has Tim flinching and walks away up the stairs without looking back. Tim doesn't breathe until the door shuts with a quiet snap , and the woman hesitantly crawls back over to him.

"Sorry," she mutters. She looks like she hasn't quite decided if she is or not.

He shakes his head and settles back to the ground. There's traces of what he drank stuck in his teeth, he tastes it when he probes his molars with his tongue. Cold sweat is gathering at the small of his back and the back of his neck.

"It's not your fault," he croaks. Gracious. He hopes Alfred's proud.

"What do I call you?" she asks, and just enough of Tim's professional pride is left in him to frown at her. She rolls her eyes. "I don't keep track of cape drama. The only one I know is our Hood, and he barely counts."

"Robin," says Tim, because some habits run deep , okay. The girl snorts at him. Her mascara is smudged down her cheeks, her lipstick a deep pink smear across her cheek like the world's most half-hearted Joker cosplay. Her eyes are hard as stones from Gotham River.

"Baby," she says and offers her hand. He takes it. Her nails are broken but he can tell they'd been painted, before.

He opens his mouth to say—something, he doesn't even know what, and coughs. Something in his chest catches and his vision goes white.

When he comes to, Baby is leaning over him and her hands are red and wet, and her expression is white and still. She can't stop looking down at his chest, the place where the dull red glow of agony lives. He can't turn his head to look down, and doesn't know if he wishes he could.

"So," he says. "Baby?" His voice is a wreck, but her gaze flickers back to his and it's a very miniscule but measurable improvement.

"As in, whatever you want me to be, Baby," she says and grins a sickly, watery grin, and he laughs and regrets it.

=

Sleep is hard to get, a headache blooming brilliantly behind his eyes, so he spends a lot of time watching the sliver of sky he can see through the bars and the grimy, broken window. It's Gotham sky, so it's more smog than cloud and more cloud than blue, but he watches it change anyway.

He always did keep awful hours. A night job that doesn't pay, a charade of idle luxury to perpetuate, and research on top of that. The lack of sleep is nothing new, so he doesn't know why darkness keeps encroaching on the edges of his vision.

Baby sleeps against his shoulder. There had been some awkwardness at first, protracted and deeply unpleasant, but his blood is under her fingernails and it's cold in the basem*nt. Not cold like winter, but cold like a basem*nt in an abandoned building close enough to the waterfront to hear water rushing by.

When he plugs his ears just to try for some goddamn quiet, he realizes it's not water. He's hearing—a pulse? Someone's pulse? His own?

He closes his eyes and snatches what might be a few hours.

Baby wakes him up by sitting up, catapulting to wakefulness with a tensing of his core muscles that leaves him hissing. The pain lingers at the edges of him, not quite enough to really put him out but enough that he can't keep his thoughts entirely together. The mess of his chest—Baby had told him it looked bad, real bad, and he hadn't asked any more—has faded to a hot throb. The headache is worse.

"D'you think he'll feed us?" Baby asks, and that's how Tim discovers that she's been giving him water from a puddle.

He looks it over. There's probably some flesh-eating bacteria inside him now, because he doubts the mold on the walls has left the floor miraculously sterile, but he still drinks it when she scoops some up for him. His throat is raw like he's about to come down with pneumonia, again .

The throbbing in his head sharpens at the thought.

She distracts him by scraping a hand over the stubble growing in on her jaw and cheek. Her expression is one he recognizes; hysterical disbelief in herself, a bone-deep confusion at her own priorities, why is this what you're upset about, dipsh*t? When she catches him looking, the glare she points at him has more lethality than anything he's had leveled at him before, and he's been shot at by a rocket launcher.

"I'm sorry," he says stupidly and she scoffs.

"Sorries don't buy dinner," she says and looks away. Her jaw is set. "You gonna say anything about it?"

Tim weighs and discards several responses.

"No?" he settles on at last and the look she shoots him is only a fraction less hazardous to his health, but then her eyes flicker past him towards the stairs—

Tim whips around.

The vampire is watching them, perched on the third step down from the door, crouched and leaning over to peer under the ceiling beams. The position is awkward, uncomfortable to look at. He blinks once, twice, and the vampire surges to his feet and is gone in a whirl of grey fabric and faded denim.

Snap, goes the door.

The breath that whoops out of Tim's chest is frantic, painful, reigniting the missing parts of his chest. It leaves him panting, and it takes a long while to clear the spots from his vision. Baby holds his arms down and throws a knee over his legs, what they'd tentatively figured out works the best to keep him from thrashing so hard he breaks the scabs again. Tim can't afford to lose more blood.

He needs to eat something, something that isn't… cough syrup. He needs water that isn't a stagnant puddle on the ground. They both do.

"Really though," he says instead of saying any of that, because there's nothing he can do. "Sorry."

She sighs, and shrugs, and he gets the feeling she's more bored with the whole exchange than interested in his apology.

"Anyway," she says meaningfully, and tugs him up against her side with a businesslike motion.

"You try all the walls?" he asks, letting himself be bundled up against her. The pain surges and wanes, but the cold. The cold fades just a little, and he would endure a lot for that. He's asking more as a formality than anything. But, honestly. Stupider things have happened than an insecure cage designed by a vampire. "The wire looks kind of rusty…"

She shrugs, curving so her head tucks between his shoulder and ear. There's just enough of his cape left to pull it around their shoulders.

"Whadaya take me for?" she asks, sleepy hoarseness ruining her sarcasm. "Threw my weight at all the walls and hung from the ceiling for a whole five minutes. It's solid as sh*t."

"Alright," he mumbles and lets it lapse. He doesn't have it in him to hang from the ceiling without blacking out. His vision had gone interestingly grey when he'd tried to just sit up.

Silence falls between them. Outside, wind scrapes past the building. Inside, water drips slowly down from the ceiling, barely stirring the wet smell of mold. His pulse rushes slowly in his ears, an in-out tide that's gotten to be almost comforting. Above…

He concentrates. There's no sound, not a footstep or a whisper. Either the vampire is utterly still, or gone out for whatever reason, or… and Tim remembers that white shape in the gloom unfolding out at him, wrapping him tight in what he now recognizes to be all four skinny limbs. The pale face peering at them from the basem*nt stair. Perhaps the vampire really is just that quiet.

"What were you doing on the waterfront?" he asks to distract himself.

The question isn't well-considered. He knows it isn't great the second the words hit cold air, it implies a lot of things he hadn't been thinking about when he opened his mouth. He licks his lips once, salt on the tongue, and she shrugs, jostling him.

"Stuff," Baby says. Her cheek scratches against Tim's shoulder, stubble soft like the rest of her is. She's warm and getting warmer. The rest of their little cage has been getting colder and colder. "If you know what I mean."

He's been shaking for a while now, he realizes, intermittent tremors Baby hadn't mentioned. Fine little trembles that work into him from his cold, cold skin down to his bones.

"I get it," he murmurs. His voice is hoarse, scraping its way out of his dry throat. Baby smells like copper, like a summer evening. He turns his head on aching, grinding vertebrae to rest his nose in her hair.

The mess of his ribs and throat have faded to a dull pulse of sensation. It's not pain anymore. Tim doesn't look down at it, he just shuts his eyes and lets Baby's heartbeat thud-thud-thud in his ears.

==

The vampire comes back, hours later. Tim slept a little, and Baby is still sleeping. Tim hadn't woken her.

The man's pale eyes regard them with something very ugly and pleased in their depths. He's holding another paper cup, that awful f*cking cup, blank white and foreboding. He crouches at the bars and sets the cup aside.

"f*ck you," Tim says preemptively. The vampire blinks at him, a slow feline expression of satisfaction. His mouth is open, lips parted so white teeth peek out at Tim. The deep, long breaths remind Tim unpleasantly of Croc. The vampire is f*cking smelling him.

"If you don't come over here, I'm going eat her and just bring you another," says the vampire. The way he says it is very matter-of-fact. He doesn't even really look at Baby.

Baby wakes up when Tim untangles himself from her. She locks a hand in his for a moment, but when he looks at her she lets him go. The lipstick has worn off of her face except a faint pink halo around her mouth but eyeliner and mascara are still ground deep into the fine folds at the corners of her eyes.

The vampire grabs him by the chin when he's crawled close enough and yanks his mouth open. His grip is iron. Tim gags when a thumb jabs into his mouth, tries to fight that iron grip, but then something blooms across his tongue and he—

The noise he makes is helpless, yanked out of his chest, a baby animal noise.

The vampire laughs at him, huffing air through his nose. He'd taken his hand back. There's dull crimson blood oozing too slowly from the pad of his thumb, and Tim hates himself for how he can't stop himself from licking his lips. His mouth is suddenly flooded with saliva and the ache in his head has centered somehow to his f*cking sinuses.

The vampire smiles at him with something horribly sincere in his eyes. His fangs are awful crescents against the dark back of his mouth, white and sharp in the dim light.

"Here," he says in his worn, scratchy voice, and offers Tim the cup. Tim doesn't take it at first. The vampire just stays there, still and unblinking and unbreathing, watching. Tim reaches out eventually and takes it.

The smell of artificial cherry blooms in his sinuses, thick and cloying.

Tim swallows back nausea and looks up at the vampire. When he swallows, it clicks painfully. His veins feel like dull lightning, crawling under desiccated skin.

"Swallow all of it or I'll kill her in front of you, I really will," the vampire says and he's just looking at Tim with the softest, cloudiest blue eyes. "And then give me your hand."

He leaves eventually, the vampire.

It's Tim's forearm that's a mess this time, soft inner elbow carved up and raw when he dares a glance at it. Not so much blood, which isn't surprising, since he probably doesn't have much left to bleed. He's so cold he isn't even shivering. His breath is coming in thin little pants, too quickly. At least the teeth hadn't caught on a tendon, he thinks, and heaves.

It had hurt, he'd screamed, and then he'd—gone away into himself a little, and he'd only really come back when he'd been dropped to the floor. Enough presence of mind to open his eyes to watch the basem*nt door snap shut, but not enough to move until Baby crawled to him and started tugging.

"Jesus," she's saying, over and over. Her eyes are big and red and sore-looking, and she's sobbing for air like it's running out. "Jesus, Robin, Jesus f*cking Christ."

"I'm fine," he croaks, and shuts up at the noise she makes in answer. Instead he does his best to help her in shifting him back to their little corner. She wraps herself around him and it's such a relief, how warm she is.

Warm enough the shivers come back.

His arm is numb. So is his chest. The venom must be paralytic. He pulls his sleeve down over the gouges in his arm. They look like little commas, little curving divots where the vampire had broken skin and then ground down.

B isn't coming.

The shaking takes him over, heaving full-body shivers until he realizes his cheeks are wet and the air heaving back and forth in his chest isn't enough. Until Baby's arms are around him and he's breathing the stink of the two of them from the crook of her neck. Sweat and human waste and a heartbeat under the thinnest membrane. She'd been wearing perfume when they'd been taken, he can still smell a hint of the chemical flowers.

The vampire's blood is sickly sweet in his mouth, like fake sugar, and no matter how many times he spits it won't come out from between his teeth.

It doesn't matter how far down his throat he'd stuck his fingers, his stomach spasms and his jaw cramps and he gags—nothing comes up.

Batman isn't coming to get him, not in time. Not Dick, not even awful f*cking Damian. Steph, Barb, Cass… Jason.

The last one has him giggling, a mad titter he cuts off as soon as the sound registers. Too familiar. Too easy to sink into. He pushes it away.

Red Hood would come for him, if he knew. Professional pride ran deep in him, and Nosferatu's B-tier cousin on his home turf would probably raise some offense. And no matter how much he whined about it, he's warmed up to the Bats a lot in the past handful of years.

But Jason doesn't know. No one knows.

The pain is pretty much gone. It's numb now, a yawning sensation of nothing he can't bring himself to look at. The burn in his throat is better, the throbbing in his skull.

He's going to die here.

He's going to die here.

Of course he thinks of Jason. How could he not? He thinks about a kid, just a f*cking kid, scared and hurting like Tim is now, but all alone.

Less than forty-eight hours. A night and a day and another night. He's lost too much blood to survive, he has no idea how his heart hasn't given out yet. It's probably something to do with the sticky sweet taste still lingering in the pits of his molars.

Still not enough time for anyone to put together wherever they are. Twelve hours at least, for someone to notice he's gone after locking out comms for the night. Or—it's a weekend. Sixteen hours, since Bruce would have needed to do something Bruce-like in public. And a few hours after that before panic set in because Tim had finally ground through the shouting matches to make the point that he's not just emotionally but also legally an adult now, and doesn't need a curfew check in.

And there hadn't been good surveillance at the docks where Tim had been. It's why he'd been there in the first place. Why it's Red Hood territory sort of by default, because it's the kind of place only brute force really worked. Oracle is more of a soothsayer than a miracle-worker, where Tim had been. Reading the future in broken traffic light cameras.

He'd done this to himself.

He's muttering. Baby's thumb lands across his mouth and he feels his lips move against it.

"You alright?" she asks when his mouth finally stops moving. His jaw keeps working without his permission, muscles clenching and flexing involuntarily. His molars are grinding together. He'd worry about breaking a tooth if that mattered even remotely.

"'Course I am," he says.

==

For a while—hours, probably, maybe days, maybe seconds—he drifts.

He's too weak to rest. It's worse than that, the grey haze he stumbles through. Cold except where Baby is pressed to his side, where he's feverish and sweaty. He's plastered to her, knee between hers and her arms around his chest, shameless, hopeless. The pain fades with that dull misery, into the cold and the numbness.

He lets himself drift.

Metal rattles against metal.

He's alone in the cage, and the door is hanging open.

The chain rattles as he crawls over it. Baby isn't with him, isn't in the shadows under the broken window, in the crevice under the stairs. He kneels at the bottom step and looks up, up at the door. Faded white paint, hanging loose on old hinges. Grey light filters through the crack underneath.

He gets his feet under him. The stairs stretch forever but he climbs them, hand over hand, nails in threadbare carpet. The door is open, moves silently on loose hinges, spits him out into a warehouse he knows.

He knows this warehouse.

Somewhere far away a child is screaming. It echoes off catwalks, girders, dirty panel walls. He's running, running, running and the warehouse is like a cave. Laughter echoes off the ceiling, screaming comes from up ahead, and he knows that screaming.

He slams into the door, solid steel, dull and immovable. It doesn't give under his fists, his nails at the cracks, his desperate pleas. There is no way through, and that laughter moves farther off, and the screaming is dying to hysterical sobbing.

"We don't make it out of here," Jason says conversationally, right in his ear, and Tim screams and whirls, and slams his elbow into the bars of the cage.

It rattles, but the sound is dull and distant to the roar of agony in his ears. He's back in the cage. He never left. Baby is talking, exclaiming with what might be shock. He can't make out the words, and he sags into her grip, and the grey swallows him back up again.

He doesn't sleep this time. It stalks the edges of his awareness, dark and laughing, and he pushes it away. It helps to keep his hands twitching, wandering the sharp cracks in the cement, the rough fishnets over Baby's knees.

She wakes him, after an unknown interval.

Her hand is on his shoulder, shaking him and sending a dull lance of pain through his chest. He lifts his head, panting, and follows her gaze.

The vampire watches them from the other side of the cage wall. Tim blinks in muted exhaustion. When he sees Tim is mostly lucid again, the vampire beckons him over.

He goes. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Baby's hands helping him to his knees with obvious reluctance and then dragging himself hand over aching hand to the bars of the cage. He tries to sit down there, and gets so lightheaded he has to lower himself to lay on the floor.

The vampire watches all of this with grotesquely polite interest.

"What do you want?" Tim asks. His cheek moves against the floor.

A cup is placed by his nose. It looms in his vision, this close to him. It fills up half of the known universe, blank and white and radiating lukewarm against his face. He reaches out and wraps a shaking hand around it for warmth more than anything.

"I'm sure you have questions," the vampire says. His voice, husky and quiet, is sympathetic. Tim hates him, in that moment. Hates him with a sick, cold ferocity that burns itself out at once and leaves him heaving for air against the dusty concrete. He can't seem to get enough of it. Anemia—the result of not having enough blood to get oxygen everywhere it's needed. It's why his fingers feel so cold.

"Yeah," he manages, gritty, and swallows a cough. He can't afford to black out again.

"Drink, and I'll answer anything you'd like."

He drinks. He has no choice. He clenches a hand and presses his knuckles into the concrete, taking long swallows of numb warmth—of course he doesn't have a choice. The vampire will kill Baby. He'll kill Tim. He'll hurt Tim more, more of his teeth ripping through Tim's skin and skating by his tendons with teasing numb pressure.

He finishes, and pushes the cup away. It tips over and rolls into the vampire's hand.

"Very good," the vampire croons. His voice keeps getting lower and quieter. The way he looks at Tim is awful. "I'm sure you must be having a terrible headache as your mouth reforms. That may help."

He reaches between the bars and lays his hand on Tim's where it's resting on the floor. Tim flinches, but doesn't pull it away. He has no choice.

"My mouth?" he asks hollowly, though he knows the answer. Sound vibrates horribly against his palate.

"Your teeth are coming in," the vampire tells him. The soft fondness in his voice has Tim shuddering with disgust. His hand on Tim's is cold, the fingers smooth and dry and horribly cool, a mannequin's hand. The thumb brushing over his knuckles might as well have been carved from bone. "It's almost over, fledgling."

It hurts badly to lift his head, to turn it. His hair catches on the cracked damp cement.

He wants to fall asleep. He wants to curl up with his head in Baby's lap and cry in the sore, dry way he knows from experience is all he can manage when he's this tired. He needs to know what this vampire knows. He needs to plan.

He knew. He knew, he'd known from the first mouthful of artificial cherry. He wants to close his eyes.

"What's almost over?" he asks. His voice croaks from his raw throat and the vampire smiles at him with that same fondness. His teeth flash, his gums dark and receding so they look like blades. Tim blinks at them owlishly. His vision is blurry. His head hurts, a sharp ache and the cloudy sensation of pressure.

He tongues the sore, swollen buds at the roof of his mouth. Nausea ebbs in him. He doesn't have the energy to throw up. There's nothing for him to throw up, anyway.

"Your heart is going to give out soon," the vampire tells him. It's the same tone Tim's heard R&D personnel use discussing parts durability. Mildly regretful, anticipatory. "Don't be scared when it does. I'll be here to help you, to keep you fed."

The way he glances up at Baby, huddled in the furthest corner to the cage, makes the nausea surge. Tim heaves, and gets nothing but a sour mouthful of spit. The vampire coos down at him. It's a sharp little noise, inhuman. His gums are crimson and his cloudy blue eyes are back fixed on Tim, and Tim hates it but it's better than when he'd been looking at Baby.

He wants this vampire out of this basem*nt, he wants that more than he's wanted anything, ever. Away from him. Away from Baby.

"How will I know?" he asks. His breathing is crackly.

The vampire hums. His thumb explores the valleys of Tim's knuckles, back and forth, and then retreats. His expression is meditative.

"If it does not happen tonight, I will ensure it," he says decisively, and stands.

He goes. Tim watches him go blankly, up the stairs and through the door. It snaps closed behind him, and he's alone in the dark basem*nt with Baby.

He laughs. He can't help it.

The laughter rips through his chest, draws his vision in tight until all he can see is the horizon line of broken concrete, flashes like lightning through his skull. His fingertips are numb except a sick tingle.

Baby is there, eventually, some fraction of time later. She holds him down, though he doesn't really know why. He doesn't have enough blood left for what he loses through the bandages to make a difference.

He runs out of air eventually, dropping into convulsive pants. It takes a long time for his vision to come back, to make out Baby's terrified face leaning over him. Her eyes are a rich hazel, he notes with blissful inanity. She really is beautiful.

"I'm dying," Tim croaks.

He can feel it. He can feel it in the cold numbness in his fingers and toes, the awful see-sawing beat of his heart. The panting won't stop and still doesn't seem to be pulling in enough air. His vision is starting to tunnel again and even where it isn't fuzzy and black it's like some veil has been pulled between him and the rest of the world. Everything is blurry and dark.

"No."

Baby's hands on him, hauling him up, hurt. He gasps and sobs and welcomes it, the pain turning the room bright and sharp for a moment. His mouth hurts, suddenly. Too crowded. Aching. He stretches his jaw and Baby pins him to the wall.

She's snarling at him. Her blunt white teeth, the lunatic rims of white around her eyes, the cracked dry skin of her lips, he sees all of it in hallucinatory detail.

"You're Robin," she snarls. "You're f*cking Robin , you can't give up, you can't give up on us."

He isn't, he wants to tell her, but all he manages is another gagging heave because he can feel them. He can feel them.

There are needles of bone in his mouth, his tongue pressed to them. Muscles he doesn't understand work achingly in his jaw and the needles— extend .

He doesn't know what that sound is, in the air, not for a long moment. That high, fluttering whine. He doesn't realize it's him until his voice cracks.

That pain is gone. For a moment, one piece of his agony is all gone.

"Yeah, yeah," Baby pants. Crazy-eyed, pale, smeared up with sweat and dirt and Tim's blood. "Yeah that could work, maybe that'll work."

He understands only when her wrist wedges into his mouth, when those bone needles slide across skin and catch and tear. When she's forcing his mouth wider, pressing up into his dangerous teeth.

When Baby's blood hits his tongue.

"Sorry," he sobs, his blunt incisors scraping her skin, his tongue lisping against her pulse. His words are nothing, garbled sounds, unintelligible, he can't stop himself. "Sorry, sorry—"

"Drink," he thinks he hears Baby say.

He doesn't pay attention. He can't. His mouth is full of liquid bliss and he drinks, he drinks, he drinks.

The burn fades. The ache. The cold numbness. Pain washes from him in a river, everything washing away. He is light and powerful and utterly content. He bites down harder, drinking in greedy little swallows—the flow isn't enough, he wants more—

He's hauled backwards by the hair.

It hurts in a faraway sort of way, beyond the glittering veil. He doesn't fight it, sways back and doesn't fight the laughter that bubbles up in him either. It fizzes in him, in his chest, in his tingling fingertips, in the painless lift of his arms above his head. Warm, full, light, bliss—

The slap jerks his head to the side and leaves him ringing.

He is utterly, abjectly blank.

The stillness is blessed. He's nothing for a moment, the pain washed away and leaving an emptiness euphoric in its lack.

No pain. No fear.

No raw thirst.

He stares at Baby. She's clutching her wrist to her chest and glaring at him. The eyeliner clings in greasy crumbs to the folds around her eyes. Her lips are dry and chapped. Her blood perfumes the air with iron, salt, an ozone sting. She stands out lurid and detailed in his vision, a firework against the concrete and rebar behind her.

He feels like an animal.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

"Shut up, for real," she counters, and goes to him. She doesn't let him backpedal, gets him by the shoulders and hauls him into the corner. He goes, weak, terrified to fight it, and lets himself be tucked down against the wall with her. The same shamelessness, despite how the pain is gone. The warmth is still—so nice.

He's still shaking, he notes, but he thinks this time it might be psychosomatic. Psychological response. Something like that.

"I don't know if there was another way," she says, and after so long knowing Bruce and Dick, he recognizes an apology when it comes in disguise.

He shrugs. He doesn't know either.

"How do you feel?" she asks against his shoulder. He shakes his head, nose moving against her collar bone. He doesn't know how to answer that in a way that doesn't end with him dry heaving. "You're moving better."

And he is. He lifts an arm carefully, up up and above his head. His chest is tight, but the pain doesn't come.

"Yes," he says and lifts his head to meet her gaze.

"I'm not dying here," she tells him. Hazel eyes, brown and green, hard as river stones. "I'm not gonna let you die here either. We need a f*cking plan."

==

The floor is cold, and Tim hates it bitterly.

It chills his cheekbone and the flange of his hip bone, where he's curled up awkwardly on the floor. His elbow aches, a faint and persistent annoyance. His knees ache too, and his legs are starting to cramp.

It's nothing, the pain is nothing. It's the cold that bothers him.

He watches Baby through his lashes and keeps his breathing slow and shallow and even.

She's watching the stairs. She's been watching the stairs for nearly two hours, alternating drumming her broken nails against the cement and fussing at the torn hem of her filthy negligee. She keeps flinching at nothing, at the distant roar of a motor, at the rattling cough Tim allows himself every couple of minutes.

Night is falling outside, the sliver of sky fading from the silver of old metal to a stormy grey. The temperature is dropping with it, and he drags another breath in.

He can smell blood. He can smell Baby's blood.

It's different. He's no stranger to blood, the smell and look of it. Even if he had been squeamish, it would have been drummed out of him in those short years as Bruce's Robin. And after, when…

It's all new now, is all. He can smell it so strongly. A perfume to the air, horribly intriguing. He pulls in another breath. Air slips over his tongue and the roof of his mouth and that sensation is new too, silken, pleasurable. His… his fangs are…

He suppresses a shudder, and shifts. Concrete scrapes. Baby watches him.

Unwillingly he forces himself to settle.

Above them, a faint scrape.

His eyes slam closed and in the darkness behind his eyelids he listens.

There are no footsteps above him. There is wind crashing through the buildings outside, water dripping down the basem*nt walls, Baby's breathing. Is his hearing better than it had been before? Can he smell with any more acuity? If he does…

He clenches his fist, grinding his knuckles against the cement floor until it hurts. If his senses are any better, it's not enough.

The basem*nt door opens with a soft creak and Baby flinches. The steps that make their way down the stairs are audible now, slow and hesitant in that way Tim has noticed the vampire seems to move. He wonders, forcing his shoulders to relax, forcing his breathing shallow, if the vampire is walking more heavily so that they'll hear him coming. So that they'll be afraid.

The footsteps pause at the foot of the stairs, and then drag their way to the cage.

Tim feels eyes on him. A hungry gaze. He might be imagining it.

"Fledge," the soft voice comes.

Tim forces himself not to flinch. Not to move at all. The voice comes from closer to the ground than he'd expected. The vampire is crouching to examine him—there comes the soft huff of air. The vampire smells him.

A rustle as the vampire stands. Tim watches Baby through the veil of his lashes.

"You stink of blood," the vampire says softly. He sounds different talking to Baby than he had talking to Tim. Absent, a hint of cool interest. "And fear. Did he try to bite you already?"

There's a hiss of indrawn air, a flicker of movement through Tim's lashes. He keeps his breathing light and even and doesn't tense, doesn't twitch.

"f*ck you," Baby says. She's breathless. "f*ck you, f*ck you."

A hum. The rattle of the chain moving. The scrape of metal across cement.

"I thought he'd be precocious," the vampire says, and his voice has dropped. Quieter, softer. Warmer. Fonder.

Closer.

The chain rattles.

"Now," hisses Baby.

He unfurls.

The strip of his uniform is a seam, hemmed in steel thread. Near indestructible. The vampire is leaning over him, hands at his hip and shoulder, and Tim catches a perfect flash of wide, shocked blue eyes. Blue as summer sky. He loops the steel-lined fabric around the vampire's neck and rolls away. Out through the cage door.

He'd calculated again and again. Distance between the bars, the strength of the steel thread, the average range of motion for a human body that isn't Dick Grayson. Durability of iron rebar, his own strength. The strength of the human windpipe, and at what speed and angle a strike would be debilitating versus fatal.

He wraps the strip of cloth and steel around his hands and hauls the vampire back against the bars.

He'd been correct. Bracing a knee against the vampire's back, the makeshift garrote fed between the bars, the vampire can't reach him. He hauls back and the vampire's hands scrabble at his throat, then against the bars, rattling them.

The vampire heaves. Tim braces. His chest pulls.

A handful of seconds, a heartbeat of stalemated equilibrium.

Air coughs from the vampire, a strange and choking kuh kuh kuh of sound. Tim strains against that impossible strength, fighting how the garrote cuts into his hands. Blackness edges into his vision, blackness edged in bloody crimson. He doesn't recognize the sound, the quake of the vampire against the bars of the cage, not for a heaving eternity.

The vampire is laughing.

The red surges, the blackness tightening in. His vision is a pinprick, a blur of the back of the vampire's neck. The vertebrae there, pronounced lumps under stark skin.

Time runs together.

Mad laughter. Tim's chest, tight, heaving. There is a car passing outside, the engine clatters busily, its pistons echoing off the inside of Tim's skull. Inside the car music is playing. Water falls from the ceiling—drop, drop-drop, drop. Baby is panting.

Baby stinks of something sour and delicious. It melts on Tim's tongue.

You stink of blood. And fear.

He braces a foot on the iron rebar. He lifts himself, tension of the garrote around the vampire's neck keeping him suspended. He picks up his other leg, positions the foot appropriately, and slams his heel into the cervical vertebrae at the back of the vampire's neck.

There is a wet snap. Tim loses his balance. He hits the floor in an awkward sprawl.

The vampire slides away from the bars with a slow, sagging, sloppy lack of control. He topples to the side as he does, still with that ragdoll looseness, folding over on himself so that when he hits the ground he faces Tim.

His mouth is slack. His eyes are open. There are little starbursts of red at the corners of his blue, blue eyes. He doesn't blink, and he isn't breathing, and he doesn't move.

He dies.

In that awkward sprawl on the floor, Tim forces himself to breathe. In, and out. In… out again.

The car has passed, clattering engine and faint music fading away. Water drips from the ceiling. Tim's chest is still so tight that he has to sip after air. He stares into those cloudy blue eyes. They're the foggy blue of clouds on a summer day in Bristol. The fringes of dull brown lashes don't move. There is no more laughter.

Baby makes a quiet noise. It isn't quite words.

Tim doesn't move. He can't move, not as Baby crawls out of the cage and stands up, not as she bends over him. Her fingers are cold at his neck, pressing against his pulse. It's pounding very quickly. He only notices that when it rages against Baby's fingers.

"Get up," Baby says, and when Tim still doesn't move, "You've got to get up."

He doesn't have to get up, he wants to say and can't. He hasn't blinked and his eyes are starting to burn.

Baby settles in front of him. It cuts off his view of the vampire, vision taken up by bruised knees and filthy fishnets. He blinks at last and his eyes are wet, and he finally looks up at Baby. She's frowning down at him, ghost-pale, shaky and sweaty.

"Up," she says, takes his hand in hers, and starts hauling.

He gets up. It's easier than he expected, once he starts moving he can keep up the momentum. She gets up with him, hand hovering and watching him like she's scared he'll fall again. His hands hurt and when he looks down at them there are deep red grooves cutting across his palm where the garrote bit into them.

He looks up at Baby.

She's staring back at him. He can't read her expression. It's wide-eyed, whatever it is. He can see white all the way around her iris. The terror smell…

That sour smell is fading.

He leans, tries to look at the corpse. Baby steps to the side to block his gaze, reaches out to take him by the shoulder. It's the wrist he'd bitten. The smell of blood fills his nose.

"Come on," Baby whispers, and they climb out through an abandoned house. They'd been held in its basem*nt. The carpet is moldering, the furniture ruined. The front door hangs loose on its hinges and the yard is pavement cracked through and mazed with weeds.

The sun is just going down, it turns out.

He doesn't catch fire and his skin doesn't begin to burn immediately, which in retrospect is something Tim should have worried about. Instead he just squints at it dully. Even the dull, bloody light of a sullen Gotham sunset stings his eyes. There's a body under his feet.

He turns to the side and vomits. Not much comes up and what does is brilliantly red. He heaves, stares down at it, and feels wetness gathering in his eyes. There's bile in his sinuses, iron-heavy bile that stings.

And then Baby is there, warm arms around his shoulders, a body against him shaking with the cold just like his, and he's being turned around.

"You're coming back to my place," she says fiercely, her accent pure Narrows. "And then I'm going to, to… I'm going to f*cking shave."

He must nod or agree or something, because the next thing he's aware of is Baby taking his hand and starting to walk.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

It takes an hour to get to Baby's apartment.

They'd been on the Robbinsville waterfront, it turns out. Not so far from where Tim had been poking around, a lifetime ago. Baby's apartment is at the edge of the Bowery, and no one stops them as they limp to it. No one spares them a second glance, in Baby's filthy negligee and Tim's bloody suit. No one wants to know.

It's Gotham. Not even the weirdest thing they've seen that night, probably.

Baby's spare key is still hidden under a loose paving stone, it turns out, and she leads him into a cramped living room. The place is cold, but not as cold as the Gotham night.

She sits him on the couch and stumbles into the tiny bathroom and he's alone.

The couch is leaking stuffing from the corners. There's a bong on the coffee table and an open packet of sour cream and onion chips, forlorn and lifeless in the light through the window. Baby hadn't turned on the overhead light. LEDs blink at him from under the sh*tty table the sh*tty TV is propped up on.

The shower goes on. He gets up and goes to the kitchen.

Baby comes back and pulls his hands out of the sink. He'd done the dishes, crusted with ancient food, and then scrubbed the counters, and then gone back to washing his hands. He blinks at her, her hands nearly too tight around his wrists.

She's pink and clean and dressed in baggy clothes, and without the smeared eye makeup she looks younger. Softer. She'd shaved.

"Shower's free," she says, nearly kindly, and shoves him into the bathroom with a towel and an old set of baggy pajamas.

When he steps under the water, what pools around his feet is brown. Brown, flakey, and disgusting. He looks down at his toes and tries not to think about it. About the knotty red mass he's studiously not looking at from the corner of his eye, making it hard to haul in a whole breath.

He scrubs himself down once with soap and again with body wash and then again with the soap, until the water goes from lukewarm to freezing and that hurts enough to push him from the shower. He's shivering, and aches to turn away from the mirror and hide in the ragged shirt Baby gave him.

He turns to face the mirror and his breathing catches.

He doesn't know the vampire's name. That's his first thought, and he doesn't really know why as he presses his fingertips gingerly to the first set of scars that crosshatch his chest now. They're hard under his fingertips like they shouldn't be, a few days old, hard like fresh keloid tissue. Firm and knotty and angry red.

The vampire had ripped through his suit in the first strike, the faintest set of lines, from collarbone to the bottom of his ribs. Then he'd done it again, turned his head, and done it again, and then he'd sunk his teeth into Tim's ribs just above his heart and worried until the bite mark is just two parentheses of bright, angry scar.

He touches the two divots where the fangs themselves had punched through. All the way to the ribs, if Tim is any kind of judge, maybe into the connective tissue between them. He shouldn't have survived that.

He presses two fingers to his carotid. His pulse thumps away, unsteady, unwilling.

He has some kind of healing factor now, obviously. Some part of him spins away, outlining relevant factors, listing possible experiments. The rest of him hauls in a breath and holds it until his vision sparkles.

Is he a vampire if he's managed to f*ck it up and survive?

He exhales in a rush and drops his fangs and forces himself to look at them.

They're delicate. Thin needles even at their fullest extension. Not the scalpel blades he recalls in the vampire's mouth, though how can he be sure? He knows the unreliability of victim testimony.

Baby bangs on the door and Tim jumps, and snatches up the shirt. He's pulled it over his head before Baby comes in, but he can't stop himself from pulling the collar up higher anyway. He's lucky he's always preferred high-collared suits, he notes, and then has to shake his head at Baby when she raises an eyebrow at his mad giggle.

"You need to go," she says abruptly, but she grabs Tim's hand at the same time.

Her hands are so warm and soft. She'd filed her nails at some point and taken off the old polish. They're pink and clean. He lets her tug him in the direction of the living room, and doesn't question it.

"Listen," she says, "You're coming back. You will come back or I'm gonna hunt you down, Birdie."

He blinks at her, and manages a wan smile.

"Birdie?" he asks and she rolls her eyes. She looks so soft without her eyeliner. The eye roll doesn't even feel all that hostile.

"I'm not gonna call you Tim where anyone can hear," and keeps going as he opens his mouth to react to—how did she know ? "Whatever. I had to call my boss, let him know I'm back, he's a f*cking mother hen. And I know you capes don't get on well with Hood. So you need to leave, but you're going to come back here tomorrow afternoon, okay? Say, yes, Baby."

"Yes, Baby," Tim echoes, feeling winded.

Hood, a mother hen? Tim, bizarrely, kind of gets it.

And then his breath catches, and the scar tissue embedded in his ribcage throbs.

"You can't tell him," he says.

His voice wavers, weak and small and childish in a way he hates immediately. An irrational surge of self-loathing, at how he sounds like a baby asking for its mother in a way he'd scrubbed out of himself the second he could.

She blinks at him. She looks young herself, she can't be more than a year older than he is, twenty-three at most . She looks it, taken off-guard.

"It would do," he says, and then has to take a breath. His lungs aren't pulling in enough air. "Do serious damage to my professional relationships. If they knew about."

His lungs seize up entirely. Instead of continuing, he gestures to his mouth.

Her gaze softens, and he discovers he hates that even more than the weakness in his own voice.

"You didn't do anything wrong." She reaches out, and it takes more than he wants to let on not to flinch away from her hand landing on his shoulder. "It was self-defense."

The tension it takes for him not to shatter under her palm is astounding. Tim feels like Brown Bridge, brittle steel and taut wires holding him barely above water. His pulse is rushing in his ears, or maybe he's hearing hers. It sounds like waves.

"Please," he says. "I would very much appreciate if it were kept quiet."

His diction is perfect, each syllable snapping into place like a soldier at attention. His consonants are crisp and his vowels are pure Gotham Academy, despite the fact he'd never graduated. There is no reason for her gaze to go sad like it does.

He nearly snaps at her, and swallows it at the last moment. It would do no good, and he needs her. He needs her.

"Sure, Birdie," she says quietly. "I won't talk about your teeth, or anything else. The capes f*cked you up good, huh?"

Tim does not deign to respond to that.

He does borrow a handful of safety pins, working them through the torn edges of his suit and hauling it into something that might pass for decent from a distance, in the dark. She watches him work, brows drawn together, but she doesn't say anything until he's squared his shoulders and faced up with the door.

"Come back," she says. The anger is a thin, cracking shell around the raw confused emotion buried below. It rings through loud as a bell. "Okay? Or I'm gonna go looking."

"I promise," he says and the door closes behind him.

He makes his way gingerly up to the roof. He still doesn't hurt, not like he should. Faint aches around his ribs, the wrench of his arms from… well. His chest is a little tight, but he's also having trouble keeping his breathing even. He suspects it's psychosomatic.

Gotham spreads below and around him. Walls he knows, brickwork his fingertips have memorized, cement that's absorbed blood, sweat, and tears. A mile off the skyscrapers gleam, and from where he is he pretends he can make out the dark shape of the Manor. At this time of the morning the bats should be heading home to roost.

He'll be able to make his way a few streets over to the drop he's nearly sure no one else knows about and pick up a replacement uniform and a new staff—

"Hey, Pretender."

Tim straightens.

It'll be worse if he acts like a skittish animal. Better to put on a nonchalant front, and so he turns to face Red Hood and doesn't flinch.

Jason lounges at the edge of the roof Tim just climbed over, looking every inch relaxed lethality. His helmet is new, the surface cold and red reflecting Tim's face back at him.

"You look like hell, Red."

Tim twitches. The shower wasn't enough, his suit is filthy and really obviously damaged, and he looks like a walking bruise. He's buzzing, jittering and strung-out in a way he doesn't know how to hide. The cold night air on his skin feels raw, painful. The little buds at the roof of his mouth ache and he tightens his jaw against it.

"I've been busy," he manages. His voice is tight.

Red Hood's helmet ticks to the side. Tim imagines an air of sarcasm to it. His vision is blurring too much to really tell what Jason's feeling at all.

"Planning galas for Daddy?" he asks, and the buzz of distortion to his voice through the helmet grates against Tim's ears. "Stock market take a dip, kid wonder?"

Tim shakes his head. His lip cracks. He tongues it. It's not bleeding.

"Y'know, funny story. dickhe*d got ahold of me," Jason continues. He's edging forward with an absent grace, like he might genuinely be unaware he's doing it. Tim's noticed he's not always fully aware that he moves like a predator. Did Tim used to be scared of that? "He had a lot to say about how he hadn't heard from you in a while. Sounded like you were somethin' more than busy."

Of course Dick would go to Jason.

f*ck, he's so tired. He closes his eyes. He's going to have to come up with some excuse for the lost time. He's going to have to figure out how to eel out of a medical examination from Bruce, at least until he's done his own and he knows how to—

No x-rays above the neck, no MRIs, no CAT scans. No dentists. He's never going to be able to hide the teeth. They ache in his skull, throbbing beacons behind his eyes.

"Replacement."

Time moves so slowly. Tim moves even slower.

Red Hood is still there when he opens his eyes. Too close. Of course he is.

There's a syrupy moment that stretches into hours where Tim's eyes find the sliver of white skin between the neck of Jason's shirt and his helmet. He's not in full costume. He's not prepared. His skin there is soft because it's so damn vulnerable not even Jason's got calluses there. Tim can feel it in his teeth, that soft skin.

He can taste it.

He rips his eyes away, slow like honey, sliding away into a crouch and then over the edge of the roof. Free-fall.

He hits the ground like a cat, rolling across wet cardboard and pulped newspaper and back on his feet in a moment. His mouth is dry and cottony and sour. He tongues an incisor, feels the double-point of secondary fangs. Above him, Jason is shouting at him, and Tim swears he can still feel Jason's heartbeat in his mouth.

He sprints, time reeling back into step with him, and by the time Jason sorts his ass from his elbows Tim's heading towards the edge of town at a speed not even Jason can match.

==

He goes to the Nest. It's the only place he can think of that he can find medical supplies, concealer, and a security system good enough even Batman needs to come through the front door.

And it's empty.

He locks the door behind him and staggers to his knees in the entryway, strings cut by nothing he can sense. He props himself up on knees and elbows and it's enough to keep him from going all the way to the floor. For a long, long time he sits there, head hanging, drawing in breaths as measured and even as he can keep them. The space smells of dust and ozone, old coffee and cellophane-packaged sandwiches.

Eventually he gets himself back to his feet.

He makes it through a second shower, the wincing process of rubbing cream into the knotty scarring, and pulls a hoodie over his head just in time for someone to pound on the door. He goes to the door and opens it.

Nightwing is on the other side. Crouched and already pulling out the lockpicks.

He's so tired his vision is going gray at the corners.

Dick's frozen in space, looking up at Tim. His eyes are blank lenses, his expression slack shock. He stinks of something that kicks Tim's heartrate up, a smell that leaves the phantom taste of lactic acid at the roof of Tim's mouth.

He swallows that away and doesn't breathe through his nose.

"You would have gotten yourself electrocuted," he says, because Dick knows Tim is not the kind of person to install locks vulnerable to metal picks.

For a moment longer Dick is still, and then he stands all at once, a jerk of remarkably graceless motion.

He's staring, hard. Tim can feel his gaze roving over his face despite the whiteout lenses and he knows what he looks like—the sleepless bruises under his eyes, the wet mess of his hair. He's even more pale than he had been before, and he'd already looked like he lived in a cave, ha .

He huffs out a breath that would have been laughter in a better time, and that's what breaks Dick's stillness.

A wild rush and all the air is slammed out of him, back to the wall, Dick pinning him. Dick's arm across his throat, his wild snarl looming over Tim, and in that flash of white teeth in his face—

—for a stupid moment Tim is lost, fighting, hands and feet and fingernails and sobbing for air, air —

and then he's free. Dropping to his knees, body shrieking, coughing for air. His esophagus is stingingly raw. He holds himself up with one hand and cups his Adam's apple with the other, feeling it move as he swallows. Dick's feet appear in his peripheral vision and then fall back a step and out of sight.

"Tim?"

Tim looks up at him. Dick's wild-eyed. Mouth working like he wants to say something but the words won't come. Shoulders stiff, high and defensive. He's pulled the domino off, skin pink from the adhesive.

The door is cracked open. Tim thinks about that, inane, and decides not to care. There won't be passersby at this hour. Not ones curious enough to look closer at his door.

"Hey," Tim rasps. His voice hurts enough to discourage anything more.

Dick drops to his knees in another graceless motion. A puppet with cut strings. His knees crack against the ground and he doesn't even seem to notice. He reaches out, and warm fingertips skate Tim's cheekbone and drop away. His eyes are wide and blue-grey and glassy. Tim sways towards him and Dick sways in answer, his palm cupping Tim's cheek for just a moment, his warmth palpable even so far away.

"It's really you," Dick says, and it's not a question except in the ways that it is.

Tim licks his lips. The taste tingles.

Tim hauls himself to his feet.

"Timmy?" Dick asks, looking up at him. His hand keeps coming up like he's trying to reach out to touch Tim and then dropping back to his side.

Tim swallows again gingerly. The pain is fading, and so is the sour lactic-acid smell.

Cortisol, Tim theorizes absently. Stress chemicals. Dick wears his heart on his sleeve, and in his smell.

He could laugh.

"C'mon," he says, and takes Dick's hand, and ignores Dick's flinch. He hauls Dick to his feet and only staggers a little bit at how gracefully Dick rises. Boneless, liquid movement. It's a relief to see it back on him. Dick should never be graceless.

Dick doesn't let go of his hand.

"What happened?" he asks. It doesn't come out as the demand Tim knows he meant it to be. It comes out lost. "You went dark, we—no one knew …"

He trails off, blinking rapidly.

It sits at the tip of Tim's tongue.

An awful cage and a woman named Baby. Angry scars he shouldn't have survived to develop and the teeth aching in his mouth. Dick would understand. Dick would forgive him, would help him, would protect him—

He blinks away the impression of a pale scarecrow shape from the corner of his vision. He's nauseous.

"You were gone ," Dick says raggedly.

Tim looks at him, really looks, and blinks.

"Jesus, Dickie," he says without thinking, and then he's looping his arms around Dick's shoulders and hauling him down into a hug before he can think it through.

His teeth ache, but he clenches his jaw and holds his breath and Dick sweeps him up into a hug that feels so heartbreakingly warm Tim bites the inside of his cheek to be sure. Thick not-blood seeps into his mouth, accented by pain, and he blinks and buries his head in Dick's shoulder. His toes don't even really touch the carpet, and he feels so f*cking—

Real. It's real.

"I'm fine," he says, and resists the needs to plug his nose as he says it. Dick smells like… like something intriguing . A hot, iron-heavy smell that strokes across the back of Tim's tongue. His mouth waters if he concentrates on it. If he really concentrates, he can feel the shiver of Dick's pulse through the skin millimeters from Tim's mouth, and he can taste salt on an inhale.

And. And he squeezes his eyes shut.

He could bring his legs up, fit them to Dick's waist, bury his face in Dick's neck. The neck of his suit is high but it isn't high enough and his pulse echoes in Tim's fangs. He keeps them retracted, pulled so far in his sinuses ache.

"You have no idea," Dick says. He's digging his fingers into Tim's back, and it'd hurt if Tim gave a sh*t. He doesn't give a sh*t. "Timmy, you don't… you were gone , and I…"

Tim kicks him gently in the shin and Dick lets him down, but he doesn't let him far, hands on Tim's shoulders. He's staring at Tim. Something about his face, crazed and confused, rings in the back of Tim's head like bells. He doesn't try to figure out what.

"I'm okay," Tim says quietly. Dick just looks at him, and the crazy eyes are starting to get a little unnerving, actually. Dick doesn't seem to be blinking. "Really, I promise."

"I couldn't find you," Dick says. He's acting like he hadn't heard Tim at all. He might not have, honestly. "And B, you don't… And Jason…"

They would have gone crazy. Bruce would have, at least. Too close to old, raw memories. Too much like things that should have stayed in the past even if they hadn't. He's seen it before when Dick went dark, when Stephanie…

Jason… Tim had seen him. He hadn't seemed any different.

But Dick…

"Dick," he says, and knocks Dick's hands away to put his hands on Dick's cheeks. Dick looks at him, finally focusing. His gaze is wounded, a raw bleeding confusion that hurts to look at. Tim had seen it in the eyes of the dog Damian had tried to take home after watching it get hit by a car. Half its body crushed, agonized and betrayed that the world happened to it this way.

His breathing is so fast and he's so warm under Tim's fingers.

He yanks on Dick's ear and the look washes away in an instinctive flinch.

"Hey!" he says and Tim grins carefully, yanks again and lets Dick bat his hand away.

"I'm perfectly alright, promise," he says, and lets Dick look him over. The scars are covered, his mouth is closed, everything else passes perfectly for normal. "Tired, thirsty. A little banged up, but no more so than usual. I'm fine."

Dick doesn't really believe him but at least the raw look has faded from his eyes. He pats Tim down a little before Tim can elbow him away, and then insists on bundling Tim into a chair on the kitchen island and making him a smoothie. Tim watches him do it, fruits and light yogurt and kale.

He wonders if he'll have to hide throwing it back up, if his body rejects it. Is he able to eat something that isn't blood anymore? Oh, wondrous mystery, he thinks hysterically, smiling close-mouthed at Dick in thanks. It's like some hellish puberty.

He can eat, it turns out. It just sits awkwardly in his stomach.

Dick watches him sip. The observation is obsessive, borderline creepy, but the white knuckles where he grips the counter dissuade Tim from saying anything.

"Tired," Tim reminds him when enough of the smoothie has been consumed that Tim feels secure in stopping without looking too weird.

Dick stares at him, and then he ducks forward and Tim is tired and f*cked up, and so he misses the opportunity to break Dick's hold when he gets an arm around Tim's hips and hauls him into a fireman's carry. He shrieks and punches Dick in the meat of the upper arm, but as he expects it does absolutely nothing. Dick ferries him in the direction of the master bedroom regardless.

"I can walk," Tim complains, but Dick just adjusts his grip, hefting Tim higher, and Tim can't find it in himself to complain much more than that.

He's deposited on the bed, the spotlessly made bed. For a moment he's seasick, swaying in place, clutching at the sheets before they can slip out from under him. A moment later Dick is there, an arm around his shoulders, helping him back to the pillows. He's watching Tim with a luminous intensity.

"What happened?" he asks quietly and Tim turns his face away. He doesn't want Dick to see the way his jaw works. He doesn't want to try to meet Dick's eyes. They're still—crazed. Cracked in a way that gleams madly in the dark, and Tim hasn't ever been scared of this former Robin. He just doesn't want to face up to it.

"I just got held up for a bit," he says. He knows it's futile, but it would be worse if he didn't try at all. "It's fine. I'm fine, Dick."

Dick is quiet for a bit. Tim can nearly hear the gears turning in his head. He wishes Dick actually were the airhead he plays at sometimes. He feels awful about that thought immediately. Not enough to turn his head, though.

"Can I stay the night?"

He does look up at that.

Still crazy, those eyes. Blue like a stormy lake, fixed unblinkingly on Tim's face, clear and sharp and utterly terrifying. He can't quite meet them head on.

"I can take the couch," Dick continues when Tim doesn't say anything. "And you changed the bedroom lock recently, I haven't worked out how to pick it yet so I don't think anyone else could get through before I wake up."

The breath Tim hauls in is wounded and involuntary and too telling. He lets it out through his teeth in a faint whistle, and tucks his hands together. From the corner of his eye he sees Dick twitch, the urge to reach out aborted with gratifying smoothness.

The silence drags on, anyway. Tim can't find the words to say yes, or to say no.

"Sorry, shouldn't have asked. You'll have to debrief soon," Dick says at last, and stands. He's finally looking away and Tim's head jerks up—with Batman, that's what Dick means, a neat contact report with injuries and casualties and names and locations, a timeline, motive and rough persona. He can't see Dick's eyes anymore. "But for now I can keep him off your back. Say you fell asleep and looked like you needed it, something like that."

He's made it all of two feet from the bed when Tim finds himself up on his knees and clutching Dick's wrist in a grip that has to hurt.

Dick flinches but to his credit he doesn't break Tim's nose with an elbow or anything. He just rattles Tim's teeth against each other with the force he jerks around with, and stares down at him with silly, childish round eyes.

"Stay," Tim commands, and when Dick doesn't move immediately, yanks harder. It pulls Dick off balance.

Dick doesn't wait for more than that. He's broken Tim's hold in a moment, bounding to the light switch and plunging them into the semi-darkness and then back to the bed. He helps Tim with the covers, presumptuous and sweet, and he's smiling so big Tim can see the flash of his teeth in the bare light of the LEDs of the fire alarm.

"Like we're kids again," Dick jokes, and his voice is almost right except for how it's all wrong. Tim wants to hit him a little for saying it, but he's too busy swallowing back the hot throb behind his eyes to follow through on it. By the time he's sure he's not going to cry, Dick has shimmied under the covers in his boxers and a loose shirt.

Tim doesn't ask. He doesn't fight it when Dick tentatively scoots a little closer, curling up in the fetal way he always does. He smells exhausted, old sweat layered with new deodorant and the tang of used adrenaline. His pulse is slow. He radiates warmth, a furnace Tim struggles not to ease ever-closer to.

Tim's eyes feel bruised. He's not sure he could stay awake even if he wanted to.

He closes his eyes, pushes his face into the pillows, and prays to whatever will listen that he doesn't wake up with blood in his mouth.

==

He's warm.

He wakes in slow drifts, consciousness piling up on him until his eyes slit open and he's more awake than he isn't, but only just. There's sun pressing against the other side of his blackout curtains, reduced to molten shades of crimson where the curtains meet the wall.

Someone is breathing against his hair. He's so, so warm.

There's an arm, heavy and lax, draped over his waist. There's a hand tucked between his and the calluses are foreign.

The warmth feels so good. Dazing and desperately needed. It drags at him, at his body and thoughts. Sleep beckons him, sweet, obscene. He could dip back into it and let himself fall and it would take nothing at all.

He forces his eyes open.

Dick had moved in his sleep, or Tim had, or both of them. He's tucked under Dick's chin. His shoulder blades press to Dick's chest, the backs of his thighs to the tops of Dick's, his achilles tendon notched absurdly between Dick's toes. The room is dark, and the edges of the curtains promise that the rest of the world is horribly bright.

Dick snuffles, a wet sound that stirs Tim's hair.

Desire unfolds in him until it feels like it's too big for his body to contain. It hurts in a hollow, aching way, a hunger he doesn't know how to sate no matter how much he eats. He swallows, and swallows again, and begins the slow process of easing himself out of Dick's arms without waking him.

Eventually Dick stumbles out of the bedroom with bleary eyes and hair sticking up in every direction. His shirt is rumpled and his boxers sag low on his hips.

Tim looks away and points at the mug of coffee on the counter.

He's able to drink coffee at least, thank f*cking Christ . He made breakfast too, enough for Dick plus a little more to put on a plate and push around until it looks like he ate while Dick was still sleeping. Dick doesn't even blink at it, just eats with a sleep-stupid expression and without taking his eyes off Tim for even a second.

Tim pretends he doesn't notice, puttering around to put the dishes away.

He'd managed a few bites. Eggs went down about as easy as the smoothie, but the single bite of potato nearly came back up. He's working on a theory about that, working back from blood to dark leafy greens and red berries. The eggs fit in there somewhere, probably.

Food and coffee all nearly come back up for a second, spectacular appearance when Dick puts down his empty mug and says, "We should go to the Cave."

Tim swallows, keeps his breathing slow and even, and doesn't let his hand pause in ferrying the mug from the counter to the sink.

"I'm not letting B do my exam," he says with finality. He's learned a lot about saying no to Bats, especially to Bruce. If he can get his way by going around them it's always easier, but sometimes all he can do is plant his feet.

Dick pauses in drumming his heels against the bottom rung of Tim's nice bar stools. He looks surprised, and then thoughtful.

"I could get Leslie," he says.

Leslie won't tell B, not if Tim asks her not to, but her files aren't secure and she'll want scans. She'll want to run… blood tests, maybe an STD panel—sh*t, he needs to run one. Are vampires a vector for HPV? Leslie's paltry clinic firewalls won't keep that kind of file from Oracle, probably not even from Bruce if Bruce decides his concerns outweigh patient confidentiality.

And Oracle might keep his secret, if he asked her to and he had a good reason, and he doesn't—

"—Tim? Timmy ."

There are hands on his elbows. Cupping them lightly, not even pressing them down, and the lightness of that grip is the only reason Tim doesn't break Dick's nose when he throws the punch.

Dick dodges. It's f*cking telling , Tim thinks scathingly in the tiny little part of him not fighting hyperventilation, that Dick looks like it wouldn't even occur to him to be offended that Tim just tried to punch him in the nose.

"I," he tries to say, and trips over his own lungs and coughs until his vision goes dim. Dick hovers around him, hands up but avoiding touching. Eventually Tim manages to get his breathing right. "I'm fine."

Dick just looks at him.

"I am," Tim repeats, and tries not to think about how pathetic it feels to do.

There is a beat of silence. A humiliating quiet. Unhealthy heat surges in Tim's cheeks and he tries to ignore it, and doesn't quite manage. His hands keep making fists and he can't get them to stop. He can't f*cking control himself.

He breathes in, four count. Holds, two count. Lets it out, four count.

He has to keep himself under control.

"So, not Leslie," Dick says. He sounds gentle, but not judgemental, and Tim can't quite read the look on his face. It's hard to look at it for longer than a moment.

Tim doesn't move. Neither does Dick. He wants to reach out and touch, Tim can read the straining desire in the way Dick curves towards him. Dick's body has always been his giveaway, too expressive, too showy. He doesn't reach out, though. He keeps his hands to himself.

"Not Leslie," Tim agrees. He's gotten his voice back under control. It's nice and even.

"What about me?" Dick asks, still gentle.

"Okay." Okay.

Tim can make this work.

==

He refuses to let Dick drive him to the Cave, on the grounds that he is fine .

Dick lets him go eventually, though he's frowning fit to break a heart and Tim can't shove the guilt at it entirely away. He's never quite worked out the trick, hasn't figured out immunity to Dick's gravitational pull.

He throws a leg over the Ducati and squints through the sun, and notes that he'll need to improve the UV filtering on his helmet visor.

Sometimes he pipes in music, taking the curves of the road up to the Wayne Manor at speeds that make Bruce's eyebrows pinch. Something he picked up from Stephanie, or something Bart or Kon dropped in the old Titan's group chat.

He doesn't listen to anything this time but the rush of the wind past his helmet, the scream of the engine, his own heartbeat. By the time he pulls in at Wayne Manor, he doesn't have enough of a plan. He gets up off the bike anyway, no matter how much he wants to stall.

The last thing he wants is even more suspicion.

Alfred greets him at the door. He bows Tim inside and if it weren't for the way he shadows Tim all the way to the entrance to the Cave, he'd think Alfred is completely normal. The mask of professionalism is near-perfect.

"How's Bruce?" he asks, hesitating at the top of the stairs.

Alfred examines him for a long moment that seems to stretch on for an eternity before he blinks. The lines in his face seem deeper than before, without having shifted at all. There's a certain weight when he inclines his head.

"Master Bruce has not left the Cave for a day, now," he says, and he looks like he's about to say something more when Dick turns the corner coming up the stairs, spies them, and bounds up the last few steps. He's grinning with all his teeth and except for the domino, he's in full costume.

Tim has no idea why. Maybe he feels safer in it.

"Timmy," he says, and takes Tim by the sleeve. Tim allows it to happen and allows himself to be pulled gently back down the stairs, only nodding to Alfred. Alfred's mouth is closed now, his expression smooth and serene, and he bows his head and closes the door to leave Dick and Tim descending in near-darkness.

Dick is chattering about… something. Something about traffic, and Gotham civic engineers, and Blüdhaven's comparatively clear streets. Something Tim would be able to pick a fight with if he could focus enough to pull the relevant figures to mind.

He doesn't have that focus. He's having enough trouble keeping his balance on the stairs. Instead, as they hit the bottom of the stairs, his fractured focus catches a hint of movement and emerald green fabric.

Damian stands in the doorway to the equipment inventory room, frozen for a single long moment.

He's wearing the closed-off expression Tim doesn't hate quite as much as he used to and doesn't say a word. He doesn't actually seem to be breathing either. Tim thinks he might be a little bit pale, but it could also be just the lighting, and Damian is whirling and disappearing again too quickly to take a second look.

Dick follows his gaze, presumably catching a glimpse of shiny loafers and pressed slacks.

"Hopefully he's going to finally get some sleep," he says cryptically, and doesn't elaborate.

Tim decides he doesn't care and follows Dick further into the Cave.

Batman waits at the massive, unwieldy desk he insists on using for the computer. Batman, not Bruce, fully suited and wearing his cowl. He watches Tim come down the stairs and Tim can practically feel the weight of his observation. Batman is the world's second best detective on a slow night, and he's bending all of his attention on whether or not Tim is limping.

Tim is not limping. Tim isn't in pain, he isn't sick, he's not broken. He doesn't look too long at the dark figure hulking in its silly desk chair, and huffs in annoyance through his nose when Dick starts to dance impatiently at the door to the medical suite. He keeps his mouth closed.

"Tim."

Tim manages not to flinch. He throws a look over his shoulder. Distracted and genteel annoyance, the Majority Shareholder Timothy Drake-Wayne special. He holds it for just long enough, hands in his pockets, and rolls his eyes.

Bruce shows through the cracks in Batman's facade, the too-thick stubble and the pinched cast to his mouth. The skin at the corners of his mouth is white, his lips thin. Alfred likely had serious difficulty getting him to eat. He'd probably given up entirely on sleep.

"Bruce," Tim says and waves. "In a minute? Dick's going to look me over."

A silent nod, and Tim is at Dick's side.

Dick closes the door to the medical suite behind them, drops the blinds, and at a jerk of Tim's chin yanks the camera in the corner off the wall and drops it in the trash can. All routine, though Bruce will probably be sulky about it. Tim had never been particularly fond of having his medical exams recorded. It wouldn't be notable that he's trashing the cameras again, even if Stephanie says it makes him a hypocrite.

That's almost enough to make him smile, despite it all, despite the cold stink of disinfectant.

Dick turns to look at him.

He's not wearing the domino, at least. His gaze rests on Tim, naked and beautifully blue, a crease of concern between his brows. He isn't going to take the gloves off, apparently, which Tim is absurdly thankful for. It means Dick isn't thinking about tests that are too invasive.

"We don't actually have to do this," Tim tells him, trying a grin. He's cold, and his chest keeps trying to contract oddly, and his hands want to hide under his thighs for warmth.

He can bypass any blood tests Dick tries to run, it won't be hard to get a minute or two alone with the machine, and since there's no facial bruising he probably won't try to check Tim's teeth. The headache surges behind his eyes every time he turns his head but he can keep the wince off his face and maybe skip concussion protocol too, in case there's any change to the musculature of his jaw that Dick might notice—

"Don't even start with me," Dick says, crossing his arms. "Shirt off, I need to check your ribs and lungs."

Tim huffs and lifts his shirt.

"I lost a spleen, not a goddamn lung," he begins, and…

His shirt clears his face and he stops because Dick is staring at him. He's frozen in the act of lifting a stethoscope, and he's staring, and his face is white.

Oh. Oh. Oh, no.

He's staring at Tim's… his chest.

His hands fly to his chest. To the mass of keloid tissue, angry hot pink and hard under his fingers, a psychosomatic weight compressing his ribs. He can't breathe. His lungs have locked up, air stuck in his throat.

"You didn't have this three weeks ago," Dick says quietly.

It takes Tim a disgracefully long time to remember what he's talking about.

Three weeks ago there had been a small Arkham breakout. Small , but deadly. All hands on deck, and half of the team trying to keep the Joker away from Harley. Tim had been assigned alone to Crane and won himself a room full of Fear gas, the choice between watching a child overdose on her own terror or giving her his rebreather and facing up with his own subconscious.

Dick had found him, Tim learned later. Found an unconscious Crane, a broken rebreather and no child, and Tim screaming himself bloody. He'd gotten Tim back to the Cave and held him down, the only dim memories Tim has that he trusts.

A body above and around him, a mouth against his ear, a voice he knew and words he couldn't understand. The rest is all empty alleys, empty rooftops, empty manor houses. Janet Drake's face, Batman's fists, Jason please Jason please please .

Tim had watched the camera recordings, after. He'd watched Dick peel the armor off Tim when Tim had started clawing at himself, trying to activate his suit's countermeasures against someone that wasn't there. He'd spent hours holding Tim's wrists until they could secure him and then petting his hair while Bruce synthesized the latest antidote in their running battle against Crane's toxins, keeping him from breaking his fingernails against the walls.

Tim came to with bruises around his wrists he imagined were the shape of Dick's fingers. He'd worn long sleeves to shareholder meetings, to lunch with Stephanie. He'd dug his fingers into them, worried at the bruises, extended the healing timeline by days.

Tim hadn't remembered .

He breathes in and finds he can't breathe out.

Dick's hands are warm. His palm cupping Tim's shoulder, his thumb touching the raking edge of the faintest scars. His gaze dances across Tim's skin, a fingertip skating from numbness to sensation and back again. Tim shakes. His lungs hurt.

"This looks… months old," Dick continues when Tim can't say anything. He sounds confused, his eyebrows creasing. No accusation yet, no suspicion, just sweet bewilderment. "But…"

"It's nothing," Tim forces out. His fangs are showing, he realizes belatedly, and pulls them back in. Dick is staring at his chest, not his mouth, and Tim crosses his arms over his chest. It knocks Dick's hands away. They stay hovering around him, frozen in place. Dick is frozen.

Tim grabs his shirt and hauls it over his head, the collar catching on his hair and his nose and his heaving chest. Dick doesn't stop him.

He's just staring .

"What happened?" he asks eventually. Tim opens his mouth and Dick closes it, a gentle hand, palm settling over Tim's mouth. He's shaking his head. "No, don't… don't lie."

The leather is cool and smooth and the palm is every so slightly sticky. Its smell fills his nose, overwhelming and thick, forcing out every other scent. He drags in a breath through his nose and then another when leather is all he can smell. The stink of it coats his mouth, his throat, the insides of his lungs.

Eventually his breathing eases and Dick takes his hand back. Tim licks his lips, quick and nervous, and flinches at the faint taste of rubber. The stink is dissipating, though the stinging smell of disinfectant isn't much better.

Dick's watching him, dark eyed. He's rubbing the palm he'd covered Tim's mouth with and the motion looks unconscious.

"There's nothing wrong," Tim whispers.

It would have been more convincing if his voice didn't break halfway through the second word.

Dick is still just watching him.

Tim looks down at his hands, resting like skinny white spiders on his knees.

They look wrong there, awkward. He moves them to cup the knobby bowls of his patellae, slides them down between his knees, and then between his thighs when that's not warm enough. The Cave is always cool. His fingertips are starting to tingle with how cold it is.

Stupid, he's been so stupid and thoughtless. Out of control, hysterical, stupid . He's made mistake after mistake, it's no wonder he can't keep even this secret—

No.

He cuts that thought off.

He pushes down the pounding terror in his heartbeat, the cold despair sweating at the back of his neck, every scrabbling panicky part of him. He drowns it all, holds those feelings under the tide of cool numbness until they're too far away to feel. They're of no use to him, and so he simply won't allow them.

He can't keep everything from Dick, not everything, but maybe—maybe some of it. Enough. The thirst, maybe even the fangs. Baby and her apartment in the Bowery and the secret she promised she'd keep for him.

It has to be enough. It will be enough. He has too much to lose.

"It happened while I was… gone," he tells his feet, brushing the polished grey cement floor. He can see himself in it, very vaguely. A shape, washed in faint color. "It… I changed, a little. Gained a little bit of a healing factor. But I'm alright, and I've got a handle on it, and you can't tell B."

Dick doesn't say anything at first. He stands at the blurry edge of Tim's vision, so still and impossible to read.

"Why don't you want me to tell B?" he asks at last. His voice is gentle. It's his Nightwing voice, for speaking to traumatized children and panicking victims.

Tim does not clench his hands into fists. He doesn't clench his jaw. He seizes the anger that surges up in his chest, and holds it tight with an iron grip. Nightwing is soft, and sympathetic to victims, and he loves Bruce an amount that borders on alarming but he doesn't always agree with him.

"You know what he's like," Tim says. He doesn't even have to try to get his voice to sound ragged. He just lets his lungs shiver like they've wanted to do all along. He just tells the truth. "About metas. He'd get… intense about it. I swear I have it figured out, I'm fine. I'll tell him, just not right now."

He looks up at last. He can't help himself.

Dick's frowning.

He isn't buying it.

Tim's hands are fists now. He tries to uncurl them, to flatten his palms against each other, but they refuse to. They just shake, and he shoves them under his thighs to hide it.

"Timmy," Dick says, and reaches out. Tim flinches, but Dick doesn't stop. His hand finds Tim's elbow, and there's no warm leaching through his gloves. It's just cold leather through the material of Tim's shirt. "I don't know, that's… I don't like lying to Bruce."

Tim swallows, discovers the lump in his throat, and swallows again in an attempt to get it to go away. It doesn't go away. His breath isn't coming right. It's getting caught in his throat, right in his useless, aching chest.

"Dick," he tries to say, only it won't come out. It gets stuck next to the breath caught in his throat, painful and swollen, and—and the pressure behind his eyes is starting to sting, sh*t . He can't breathe. His fingers hurt. His heartbeat is too loud in his ears.

He can't breathe.

"Tim?" Dick asks, frowning, letting go of Tim's elbow, and something heaves in Tim's chest.

It's just enough, just enough to dislodge what's stuck in him. The breath jerks in, and back out, and he can speak again.

"Please," Tim begs raggedly.

Dick stares down at him, bewildered, and Tim seizes his wrist. His grip is disgraceful, his fingers are numb and tingling with cold. His nose is full of astringent rubbing alcohol, bitter artificial epinephrine, his senses screaming. He can't even feel Dick's warmth through the gauntlet. "Please, don't tell him. Please, I need time, I…"

A hand curves around the back of his neck and his head is guided up, gentle and inexorable. His cheek comes to rest against Dick's chest, a hint of warmth, a trace of his scent. He inhales it greedily and doesn't care that it stings with raw thirst at the back of his throat. It's not enough, it's not enough .

He clutches at Dick, can't stop his hands from gripping him and hauling him closer, and doesn't want to.

It's warmer. It's safer, the smell of sweat and Gotham night air and the particular deodorant Dick uses filling his nose and crowding out the lonely stink of disinfectant. Muscles move under his greedy fingers, the long gymnast muscles that bend and never break. Dick's leg had come up to stop him from toppling on top of Tim, knee propped by Tim's hip. His shoulders block out the knife's blade of the fluorescent lights, his shaggy hair tickling Tim's temple.

He could knock that knee aside. Drag Dick on top of himself. He wants to rip through Dick's suit, find the skin underneath and crawl inside it. He wants to get his fingers into the heat Dick radiates. His mouth is full of saliva and his throat is so dry.

The hands clutching the back of his neck, the fragile space between his shoulders, feel just as greedy.

"Okay," Dick says. His chest hums against Tim's ear. His heartbeat is fast, hard, pounding in Tim's ears. Tim concentrates on that, squeezes his eyes shut and digs his fingers in hard enough it has to hurt even through the suit, and doesn't let himself open his mouth. "Whatever you need, Timmy, promise, whatever you need."

Tim lets himself believe that, just for the time it takes to pull himself back together.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

He parks on the street outside and contemplates his bike for a moment before shrugging, locking the wheels and tucking his cold hands in his pockets. Baby's apartment isn't in the worst part of town, and he can track it down if it gets boosted.

He dawdles in the lobby, and again in the hall outside her door. Long minutes staring blankly at the scuffed paint of the walls, a grungy off-white. The carpet is a beige non-color that looks like one giant stain, and the whole thing smells faintly of damp, but her door is solid and the lock looks new.

He's thirsty. It had crawled up his throat slowly, in the long hours spent at the Nest with an electric blanket and his whiteboard, strategizing. Mostly he can ignore it, except when he swallows.

A door down the hall slams open, shockingly bright fluorescent light spilling out into the hall with the sound of laughter. Tim blinks and squints against the sting, and turns to knock on Baby's door before he looks strange enough to be memorable.

Photosensitivity.

He's tried some of the other classics—he eats garlicky pesto just fine, for a given value of churning-stomach fine, and silver doesn't cut him any worse than steel does—and he's come up blank. He'll have to do some deep-dive research later, maybe dig up the contact info for a few folklorists.

Is he a vampire? He isn't dead. He checks his pulse again, leaning against the wall across from Baby's door. It thumps away under his fingertips, unsteady, not quite right. Too light, too irregular. Any doctor taking a listen would have a conniption and probably order bed rest or something.

But he is alive.

Baby opens the door.

She doesn't smile but she does look approving, and gestures him inside. He steps past her with his breath held and toes his shoes off when she points to a little pile of heels and sneakers in the corner. She's wearing shorts and a tank top for the Gotham Knights, ragged and loose enough to flash the curve of a breast. Sometime in the intervening hours she'd painted her nails a creamy lavender.

The back of his throat is raw. He's trying not to think about it, but he keeps swallowing.

"I have to leave in a few hours," he says.

"What happened to common f*cking courtesy," Baby mumbles, and locks the door. She doesn't spare him a glance in leading him through the apartment, past fresh dishes in the sink and a container of noodles perfuming the air with ginger and curry on the table.

"Good afternoon," Tim says sardonically, and watches Baby settle on the couch. "How are you?"

She snorts, gestures for him to sit down. He sits on the edge of the couch and ignores the way she rolls her eyes.

"You look like you're tweaking," she says.

Belatedly Tim stuffs his hands in his pockets. He's always had a bad habit of picking at his clothes until they frayed. It hasn't exactly improved lately.

"Yeah, well," he mumbles, and sits. "I do have to go soon."

His night job is waiting. A fresh suit, a fresh comm, a fresh bo staff. He hasn't had a chance to fiddle with the lenses of his mask yet, but he'll do that tomorrow. The photosensitivity is a weakness he'll need to account for but no one will have caught on yet so he should be alright.

His hand is back to wandering up and down the seam of his pants inside his knee. He laces his hands together and tucks them between his knees. Tweaking, indeed.

"Some of the girls understand," she says abruptly. The non-sequitur baffles him for a moment before she's shrugging, rolling her eyes, miming fangs with her fingers at her lips. He nods instead of flinching; he's getting better. "Most of 'em don't, but some do. Before Hood, things were worse."

Jason, again. Tim knows he runs the working girls and boys in a lot of Gotham, and knows that the rate of assault against sex workers has gone down since Jason hung a few of the offenders up on light poles. Non-lethally, mostly.

It's a little different, or maybe just kind of nice, to hear that it feels better for the girls too.

"I see," he says instead of saying any of that. Baby knows he's Tim, but she might not know the Red Hood is Jason Peter Todd. Former Robin. Bruce's dead, cherished son. None of those are Tim's secrets to give away.

"So you're coming back," Baby says. The look she gives him dares him to argue.

He doesn't want to argue.

She doesn't say anything when he settles gingerly back against the back of the couch. She doesn't blink when he pulls his feet up either, and he lets his head fall against the back of the couch. She just picks her bowl of curry up again and scrapes around obnoxiously with her fork.

Garlic?" she asks, and it takes him a second to put together what she's asking. She waves the fork at him.

"Yeah, I can eat it," he says. "Easier for me than milk, even."

She nods, and toes the remote over to him across the couch. He picks it up, and flicks on the TV. It's a Whose Line Is It Anyway rerun, volume turned low, reception absolute sh*t.

"Silver? Crosses?" she asks.

He shrugs, and curls up even tighter. It's not chilly in Baby's apartment, but it's not quite warm enough either.

"No effect," he says, and she nods, slurps another noodle.

On the screen, the special guest is falling over a table over and over again. It's hard to make out anything but the dull rush of the audience laughter.

"Noodles?" she asks, and extends the bowl.

Curry noodles, rich and creamy and spicy enough to tickle his nose. They smell amazing, and his stomach turns.

He shakes his head. She nods and sets the bowl aside.

"Do you age?" she asks, and he looks down at his hands.

Most of the scars across his knuckles are old. He watches them flush pink and then white as he makes a fist, over and over. The one across his thumb is from punching a window to get out of a burning building. The one running lengthwise down his pointer finger is from trying to open a can of soup. Most of the rest are from teeth, snapping the skin over his knuckles in the process of an ill-advised punch.

"Don't know," he tells his hands. "My cells do. But, you know. We'll find out."

It turns out they're doing some kind of Whose Line retrospective, a greatest hits compilation based around a theme utterly mysterious to Tim. They watch through a series of disjointed episodes, the actors travel backwards and forwards through time.

Baby gets up eventually and Tim blinks.

The sky through the kitchen window is a deep, fading grey. He watches her pad to the fridge, tossing the bowl in with a clatter. The shorts are cutoff sweats, her hair up in a big messy ponytail. It's streaked with old, faded blue dye. He hadn't noticed that before. He watches her over the back of the couch, and doesn't feel as out of place as he expects to.

She beckons him after her, and he goes.

Her room is small and lit with fairy lights, wallpapered with posters for bands Tim halfway recognizes and movies he doesn't know at all. The bed is large and messy with blankets, and the bookshelf overflows with what look like comic books. There's a vanity, complete with mirror and little stool, incongruously adorable next to the lurid bloody colors of the Psycho Killer IV poster on the well next to it.

Baby sits at the vanity and Tim sits on the bed. She sets something playing on her phone, something instrumental, and starts setting up her makeup.

He watches her for a while, cross-legged and strangely warm. When he swallows, it clicks loudly.

She looks at him in the mirror. He looks down at his knees.

"Thirsty?" she asks softly.

He pulls in a breath. Her smell is achingly familiar, the trace of chemical perfume, the soft smell of human. His throat is raw. He wants to lie.

"Yeah," he says. She nods from the corner of his eye.

"Think you can bite without leaving too much of a mark?" she asks, turning to look at him.

He blinks. He looks at her. Her expression is sincere, bizarrely relaxed.

"The clientele don't love damaged goods," she says, curling her lip. "Most of 'em."

He absorbs that. She watches him do it, silent, evaluative. In the mirror her bare shoulder flashes at him, tattooed words he's too jittery to decipher, the hilt of a dagger in the old school style. Hair escapes the messy bundle of her ponytail in wispy strands. He focuses on them instead of her eyes.

"I can find something else," he says.

She scoffs and crosses her arms. More of her tattoo is revealed. The dagger balances on a palm, hand leading to a wrist that disappears under her shirt. Part of a larger piece, maybe. His breath shivers in him. His traitor heart is pounding in his chest, for once putting up a show of force.

"Something else," she repeats. "Someone else? You got anyone, Birdie? Anyone else know about you?"

He flinches despite himself, and for a blind, molten second he hates her for asking. He feels hot in the face, swollen and stupid, and cold everywhere else. He doesn't look at her. He feels out of control, paralyzed to stop himself from flushing bright red, from gasping for air like a beached marine animal.

He doesn't say anything.

They are both still for a little while.

"Birdie," she says.

He looks up at her.

He doesn't know what his face is doing but, f*ck, thank god she doesn't flinch at it. The rage dribbles out of him, leaving him gutted and acid-washed and shivery. She just looks at him, brows drawn together, then shakes her bangs out of her eyes and reaches for him. She doesn't try to move him anywhere, and he lets her thread her fingers through his hair. The back is still short, though the front has reached the bottom of his chin.

"Let me help you," she says gently, and offers a shoulder.

He manages to swallow back the surge of bile, but it leaves him coughing. His breath stings but for once it's the hot sourness of stomach acid and he welcomes it, hauls in another mouthful of air too soon and revels in how it hurts the way it's supposed to.

He becomes aware only distantly at first, and then all at once, that Baby is holding a knife now.

He stares at it through wet, blurry eyes. She stares back at him, her mouth a grim line. Her eyes are hard, and he's reminded again of Gotham River.

"Are you going to stab me?" he asks hoarsely, bizarrely offended. He manages to contain his next cough.

She rolls her eyes at him.

"Swear to f*cking God," she mumbles, and presses the knife to her own shoulder.

He's opened his mouth to say something, reaching out to try to take the knife, and the smell of blood winds into the air. He pulls it in on accident, just a sip of air, and then he can't stop pulling it in. Great gulps of air, dragging in through mouth and nose.

His mouth floods. Saliva and something else, a tang of something chemical that leaves the back of his throat tingling when he swallows convulsively.

Venom.

She hasn't cut deep. It's just a little scratch, only a bead or two of blood. She holds his gaze when he can manage to pry his eyes away from the slow seep.

"Let me help," she repeats quietly.

He can't answer. He's trying to control his breathing.

"I'm not gonna let you starve yourself," she continues when it becomes obvious that Tim either can't or won't speak. Tim isn't sure which it is, himself. " C'mon, Robin. It's just a little bite."

And so he… he bites. Bends his head to Baby's shoulder, her soft skin, the aroma of perfume, and tries so hard not to let the sink of his teeth into her be too much.

After, he lays on her bed tucked under a cheap fleece throw blanket and shivers. Not with cold, for once. His vision is blurry and he can't stop pressing his knuckles to his mouth. His lips feel sore with it. He might be giving himself bruises. Ecstasy flutters in his veins and plucks at his nerves and thumps in his heartbeat.

He bites down on a knuckle and watches Baby drag an eyeliner pencil along her waterline. Eventually he sits up, pulling the blanket around his shoulder. The shivering has mostly died down.

She blends the contouring of one cheekbone with lazy, effortless professionalism. The ease of long practice. It's a skill she's had for a decade at least, if he's any judge. A decade of painting her face, and he's practiced enough in disguises to know how much skill it takes to transform a face as utterly as Baby is transforming hers with foundation and a little blush.

"How'd you know?"

Baby looks at him in the mirror, and he holds her eyes for all of a second before he's looking down at his hands, tucked between his shins.

"That you're," he clarified, probably unnecessarily, "you know, Baby."

"I tried it and I saw myself for the first time," she says at last, voice absent, and he peeks up at her. She's not looking at him anymore. She's doing something with an eyeliner pencil that looks delicate, artistic.

"You're really beautiful," he says, and winces. She snorts without moving anything at all but the eyeliner pencil. She is beautiful, and hates hearing it. He's learning a lot about her, in a stumbling awkward way.

"Thanks, Birdie," she says, and finally blinks. Her eyes are big and dark, her lashes graceful sweeps against her cheekbones. The smudges of pink on her eyelids are bright and bold. She's considering him. "Want me to do you up?"

He's kneeling at her feet before he even really thinks about it, putting his chin in her palm and letting her tilt his head back and forth.

The eyeliner pencil tickles, but he's had his eyelashes yanked out by badly applied domino-adhesive, and he bears it out. He keeps his eyes closed and meditates in the dark, sorting each sensation and discarding it. The cool air of the room. Baby's perfume, artificial roses. The soft, cool pressure of kohl against his waterline. His clothing against his skin. His gums aching faintly. His strained heartbeat in his ears.

The pencil pauses and then is gone. For a long moment he's still, chin in Baby's hand, and then he's being pushed gently back. He goes, opening his eyes with belated clarity.

Baby smiles at him crookedly.

"Aren't you pretty," she coos, fondly caustic, and drops the eyeliner pencil into the mess of the desk. "Take a look."

He's expecting Caroline. Caroline isn't who looks back at him.

The person that looks back at him in the mirror is almost recognizable. Their eyes are big, dark, solemn. Too pale, smudges of sleeplessness under their eyes, but when Tim quirks a smile the face in the mirror does too and they keep meeting Tim's eyes.

"I like it," he says to them and to Baby. She nods. She's smiling, half kindly and half amused.

"Alright, Birdie," she says, and pushes him gently away. "Get outta here. We both got night jobs to gear up for, yeah?"

==

He knows to take the makeup off before bed, he even has makeup wipes. Ones he'd tested for effectiveness, for adverse reaction, for how they feel on his skin.

He leaves it on anyway.

When he crawls out of bed, in the early afternoon because there's nothing much to do with his day but sleep through it, he shocks himself with the ground-in smear of the old eyeliner. He stares at it for a length of time that's probably a little too long, examining how the dark feathering from the corners of his eyes makes the blue of the iris somehow more vibrant.

He reaches for the makeup wipes.

Clean-faced, he's waiting for the coffee maker to finish brewing when the alarm for someone trying to come in through the second story window goes off.

He pulls up his exterior camera feeds one-handed, pouring the coffee into a mug with the other, and sighs. Dick Grayson smiles up at him from the landing of the fire escape, one hand tucked under his arm, doubtless nursing the very slight electrical burn Tim's traps had given him. He's wearing civvies and sunglasses, his idea of undercover.

Very bright civvies. A tropical button-down half tucked into salmon shorts. He's attention-grabbing, and on the fire escape of a building on the edge of a bad neighborhood. Tim sighs.

"Grayson," he says when he's disarmed the traps and cracked the window just a little, taking a sip of coffee. The smell of Dick Grayson wafts in on the warm breeze. Not even the rich stink of a Gotham spring completely obscures it—talcum powder, this time, accenting the perfume of soap and sunshine. He'd been patrolling last night.

Dick grins at him winningly.

"You changed your security, Timmy," he says, and it's one of the most infuriatingly lovable things about him, how proud he manages to sound of the fact that Tim subjected him to mild electrocution. "It looks really good!"

"Keeps out al Ghuls," Tim mumbles and opens the window all the way, begrudgingly letting Dick inside. "You know, I do have a front door. It doesn't electrocute you when you try to knock, even."

"Front doors," Dick says and flaps a dismissive hand. "Ohh, coffee?"

He's past Tim and heading towards the kitchen in a flash of bright fabric, clean scent, fingertips at Tim's elbow and gone again before Tim can do more than flinch.

He's left staring at the cracked window, the sun glinting off the rails of his fire escape. Without Dick's scent, the smell of Gotham flows in unimpeded. Wet stone, car exhaust, a hint of rich effluent. Tim closes the window and re-arms his security with mechanical efficiency.

Dick has helped himself to Tim's coffee, sitting cross-legged on his island counter. He looks cozy, hands tucked around a novelty Superman mug Stephanie had given him as a gift. He'd kept it for how it made Damian's lip curl, and then he'd moved, and the mug had ended up at the back of some seldom-opened cabinet and he'd forgotten all about it. He isn't sure how Dick had found it.

"I didn't say you could have any," he says and takes another sip. "It could be really f*cking expensive, Grayson. There's some expensive coffee in the world."

"The kind made of cat sh*t," Dick says, nodding sagely. "Anyway, your Folgers can is on the counter."

So it is.

"Why are you here?" Tim asks, finally giving up the fight and smiling at Dick. It's as easy as it ever is to walk over, lean his hip against the counter by Dick's knee. Dick smiles down at him and his scent folds around Tim like a veil.

It feels risky to do, but Tim tucks his nose towards his mug and sniffs like he's breathing in the aroma of Folgers' finest. He can smell the coffee, sure. He can smell Dick too. Talcum, deodorant, sweat, petroleum jelly. It's familiar to him. It's Gotham rooftops and Alfred's stained, scuffed, carefully loved kitchen table. The shade of blue that Tim can never quite stop himself from automatically noticing. It's the smell of popcorn and mediocre cologne.

"Bruce asked me about you."

The coffee in Tim's mug sloshes once.

He sets it down on the counter by Dick's knee.

"I see," he says. His tone is neutral. He'd expected this. He'd known this would happen, because when it comes down to it Bruce is as regular as clockwork when it comes to invading the privacy of the people he loves. "What was he asking about?"

Dick looks down at him with raised eyebrows, because he's not fooled, because he's… damn it.

"What I saw in your medical exam," he says. His tone is gentle and not at all reproachful of the obvious question. "And if you'd talked about what happened to you. He's not happy about the report you turned in."

Possibly because it was the most poorly written report Tim has ever turned in, including when he was thirteen. Bruce had sent him an email about it within the hour. Tim has ignored that email.

"And you told him?" he asks.

Dick looks at him, and there's the reproach.

"I told him you were pretty much healthy, and that I didn't know anything about what happened, since you didn't tell me anything. Since you, you know. Didn't."

And it shouldn't make something thick and cold and awful seize up in Tim's chest, but it does.

"Nothing happened," he says, but he sounds wrong when he says it and he knows Dick wasn't going to believe him anyway. He just looks at Tim, expression sad, wearing a stupid blue shirt with big yellow lemons on it and horrible pink shorts, cupping a mug Tim can't even annoy Damian with anymore, drinking Tim's cheap coffee.

The silence rolls on and on, past the point he would have expected Dick to say anything, until Tim swallows audibly just to break the stillness. Dick takes a sip of coffee and sets it aside.

"I'll lie to Bruce for you," Dick says quietly and slides down off the counter to stand next to Tim. He's looking right at Tim. His eyes are very blue, Tim thinks with utter inanity, a lovely cool blue-grey. Like an alpine lake, something calm and serene. "But I think I deserve to know a little bit about why, Timmy."

Tim manages to breathe.

It's an anxiety attack, he recognizes belatedly. The cold tightness seizing in the pit of his stomach, the way he keeps having to tell himself to breathe all the way to the bottom of his lungs. He doesn't have time for this. He clenches his hands into fists.

"There's nothing to tell," he says, and bites the inside of his cheek viciously. It's a terrible lie. "Just… it's not a big deal, Dick, seriously."

He should have thought about this. He should have come up with a story. He should have—he hadn't wanted to think about it, had hated the acid churning in the pit of his stomach when he tried, and he'd thought… he'd thought he'd have time.

Unlike his father, Dick is occasionally entirely unpredictable.

And he's just looking at Tim with that sad solemnity, with his beautiful lakeshore eyes, and he isn't fooled at all.

"I'll lie to Bruce," he repeats. "I promised, remember? But, Tim, seriously. This is a lot to ask. I just… help me understand, Timmy. I want to help."

Tim has the hem of his shirt in his hands, bunched in his fists so tightly it hurts his fingertips. His nails are digging holes in the weave. He looks down at it blankly, at his white knuckles, and can't figure out how to get himself to let go.

"You're helping," he tells his lap.

Dick's smell has evolved with their closeness, with time for the bolder overtones to settle. He smells a little like dish soap, a little like tea. He must have come from the Manor—Tim can smell dust and furniture polish when he reaches out to lay a hand on Tim's bicep. He can smell warmth, the damp salt smell of human. He can feel Dick's pulse through his palm. The contact is gentle, almost hesitant.

"I could help more if I knew how," he says, so quiet, so gentle. "Something's really getting to you."

The anxiety attack is imminent. Possibly inescapable. If Tim untangles his hands from his shirt they'll be shaking.

His fangs ache with a sharp and unfamiliar pain, the urge to drop them nigh-impossible to ignore. A detached fragment of him wonders about that. A threat instinct in reaction to his fear? He doesn't have time to think about that.

Damage control.

Secrets, secrets. What to sell and how much he can get for it, he thinks blankly, meeting Dick's eyes almost by coincidence, and he thinks it with Janet Drake's voice. Dick won't let this go until he's satisfied he knows all there is to know, and so Tim will have to make him believe that he does.

The worst secret of all, he'd sell quite a bit to keep that.

f*ck, he's nauseous.

"I was…" he begins haltingly. It's a relief to let his fangs drop. The pain fades, and with it a fraction of the panic. When he breathes in Dick's smell is thicker somehow, it's easier to pick out its nuances when half of Tim's attention isn't fixed on keeping himself from salivating. The tea is earl grey, accented with bergamot. "It…"

His thoughts won't line up. Words won't come. No plan forms in the shapeless grey fog of his panic, barely contained.

Dick's hand touches his elbow carefully and he flinches with his whole body.

"S'okay, Tim," he says gently, and he doesn't comment on Tim's flinch, and he doesn't sound like Nightwing. Tim hauls in a breath that shivers in his lungs like it's trying to be a sob, and coldly hates himself for it. "Take your time."

Tim pulls away. Dick lets him go.

He has no words. He has no plan beyond what he's already pulled together, a desperate effort at misdirection. He just has to do it, has to—say it.

All at once.

"I have fangs, Richard," he says, and opens his mouth.

Dick says nothing.

Dick is silent. So silent. He stares at Tim, at his mouth, at the way Tim can't stop himself from knotting his hands together at the base of his throat. His knuckles press against the pulse of his carotid artery, tracking the arrhythmic pounding.

"Dick," Tim manages at last.

Dick blinks. He shakes his head.

"I see," he says at last. His eyelashes flutter. He's blinking rapidly. The expression he's wearing isn't quite Nightwing, but it's pretty close. A mixture of cool authority and slightly asinine bravado. "That's, uh. Well, that's new. And different."

Tim closes his mouth and draws his fangs back up. Dick blinks again, and goes a little pink.

"So you're…" he says when Tim doesn't respond.

"Vampire," Tim says. It's hard to get out, so it comes out terse. Something is caught in his throat, trying to climb out of his lungs. He swallows it back. "I… I think. I didn't… have the chance to ask many questions."

Dick's eyes track across his face. Sharp, brilliantly blue, a stormy lake, an empty sky.

"So, you…" he begins, and doesn't go on for long heartbeats. He isn't blinking either. He stares, and finally speaks again. "Blood?"

Tim opens his mouth and discovers his voice is trapped in his chest. It feels like a solid wall, his voice trapped in aching bubbles at the base of his throat. Finally he swallows, and nods.

Dick's face goes through several rapid expressions—consternation, confusion, curiosity—before settling into something gentle. Something calm.

Nightwing. Tim's looking at Nightwing.

"Are you getting enough?" he asks quietly, and his voice is all Nightwing too. All Bruce's training. Tim knows how to do that too, how to comfort a victim while extracting information. Maximizing efficiency—he's always been good at it. Better than Dick, even. "If you're… thirsty?"

Tim's skin itches. He can feel his pulse in strange places. His heartbeat pounds in the crease of his thigh, the fold of his elbow, the base of his skull. He swallows and his throat clicks dryly.

"Can I help?" Dick goes on. Nightwing slipping away again. He'd always been bad at separating himself from his emotional response to the victims. Tim finds that his hands are clenched into fists. "If you… need someone to bite, you know."

The sound crawls up Tim's throat and out of his mouth and cracks the air between them. A call like one of Damian's kittens, crying for a dead mother, only a touch too high and sharp. Not human at all.

A moment of silence.

"Tim?" Dick says, and when Tim hauls in a breath, the smell of Dick fills his nose. Full and sweet and calling safety to the parts of Tim he hasn't managed to dig out of his subconscious yet. "What—?"

Tim shoves Dick away.

Panic flutters in him, in the thready pounding of his unreliable pulse, in the harsh breaths he has to fight to pull in. He can taste Dick, too close, too warm. His pulse pounds like it's in Tim's own body, hard and quick. Soap, sweat, bergamot. Earl grey tea, a hint of honey.

Thirst bakes in his throat. It's a stinging, raw kind of pain that flares when he swallows, and he hadn't even noticed it until Dick was close.

Too close. His mouth is wetter than it should be. His palate aches with a throb in time to that pulse he can hear so well it's nearly a physical sensation, the musculature of his fangs complaining at being drawn back up again so soon, aching to take just a little bite. Just a nip.

Tim backs up another step.

Dick is looking at him with wounded confusion, because he doesn't understand. Not even now, not even after seeing Tim's fangs. He doesn't understand the danger he's in. The euphoria of painlessness calls to Tim. A siren song of slaked thirst.

"I can't," Tim begins and has to stop because his breathing is too fast, so fast it hurts in his chest. His stomach is rolling, clenching on nothing. "I won't bite you. I won't."

He stops again. The ragged saw of air in his chest isn't getting better. It's getting worse, grating against the sting in his throat, the ache in his head.

"Timmy," Dick says and moves to come closer and freezes when Tim backpedals some more. His back hits the wall, cold paint against his shoulder blades even through his shirt. He presses himself to it, like if he just presses hard enough something will give.

He's hyperventilating, notes a clinical splinter of his thoughts. Air comes faster and faster and it doesn't seem to carry enough oxygen with it. Blackness presses in at the edges of his vision and with it seems to come a great soundless roar.

Somehow he keeps his feet underneath him. Somehow, by some titanic effort, he straightens and turns his head to look at Dick. Seizing control of his lungs is a grueling, ruthless effort and every second his focus slips is a slide back towards hyperventilation.

The blackness retreats a little, and the numb deafness. Enough for Tim to really process Dick's expression. It's awful, whatever it is. It looks like pain, certainly. Pain, and confusion, and something else that sticks in Tim's head, familiar.

Ordinarily Tim would already be analyzing it, pulling up memory after memory, trying to divine what Dick is thinking from the angle of his eyelashes and the set of his mouth. Now, wrung out, still on the edge of panic, he just tightens a fist around the hem of his shirt. He has to try to talk his way out of this, but just the thought of trying to put together a convincing argument for Dick not to flip the f*ck out makes him nauseous.

"Tim?"

Dick's voice is soft, and very young. Tim blinks at him tiredly.

"I'm good now," he says, and Dick doesn't even bother to address Tim's blatant lie.

"I'm sorry," he says. Tim just stares at him. He can't think of anything to say. "I won't ask again, alright? Is that okay?"

Tim pulls in a breath, through his mouth in an attempt not to smell quite as much, and exhales through his nose.

It doesn't help. Dick's smell has filled the room. He's wearing Dick on his clothes, his skin, he'll smell cheap deodorant and sunshine even after Dick's gone. This room will hold him for days, a ghost of sun and clean skin. Tim is going to need to dig out the industrial air scrubber to exorcise it.

"Okay," he says. There isn't much else he could say.

"Just." Dick shifts back and forth on his feet, a graceful sway of utter discomfort. Tim is dimly surprised he hasn't done a handstand yet. "Okay. Just… you're feeding yourself, right? You're taking care of yourself?"

His breath still aches in his chest, his shoulders are still pulled in too tight to look casual, but he forces himself to shrug anyway. He summons a smile from somewhere and it probably looks like sh*t, but Dick manages a smile in turn.

"I'm feeding myself," he promises, and he doesn't volunteer any more and Dick doesn't ask.

==

"It's for your own good."

He can't make out Nightwing's eyes through the whiteout lenses. He's reflected in them, an absurd shape of red and black.

"Please." It's so cold he can't feel his hands pressed against the bulletproof glass. His bloody hands, his numb fingers. He's leaving great smears of blood behind, sweeping shapes as he scrabbles at unforgiving glass. His nails are broken.

Nightwing watches him. His hands are at his side. His expression is regretful, distant. He's a stranger.

"Please, please."

He's kneeling on something wet and soft, and it smells of artificial sweetener. Maltitol, xylitol, sorbitol. Red 40, dextromethorphan, thallium, bottled dopamine.

He looks down, at the great red smile carved through Jason's throat. He's bleeding from it in spurts even though his eyes are wide and sightless and a cloudy blue, bleeding in fat rivulets of cherry cough syrup. His mouth hangs open, showing the black back of his throat. His face is Robin's face. His body is small and young, a child's body, bent and broken into an unnatural shape.

"Don't be scared, Timmy," someone says, not Nightwing, though Nightwing is nodding along and there is no one else. He throws himself at the glass with his fists and gets nowhere. Jason's body tangles with his legs, lifeless fingers climbing up his calf, his knee. Nightwing just watches. "It's for your own good. Just drink."

And Nightwing turns and starts walking away.

"Please." He's sobbing, fingers hooked in Jason's mouth, against those cold blunt teeth, trying to push him off, "I can be good, I can be good—"

Pain flares, and he jolts over in his sheets.

It's his room in the Nest.

He's in his room, in Gotham City, in the Nest, and he'd just been dreaming. His hand hurts, the fine bone at the back of his hand.

Okay, he thinks, breath ripping in and out of him against the pillow, okay, five things I can see.

Sunlight edging in around the blackout curtains stained a brilliant scarlet, abandoned coffee mug on the side table now knocked over, the pen bomb prototype—it was supposed to be a present for Dick, the loser, he's all over the James Bond gadgets, stay focused—Wayne Enterprises event calendar from last year still tacked up on the wall, the white sheets tangled around his legs.

Okay. He's okay. His breathing still isn't under control but he's okay. A dream, and he'd hit his hand on the bedside table in his sleeping flailing, and then he'd woken up.

Four things I can hear.

His heartbeat. The sheets shifting as he twitches. The high hum of his electronics. In the street outside, someone is singing Zeppelin horribly off-key. His breathing is slowing, and his chest hurts a little less. He presses his palm to his sternum and grinds down against scar tissue until dull pain blooms.

He's fine.

Four hours, that's how long he slept. Pretty average for him, before. It's late afternoon now, almost evening. Since he stepped back from WE and turned Drake Enterprises into a vestigial philanthropic foundation, his hours are his. He'd meant to go back to school, get his GED, maybe some college. Instead he'd worked out a new way to layer synthetic fibers to give their armor a 5% boost protecting against shearing force.

Three things I can touch. Easy. The sheets are hot and humid around his legs. The waistband of his boxers pinch at his hips a little—they're old and stolen years ago from dressers in Wayne Manor, like all of the clothes he owns that aren't several hundred dollars of designer fabric. He swallows, and he feels the tickle of thirst at the back of his throat.

Okay, no, okay. He's okay. He's not going to think about that, not right now.

Two things I can smell.

Old coffee, congealed at the bottom of his overturned mug. The sour saline of his own sweat.

His breathing is stable now. He's going cold without the fever of the nightmare, but he'll get himself up and he'll take a shower. Bundle in a hoodie and sweats and make some hot coffee, and he'll be practically alive by the time he should head out for patrol.

He licks his lips. One thing he can taste.

The sheets are easy to untangle now that he's awake, and he hauls himself into the shower, and then to the coffee maker, and then into his suit and out into the night air.

When he was Robin—

He pulls away from the edge of that thought and throws himself instead into a running vault, clearing the gap between two roofs and hitting the ground picture-perfect, landing on his hands and dropping safely into a forward roll and then up on his feet again, not a single stagger in momentum.

It's not quite raining, not quite not. Drizzling in miserable little droplets, diffuse and misty. It makes grip difficult. Tim applies himself to his footing. Each step is placed perfectly. Each turn of ankle, wrist, knee calculated appropriately.

In this kind of rain, most of the worst of Gotham goes to ground. The night is quiet, and still, and smells of dust and fresh water.

Nights like this remind him of before. Of Bruce and Batman, both of them shadowing Tim's every footstep. He hadn't appreciated it properly for the entire time he wore Dick's title, Jason's shoes. Nights like this remind him but the memories aren't right. They aren't perfect.

The details escape him—the exact shade of Dick's old suit, the reluctant turn to B's lips when Tim had finally pulled off a backflip.

He throws himself forward again. Vault from the edge of the roof, slicing through the drizzle like a knife. Grapple fired into old brickwork, the familiar wrench of momentum through his shoulders. He swoops up and up, weightless for a perfect moment. His toes touch granite, the wing of a gargoyle, and he is flipping off again in a wonderful arc.

He knows better now. He keeps the memories properly, lined up and indexed like photos in an album. Dick's smile pressed to his cheek in the close dark of a Wayne Manor movie night. Bruce's hand on his shoulder when he'd handed WE back to him, better than ever, safe and secure. Jason, snarling in appreciation and not anger, the end of Tim's bo tucked under his jaw to keep his mouth shut. Even Damian, the secret smile he wears when his awful cats fall asleep on Tim.

Another wrench, another flight.

The flash of smooth, shiny red catches the corner of his eye and Tim is huffing a silent laugh as he fires his grapple in that direction. He's not superstitious the way Bruce is but, well, speak of the devil.

Red Hood knows he's there almost immediately, Tim isn't even trying to hide, but they swing in tandem through the Gotham streets for a little while anyway before Hood sets down on a rooftop and turns to look at him. Not far from Crime Alley, an area that's fuzzily somewhere between the territories of Steph, Tim, and his own.

Tim perches on the edge of the roof, watching as Jason pulls the helmet off and shakes his head. His hair is a riot, curls spilling in every direction. The streak of white glows in the night. He's not wearing a domino tonight and the rain spikes his eyelashes, polishes the seaglass of his eyes. He's grinning, the grin that promises nasty secrets.

"Heya, Red," he says. His voice is rough.

"Hood," Tim says and bobs his head. Jason hasn't gone for a gun, not that he has in years, and he doesn't try to get closer. He tucks the helmet under his arm, runs his free hand through his hair. It stands on end when he does. The rain dampens the smell of him, turning it into just a suggestion of leather and cigarettes.

For just a moment Jason doesn't look so very far from Tim's Robin, from primary colors and a heartbreaker smile. Earnest and messy. Smudges under his eyes, sleeplessness, but they've been darker. He's looked worse. Tim's hopping down onto the roof, and doesn't quite know when he'd decided to do so.

Jason pulls his helmet back on, secures the seal, and Tim lets himself drift closer. Cigarettes and old leather, a hint of rich gun oil. Jason's watching him, tracking him across the rooftop. Tim can feel his eyes even if he can't see them.

"Here to talk about what happened, shortstack?" he asks, and there's something familiar in the buzz of his distorted voice too.

Tim shakes his head. Jason snorts. It's an unpleasant sound, through that distortion.

When he pulls a knife, it has all the air about it of a college student fiddling with their phone. It flicks through his fingers, darting silver through the rain like a fish through water. It doesn't, despite all appearances, feel like a threat.

"Are you going to try and make me talk about it?" Tim asks, just to be sure.

Jason's head ticks to the side, just for a moment.

"Nah," he says eventually, and Tim meticulously contains the relieved sigh his body tries to force upon him. "Just had a nice shouting match with the dickhe*d, don't feel like getting into it with you too."

Tim wants to ask what Dick was shouting at Jason about, and doesn't. It's not his business, especially if Jason's playing nice and avoiding what Tim wants to avoid.

"Cool," he says instead.

Jason laughs, a pleasant chainsaw of distorted noise, tossing the knife from one hand to the other. The blade flashes, wickedly curved and sin-sharp. Jason isn't even looking at it, careless as he catches it by the blade between two knuckles.

"Show-off," Tim accuses. He can't stop himself from smiling, a little quirk at the corner of his mouth he knows Jason can spot a mile off.

"You betcha, Red," Jason says and his hand flashes once, twice, empty. He spreads both palms towards Tim, all look, no hands. The grin Tim imagines under the blank curve of his helmet is all boyish, wicked charm.

He knows this mood on Jason. He's chased Jason across more than one rooftop in this mood, swearing at him the whole way, leaving a gentle rain of petty cash behind for Gothamites to gather up. It's manic and fun, and miles better than the dark vindictiveness he has to chase the other times Jason decides to play keep-away.

"Up your left sleeve," he says and lets the smile spread across his face. Close-lipped, he's learned, he doesn't have to care about his teeth. It doesn't look any different whether they're down or up.

Jason produces a knife from his right sleeve, but it isn't the same knife. There's a flash of wrist as he does it, white skin, and Tim tries not to notice that. He's trying so hard not to notice that it might only be the fact that Jason really isn't aiming at him that keeps him from getting skewered by the knife flashing past his nose.

It buries itself in the shed wall behind him, punching through a panel of sheet metal with a godawful noise. Jason laughs that buzzsaw laugh.

"Tag, you're it," he says, and then he's gone, and Tim lays chase over Gotham rooftops.

==

"Stay."

The word spills out from the hollow behind his ear, Dick's cold mouth against his throat, thick and coppery. Wet sheets tangle with his legs and he fights them, fights them, can't quite pull himself free.

"I can't." His mouth is full of fluid. There are hands on him and he can't see whose they are. It's dark in his room, so dark and thick with the smell of copper and saltpeter. "I can't."

"Stay."

A face presses to his, a white shape in the dark. Eyes radioactive green, a streak of white like bone, white teeth against his mouth. The hands on him are so cold but he's burning so hot he can smell the smoke. The teeth dig in, at his mouth and throat and stomach and thigh, so cold and so good.

"I can't." He spits up a mouthful of blood against Jason's teeth, spits out another. "Let me go, please?"

His door opens. The hall light is yellow, brilliant, and in it the white shapes of the bodies in his bed writhe through crimson sheets. In the frame of the door leans a figure he knows, so skinny, teeth flashing in a wide grin.

"Precocious," the figure croons, and—

Tim is screaming as he wakes, thrashing, fighting for air.

Falling out of bed is a blessing. He scrambles across the floor until his shoulder collides with the wall, rattling the shelves, and crams himself against the baseboard.

His bedroom door is open a crack but the hallway beyond is dark and empty. He can't hear anything but the hum of electronics, the low rumble of traffic a street away. His Nest is empty. His alarms haven't been triggered. He can't smell anything but his own sour, terrified sweat.

He hauls himself to his feet and staggers to the computer station in his bedroom, pulling up the camera feeds with shaking fingers.

Nothing moves at all on the interior cameras, and even he can't read anything suspicious into the occasional pedestrian on his exterior surveillance. He reels through six hours of history on both feeds, twice, and then scrubs each file to be sure there's no sign of tampering.

When it all comes back negative he collapses back into his chair. His body aches, a soft diffuse pain. His chest feels tight and he catches himself pressing the heel of his hand to his sternum.

"Nightmare," he whispers to himself. "Nightmare. Nightmare."

He looks up, back at the bedroom door. The hallway is still dark, still empty. When he twists back to look at his bed, the sheets are tangled and wet with sweat, but also empty.

He gets up and turns on every light in the Nest on the way to the bathroom he prefers.

It's a tiny thing, a cheerful remnant of an apartment suite that Tim has otherwise completely renovated. The walls are yellow tile, with patterns of flowers. The fixtures are all porcelain and old and scratched with use. The tub is white enamel, claw-footed. There's history in this bathroom he doesn't know, can't know, and he likes it.

It's cold.

He strips in silence, letting the hot rush of the shower fill the space up with steam. The water heater is temperamental and Tim hasn't gotten around to replacing it, not for a whole year and a half, but it seems to be cooperating today. When he sticks a hand under the spray, it's hot enough to hurt.

He steps into it and reaches for the soap.

Nightmare sweat rinses off of him quickly but he takes his time anyway, eyes closed, using soap and shampoo and conditioner and bodywash. Pacing his breathing is instinctual now, and by the time he's washed the last of the suds away he's calm again. He steps out and reaches for a towel and, from the corner of his eye, catches a glimpse of pink.

He'd gotten out of the habit of looking at himself shirtless, dissatisfied with what he sees no matter how hard he works or what concealer he uses on the scars, but he turns to face himself and…

Freezes.

The scars under his fingers are no longer a livid red.

They no longer look like they're months old. They're faintly pink, now. Blurry. The knots have softened. They look years old, and a week ago they had looked months old, and a day before that they had been raw open wounds.

They're all faded except the parenthetical bite mark. That's still vivid. Faded just a touch, but each tooth is a divot and the hot anger of the scar tissue makes it stand out even more than before against silvery pink scar and healthy skin.

His hand lifts without conscious thought to his throat.

The little line of scar tissue Jason cut into him is nearly gone.

He lunges for the toilet and pukes into it very neatly.

The last time he'd thrown up in this room, he'd gotten vomit under the toilet seat and in the little rug. It had been a nightmare to clean. This time there's less to bring up. It's pink and thin and all liquid. Between heaves, Tim watches the water in the toilet bowl swirl and swirl and swirl.

He heaves a final time, a convulsion of stomach and chest and throat that hurts miserably, and collapses to the side.

He's sweaty again. It's cold, pressed up against the chipped side of the tub. He shakes, palm pressed to his throat, and feels—

The cut had been so quick and simple and brutal.

He'd learned in a handful of seconds how easy it is to take a life when it isn't worth caring about. Jason had stripped all the deliberation away, tossed aside unconsidered everything Tim had ever been or cared about. Thrown away all of the love and fear and effort of Tim's unbearably long fifteen years of life. He'd stripped Tim to nothing but Jason's boots walking away from him and the hot pump of his life out from between his fingers.

His mouth fills with saliva. He heaves himself up, spits into the toilet bowl, and drops again.

And now that's nearly gone, too.

Eventually he gets himself up and flushes the toilet, leaving the bathroom ventilation running to air out the sour smell of puke. He goes back to the station in his bedroom.

It's just before eight in the evening, the sun is falling down below the horizon. The bats will be in the Cave preparing, Hood should still be at whatever safehouse he's decided to work out of this week, and Gotham's nightlife will just be shaking itself awake. Oracle will have her hands full with keeping track of all that, she won't make the effort to check in on Tim if he's staying at home, not until the morning.

He opens a secure connection and starts looking into properties near Robbinsville.

The property he settles on is abandoned, condemned, and the deed sits in a liminal hell of administrative obstructionism that takes Tim a full ten minutes to wade through. When the building's ownership sits comfortably with a shell company he links to LexCorp just for spite, he sends an encrypted email to a contractor he hasn't shut down yet specifically because his off-books renovation habit has worked out nicely for Tim.

And then he hops on his favorite medical supply wholesale website, and settles in to spend a couple thousand dollars.

The building is ready in ten hours. Tim hadn't needed much. Just a sterile room, soundproofing just in case, some extremely judicious and only technically legal signal baffling. The deliveries arrive an hour or so later, and Tim supervises the setup in a dark jacket and anonymous balaclava, waving a handful of hundred dollar bills to expedite the process.

Gossip is going to spread like a fungus about what's going on in this building, but he's got at least half a day before anyone comes poking around since Barb's almost certainly asleep. He's got speed, and he's got accelerant to cover his tracks. There's no chance of this flying under the radar, but Tim is good at lying to Bats. He can keep this confusing enough to not be worth the effort.

He buys a van off the side of the road, cash in hand, and heads for the Robbinsville waterfront.

It turns out to be easy to find the abandoned store and the pile of crates in its back yard. He expected it to be more difficult, expected his memory to be cloudy and complicated, but he pulls in to the yard and kicks the door open and climbs down the basem*nt stairs.

It's a pitiful looking thing.

The corpse has not begun to bloat, as he would have expected from over a week exposed to the elements. A cursory visual examination reveals no insect activity, no evidence of rats or other vermin attempting to eat it. The skin is pale, those blue eyes cloudy through the fringe of sandy brown lashes.

It isn't bloated, not at all. No evidence of decay. If he didn't know better, if it weren't for the unnatural angle of its neck, he would think the corpse is just asleep.

It is, perhaps, a little shrunken. The skin pulled in tighter to the bones. It's hard to tell. It was already so bony.

He reaches out to touch, right at the crook of its skinny white throat, where the carotid artery shows dull purple under its skin. The surface is taut, cold, dry. It doesn't move. There is no pulse, there is no breath, just the lingering smell of fructose and copper.

He snatches his hand back. Stupid, stupid.

He reaches for the rubber gloves instead. The tarp is, of course, the perfect size, and he should be able to maneuver the whole package into the back of the van. The vampire wasn't heavy, and the corpse seems even lighter.

He follows all the traffic laws on his way back to the new safehouse.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

The scans he takes before touching a scalpel, saved to a local drive and ready to be loaded into his Oracle-proof air-gapped system for analysis—everything he could get short of an MRI scan, since ordering and installing one couldn't be expedited even with Drake money. Next, tissue samples he bags up with vacuum seals—dermis, tendon, all three varieties of muscular tissue, what adipose he manages to scrape up. Vitreous fluid, saliva, spinal fluid, sem*n, stomach acid, urine. And blood, great bags of it.

It's thick, thicker than blood ought to be. Darker, as well. When he pulls out the last needle a droplet escapes and the smell of cough syrup fills the still, cold air.

He throws up against the moldering wall of the hall outside his makeshift sterile room, throat stinging and thin dribbles of pink spittle sticking to his lips, and goes back inside.

He pulls out bones as well. Phalanges, a humerus, and two ribs. It takes a little bit of time, he has to stop every few minutes to put his head between his knees and breathe, but he detaches the head eventually. He packs it up, and all the rest of the samples he thinks he could conceivably need, all in another handful of vacuum-sealed bags. The scalpels, forceps, and bonesaw he puts in a plastic bag, bound for his autoclave and then probably an incinerator.

When he's done he sits down on the floor.

The cooler he's using is battery-powered, though he suspects it's unnecessary. There had been no obvious decay in the corpse. A little dehydration, but not as much as there should have been. Regardless, he'll hold off on conclusions until he's had a chance to order and install a decent suite of more specialized medical testing equipment.

The headless, flayed body keeps attracting his gaze.

He gets up and puts everything away, loads the cooler into his van, and starts sprinkling accelerant everywhere. By the time he's done and on his way, the back of his van loaded down with dissected vampire, the building is merrily ablaze and the Gotham Fire Department is on its way.

He unloads everything in the basem*nt of the Nest, leaves the cooler attached to a backup generator all set to run through until the heat death of the universe if necessary, and heads up to his computers.

Loading the scans up takes a few minutes, and he spends the time idly stealing every version of scientific analysis software that looks even remotely relevant. He's going to have to come up with a decent explanation for doing it, in case Oracle ever asks, since he's leaving digital fingerprints everywhere. His asplenia, maybe. God knows it's been a pain to deal with.

When he's done with that, porting the software manually over to his private system and setting everything running, he opens up another secure line and starts looking up vampires.

There is a f*cking lot written about vampires, it turns out.

He can dismiss some right away. He doesn't sparkle in the sun and neither does he burn, and he's had no trouble kicking down doors and going into wherever the hell he wants, no invitation needed. He hasn't tried to cross the river yet, but he can do that on his next patrol.

If he does end up trapped in Gotham, it's going to be an issue. He contemplates that, and decides not to worry about it.

In the meanwhile, he starts digging into the truly batsh*t lore. After a while it starts to feel silly, the places he's pulling possible data from, but then he imagines the sheer f*cking embarrassment of being outed as a vampire through a weakness in a Dungeons and Dragons manual and sucks it up. The manuals are easy to dig up on shady torrent sites anyway, and he tabs through them a little bit for pure nostalgia before copying down every weakness in the summaries of each edition.

The results from the analyses are starting to populate. From here, all he has to do is work on the problem until it's solved.

==

The important thing, Tim decides as he runs his fingers across all the manifold and allegedly different brands of bagged breads, is that he hasn't bled into anyone's mouth.

Also important, he thinks as he pulls out a bag of whole-grain bread he's hoping Baby will accept despite being admittedly kind of bougie, is that he also doesn't make a habit of doing so. And his blood type isn't in high demand so the likelihood of being asked to do a transfusion before he's figured out a workaround isn't high.

The kale is going to be a harder sell, but he grabs some anyway.

He'll have to be careful, but not much more careful than he was being anyway. Asplenia is no joke. Now it's just outward facing as much as inward. And he hadn't really been expecting to discover a cure either. That would have been unrealistic.

What's really unrealistic, he decides regretfully, is trying to get Baby to drink any kind of juice with 'macronutrients' in its tagline. He puts the green juice down and takes a quick inventory of the contents of his basket.

Grocery shopping is not and has never been his forte. Reddit hadn't been any help either, though that's hardly surprising. Despite all that, he thinks he probably has a passable collection of the more expensive kind of perishables that contribute to hematological health.

He steps out the doors of the grocery store and into a dull twilight. He stares up into it, a bag in each hand, and tries to remember where the time had gone. He hadn't spent that long trying not to have a panic attack over broccolini.

"Outta the f*cking way," someone snaps from behind him, and he steps aside on automatic. A mother with two toddlers in a shopping cart barrels by him.

He doesn't have time to get to Baby's before she leaves for her night job.

Which is fine, he decides, putting the bag carefully in his backseat. He can go in through the window and leave the groceries, and text her to let her know that he'd done it so she didn't worry. It'll be a quick stop, and then he'll be fine to go out on patrol, and probably she'll text him a million complaints.

It's fine.

It is not fine, he realizes, staring into her fridge.

He bought too much. Which, in retrospect, of course he did. He hadn't done reconnaissance. He should have at least gotten an estimate of the cubic footage of her fridge and cupboard space.

Alright. It's fine, he decides, staring at the plastic tubs of old takeout. He's no Alfred but—but he can throw away what's obviously expired, and if he makes a quick stir fry it'll condense some of the ingredients, maybe do some dishes…

It takes him two hours, but he doesn't break any plates. And he wasn't really going to do a long patrol anyway, he tells himself, pressing his knuckles into his temples. The fluorescent lights in the kitchen buzz at a pitch that's just a little too high and a headache has wormed itself in. The burn is starting to set in at the back of his throat too.

Breathe in for a four count. Hold for a four count. Breathe out, slowly, for a four count. He isn't going to have a panic attack. Hold for a two count. Breathe in again.

When breathing feels less like it's going to make him crawl out of his own skin he heaves a sigh and forces himself up from the couch. He'll need to send a text to Baby to apologize for being such a f*cking weirdo, because he does have a little self-awareness. He knows he's being… strange.

But, first he needs to leave. Baby probably won't want to see him after she's off work unexpectedly, that's just plain sense.

He makes it most of the way out the window.

"Red Robin?"

Tim jumps, and tries to spin, and nearly falls backwards off the fire escape.

Arsenal makes no move to try and save him, watching Tim stumble from his perch on the opposite building. He stares at Tim, and then he looks at the sill Tim still hasn't climbed all the way through. His eyes are narrowing.

He isn't in costume except a domino, but he's always been more lax about that kind of thing than the Bats. Fingerless gloves, a ratty hoodie, tight jeans. Not an outfit for heavy combat, but he was always the long-range fighter… Here to visit Hood, maybe, or just stopping over on his way through the East Coast.

Jesus, Gotham is crowded. Tim finds himself wondering, absent and hysterical, if he ought to try to heat map it. Find someplace where someone isn't going to be in his business constantly.

"That apartment belongs to one of Hood's girls."

Tim flinches again and yanks his foot over the sill. There should be—something to say, right, something to deflect? He can't bleed, that's all he can think about suddenly, he can't leave his blood where someone might find it and test it and know, or infect themselves, he isn't sure what the threshold is for a transformation to kick in—

"Tim Wayne."

"Don't call me that."

Roy is smiling. His teeth glint. It isn't a happy smile, no, it carries malice instead.

Tim isn't bleeding. He checked before he left the Nest, checked every inch of himself, and he's been careful. The roof of his mouth aches in sharp, rapid pulses like his heartbeat.

He scales the fire escape to the roof, vaulting over to Roy's side after a moment's hesitation. Roy watches him, arms crossed.

"Does your daddy know you're visiting the girls like this?" Roy asks. His head tilts. Nausea surges up from the pit of Tim's stomach, up through his chest to peak at the back of his throat. Cold sweat is beading at the back of his neck. He brushes past Roy and Roy doesn't try to stop him, just follows him with a sneer.

"It isn't like that," Tim says after a moment, running out of rooftop to walk.

A few of Hood's girls are standing at the corner below them, congregating in the pool of light from a streetlamp for just a moment. Someone's laughing, rich and pleased. Baby isn't with them, but Roy looks from them to Tim with narrow eyes anyway.

"Gotta wonder if Jason knows," he says after a beat, and Tim's breath freezes in his chest.

Gotham is just so cold at night, in all but the most hellish depths of summer. Bitterly cold. The breeze off the river is sharp and it catches the sweat at the back of Tim's neck and he's shivering just like that, trembling like a leaf. His fingers are already starting to ache.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets. Roy watches him do it. Tim hates him a little for that.

"Don't tell Jason," he says, and Roy raises his eyebrows at him.

The smile he gives Tim is not very nice at all.

"Why shouldn't I," he asks lazily. "You Bats are all so sanctimonious, maybe he deserves to know how much of a hypocrite you are. Look down on us all you want, Robin. I know what you are, and so do they."

Tim doesn't have to look to know that the vicious jerk of Roy's chin is pointing out the girls. He flinches, and wishes he hadn't.

It isn't like that, he wants to repeat, but the words get stuck on his teeth and by the time he's forced his fangs back and gotten a breath into his lungs Roy is already looking away. Dismissing him. Like Tim's beneath his notice, which is how he always has been, but this time it's sharp in a way it never was before. Like he really, really means it now.

"Don't tell Jason," he says instead, again. His words come out a little slurred around the teeth. Roy rolls his shoulders in something more dismissive than a shrug and flicks him a quarter of a sneer.

"You ain't worth my time, Wayne," he says, and then he's gone.

Tim sits down on wet concrete and presses a palm against his chest. Under his t-shirt and the hoodie it's impossible to feel the remaining scar tissue but he knows it by heart. Every knotty, fading centimeter. Every shoddy, unenthused throb of his heart.

==

Jason doesn't come looking.

No, Jason doesn't, but Tim checks the security cameras and finds Dick at the Nest's doorstep, and he remembers far too late that Red Hood might run with Arsenal but Roy Harper has Dick Grayson's phone number. That, and Roy f*cking Harper is a nosy busybody with a borrowed grudge against the Bats and no reason to like Tim.

And additionally, Tim's living a cursed life.

He watches Dick loiter on the doorstep, hands in his pockets, shoulders down and relaxed. It's a rare sunny Gotham day, the late spring clouds parting just to give Dick that golden glow. Even through grainy CCTV cameras he looks like a woodland creature, a fairy tale illustration in Keds and a leather jack Tim's trying not to convince himself looks like Hood's.

Briefly he considers not answering the door. There are three back doors to the Nest, only two of which the other Bats know about, and that's not even considering the windows. He could be halfway to Bristol before Dick even figures out he isn't home. He could be on a plane to Kazakhstan. He could learn Mandarin, boat to Hong Kong, set up in Cass's old room and never emerge again.

Dick turns, three-quarters to the camera. The light breeze is playing with his hair, tugging at the loose hem of his scoop-neck shirt. His collar bones are soft brushstrokes of shadow.

Tim gets to his feet and goes to open the door.

"Whatever Harper said, it isn't true," he says.

Dick smiles at him.

"I could have just been here to visit," he says lightly. He's still got his hands in his pockets, his shoulders gorgeously square. The breeze pulls the smell of him past Tim and into the Nest, an eddy of deodorant and laundry soap and faint cigarettes. "I used the front door this time!"

It isn't Jason's jacket. Tim is conjuring that sense memory all on his own.

Tim sighs through his nose and steps aside to let Dick in. Dick rubs his shoulder in passing, a light and cheerful touch, and Tim holds his breath until Dick's disappeared into the kitchen. He'll have to wash this shirt. When he lets himself pull in air, it tastes of Dick.

He's pressing his nose to his own shoulder. His mouth is full of saliva.

He texts Baby, and trips over Dick's abandoned sneakers on his way to the kitchen.

Dick's going through his fridge aimlessly, pawing aside cans of soda and lone beers. Tim leans against the island counter, bracing his palms against the edge, and watches. It's astonishing, striking, impossible how graceful Dick makes the act of fumbling and nearly dropping a can of some sh*tty cider Steph left behind months ago.

"I am fine," he says. Dick peeks over his shoulder.

"Roy says he thinks you're addicted to something," he says, and goes back to pawing through the fridge. Tim watches him heft a container of Chinese takeout that might have looped back around to edibility in the intervening six months since he shoved it in there.

If the whole thing were any funnier, Tim would die laughing.

"Did he say what he thinks I'm addicted to?" he asks, and crosses his arms. Dick's scent is filling up the kitchen, cutting through the stink of cleaner and dishwashing detergent. His shirt hangs loose when he bends over, offering flashes of his long flanks. If Tim were to look at them, he would already know the whipcord muscles and how they move. Dick had taught him the parallel bars, after all.

"Nah." Dick stands up at last. He's cradling a truly awful canned vodka soda that might be Barb's and might have been an ill-advised purchase of Tim's own. "He just wanted me to check in on you. So. Hi!"

He grins, arms splaying akimbo.

For a very brief moment, irritation and arousal and stinging thirst twist in Tim's head. He could slide to his knees and get his teeth in the thigh moving too fluidly in those f*cking athleisure pants, and he's not sure whether he'd break skin or not. Numb venom tingles at the back of his throat.

"Hi, Dick," Tim grinds out, hoping he doesn't sound like he's gritting his teeth so hard it threatens to crack the ceramic fakes. "I'm not addicted to anything, thanks."

"Good to hear," Dick says, and sheds his jacket. He leaves it on the lone kitchen chair in a crumpled ball, leaves the can of vodka soda on the counter, and steals an apple from the bowl on the counter Tim keeps full these days. Raw fruit doesn't upset his stomach and he isn't ready to try to test starvation as a weakness, not yet.

Tim follows, scooping up an anemic orange for something to do with his hands.

Dick occupies his couch like an invading army, arms and legs and smile pushing Tim to the outside edge and then hauling him in with an arm around the waist Tim can't bring himself to shake off. It would be easy for Dick to make Tim feel small, like everyone does, but something about how Dick occupies him is different. He winds himself around Tim's body like climbing ivy, hooks a chin over Tim's shoulder to squabble over Netflix, one leg tucked up behind Tim's back and the other knee against his so Tim's settled in the V of his thighs.

They watch two episodes of a cake decorating show Tim hates with a visceral antipathy, and an episode of some cartoon with a horse Tim is just apathetic to.

It is remarkably hard to concentrate when Dick's breath keeps just brushing the shell of his ear. It's warm in the shelter of Dick's body, gloriously warm, a soft pink kind of warmth that couples with the overstimulation of Dick's ribs moving against his arm to leave Tim buzzing. He peels the orange to cope.

The smell of orange oil cuts through the smell of Dick, his skin, his aftershave. When Tim's done picking away every fleck of pith he can, leaving a litter on the carpet he'll have to vacuum later, he's left with a perfect orange.

He takes it apart and leaves a segment on Dick's knee. Dick eats it without saying anything. Tim leaves another one.

This goes on for another episode of the stupid horse cartoon, until the orange is gone. Dick yawns as the credits roll, stretches. His whole body is touching Tim's, it feels like. His smile lights up the corner of Tim's vision, an absolute whiteout.

"I should head out before it gets too late," he says.

Stay, Tim could say.

Dick would, it's not even a question. Jason had joked once, dark and ugly, that Dick would move into their underwear drawer if they let him. Tim feels an aching, highly unpleasant sympathy and thinking about it is very hard to do for longer than a few seconds at a stretch.

So. So he doesn't think about it.

"I'll tell Roy to stop telling tales out of school," Dick adds with another of those grins that blind. Tim trails after it to the kitchen to ditch the peels he'd picked out of the carpet and the core of Dick's apple, and then to the door while Dick toes into his Keds.

He looks down at them instead of up at Dick, an off-white designed to show off the worst of the road dust. The smell of his deodorant lingers around Tim's shoulders, a trace of apple juice, orange oil still bright and sharp in the air.

"See you!" Dick says, turns to wave and leaps backwards down the steps in one motion. Tim's a little surprised he doesn't turn a handspring, that's how bright his smile is. He moves through that rare Gotham sunshine, and Tim's eyes sting with the brightness of it but he forces himself not to blink.

He waves back, and closes the door. Locks it. Lays his forehead against the cool wood.

He can't remember if he said a single word as Dick extracted himself from Tim's echoey house.

Orange oil tickles the backs of his sinuses.

He goes back to the kitchen because beating himself unconscious against the door seems counterproductive, and stares down at the jacket still balled on his silly kitchen chair. It's trailing a sleeve on the floor, a warm, dark brown that gleams with the care someone took with it.

It really does look like it'd be at home on the floor of one of Hood's safehouses.

He touches it. A fold of leather, the collar. It slides through his fingers. It's heavy leather, something to wear on a bike, maybe. Maybe Dick wore it on the ride up from 'Haven. It drops back to the chair.

The smell rises through the tang of orange oil, a siren song, a beacon.

He folds to his knees beside the chair.

He buries his face in the folds of the jacket, the butter-soft leather threading through his fingers, the lining torn just a little at the armpits. It can't still be warm from Dick's body but it feels like it is, it feels like he can chase the ghost of it if he just tries.

It smells of Dick. His deodorant, the same box store brand as ever, faux cedar tickling Tim's nose. Laundry soap, fabric softener. Not the brand Tim's automatic delivery services send him, nor the organic low-environmental-impact brands Alfred favors. Distinct, telling, Tim hauls it greedily into his lungs and pretends to himself he isn't shaking.

He's so thirsty.

He's also half-hard, thick and hot and throbbing with a low, angry arousal.

Dick smells so clean. So soft and sweet and soapy, even his sweat. He smells like a summer day, a breezy boardwalk that's got no place in Gotham. The trace of cigarette smell deep in the lining isn't his. It can't be. Tim is imagining it.

Tim presses the heel of his hand to himself, pressure flirting with punishment, a pleasure that hurts. He bites down on his other hand and his fangs scrape across his skin.

If he had gone to his knees as he'd wanted to, in that stupid moment in his own kitchen, Dick would have told him no. And Tim would listen. But if Dick didn't say no…

Two fingers is barely enough so he fits in three, choking on them, on the salt taste of his own skin and the way Dick's smell still clings to his skin. He can taste it, a ghost of Dick's skin against his tongue.

He would nose into that crease of Dick's hip, the soft skin, the siren smell of blood so close to the surface. Push him back onto the island counter and dig his fingers into soft muscle, bend his legs up to press to Dick's chest. He's seen Dick do it before, the boneless stretches, that maddening flexibility. To have Dick hold himself open so Tim can eat his fill of skin and sweat and blood—

The sound that wrenches from him is animal, sharp, hungry, and he blinks himself back to awareness on the kitchen tile. His cheek rests against the jacket, bunched up in a tangle on the seat of the chair. He's still hard.

He kicks his pants free, numb. Gathers them, his underwear, the kitchen towels, strips off his shirt and adds it to the pile. Something is ringing in his ears. He dumps the bundle of clothing into the washer, pours in detergent until the smell goes away and stumbles back to the kitchen. Stares at the jacket.

Belatedly he realizes he's naked. His erection is gone now. He stares at the jacket some more and fights the urge to laugh. If he starts laughing, he won't be able to stop whatever that laughter yanks out after it. There's pressure behind his eyes he won't think about.

He reaches out to touch the soft leather, and yanks his hand back, and leaves the jacket there to go start the laundry and climb into the shower.

Baby texted him back. He's obviously too thirsty. He'll scrub himself clean and then head over.

==

"Bagged blood works," he says, shrugging. Baby hums around the mouth of her bong, half-lidded gaze tracking over Tim as she inhales. "It helps. It just isn't satisfying."

"Like plain oatmeal," Baby says vaguely, smoke leaking from her mouth in a thin silver stream, and when Tim frowns at her she just shrugs. "You know. Oats. Mushy oats."

"I know oatmeal," he grumbles.

She pets his shoulder.

"Wasn't sure," she says, and slumps down. It takes her a second to dig the remote out of the pile of blankets, but she lets Tim ease a little closer and tuck his toes under her thigh. "What with you being rich and you know. A Drake-Wayne. You probably have some f*cked up kind of oatmeal."

Tim experiences once again that awful surge of vertigo, sitting in a dirty hoodie and leggings watching Baby take another bong rip and knowing she knows his names, nearly all of them. He digs his fingers into the seam of the futon until it passes, until the cold sweat has faded. Baby doesn't notice, or does and doesn't call him out. She just turns the TV on and hands him the remote and pokes him until he opens Netflix.

"I'm not actually a Wayne, legally," he says feebly, and she cuts a look over at him that could absolutely kill.

He resolves privately not to tell her about steel-cut oats.

An hour of some mindless home improvement show later, she sits bolt upright. He nearly falls off the couch, and doesn't. He might be working on a contact high, or else he's just thirsty and sleepy.

"Want to watch me do my shot?" she asks. He stares at her. Her eyes are pink and glassy. She's so gorgeous.

"Sure," he says, dazed.

She sets up with the same unconscious ease and professionalism of Bruce stripping and reassembling a grapple gun, alcohol wipe and syringe, both uptake and injection needle, the little glass vial with its white label. She doesn't stop him when he reaches out to take the bottle, tilting it this way and that. The estradiol is more viscous than he would have expected.

She's gotten the uptake needle onto the syringe when the knock comes at the door.

Both of them flinch at it, the heavy authoritative noise. They look at each other for a long moment in the wake of it, her eyes still red and glassy, both of them blank with confusion.

The knock comes again, harder.

"Who," Baby begins, and gets to her feet. She answers the door before Tim can think to cover the table, and—

And. Well, Tim's never been particularly lucky.

Jason fills the doorway. His helmet gleams in the warm yellow light spilling out into the dim hallway, lurid and too real. His shoulders seem to brush the edges of the doorframe and as Baby takes a step back he takes a step forward, and he has to duck his head to get inside.

Tim stares at him blankly. His ears are ringing with soundless surprise.

He knows the moment Jason registers just who's sitting in Baby's living room. The stillness that comes over him. Jason stares back at him. Perhaps someone who didn't know him wouldn't read the shock in his posture, but Tim does know him. Tim knows him so well.

Jason hadn't expected him to be here.

"Hood?" Baby asks, the blurry tone of her voice amplified by the lilt of confusion, and Jason's helmet swings towards her and then back towards Tim. He takes a step forward, and then another, until he's in the living room staring down at Tim. Tim stares back. His mouth is hanging open stupidly.

What are you doing here, he wants to ask, but he doesn't have the chance.

Jason's helmet tips down and Tim follows that invisible gaze, and realizes what Jason's looking at in the same moment Jason's hand darts out and snatches up Baby's needles. What Jason thinks he's looking at.

"What," hisses the voice modulator, and then Jason's ripping the helmet off his head and his teeth are showing in a feral display. His eyes are narrow and green and furious. "What the f*ck is this."

Something is seized up in Tim's throat. Some dying thing, hard and spiky and hurtful. He should say something, even wants to say something, but nothing comes. He stares up at Jay with his mouth still open. Jason brandishes the handful of syringes in his face.

The syringes are a plastic bouquet, gathered haphazardly in Jason's big fist. The future unfolds behind Tim's eyes, a flash of prophecy that sends a spike of hurt through the back of his skull. Translucent plastic going milky with stress and then cracking. A handful of plastic shards in Jason's hand, scattered on Baby's floor. The yelling, the violence, the little vial with its white label smashed underfoot in the melee.

Baby is back in the living room but she doesn't say a word. She stares at Hood. Her boss. Wide-eyed and shocked and confused. She—she doesn't know what to do. Tim doesn't know the exact circ*mstances, but he's not an idiot, he knows how trauma works. A large man is yelling. Tim knows Jason would probably rather take an Olympic dive into the Lazarus Pit a second time than hurt one of his girls, but Baby doesn't know…

What surges up in him is poisonous and sour and miserable. Despair, frustration, and a rotting touch of grief.

He throws himself to his feet with unsteady grace.

"Give that back to her," he hisses, and the room is abruptly still.

Without his stupid helmet, Tim can see it all play across Jason's face. The shock, melting into disbelief, the welling confusion, the rage. He can smell it, the hot salt of Jason in his mouth turning sharp and chemical. Jason smiles at him, and he doesn't need to wear fangs for it to be a threat.

"Look at you, Replacement," he croons. "Didn't take you for the f*cking type."

"It's. Ss'not—" Tim says, and the words stick, and he snarls. His heart is lurching. His gums are throbbing. His head hurts and his eyes sting and he wants with cold stupidity for Dick to be here. He wants Alfred. He wants to sleep. His throat is dry and his mouth is gummy with old saliva and his tongue is fat with dehydration. "Sss. Sstupid. It'ss not. Give it back to herrr."

The words come out wrong between his teeth.

Jason's hand tightens around the bouquet of needles. Scarred knuckles, big palms, long fingers with short blunt nails. His eyes are narrowing, slits of cold seafoam green through black lashes. His expression is impossible to parse. He smells like sweat, like hot skin, like sweet release and the tip of Tim's tongue finds the tip of a fang. He's shaking, he can feel it.

Baby shoves between them, and her back is to Tim.

"Give me back my f*cking estrogen, asshole," she snarls, and Tim stumbles and loses his footing on the coffee table. When had he stepped onto the coffee table?

He hits the couch, a glancing blow with his hip, and tumbles gracelessly to his knees.

He looks up at Baby's back. Straight and fearless, feet planted in soft, fuzzy socks. She's nearly as tall as Jason is, and the back of her neck is white and vulnerable and Tim closes his eyes.

There is a period of silence.

"Oh," says Jason.

If he weren't in so much pain, if he weren't so cold, if the thirst weren't an all-encompassing pressure against the inside of his skin, Tim thinks he'd be reaching for his phone to take a picture right now. In the annals of embarrassing f*ckups, it seems to have dawned on Jason that he'd pulled a hall-of-famer.

Slumping down to the ground, he lets himself smile.

Down here in the old carpet, he can smell Jason less strongly. Leather jacket, plastic-y kevlar, blunt gunpowder. A little sweat, a little something musky and animal that makes something in Tim throb. He buries his nose in the carpet until all he smells are dust mites.

Jason goes away pretty quickly, after that. Tim isn't paying attention to anything but keeping himself from getting up. When Baby finally comes back and touches his shoulder, he jumps.

"He's outta here," she says, and he turns his head painfully. The carpet shag has definitely imprinted on his chin, but she blessedly doesn't say anything.

Jason really is gone, and all of Baby's syringes are back on the table undamaged. It looks like at least Tim hadn't broken anything. There are bootprints in the carpet. There's almost nothing else to say Jason was ever there at all.

Baby replaces the uptake needle with one Jason hadn't handled with his questionable gloves and does her shot. It's quick, efficient, a wince when the needle slides into her skin and then… done. Only the tiniest trace of the smell of blood.

Tim swallows, a clicking dry gulp of nothing.

"Thirsty?" Baby says with a watery grin.

Tim nods. He's getting better at keeping his eyes off the floor when he hears that question.

He sits up and leans against the couch, and snorts despite everything when she drops onto it with a sigh. She lays down while he feeds now, after the first time she'd tried to stand up too quickly afterwards and nearly passed out.

"I wonder what the estrogen is doing to you?" she muses, a hand dropping into Tim's hair. He cranes back to let her really get her nails into it, and accepts the wrist that presses to his mouth. Drops his teeth, and tries to be as gentle as he can.

The teeth slide in too easily, too sharp.

He shakes, tries not to aspirate the first mouthful of blood, tries to focus on keeping her wrist as steady as possible to his mouth, and not on her hand in his hair. Tries to touch as little as possible, feeling her heart thunder under his tongue.

When the burn fades enough he can almost ignore it, he licks once and slumps away.

She's sunshine, that's what it feels like. She's pennies and melting sherbet, a bone-deep stretch after a good fight, a cold shower on a summer afternoon. Pennies and salt in his mouth.

He licks his lips, closing his eyes and rocking his cheekbone against the edge of the couch.

"You could take more," she says.

This time when he rocks his head back and forth it's a shake of his head. He can feel his heart thrumming, an anxious rhythm as whatever's gone wrong in him soaks up Baby's hemoglobin like a thirsty plant. His teeth don't ache for once, and he finds himself rubbing at them with a knuckle.

They feel… fragile, his new teeth. Thin needles of bone, hollow and light. He could break them by biting anything harder than skin. All it would take is a punch to the mouth and he'd be… he doesn't know, defanged? He doesn't know if his teeth grow back. He'll probably find out at some point.

"It's enough," he says, and lets himself droop over to lay on the floor. His head is spinning like it always does after he feeds. He's never really tried any of the fun drugs, getting dosed on Fear or some awful Joker sh*t doesn't count, but he thinks it might feel like this. Like he's floating above the floor, halfway beyond himself.

He's still thirsty, but his veins are quiet under his skin.

"You know him."

Tim shrugs. The sound of him moving against the rough grain of the carpet is wonderfully strange. He pets it, running his fingers through old nylon shag.

"You're into him, though."

He closes his eyes. Baby's husky voice follows him into the darkness there, a companionable curse.

"No," he says, and shakes his head at the disbelieving sound Baby makes. "I knew him a long time ago. He didn't know me, but I… it was a crush. Kid stuff. It's not important anymore. Family got involved."

Being into him doesn't feel remotely adequate, he doesn't add, because he's sure he doesn't have to. It feels like half the known universe got involved in the messy history between Red Hood and the third Robin and he… hadn't been subtle. He'd never been good at hiding what his predecessors meant to him.

Baby can smell the lie off him, anyway. As sure as he can hear her heart beating in her chest. It's a survival skill she'll have learned far too well.

The wanting is irrelevant, anyway.

"Whatever, Birdie," she says, and her hand drops to scrape through his hair. It feels nice. "You're all f*cked up over him."

"Price of admission to the family," he says, and she laughs at him.

==

"Croc's in the sewers again."

Long practice keeps Tim from flinching as Oracle's voice cuts up through the rattle of his breathing and the pounding of his heart.

He skids to a stop, drops into a crouch and pants and watches Sionis's latest batch of down-and-outs disappear around the corner. A mugging isn't exactly nothing, but it doesn't rate when compared to the disappearances about to pop up all along the waterfront if someone doesn't corral Croc.

"sh*t," he sighs and takes a moment to rub his temples. "What, did Arkham let him out on bad behavior?"

"Red," Oracle chides, though her amusem*nt bleeds through the hiss of her vocoder.

"Right, right," he says and tips his head back. The night is almost clear—ragged banners of clouds fleeing across the night sky, a dusting of the brightest stars struggling through the light pollution. The moon is full, a bright coin overhead. There's a breeze off the river smelling of effluent and green things.

Bruce is in San Francisco for something Titans-related Tim had refused to get involved in with some flimsy pretext. Batgirl and Orphan are handling a smuggling operation on the waterfront that needs very tricky surveillance, and Signal is studying for his finals.

Robin is… Tim is not going to call Damian unless it's the last possible f*cking choice, honestly. The attempts on his life have stopped but they still happened.

Also, Tim doesn't like the idea of Damian in the same square mile as Croc. He's been unwilling witness to what a knife can do against Croc's hide, namely: f*ck all. Damian is very, very, very good with his sword. Tim's seen him in action. It is still a sword.

Tim isn't going to call him if he doesn't have to.

"Nightwing? Or Hood?" he asks, because he's learned better than going toe to toe with Croc on his own. He only needs his ribs surgically removed from his lungs once.

"N is in town," Oracle says and Tim raises his eyebrows in surprise. Dick's been spending more and more time back in Gotham, it's true, but it's still a little new. "With Hood, actually. Not answering their comms."

No panic in that statement, which means either she can see them right now or she knows what they're doing.

"Interesting." It is interesting. Dick doesn't spend much time on patrol with Jason. "I can swing around and grab them, where are they?"

"Follow the gunshots," and the buzzing hum of Oracle in his ear is gone.

Tim follows the gunshots.

Nightwing is in town, and it turns out Red Hood is taking exception.

Tim lands by a gargoyle and tucks himself into its shadow, molds himself to it like he's ten again. Watching his heroes fly, clutching his camera in sweaty fists, forgetting to take the cap off the lens in his excitement.

Gotham never changes. Gotham is black stone and grey concrete and orange sodium street lights, the stink of stagnant water, the meaty thump of flesh against dirt. Tim is Bristol-born but he dug his way into Gotham with his fingernails, just for a chance to reach out and touch. Just to catch a glimpse of his heroes dancing.

Jason and Dick are dancing, alright.

Jason fights like an avalanche.

He fights with the kind of inevitability that gravity envies, a view from one point to the next and nothing considered but the fastest route to get there. He throws a punch Dick twists away from, spine liquid, and Tim knows the impact of those knuckles with perfect, animal intimacy. He feels them against his palm, the pit of his stomach, his mouth.

Jason throws another punch and Dick's palm touches the inside of his wrist, dips under the swing of Jason's elbow, for a moment his body a perfect echo of Jason's as his hand reaches towards Jason's gun. They move as one, and then Dick wrenches the gun from Jason's hand.

Jason's kick lands against his hip and he topples, corrects in midair, a one-handed handspring to land in a crouch.

He's panting. They both are.

"You had no f*cking right," Dick hisses, barely loud enough to carry. His back is to Tim's hiding spot. The orange streetlight glides down the curve of his spine, the hinges of his hips, the outside edges of his feet. He's put the gun down to one side, the bullets to the other. His hands hover over the surface of the roof, his stance loose and ready.

From across the street Tim can make out only the stink of sweat and latex, leather and gunpowder. Blood. Someone is bleeding. Tim drags each breath over his tongue.

Jason laughs. The buzz of his distorter is all wrong, rattling, flashes of warm humanity breaking through.

"You jealous, bluebird?" he demands. Hands empty and out to either side, palms forward, head twisting one way and then the other. Vertebrae crack. "You wish you had the f*cking balls—"

Dick howls with rage and Tim feels it in the back of his throat. It's high and jagged, and Dick is lunging for Jason across the roof—twisting jump, handspring. Both feet to Jason's chest, kicking off into a backflip.

A shout. The helmet crunches against cement. Jason rolls once. Dick lands, both feet and a hand, three points of perfect contact. A showman to his core.

Jason grunts, heaves himself up, elbows to knees to his feet faster than his bulk should allow.

"You wish you had the guts," Jason hisses, and the distorter is really giving out, it's just a rattling hum over the edge of his voice. The venom is all Jason, all organic, one hundred percent pressurized rage. "Wanna hear all the dirty details? Wanna know how I did it?"

Dick hisses something Tim can't hear and lunges again.

Jason pistol-whips him.

Not as hard as he can. Tim knows Jason's full strength, knows that if he wanted to Jason might be able to crack Dick's skull. Instead Dick's head snaps sideways and he staggers. Falls back a step, and then another. Jason doesn't point the gun at him. It's pointed at the ground, finger outside the trigger guard.

Tim hadn't seen him draw it.

Dick falls into a crouch, shakes his head again. There's no deeper scent of blood on the breeze. Just a bruise, then. Jason hadn't hit him hard enough to break any bones.

"Does he know?" Dick demands.

No answer from Jason. His back is stiff. At this angle Tim can see only the streetlight reflecting from the curve of Jason's helmet, the tight bunch of his shoulders.

"You think he's going to forgive you?" Dick says, and Jason throws himself into a graceless rugby tackle.

It catches Dick off-guard, Tim can see it, reads it in the way Dick falls like a sack of dirt under Jason's weight. Scattered down across the roof, Jason sprawled on top of him.

Tim is up and moving before he can really think about it, running, feet light on the edge of the roof and then firing his grapple. He swings, out of sight for a moment, and hits the edge of their roof in a silent roll.

"You're getting sloppy."

He comes up and Dick is cradling Jason's head in his hands. The stupid blue finger stripes, splayed across the scratched-up surface of the helmet. They're bent together, forehead to helmet, Jason's hands by Dick's shoulders braced on the roof, and Dick's breath has fogged a part of the smooth red.

They're both bleeding. Saline and hemoglobin, rich and metallic.

"You shouldn't have—"

Tim stands, and both of them flinch, synchronous in looking up at him.

He shouldn't be here.

That knowledge comes to him with the rush of a revelation. It's in the way Jason's knees bracket Dick's narrow hips, the breath evaporating from Jason's helmet. Jason's breathing is a ratcheting whine of electronic interference and Dick is a sensuous curve of darkness against grey cement. The blue of his costume and the red bruise blooming on his jaw draw Tim's gaze too easily.

Jason sits up, sits back on Dick's thighs. Tim feels his gaze without having to see it at all. Dick's hands fall to Jason's knees and his brow knits, and Tim can't see his eyes either. The whiteout lenses are perfectly blank.

There's a salt-thick musk smell to the air that thrills something in the back of Tim's head, and he ignores it.

"Red Robin," Dick says. Jason must have gotten him in the mouth at some point, a glancing blow that mashed his lips against his teeth. The insides of his lips are raw, blood and saliva all pink and shiny.

Why were you fighting, he wants to ask, but he already knows that he'll never get any kind of answer. What's wrong? Why are you angry?

Childish questions.

"Hood," he says instead. His voice is flat, nearly perfectly so. "Nightwing. Sorry to interrupt. Croc's in the sewers again."

He pretty much only remembers it as he's saying it, is the thing.

"f*ck," Dick says, and then, "f*ck." He slithers out from under Jason without seeming to touch the ground, coiled together and then springing up to his full height. Taking the barrel of Jason's pistol to the face hasn't slowed him down at all.

Jason stays where he is, crouched low. His helmet swings from Dick to Tim and back again.

"What's the situation?" he asks. The distorter has given up the ghost entirely. His voice is a little muffled but otherwise just himself.

"B is on the west coast and everyone else is busy," Tim says shortly. Dick isn't looking at him, busy brushing down his suit and tugging his hair back out of his eyes. He can't tell where Jason is looking, not accurately, but he doesn't think he's trying to meet Tim's eyes either. "I need at least someone as backup if I'm going in."

"I'll go," Dick and Jason say in such synchronicity that Tim has to laugh, at that and at the betrayed cast to the way they look at each other.

Despite the tension, the blood staining the air he drags in, the sickness pulled too tight in the pit of his stomach, it's a little funny.

"No reason we can't all go," he offers, and they turn to look at him now. He ignores the weight of their eyes on him. "I mean, if your filters aren't f*cked, Hood. I wouldn't want to go into the sewers without them if I could help it."

Jason stands, rolling his shoulders. The fight doesn't show on him, no evidence of the damage Dick must have done in the power of his shoulders. He practically blocks out the moon when he walks to Tim's side. Dick flanks Tim from the other side and he gives Jason a wide berth, but…

Well. They aren't attacking each other anymore.

"I'm fine," Jason says. "Let's go."

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

So Croc breaks one of the fiddly little bones in Tim's foot.

It isn't bad enough to warrant a cast, so thank f*cking God he doesn't have to hobble around for weeks pretending to need it. And he should be fine to go as soon as he's visited Baby again. He elevates his foot in the meanwhile, stuffed into a bright blue compression sock, and stares down a bottle of nail polish.

It's red, and might be Selina Kyle's. He'd found it in the bottom drawer of the bathroom off of the guest bedroom he'd commandeered to shower in instead of using the bedroom that still has all of his teenaged-self's things. Bruce is out. Dick is out. Jason never comes in. Damian is avoiding him. Alfred is baking.

Tim is bored, and losing a staring contest with a bottle of red nail polish.

This red is not his color. Tim has a yellow undertone to his already pale skin that would make him look washed out against that full-throated roar of a scarlet. If he made his way back to the Nest, his disguise closet has a full spectrum of polishes that suit Tim's skin-tone. Caroline Hill wears pink polish sometimes, a sensible shade that hints at a playful side while suggesting girlish innocence.

There is nothing innocent about this red. There's nothing innocent about Selina Kyle. Tim picks up the bottle of polish and spins it between his fingers. The polish is old enough to have separated. Selina Kyle hasn't visited for some time.

There's nothing innocent about him, either.

"Ooo, slumber party?"

Dick vaults over the back of the couch.

Tim manages not to flinch, or jerk to hide the polish. He tracks the twist of Dick's body carving through the air instead. The mechanism of shoulders and elbows, knees coiled to his chest, the perfect pivot of his wrists. Dick lands perfectly, doesn't jostle Tim at all.

Of course.

He grins at Tim. It's a weightless smile, a bone-white smile. He smells of soap and bright Bristol air, and a hint of golfing green and lemonade. He must have changed since. The shirt he's wearing has holes at the neck and hem, the material worn thin enough to drape like gossamer. Utterly inappropriate for a Saturday afternoon spent playing Bruce's reluctant but good-natured first son.

The shorts he's wearing are very short. A thigh touches Tim's elbow, sun-kissed in a way that makes Tim look even paler than he already is. It's warm, Dick always radiates warmth, and an afternoon in the sun has him hot enough for Tim's fingertips to ache. He wants to dig them into Dick's thigh, and digs them into his own instead.

Tim considers asking how golfing went, and finds he doesn't care enough. Whatever Richie Wayne was getting up to, Tim is bored just thinking about it. Dick's back, and he's smiling, and there's just a hint of clean sweat winding its way through his scent.

He's not going to think about it. It already tugs at the roof of his mouth in a way that promises to hurt soon.

"Sure," says Tim, and spins the polish between his fingers again. It's an opaque shade that claims to dry to a wet finish. Tim understands intellectually, but isn't sure he likes the phrasing. He spins the bottle again. "Sleepover, Richard. Do my nails and I'll let you braid my hair."

Dick laughs, a little chuff chuff of noise, and gets up.

"Lemme grab a few better shades," he says, and disappears.

He comes back with a basket full of jewel tones and a sixer of Zesti under an arm. He pops one for Tim and starts sorting the bottles. They're all dark rubies, emeralds, a deep royal blue that shimmers subtly in the light.

He holds that one up to Tim's arm, tilting it this way and that in the light, and huffs to himself in approval. When he takes Tim's hand it's without asking, rubbing at his nails with the hem of his t-shirt for some bizarre reason and then uncapping the polish. It's only then that he looks up at Tim through his lashes.

"Good?" he asks.

He meets Tim's gaze. He's smiling.

They must be the only people in this entire wing of the Manor.

A croon fights its way to his lips. A soft little chirp of sound. A bubble of shivery… something. He can feel it in his lungs, his vocal cords, the press of the tip of his tongue to the back of his teeth. It isn't a human sound to make.

You can see it, Tim finds himself thinking with fervor, with feverish madness. You can see it in me, you must be able to see it.

"Good," he croaks aloud, swallowing back that croon.

If Dick sees it, whatever it was that Tim can't articulate even to himself, he says nothing about it. He just takes the polish and positions Tim's hand just so, and begins.

The polish is cold going on, a shock.

Dick bends himself to painting Tim's nails with all the focus Tim usually sees in him when approaching the parallel bars, a line folding between his brows. When Tim shifts his weight Dick actually hisses at him, and Tim freezes more out of surprise than anything.

"Blow on them and don't touch anything," Dick says when he's finally finished with Tim's pinky finger. "And gimme your other hand."

Tim does as he's told, lifting his freshly painted nails into the air and twisting awkwardly to offer his unpainted hand to Dick. It twinges something in his foot, which he ignores. It won't matter for long.

Dick turns himself to the second hand with just as much fervor, and this time his tongue is between his teeth. Tim looks at it, and then turns his gaze down at Dick's hands cradling his. Dick's hands are bigger, though not by much. Tim's fingers are slimmer, his knuckles more pronounced. They both have shiny little scars on their knuckles.

"I didn't know you were so good at this," Tim murmurs and Dick glances at him, a sidelong grin nearly blinding in its sly warmth.

"Stopped while I was doing my time as a cop and never picked it back up again," he says easily, taking Tim's index finger this time. Tim marvels at how even the color is when Dick does it. "Plus, the night job is hell on the nails even with gloves."

Tim knows. His nails are a wreck at the best of times; Stephanie had winced at his nailbeds more than once. When they aren't filed down or broken, they're ragged and bitten. His hands are the one part of him he hasn't quite figured out how to bring in line.

They don't look so bad now, as he lifts the hand Dick just finished. The saturated midnight blue plays well with his complexion, even he can see that. For a moment he just looks at it. It shouldn't change so much about his hand, his nails being a different color.

It looks entirely new. His fingers are long, and look pleasingly slender, and he hasn't broken them badly or often enough for them to deform. He's seen Jason's hands, the notched scarring and crooked bones. Jason's hands are… far from hideous.

Tim twists his wrist this way and that. His nails catch the light, turn the gesture into something elegant. He likes how his hands look with blue nails.

"I could try to do yours," he says and looks up at Dick.

Dick is watching him with an inscrutable expression. The lighting of the room contrives to leave his eyes in shadow and the set of his mouth is unfamiliar to Tim.

A moment later Dick is smiling, broad and jubilant, and that unknown expression is gone.

"I'd like that, Red," he says, and caps the polish with a flourish. "What do you think, should I go for Nightwing blue, or is that too tacky?"

==

Patrolling is about the only thing that still feels the same.

At night, he doesn't have to pretend he isn't squinting against every passing headlight. In the dark, alone, he can draw careful mouthfuls of air and sort out the stink of Gotham City in his own time. There's so much to it—food and mold and blood and dirty, teeming life. He can crouch on a gargoyle like an awful parody and…

It's nice. That's all. It's nice.

Somewhere a few streets away, someone shouts angrily.

He drops among the brawl like a bolt from God, staff in hand, whipping someone across the back of the knee. There's ten, maybe twelve of them in this dirty back-alley parking lot. They turn on him at once, all of them. He welcomes them with bared teeth, dropped fangs, who would believe them?

There's a sharp chemical scent in the air, he huffs a faceful of it when one of them tries to punch him. Tim drops him with a heel to the jaw.

co*ke. Typical.

The fight doesn't last long enough.

He crouches in a field of dropped bodies, groaning and sobbing. The stink of co*ke clogs up the back of his throat, unpleasantly numb. It blunts the smell of the blood on his fingers. He can't stop staring at it, the thick wetness cold through his glove, distinguishable only by the shine of a streetlight.

"Playing rough tonight?"

Tim snaps his mouth shut. His lips had been parted only a little bit. He'd been trying to… he'd been trying to convince himself to wipe the hand on one of their shirts

"What do you want?" he demands and looks up to Red Hood, lounging back against the wall from the landing of the fire escape above. He looks relaxed, arms crossed over his chest. His jacket strains at the shoulders. His helmet is sealed properly this time, his throat hidden behind panels of armor and what looks very like spandex.

He can smell leather and old cigarettes from here. Despite himself, he crouches and leaps to catch the bottom of the fire escape and hauls himself up.

Red Hood ambles to the stairs and heads up. Tim follows him. Oracle will call in the co*ke deal, or she won't. Tim…

It's probably a good thing Jason showed up. Tim wishes he hadn't.

"What'd they do to deserve all that?" Jason asks idly. Tim glances down at the little pile of criminal nightlife he'd left behind. From this vantage point the smell of blood is almost gone. None of them have tried to get up yet. Some of them haven't even come to. He may have played a little rough.

They're going to survive.

"co*ke deal," he says, and slides around Jason up onto the roof with a good five feet between them. Even so, the smell of leather follows him. Generic antiperspirant. A hint of cigarettes.

f*ck, he wishes Baby hadn't said anything. He licks his lips and catches the taste of salt.

"You're acting different."

The roof is all Gotham all over, big fake stone parapets and sh*tty tar paper and cigarette butts from a million insomniac citizens. Tim spends a moment just breathing. Looking up at the moon forcing its way through the Gotham cloud cover, a blank little disc. Then he shrugs.

"I've gotten taller," he says, and turns a grin with all of his teeth except two onto Jason. "I'm sure that's it."

With the helmet he can't see Jason's face, but he's never had to. He's known Jason's body since before he even knew his own. He can read the disbelieving raised eyebrows from the way Jason's boots shift on tar paper.

"No way in hell you're any taller, pipsqueak," Jason says, but he's distracted. He's staring at Tim, Tim can tell. The scrutiny itches under his skin. The smile stays pinned to his face out of long practice, but his gums are starting to ache.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," he snaps at last, and turns away. With his mouth closed, he can let the fangs descend a little.

"Not my specialty," Jason says, but he doesn't even sound like he's paying attention to his own snide remark. He's closer, too. Tim can track him by the faintest sound of boot treads on tar paper, by the hot intensification of salt and leather on his tongue. His presence behind Tim feels like a sword, like Tim's a particularly stupid vampiric Damocles.

"I'm fine," he says, feeling very tired of that particular phrase.

Jason doesn't even bother to respond to that.

"What happened while you were gone?" he asks.

Tim looks up at the moon and refuses to turn around. If he concentrates, he swears he can feel the heat Jason radiates against his spine.

"I don't think it's any of your business," he says. He knows his voice is perfectly even. He knows he sounds annoyed and disinterested. He's still occasionally Timothy Jackson Drake and if Timothy Jackson Drake has nothing else to sell, he can sell annoyed and disinterested. He could sell annoyed and disinterested to God, if he tried hard enough.

The sibilants stick in his teeth.

"Bzzt." The sound buzzes double-harsh with the Hood voice modifier. "Wrong answer, Red. Happened in my goddamn backyard, you think I don't know when a gang pulls off kidnapping a cape? That might fool B, but I'm not stupid. What happened?"

"Why do you care?" Tim demands, unable to help himself.

"And I repeat, my f*cking backyard."

Tim hauls in a breath, holds it until he can pretend the hot taste has faded from the back of his tongue, and lets it back out slowly.

It stopped hurting a long time ago, that Jason doesn't hate him because he's indifferent to Tim's entire existence. Tim made his peace with it. He doesn't need Robin to love him like he did at twelve years old. He just… doesn't like being reminded that Jason does not care. Like pressing on the place where a bone broke a long time ago, an experience Tim is intimately familiar with.

"Baby and I were captured by some… someone. Maybe it wasn't a gang," he says. "They threatened a lot, then they got careless, and then we got out. I don't know what you expect me to say."

"The truth would be nice."

His voice—

The helmet is off. Tim whirls, and that's a mistake because he can smell sweat and that Jason had split his lip at some point in the night and the pleasant musk of human. His gut tightens. Jason's hair is tangled and messy in his face and his helmet is tucked under an arm, and he's not doing anything much at all but looking. He's watching Tim with those sometimes blue eyes and Tim's hands are fists at his sides.

"I can help you," he says, when Tim doesn't answer.

If he stepped forward, Jason would probably let him. Arrogant, careless Jason. He'd let Tim too close and wouldn't even realize he was in any kind of danger, with Tim's staff tucked so nicely away, with how obviously f*cked up Tim must look. With how Tim is supposed to be, a baby Bat.

Tim might be able to tuck his mouth against Jason's throat. He could lick the salt from under his jaw. He could press himself to the bulk of Jason, fold himself into that heat, that animal smell. He could bite, and Jason wouldn't stop him in time. He can practically taste it and his mouth floods.

He backs up a step, feet scraping painfully over damp tar paper.

"You can't help me," he says thickly, which is about the worst thing he could have said. He realizes it the moment the words leave his mouth. Jason's face tightens, but not with anger.

He's a lot of things, Jason Todd, and there's just as many things he isn't. He isn't stupid, and he is Batman's son. As much as everyone but Tim seems to want to forget sometimes, that can't be taken back. He was never going to miss a slip as obvious as that.

"You can trust me," Jason says. Tim could almost mouth the words along with him, that's how easy it is to see his own f*ck up. "Seriously. Tim."

"Stop," Tim says.

"Listen," Jason says, and he isn't listening. He's looking at Tim and he's really not seeing Tim at all. His face is softer. His voice is quieter. Whoever he's seeing, they need a Jason that Tim doesn't know and never did. "I can help. I promise, there's nothing—"

"Stop," Tim says, and nausea surges in the pit of his stomach. "Stop, Hood, I f*cking mean it."

Jason blinks. Jason comes back. Tim's Jason, eyebrows drawn together, green spilling through his lashes. There's the irritation, the stiffened shoulders, the curl to his lips. Jason's opening his mouth and Tim is so, so thirsty.

If he licked into that mouth maybe it would be enough, maybe he could stop at that, maybe it would all finally stop.

Tim gets himself gone again before Jason can sort out what he wants to say. Tim doesn't really care what it would be.

The only person that can help him anymore is himself.

==

The dress is long, modestly cut, and has a very pretty pattern of pastel flowers on a white background.

Tim finds himself smoothing down the edge of the skirt where it had torn the last time he'd needed to wear Caroline Hill. He'd intended to mend it, or at least take it to Alfred, but never got around to it. It's not too obvious, but he wouldn't wear it out as Caroline as it is. Caroline is put together, calm and reserved in a way that makes her headspace comforting.

It's tailored to fit him. He could put it on right now and even without the padded breast form he tends to use with it, it gives the illusion of soft curves. Advantages to the way neglect and then constant physical training shaped his body—androgyny is only a well-placed seam away. He's willowy, as Steph had told him once with a sneer of mock-jealousy.

He drops the dress to the floor of his disguise closet and backs out. He doesn't want to be Caroline right now. He wants…

What he wants is difficult to articulate.

Instead he goes to the guest bedroom closest to his own. The one with the most regular use, the one with the closet he stuffs with all the abandoned clothes his awful friends and worse family leave behind them when they visit.

There are jackets, blazers, a tattered vintage fur stole he doesn't examine too closely. A few sets of slacks in Dick and Duke's sizes. Sweaters, a few scarves, a truly hideous poncho in burnt orange and highlighter green. Dresses. Also, there are the dresses.

He touches them with a fingertip.

Rationalize it, he tells himself, and then forces himself to try—he can fit into the baggier of Cass's dresses and the tighter of Stephanie's. They both prefer colors that suit his skin tone well enough, and materials with breathability and comfort. He'll need to cover…

His palm is pressed to his sternum. He blinks, and drops his hand.

The dress he pulls out is a high-neck halter-top, and it probably belonged to Cass. It's a dark navy at the neck, fading at the bottom hem to something a shade darker than… ultramarine? Tim isn't Damian, he's no artist. It's pretty, whatever it is, and it doesn't make the bleached color of his hands look too much like spoiled milk.

So. So.

He holds it up to himself. It'll fit, at least in terms of width. The back plunges. The material is light cotton that whispers against his skin when he drags it through his fingers.

He yanks it over his head all at once, like ripping off a bandaid.

The halter top is a little too tight and catches on his ears, and the material is cold where it swishes around his thighs, and his breath catches when it settles on his chest. It feels heavier on him than it had in his hands, weighing oddly on his collarbones and chest. The back, open to the air, leaves his spine pricking with cold.

He's going to have to get some of the durable concealer for the scars the dress leaves exposed, at least the more inexplicable ones. He smooths his hands over his chest, the material bunching and warming against his skin. It covers the raw scars on his chest at least, easily.

He spins. The skirt flares out, the gradient of color more obvious as it flies up around his hips, and when it settles the line of his boxers bunches the fabric. He kicks them off, and smooths the material down over his hips. The material is thin enough for the heat of his hands to sear against the thin skin of the crease of hip and thigh.

He twirls again. The material swishes at the tops of his knees. He pushes himself up on his toes and glances at himself shyly in the mirror through his bangs.

And then his phone goes off, and he flinches, and drops back onto his heels with a stumble.

It's Dick. His photo ID is a picture he took himself, squashed in claustrophobically close to the camera, smile taking up half the available space. Tim looks at it for a second too long, and then puts the phone to his ear.

"Richard Grayson," he says, and Dick makes a wounded noise in his ear.

"What'd I do to get the full name, huh?" he asks, and the teasing warms his voice to something intimate. Tim finds himself smiling as he toes the closet door shut and drifts back in the direction of his disguise closet. The dress is nice but it isn't… complete.

"I'm sure you've done something," he murmurs, only half paying attention. Dick makes another sound, a huff of faux-annoyance. "What's up?"

"I miss you," Dick says.

He says it so carefree, so casually. Like it doesn't make Tim itch. It sounds obscene in a way Tim fights to define, and he wrinkles his nose.

"Mm," he says in answer, and nudges the door to his disguise closet back over. He ignores the dress on the floor to kick the shoe collection around, searching aimlessly until he finds a pair of black strappy sandals with an unexpected amount of heel that he doesn't remember buying, but are in his size. "Do you know why I'd have a pair of black heels? Lots of straps?"

There's silence for a moment, so he puts his phone on speaker and sits down to pull the heels on.

They still fit. Tim hasn't grown any in years, so of course they do. He looks down at his feet, the narrow point the heel forces them into. He keeps his legs shaved because the Red Robin suit is a bitch on body hair of any kind. The straps he tightens around his shins make his legs look thin, shapely.

"Mob boss's daughter, a year or so ago? You threw a drink on someone as a distraction, I think," Dick says at last. He sounds intrigued. "You dressing up for a case, Timmy?"

Tim pulls in air until he can't anymore, until his lungs hurt, and lets it out all at once.

"Not for a case," he says, and pushes himself to his feet. Standing in the heels isn't quite natural, after so long without the practice, but it's easier than turning cartwheels on the balance beam under Dick's supervision. He wobbles back and forth a few times in front of the mirror until his gait straightens out.

Dick hums. More intrigue.

"Not for a case," he repeats. "Night on the town, little birdy?"

Tim does not flinch at birdy. He starts looking through his coat collection instead. The dress doesn't really call for a fur coat, he decides. Too luxe, too ostentatious.

"Where B can catch me on-camera and give me a lecture on public personas?" he snorts, and pulls out a blazer. It's a bit big on him, meant for a shirt with padding to change his silhouette, but if he slips it on over the dress…

"So come out to 'Haven."

Tim looks at himself in the mirror.

His face is Tim. The rest of him is—

He swallows. His hand is tight around his phone, his knuckles going white, the edges of his phone case biting into his fingers.

"I'll take you out, baby," Dick says, all cheesy and gallant. Tim finds himself blinking rapidly. His grip around his phone hasn't eased and he can't figure out how to regain control of his hands. "I know a place that lets in under-twenty-ones."

"I am twenty-one," Tim says, shocked into relaxing his grip. It comes out with a huff of laughter.

"Oh, I know," Dick says. "Come over, Timmy, we can go out. I'm not going to tattle to B."

And Tim tongues the roof of his mouth. The hard lumps of his fangs, the aching muscles keeping them retracted. No, Dick won't tattle. Dick can keep secrets. He'll keep them for Tim.

Red lipstick, he thinks. Something shockingly bright, and smeared eyeliner. He looks like he's wearing his boyfriend's blazer, he looks like the kind of girl that has a boyfriend with a blazer.

He thinks Dick might have left a blazer in the guest closet.

"Sure."

==

"That's my blazer," Dick says.

His eyebrows are raised. His gaze is wandering down Tim's body in a way that makes something squirm in the pit of Tim's stomach, and he isn't sure if he likes it or not. It takes in the blazer hanging off Tim's shoulders, the hang of his skirt, the strappy shoes he'd put back on after getting out of the car since driving in them turned out to be annoying.

Tim rolls his eyes and pushes past him into Dick's apartment.

"Finders keepers," he throws over his shoulder, and tosses his bag on Dick's old, saggy couch. There's something playing quietly in the kitchen, something with violins and horns and a woman crooning in a language Tim doesn't speak. The apartment smells of pasta and tomato sauce from the jar, and Dick pauses in the doorway to the living room to lean against the frame and smile at Tim crookedly.

"Can I help you?" Tim asks waspishly when Dick doesn't say anything. Dick shrugs away from the door jamb and steps into the room to take Tim's blazer with exaggerated gallantry. Warm hands cup Tim's shoulders for a moment, electric against bare skin. Dick hangs the blazer over the back of the couch and falls back a step, folding his arms across his chest.

He's still smiling crookedly.

"You look good," he says when enough time has gone by for Tim's words to hang in the air. "You hungry?"

He doesn't blink as he says it. Tim tries to read into his words and finds no purchase.

He shakes his head. Dick gives him that easy smile, too sweet to distrust, and gestures with a kind of outdated, silly gallantry. One hand tucked behind him and the other extended, palm up, waiting.

His pulse is so close to the skin, in the wrist that position exposes.

For a moment, a long moment, Tim is frozen in place by the call of it. Sweet and desperately needed. There's a twinge in the pit of his stomach almost like pain, a twist, a tightening. The muscles of his inner thighs go tight and for a moment he presses his palms to his knees and wants.

"So polite," he manages, just a beat too late, and pries his hands from his knees to take Dick's hand. Dick doesn't mention it, just helps steady Tim as he stands and reaches back to pick the blazer back up.

He doesn't offer it to Tim right away. He looks at it, and then sideways at Tim, and his expression has gone still and unreadable.

"What?" Tim asks when the silence has started to prickle at him. He pretends he doesn't wobble when he steps forward, because he really does need more practice with the heels, and Dick breaks into a smile. It's a brilliant smile of course, only a little intense and strange, and he doesn't let Tim take the blazer from him. He sweeps it around Tim's shoulders instead, smoothing it down Tim's arms with gentle palms.

"You look really good," Dick tells him, still wearing that brilliant smile and that intensity it's hard for Tim to look at directly. He lets Dick touch instead, tugging the blazer to frame his shoulders and waist, a brief touch to the neckline of the dress to pull it even. "Can you get drunk?"

Tim manages not to blink or flinch at the question. It's a valid one. It's a good one. His physiology isn't that different but most of the difference is in his digestive system. He catches himself frowning, considering. How would Fear even affect him now—?

"No idea," he says, shaking that thought away, smiling up at Dick only a little sharply. With a little fang, because he just can't stomach a headache right now. "Let's go find out?"

He can get drunk, as it turns out.

The club Dick takes him to is small and dimly lit and smells of perfume and sweat and arousal. It slicks the back of Tim's tongue, a base note to the sour burn of the drink Dick had gotten for him, leaves him deliciously dizzy and a little oversensitized. Dick laughs at him, wobbling on his heels on the dance floor, and steadies him with an arm around his waist.

He is, he claims, being gentlemanly. He dances, disgustingly graceful and smug with it, and grins sharply at anyone that comes too close. His hands stay at Tim's shoulders or his waist and he gets a second drink for Tim, insisting on paying, and that might be gentlemanly.

Tim doesn't know. He's floating, weightless, a sharp pleasure in the pit of his stomach and tucked between his lungs. When he presses his nose against Dick's shoulder, the clean smell of him slides right through the syrupy arousal.

"Lightweight," Dick whispers to him, in a lull as the DJ changes over. His hand is at Tim's hip, blood-hot and polite. Tim scowls at him, feeling extravagantly warm. The bodies moving around him keep piquing his attention, but as always it's difficult to look away from Dick.

"f*ck you," he says with dignity and only a little slurring. His fangs are in the way, and he… he should practice speaking with them down. He will, he resolves. f*ck, he's warm. "I'm going to the bathroom."

Dick lets him go. He's grinning, but he doesn't say anything, and Tim manages to keep his feet all the way to the bathroom. The signs indicating gender are papered over with old advertisem*nts for old DJ sets, obscene drawings on bar napkins, signs insisting on a hard age limit on selling alcohol. He picks one of the two doors at random.

The stalls are all occupied and the smell of sem*n is thick in the air, which is fine by Tim. He just wanted…

He turns the sink on and washes his hands in cold water and stares at himself in the mirror.

Fey, dark-eyed, eyeliner smudged just a little at the corners of his eyes and sweat gleaming at the curve of his throat. The cut of the dress leaves more to the imagination than it seems to and with the way it falls he could almost see shallow curves.

He licks his lips. They taste of salt, warmth, human. He's been chewing on them and they're blood-dark as a result, a little swollen and sore.

He shoves away from the sink and finds the last paper towel dispenser with anything in it, and then leaves the bathroom looking for Dick.

Dick had waited for him. He leans against the wall in a corner just shadowy enough for eyes to skip over him, a long line of grace and showmanship in denim and ripped cotton. He watches Tim come and Tim can't tell what he's thinking.

Dick reaches out and reels him into his side when he gets close enough. He smells of spilled tequila, sweat, someone else's cologne—a trace of fake pine needles and musk, fading quickly. Tim leans into Dick's side until the smell evaporates.

"How are you feeling, little birdy?"

Tim shrugs. He's smiling, just a little thing. He can't stop pulling his lower lip between his teeth even though it stings. Maybe because it stings. A bright pinprick of sensation.

"I barely recognize myself," he says. The words come out light, tripping over each other. His tongue is a little numb, his teeth as always in the way. Phonemes twist underneath him, lateral fricatives moving in unexpected directions, the sibilants abandoning him entirely.

He tongues a fang. They hover behind his canines, extended just enough that it occurs to him they might be visible.

The thought comes without the usual fear, drowned and muted by scent and darkness strobing with neon and by Dick's side against his. He can believe just for now, just right here, that he's safe.

"Good thing?" Dick asks, and it takes Tim a long moment to remember what he'd just said. He hums in answer, shrugs even closer to Dick, rolls his lip through his teeth again. He'll regret biting so hard in the morning, but he doesn't care right now. He just doesn't.

"I guess I'm just surprised you didn't…" he trails off, hand gesturing airily on a loose wrist. All of him feels loose, liquid. It's Dick's arm around him that keeps him on his feet and nothing else. It's tight around Tim's waist, nearly tight enough to border into pain, and Tim finds himself preoccupied by it. "You know. You aren't… making a big deal of it."

Dick hums a low note that Tim feels in his shoulder to Dick's chest more than he can hear over the music, and then shifts Tim in his arms so his back is more solidly leaning against his front. Tim goes easily, letting his head loll onto Dick's shoulder and peeking up at him. Dick's not looking at him. He's watching the crowd and his expression is glassy-eyed pensiveness.

His hand rests on Tim's hip. Through the thin cotton, Tim savors his warmth. Each finger is distinct, fingertips unbearably light against Tim's iliac crest.

"Big deal or not," Dick says and his head tips, his cheekbone coming to rest on Tim's head. "You're still you. And I love you."

Tim shivers.

Dick pulls him in tighter, closer into the shelter of his body. Tim lets him do it, lets Dick's arms twine around him, lets himself be tucked under Dick's chin. He tastes the words on his tongue, rolls them back and forth in his mouth until the fluttering in his stomach settles. Dick's hands have found his hips, the dip of his waist, fingers curving to rest in the bowl of his pelvis. It drags the trembling feeling out, longer and longer.

The beat ratchets faster, as the music pounds harder, as the crowd shifts and boils. Dick's chest rises and falls and he waits for Tim, unmoving and patient.

"Oh," Tim manages at last, and turns in Dick's hands. Dick is smiling at him, dark-eyed and pleased and happy. He wears happiness so well. Tim wants to devour it. He wants to say—something. He can't quite get the words to line up properly in his head. "Yes. Dance?"

Dick lets himself be led, very easily.

==

The thirst is… bad.

Tim swallows against it, against the dry ache pulsing in the base of his throat. The pain is hot, and makes the corners of his eyes sting, and leaves his head cloudy. He has to take a moment at the base of the fire escape to Baby's window to lean against the cool brick wall and close his eyes.He's left it too long, again.

He just... he'd gone home, dress a crumpled ball at the bottom of a plastic bag, face red and raw from scrubbing off the makeup. He'd dropped the bag in the entryway to the Nest and he hadn't left again for two days, until Baby had escalated to outright threats. Bagged blood is harder to come by than he likes and he hasn't worked out a way to access enough of it without resorting to stealing it from clinics, and he isn't comfortable with that.

He isn't desperate enough yet, no matter how much swallowing hurts. No matter how cold it is, how his fingers ache and his heartbeat keeps stuttering alarmingly.

He can smell so much.

Rich basil and yeast from the bags of groceries he'd brought for Baby as penance, piled at his feet. The wet decay of the garbage piled in the nearby dumpster—paper, moldy plastic, fabric, old food going rancid. Mud in the cracks of the pavement, the wet pavement itself, the brick an inch from his nose. Animal, probably a cat, less than an hour old. He can smell old cigarettes, the sharp chemical stink of them reminding him so much of—

"Hey, Red."

He flinches with his whole body.

Red Hood watches him from the landing above, he discovers upon tilting his head up. The thought wanders through his swimming head that it isn't fair how quietly the man moves. Jason must outweigh Tim by an infuriating margin, and he hadn't heard the rusted metal groan even once.

"Hood," he says. It slurs past his fangs and a tingling mouthful of venom. The scent of human is filtering down to him in the wake of old cigarettes. Warm, mouth-watering, an edge of musk that tightens his gut.

"This is, no sh*t, the sixth time I've caught you out here," says Red Hood, and a muscle in Tim's jaw twitches.

He looks down at the bags by his feet. Dark leafy greens and bread, eggs, rice, Spam. He'd been thinking about omelets, something he can't f*ck up too badly that'll do some good for Baby's blood supply. She's not anemic yet, but Tim's worried.

The damp of the pavement is probably soaking through the paper bags. His hoodie shifts in the breeze. Dark fabric. He'd hoped it was discrete enough. It apparently hadn't been.

He pulls his fangs up. It hurts, a sharp sinus headache, but he ignores that.

"A bit of an exaggeration but your point is made," he says and shrugs. No point denying anything to Jason. "I was delivering food, Hood, if you don't mind."

"Strange kinda customer, paying in groceries."

The distortion is pretty bad, but Jason's tone is neutral. Not accusatory. Probably not accusatory.

"She's my…" Collateral damage. Fellow hostage. Savior. "Friend. She's a friend."

Jason's looking at him, Tim can feel it. Tim doesn't look back, in case Jason looks like Roy had. He'd be able to tell, even through the helmet. He's tired and shaky with thirst, he'd waited too long before coming here, and the thought of convincing Jason to go away when he feels like this is daunting.

Tim finds it in himself to be grateful for the distortion and the helmet and the way Jason stinks of cordite right now. He can't smell any blood.

"I didn't know you uptown assholes knew how to be friendly with the working girls," Jason says at last.

"I said friends, not friendly," he says, and leans harder against the wall. Cold Gotham air and darkness are leaching into his bones despite the thick fabric of his hoodie. By his feet damp newspaper shifts uneasily in the breeze off the river. "Are you ever going to leave me alone?"

A creak of body armor. A gust of cordite, gunpowder, sweat, leather. Boots on gravel, and Jason lands a foot from Tim, looking like a piece of Gotham come to life.

"Historically, doesn't look likely," Jason says, and Tim finds it in himself to laugh.

He's so thirsty. The rawness at the back of his throat is distracting.

"Right," he says, "right."

You hate me, he wants to say, even though he knows it's not actually true anymore. Jason is different than he had been. They all are. Older and saner, mostly.

It's really f*cked up that he kind of wishes Jason still did hate him. He'd know how to get Jason to go away, then. It'd be as easy as opening his mouth.

"I can help you," Jason says, and Tim closes his eyes. f*ck, f*ck he's tired.

"Nobody can help me," he says. Tonelessly.

A rustle. A hiss of a seal coming undone. A series of little clicks, metal and plastic. A drift of scent, skin and faded tobacco.

"Alright, call me Odysseus, then," Jason says easily, helmet-free. "Let's get these groceries to Baby and then you and I are gonna have a real talk."

Tim opens his mouth, possibly to say something disparaging about Jason and the Argonauts and possibly to argue, but Jason rolls his eyes and moves like he's thinking about shutting Tim up with a hand over his mouth.

Tim jerks back, nearly tripping on rough cement. Jason stops, hand still extended between them. The veins in his wrist give away his pulse. Tim can smell them, heady and thick. If he pressed his tongue to them, he'd be able to feel it.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," Jason says. His expression is unreadable. He's watching Tim and his eyes are as blue as Tim's seen them in years.

Tim laughs, mouth-closed because he can't keep his fangs up anymore. They're aching and the thirst is making him lightheaded. Stupid.

"Not worried about that," he murmurs and shakes his head. His hair flops in his face. He hasn't cut it in a long time. He's starting to think he might not for a while longer. "We talk, and then you'll leave me alone?"

"If that's what you want," Jason says easily, which isn't the unconditional yes Tim hoped for. It's something, at least, and so he gathers his bags back up and hops onto the fire escape. Jason follows, helmet jammed back on his head. It blunts his scent a little.

Baby opens the window, scowls at the bags in Tim's hand, and raises her eyebrow at Jason. Jason says nothing, crosses his arms and leans back against the railing of the fire escape. He looks nonchalant. Tim avoids looking at him, dawdles through helping Baby unload the groceries and accepts the kiss to his cheek before she shoves him back out the window.

He follows Tim up the fire escape like a shadow, lighter on his feet than his bulk would imply. Tim can track him by the sound of his pulse, the wax and wane of the cool smell of leather and gunpowder. He's followed across a handful of rooftops before Jason says anything.

"Tim."

The buzz of distortion doesn't hide his reproachful tone.

Tim stops. He doesn't turn, not yet. He looks across Gotham instead, at the icy shine of skyscrapers to rival Metropolis, at the dark hulk of Blackgate, at the flash and sizzle of neon heat. Frames it like he would a photograph. He hasn't picked up a camera in months.

His problem, he decides, is he's always running out of time.

He turns to look at Jason.

Jason looks back at him for a moment, and then reaches for his helmet. It opens with a series of clicks, a hiss of pressurized air. His hair is plastered to his forehead, white forelock shocking in the dark. His expression is blank.

Tim spreads his hands wordlessly, encompassing the empty rooftop. Their only companions are gargoyles.

"This where you want to talk?" Jason asks, setting his helmet down at his feet. He's not wearing full costume again, just light body armor and that ever-present leather jacket. He's watching Tim carefully, like he expects Tim's going to bolt and Jason's resolved to chase him.

Perhaps he has every reason to think that. It's hard to remember a single conversation since everything happened where Tim hasn't ended up running away.

He's reminded for an awful moment of Damian, approaching a hurt animal with care. Injured animals, he'd lectured Tim at great length, were the most dangerous animals. Jason is looking at him that way now, like he's preparing for Tim to lash out.

It's probably smart of him, even if he doesn't know why.

"Here's fine," Tim says shortly. He refrains from tangling his hands in his cape. "I don't know why you keep wanting to talk to me about something that's completely—"

"You killed someone."

Tim freezes.

The world doesn't crack in half.

No, the world doesn't shatter. Nothing changes.

Nothing breaks.

There's a little fracture of lost time. Just seconds, he thinks when he blinks back to himself. He hadn't moved. Neither had Jason.

He'd been far away, somehow, in a place white and loud and impossible. He feels winded. His heart is pounding. He'd bitten his cheek at some point. It throbs in time with his breathing. The pain is dull.

Jason is still watching him with that careful attention.

"How," Tim asks. His voice feels distant.

The body is gone. The blood had been mostly Tim's. Baby wouldn't tell anyone, she promised.

"Knew I was right," Jason says quietly, not triumphant at all. He isn't stupid, the second Boy Wonder, all grown up and with an edge sharpened to the point of cruelty. "And, 'cause you never turned your kidnapper in and there was no investigation. Either you went dark for fifty hours and came back looking like hell warmed up for kicks and lied about a kidnapping, or something went badly f*cking wrong."

Tim's eyes close.

"Right," he says.

"Don't know I've ever seen you this shaken either," Jason continues. If Tim didn't know better he'd think his voice is gentle. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter. "Where you didn't have a backup plan. A better cover-up. You know the big bastard wasn't ever gonna let it rest, even if you could ship dickhe*d off-site."

Tim swallows back the cold nausea. He does know. It had just seemed far away, serendipitous that Bruce hadn't asked further. He should have known better.

"Does he know?"

"Nah."

Tim's eyes open.

Rooftops are poorly lit at the best of times, but even so he can read Jason's body language. The languid drape of his hands on his hips, head tipped inquisitively to the side and shoulders relaxed. He's watching Tim closely, but even Tim can't read judgment into his expression. He just looks pensive.

"How…"

"I told him I took care of it."

Took care of it. Tim knows what that means from Jason. Everyone does.

Tim breathes in, and breathes back out.

"And B…" he says. It's not really a question. They all know how Bruce reacts to Jason and his little murder thing. Even as retribution for one of his kids. Even for Tim. Tim knows how much it would have hurt both of them. The only reason the two of them can stand to be in the same city is the fact that Jason's picked up a rubber bullet habit.

"Not happy about it," Jason confirms. His voice is careful. He's still watching Tim like he thinks Tim's going to bolt. "Babybird, c'mon. I know I'm a f*cking hypocrite, but you don't need to go through this alone."

The laugh that escapes Tim is ugly and wet and bubbles up with the sour taste of bile. f*ck, he was never going to get away with any of this.

And now he's dragged Jason's fragile armistice with Bruce into it. Maybe put Jason in the position where he broke that truce, for Tim, and Tim is a selfish f*cking person but even he can't justify that to himself. Can't even think about dragging them all back to those awful days.

And it had been awful, those long years where one of the heroes he'd loved before he even knew what love was went to war on everything Tim is and believed in. And Tim hadn't even really disagreed with him is the thing, not a hundred percent, not on a theoretical, philosophical level. Little Timmy had just been in the way. And here he is again, right in Jason's way.

"Why do you call me that?" he asks. Hail Mary, or something like that. He might not have a chance to ask, later.

Jason's shifts.

"S'a nickname, Red," he says and for the first time he isn't exactly meeting Tim's eyes. Tim watches him, shifting on his heels, and doesn't know what to read into it. "I thought it'd be, y'know. Better than Pretender."

It is.

"You want to know what happened." Tim says.

Jason frowns at him. He frowns harder when Tim steps in close, and grins up at him.

It must be a crazed grin. Tim's pupils must be blowing wide, nose full of the iron smell of old blood in the crevices of Red Hood's gloves. He could work his tongue into them, lick up those precious traces, gorge himself on scraps. The streetlights are nearly too bright. They halo Jason's shoulders.

"Okay," Jason says. He's staring with dark eyes and his breathing has picked up, his heartbeat pounding in Tim's ears. He still isn't protecting himself like he should. He smells… really good. "If you want, Tim."

So he opens his mouth and drops his fangs, just a little.

It takes Jason too long to see. Like Dick, Tim thinks, and then stops thinking. Jason just stares at Tim, at his face and mouth with pinched brows and when the realization dawns it dawns slowly.

Really slowly. He steps closer. Tim lets him. It doesn't look like Jason's quite aware of himself.

His gaze is fixed to Tim's fangs.

"Tim," he says.

It's an odd sort of strain, holding his fangs half-extended like this. He doesn't even really know why he's doing it, except he still really doesn't want anyone to see them.

"Yeah," he whispers.

"Tim, you have fangs."

Tim laughs at that.

"I f*cking noticed," he says hysterically. Jason is still edging closer. He hasn't blinked. The blue-green of his eyes gleams. "Happy Hallo-f*cking-ween, Jason."

Jason doesn't laugh. He doesn't blink. He doesn't start screaming either, a specter of a nightmare Tim has to admit wasn't terribly realistic. Jason isn't the screaming and running type.

Apparently he's the type to keep coming, until Tim has to step back, until Tim is backed up against the cold brick wall of the roof shed. Until he fills up Tim's vision, his breath, his ears. His gaze fixed to Tim's teeth.

To his mouth.

The silence stretches, thickens, sweetens with the panting speed of Tim's lungs working and the iron control to the pace of Jason's own breathing.

"Do you…" Jason asks at last, breaking the silence. He's hoarse. "Are you… thirsty?"

The question echoes like a slap, rattling through Tim's head.

He laughs in answer. Dry, coughing laughter. His mouth is a desert. He tongues a fang and Jason's gaze flickers.

"Yes, Jason," he says, and he's still laughing that embarrassing, hurting laugh. He can't stop dragging his tongue along his teeth, his lips, compulsive, tasting Jason on them even with inches between them. "Yeah, I'm thirsty. Really, really thirsty."

So thirsty he burns.

Hot fingers catch his jaw and he hauls in a breath of surprise. It lets Jason's thumb in, pressed to the inside of his bottom lip, prying his mouth gently open. He hadn't heard Jason take the glove off.

Tim lets it happen. Lets his jaw fall open, his fangs drop even more. Lets his head drop back, giving up all at once. Lets go of everything, the tension holding his shoulders up, his eyelids open. His head lolls into Jay's grip. He looks up at Jason through half-lidded eyes.

It feels…

The absence of pain is obliterating.

Jason's breathing catches.

His hand flexes against Tim's jaw, fingertips scraping across his cheek, the soft skin under his ear. Tim moves with it, letting his head tilt. His fangs are long, pushed to their fullest extent, and Jason stares at them. He's unblinking, dark-eyed, mouth a thin line.

"Well," he says at last. His thumb presses harder to Tim's lip, presses it up against his useless blunt bottom incisors. "That's… that's something. You're—something."

"Vampire," Tim murmurs, and it comes out as a croon. A trilling little noise, thirst-mad. Utterly inhuman. Shivery embarrassment sheets through him, plucking at the pit of his stomach and his hands—on Jason's arms, he realizes with dim resignation. He's tugging at Jason. Trying to pull him closer. He can't stop the noise, dragged out of him by Jason's smell, his hands on Tim's mouth, his bulk boxing Tim in.

"Yeah, sweetheart, I can see that," Jason says and that dark gaze finally flicks from Tim's fangs to his eyes. That hot, shivering embarrassment twists in Tim, down below his stomach, down at the root of his co*ck. He's half-hard, he hadn't even noticed.

Whatever Jason sees in Tim's face, he blinks.

"We shouldn't be doing this out here," he says abruptly, and steps away.

It's cold. Tim had forgotten, in the handful of seconds where Jason's feverish heat had filled up the universe. He gasps for breath, mouth lax and still open, hands fists against his thighs, and stares stupidly at Jason. His pulse pounds in his teeth, his ears, his co*ck.

What does this mean, he wants to ask, but he can't get his tongue to do anything but press compulsively to the backs of his fangs.

Jason is staring back at him. Just as stupidly, observes the last part of Tim still clinging to sarcasm. He's flushed, Tim can definitely taste it off him. Blood so close to the surface.

"I have a safehouse nearby," Jason says, just as Tim's finally gathered enough of himself he thinks he might be able to approximate human speech.

"Okay," says Tim.

==

Jason's safehouse is a basem*nt apartment in a half-abandoned tenement block at the end of a street more crack than asphalt. He slides in through the window and beckons Tim in after him.

The door is blockaded, it turns out. A pile of old bookshelves and a broken washer unit. The room is covered in dust, old trash, broken glass. Tim observes it, the untouched dust of the trashed kitchenette and the crumbling plaster of the walls. He's still cold, and sluggish with it, and it doesn't make sense. The place looks untouched. Unlivable.

"It's a front," Jason says and he sounds nearly defensive. "An' not my main place anyway, just—c'mon."

The back room is—different.

Jason starts lighting candles, lighter snck-sncking as he goes, and the warm light fills up the space like a rising tide. Bookshelves, clean ones. A gun safe. A mattress in the corner with sheets that look clean, if untidy. These windows are blocked off with cardboard and duct tape plastered over with colorful magazines and newspapers. There's a hotplate and an ancient drip coffee maker in the other corner.

Tim stands in the middle of it, in the middle of Jason's life, and doesn't know what to do with his hands.

His gaze follows Jason. Watches the armor come off, deft fingers working to disarm it as he goes, the guns unloaded and set aside. The gun safe opened, the weapons put away with military neatness. It closes again.

Jason turns to look at him.

He's wearing an undershirt and jeans. Tim's breathing catches. His vocal cords are vibrating without his permission. A subvocal murmur he hopes Jason isn't catching.

There's just… so much skin.

His shoulders, his arms, thick and scarred, a hint of thick belly when he'd pulled off the body armor. Tim remembers the firmness of that muscle under his desperate fingers. The inevitability of Jason's hands on him, how there'd never been a thing Tim could do to stop him from throwing Tim around when Jason finally caught him. It used to scare the sh*t out of him.

His heart is pounding, rabbity. Jason stopped scaring him a long time ago, when Tim crossed the wires of fear and want, and now he can really see everything Jason's jacket hid. Deltoid, pectoralis minor, tricep, bicep. The thick knob of bone of his wrist, long crooked fingers, reaching out to Tim.

"You're thirsty," Jason says, and Tim goes to him.

Jason catches him by the shoulder and holds him there, warm palm pressing so close to where Tim's heart is pounding.

"I don't know anything about vampires," he says with a casual bluntness that leaves Tim winded, and Tim hasn't worked out how to get his mouth to cooperate to say anything when Jason keeps going. "I'm not gonna push anything."

The fact it's Jason saying that to Tim ought to be hilarious. It certainly seems like the setup for some great cosmic joke. Instead Tim just stares at him, throat working against the steady dribble of venom. Hunger aches in him. He's ravenous. What he's ravenous for barely makes sense. It's an incoherent, howling need.

If this hunger were new, he'd be a better person. Instead he feels like a thin membrane of skin wrapped around teeth and emptiness, and the feeling is the first friend he ever had. He tongues a blunt canine and Jason's gaze lingers on his mouth.

"I don't know anything about vampires either," he manages. His voice is a rasp. Jason's eyelashes flicker. "I don't—I'm not going to push anything. Either."

Jason laughs. It's just a little bark of sound, dry and incredulous.

"Timmy," he says. "Babybird, I wanna eat you alive. I wanna f*cking destroy you. What I'm askin' is if you can consent."

The noise Tim makes, involuntary and painful, is distinctly inhuman.

A sharp trill. It sounds like a bird, like wind fluting across the mouth of a bottle, something strange and haunted. It hums pleasantly in his throat, rolls off his tongue like a childhood language he'd forgotten, and Jason's pupils blow wide. Dark, hungry holes rimmed in green.

His breathing is heavier. That thick, wet smell is back in the air and Tim is starting to think he might know what it is.

"I," he tries, and it comes out flavored with more of that trilling sound. The thirst pounds in his throat, in the back of his head, in his extended fangs. Arousal throbs everywhere else, and he realizes with dreamy abruptness that he's hard. He has to swallow to get his vocal cords to work again. "I want anything you're going to give me, Jay. I want it."

Jason's next breath shudders and then he's striding forward, suddenly in Tim's space, looming above him in dim candlelight. His eyes are dark, his lips parted on harsh breathing, and the thick smell of his arousal feels like it grabs Tim by the prick.

"Let me see," Jason says.

His brows are drawn together, expression crazed with wanting. Tim opens his mouth and drops his fangs.

Jason's thumb is blunt and big and salty, sliding into his mouth and over his tongue. His eyelids flutter, jaw dropping open. A rough thumbprint presses against the back of his throat until Tim nearly gags, slides back to his molars, past them to tug the inside of his cheek. Tim's head turns with it, to the side and down. His throat exposed, his erratic heartbeat thudding so close to his skin.

"f*ck," Jason says. His voice is rough. Tim watches him through slitted eyes, blurry through his lashes. "f*ck, baby, your—your mouth is so…"

Another finger in Tim's mouth. Pointer finger, stretching him open further, calluses scraping past his lips. Thumb and pointer finger catch a fang, clumsy from the angle to reach past Tim's canine.

He makes a noise. A high, hurting noise from his chest, fluttering past Jason's fingers in his mouth.

He can feel Jason in his teeth. He can feel the rough texture of his fingerprints, the heat of him, the salt biting into his tongue. His head is throbbing. He's hard, desperately hard. Hard enough that his co*ck aches.

"Jay," he tries to say, but all he ends up doing is mouthing at Jason's fingers.

Jason's eyes aren't cold. They're fire, blue-hot, fixed on Tim's mouth like it's all that exists in the universe. Tim presses his teeth to Jason's fingers, dull incisors against hot skin, and Jason's breath rattles in his chest. He's so warm, so f*cking warm in Tim's mouth and all around him.

He wants that warmth in him, deep in him, as deep as he can get it.

"Shh," Jason croons, and his fingers press deeper but it isn't enough, at the back of Tim's throat and pressing down and in, but it isn't enough. "I got you, baby, I got you."

Tim's fangs catch on his skin and blood is in Tim's mouth, and Tim keens.

He loses time. Red behind his eyes, in his mouth, a taste he can't get enough of and a warmth that holds him gaping open. His tongue moves against blood-hot fingers, a hint of metal, a touch of leather. There's something under him, and over him—

Jason looms, pressing him down against rumpled blankets and a mattress that smells of human. Old sweat, sem*n, a hint of iron-rich blood. Jason is pressing him down, all of the warm bulk of him, Tim spread wide around his waist. The fingers are still in his mouth and Jason is still bleeding sluggishly, and he's staring at Tim with eyes all pupil and a hint of blue-green.

The fingers withdraw. Tim hisses.

"Thirsty, babybird?" Jason teases and Tim bares his fangs on a blade-sharp instinct and Jason laughs.

He laughs.

Something in Tim is shaking, trembling with a pressure too big for Tim's stripped-down thoughts to comprehend. It's in him deep inside, nestled between the thirst and the want, held in place by Jason's weight on him. Around him.

"Ffuh," he manages. His fangs ache weirdly, a new ache, extended as far as he's ever let them be. It feels… good. "Fff*ck you."

Jason presses in, presses closer. Tim's legs slip open even wider to let him, parting easily, heels clutching greedily at the back of thick thighs.

"You know, I bet you were a little bitch when you were hungry," he says, but it barely sounds like he's saying it to Tim. His hand is in Tim's hair, his fingers winding through the strands, guiding his head up until his mouth and nose press to Jason's chest. Tim pants against his shirt, the thin fabric dampening under his mouth. Soft muscle moves against his lips, pressing close to his teeth, and all he can smell is skin and sweat and the riptide of Jason's pulse. "C'mon, sweet thing, you want it?"

The noise Tim makes is broken. He feels it well up from deep in him, right from the root, down in the pit of his stomach. He can't stop panting. He can't stop pulling the hot sweet smell of Jason into his mouth, greedy, helpless.

He's slipping under, into himself. Want, thirst, molten helpless desire. He's hard, and his mouth is dry, he wants Jay's co*ck spearing him open and he wants to bite down on Jason's soft chest until his mouth is wet again.

"Yeah," Jason grunts, folded so far over Tim he's doing it in Tim's ear. His voice is gravel, rough, slurring. His breath is hot in Tim's hair. "f*ck, yeah, babybird. Lemme take care of you, go on."

The hand not cradling his head is working under him, to the small of his back, lifting him against Jason. Tim's body is helping, thighs and back working to drag himself against the hot hardness pressing between his legs, but it seems so secondary. A distant thrill somewhere in some leftover fraction of rational thought, that Jason seems to want him, or at least doesn't mind a desperate Tim Drake rutting against him.

His hand fists in Jason's shirt and tugs, directionless anxious motion.

"sh*t," Jason says, "f*ck, yes." And he moves. A shimmy, fluid and graceful, his hand slipping out from under Tim and then the undershirt is bunching and scraping past Tim's face and away. Tim drags his own hoodie off and drops it to the side, and then miles of scars and skin press him back down into the bed.

"Jay," he whispers, and Jason hitches against him in a sharp, clumsy reaction. The hard curve of him drags against Tim, caught in his jeans and aching for it. He echoes the motion, helpless, a sharp high noise breaking from him at how much the pleasure hurts.

"C'mon, get 'em off, c'mon," Jason mumbles against his ear and Tim doesn't understand until rough fingers find the zip of his jeans, until the pressure eases and Jason is helping him shove them down his legs. Somehow Jason's are gone too, and when he presses back down onto Tim the noise he makes is helpless, pathetic. Warm skin, Jason's bulk pressing him back open until all he can do is cling to Jason's shoulders and press his co*ck up against the soft firmness of Jason's belly.

Jason's co*ck tucks into the crease of his hip and it holds his attention utterly, the slick weight of it and the pounding scent of Jason's pulse. A big hand cups his hip and he's moving. Body dragging against Jason, skin catching on skin. Jason's co*ck pressing against him hot and hard and jerking as Tim works a hand between them to drag uncoordinated fingertips over its silky hardness.

And then Jason's hand is lifting his head, pressing him so gently to the soft curve of his shoulder. Tim's mouth against skin too soft to be real, lips so close to the vein Tim can feel thrumming away. He moans, mouth closed, trying so hard not to breathe in how sweet it smells.

"You ain't gonna hurt me," Jay whispers and Tim whimpers, shakes his head as much as he can tucked into the crook of Jay's neck.

"You won't," Jay continues, and the hand in Tim's hair trails to the back of Tim's neck. He's so gentle, pressing Tim closer. His pulse throbs against Tim's mouth, hot and close, and his mouth opens and his dry tongue lolls out to press against Jay's skin. "I won't letcha hurt me, I promise. Trust me, can you trust me?"

His voice is shaking, Tim can feel it against him, and the hands pressing to him are digging in to the point of sweet pain. Jay is shaking, holding himself so carefully over Tim, holding him open, begging for Tim to take.

Tim wants to take everything Jay can give him. His tongue drags, velvet-dry, over rough sweat-damp skin.

"Trust me," Jay repeats, and Tim never thought he'd ever get to hear the Red Hood beg for anything.

That thought is a long way away from him, his opening mouth, the taste of Jay against his tongue and against his teeth. The pulse pounding against his lips. The hand at the small of his back and the co*ck straining against his thigh.

"Jay," he murmurs deliriously and his fangs—

Skin parts for them so sweetly, so easily, just a long slide and Jay's voice above him in a low noise like a bell. A long, slow glide and Tim's mouth coming to rest, Jay's pulse fluttering against him, and his mouth filling with wetness and salt-iron.

He drinks. Somewhere above him, Jason is speaking. Below, he ruts against Tim, his co*ck dragging against Tim's hip. There is wetness, sweat and precome slicking the motion. Tim's hard in an aching, distant way and his body presses up against Jason in clumsy, wanton thrusts. Pleasure finds him in waves. Implacable, unendurable.

His mouth gapes against Jason's skin, against his pulse, his tongue working against his teeth in Jason. Blood runs like wine over his tongue and in hot pulses down his throat, over his lips and down his chin, across his chest in rapidly cooling spatters.

A hand cups the back of his head. Soft fingertips through his hair and then tangling, pulling him away with gentle inexorability.

His fangs pull free slowly, tugging against soft skin, blood bubbling up and smearing across his mouth. Mindlessly he chases it, lapping after it until Jason makes a soft noise and pulls him up again. He presses their mouth together and the slick slide of Jason's tongue into his mouth soothes him, sends him panting and scrabbling at Jason's shoulders for more.

"sh*t," Jason mumbles against his mouth, voice thick, muffled and good. His body moves, pressing his co*ck into Tim's stomach, slick with sweat and blood and precome. "You take enough, baby? You need more?"

Never enough, Tim wants to say, his mouth wet and bloody, his co*ck aching, working himself up against Jason's body in clumsy thrusts. Thirsty and wanting and desperate. Never enough, never ever ever. All that comes out is a whine, a moan, another hitched thrust dragging the head of his co*ck over Jason's belly.

"Yeah," Jason says, and his hand catches Tim's co*ck and abruptly they're pressed together.

Jason's co*ck is smooth and hot and hard, his hand wet and rough, and Tim works himself into the tightness of that grip around him. Mouth falling open, his whole body convulsing as Jason's co*ck grinds against his.

"Jay," he manages, word slipping out in a spill of other noises—obscene, pulled from deep in him. Jason's back works under his palms. Long thrusts, powerful, his hand tight enough the drag of calluses is almost pain. He pants in Tim's ear, hot and wet. "Jay, Ja-ay."

"Baby," Jason sighs in answer. Voice thick, straining. "Babybird, pretty bird."

And his thumb sweeps, rough and too dry, over the head of Tim's co*ck.

His body locks and he comes like the end of the world, pleasure white and hard and so good it's clenching pain, wet and dragged out of him—

Jason hisses and keeps working him through it. His hand around Tim's co*ck, wet with come, his own co*ck still hard and straining and so hot. All of him is hot, heavy weight pressing Tim down as he claws for air, as it's forced from him by Jason's merciless hand.

"Jay," he manages, a last scrap of air, and Jason comes with such a soft little noise.

His come spatters Tim's belly, hot like burning, jerking an aftershock from him. Jason works them for a moment longer, a last desperate tremble from Tim, and then lets go.

Tim drops. Tension, strung tight and then releasing all at once. He's shaking.

He's—f*ck. He feels…

Jason tips over to the side, landing among tangled sheets, a leg falling over Tim's thighs. He could move, the mattress is big enough for them to separate. He could get up, even. There's clothing in the cardboard boxes in the corner, Tim can see it now from the corner of his eye as he avoids looking directly at Jason.

Jason doesn't move. He leaves his leg there, heavy weight pinning Tim in place. He's watching Tim from less than a foot away, and when Tim gives up and finally looks at him he just blinks.

His eyes are a strange shade of blue, too rich to seem quite real. There's a ring of green around each pupil. A starburst. He blinks again. Tim looks down at his hands.

"I," he begins, and there's a hand on his cheek guiding him to look up.

Jason kisses him very, very gently.

"Hey," he says, lower lip brushing Tim's, and Tim bursts into tears.

For a moment Jason is frozen, probably shocked, and then Tim is being gathered up. Pulled into warm arms, tucked into Jason's chest, the bridge of his nose to the underside of Jason's chin.

"You're okay, it's okay," Jason whispers, and Tim sobs for air against his throat. Every breath is wonderful, perfumed with Jason, he is saturated with Jason. Anointed in sweat and blood and come, ownership ground into his skin. He's going to smell like Jason for days. He shakes in Jason's grip and soaks up his words with a ferocious thirst. "You didn't hurt me, it's all good. It's fine, babybird."

Eventually Tim's breathing slows from whooping heaves to something more manageable, teetering less on the edge of hyperventilation. Jason waits him out with a patience that shouldn't shock Tim like it does.

"S-sorry," he manages. Jason's hand in his hair quiets him, gentles his head down into the warm junction of arm and neck and chest. In that warm, hidden place he breathes and wonders at how the cold and pain are gone. Gone, gone, gone.

"No sorries," Jason murmurs, sounding fond in a way that digs into the soft place under Tim's ribcage. "S'long as you need, I ain't going anywhere."

Tim flinches.

There is quiet for a moment, except the sound of breathing

"Did I push you too far?" Jason asks, and his voice is—

Tim forces his head up, makes himself look Jason in the eye.

Jason just looks back at him. His expression is tight, eyebrows drawing a little together. His hand is in Tim's hair but it's hesitant. There's… there's a little fear in the tight pinch of his mouth.

sh*t.

"No," he says, and flinches at the sound of his own voice. It's hoarse. He can't stop his mouth from twisting, his fangs throbbing in one sharp pulse of ache. It drags sourness up the back of Tim's throat. "No. No, I… I wanted. It. I wanted all of it. I'm just… I'm a mess. Psychologically. Obviously."

A laugh, just a huff of air. A laugh, nevertheless.

"Okay," Jason allows. His voice is… not convinced. Tim's jaw clenches, and he forces his teeth apart when they creak ominously.

"I mean it," he promises, and reaches up to pull Jason's hand from his hair to cradle between his. Jason lets him lace their fingers together. It's… something. He tries on a smile. He isn't sure if the fangs he can't bring himself to retract add or subtract from the effect, and it leaves him feeling a little raw, but Jason's hand goes tighter and some of the vulnerability fades. "Though I have to question your self-preservation instincts, keeping a monster in your bed."

Jason frowns, and then his hand is cupping Tim's shoulder, and then in one dizzy blur of motion has Tim tucked under him. His weight crushes Tim down into the mattress, eclipsing everything until all he can see is skin and silver scars, all he can hear is Jason's breathing, Jason in his mouth and nose and pressing into every inch of him.

"You're no monster," Jason says, and the casual surety he says it with kicks the last scrap of air out of Tim's chest. He's held there for a moment, and then Jason eases off just barely enough for Tim to drag in a sip of air.

He wants to stay here for the rest of time. He wants Jason to keep him here, trapped under him, warm and sated and blissfully safe.

"Teeth," Tim reminds him hoarsely. Jason rolls to the side just a little, still half on top of Tim. Just enough freedom for Tim to lift his chin and make out the way Jason's eyes roll.

A broad palm lands on Tim's face. His palm is rough and smells like sex and sour tobacco. It's warm against his mouth, and his fingers cradle Tim's jaw gently.

"Shut up, I know what a monster looks like." The smile Jason gives Tim is mirthless, but at least it isn't bitter. "Bats have fangs, y'know. Vampire bat."

Tim groans through his nose and jabs Jason in the ribs until he takes his hand back. The arm around his shoulders doesn't move. They're sticky, sweaty, and Jay still stinks of blood. Tim can hear his heartbeat in the elbow next to his ear, the thinnest skin over that slow pulse. Jay's come is drying on his stomach and thighs and his blood has to be all over Tim's face, and Tim…

He's actually shockingly okay with all of it.

It helps that Jason is watching him from the corner of his eye, expression sleepy and pleased and utterly unafraid. When Tim tongues a fang, self-conscious, Jay reaches out to rub a clumsy thumb across his lower lip.

"Cute," he says. "Stay the night? Instant coffee's better'n nothing."

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Sunlight glows through the thin layers of newspaper, everything that greets Tim when he opens his eyes rendered a soft honey beige.

Awareness comes slowly to Tim even as he blinks the sleep away. Warmth, the smell of old leather and coffee grounds. The dim glow of natural sunlight, a handful of candles. One of them is scented, a generic vanilla that settles low over the room.

He's alone in the bed, but the depression in the mattress at his back is still warm and behind him there's the rustle of someone trying to move quietly.

He rolls over, not trying to be quiet at all.

Jason sits cross-legged by the coffeemaker, oil-stained rag in one hand and a pistol slide in the other. His hands move with practiced grace and Tim watches it for several long minutes. The coffee maker is dripping, the soft plock plock of it percolating accenting the quiet rustle of Jason's movements.

He feels… good. Warm, and pain-free. The burn of thirst is gone for now. The smell of the room fills his nose, familiar already, a blood-deep whisper of safety.

Jason looks up, and blinks at him.

He's still soft with sleep. Hair a touch greasy, eyes clouded, the way he runs his bottom lip through his teeth is all sweet temptation.

"Mornin'," he says.

Tim sits up. The blanket drops to pool in his lap. He's naked because he hadn't bothered to put anything back on last night, but at some point Jason must have wiped him down because there's no sticky pulling sensation of dried come. Jason's wearing briefs that strain to contain his thighs and a shirt big enough even on him to drape his collarbones.

Jason is, of course, beautiful. Suddenly though it's a revelation, in the diffuse light that doesn't hurt his eyes. Jason is broad, heavy with muscle won by hard work and spite, and padded gorgeously by a soft layer of fat. That broadness, the harsh rake of scarring across his face and shoulders, all of it and the brilliant clarity of his eyes on Tim. Gentle blue-green, like an ocean in a picture book, only a touch wary on Tim's face.

Tim reaches out, because he could help himself but doesn't want to, because he could deny himself but denial hasn't done anything good for him. He extends a hand and Jason sets the rag and pistol slide aside, and goes to him. He lets Tim tuck a hand in his hair, and draw him in.

The kiss is sweet, gentle, a press and slide and warmth and a hint of wetness. Jason, in the daylight, kisses with a caution that grabs Tim by the throat. He loses time to the slide of lips together. He hadn't known.

He hadn't known about this Jason. A softness Tim is allowed to touch. Jason's Robin, that battered, hesitant kindness—he'd known it was still there, but that it could be given to Tim… Tim hadn't known.

They part, breathless. Jason is still staring at him, and Tim doesn't know what he's thinking. It's suddenly unbearable that he doesn't.

"Thank you," he says instead of demanding to know, since he's making a conscious effort not to be either of his fathers. He's rewarded by another blink, an unbalanced expression.

"Uh," Jason says, and swallows. Tim isn't thirsty, but he tracks the movement of muscle in Jason's throat all the same. "No problem, Timilyn."

Tim has time to process the nickname, but not enough to respond before Jason's sitting back and co*cking his head.

"I got work to do today," he says. It derails the complaint Tim was formulating neatly. "If you… want to tag along? But uh. Coffee?"

Tim stares at him, and tries to understand.

Jason wants Tim… to tag along.

For a moment something moves beneath the drugged softness that sits atop Tim's thoughts. A touch of disquiet, a heaving anxiety. Wordless, nameless fear. The drum of paranoia. There's a catch. There'll be a catch. There's always a catch, when Tim is given something he wants. He's got historical data to back him up.

He pushes the thought aside and nods, tucking the blanket around his waist to sit cross-legged. Jason's eyes flicker over him and his scent thickens, just a little, but he turns away without a word.

There's only one mug in the safehouse, a chipped one Jason definitely stole from a diner, and Tim contemplates that as he sips perfectly mediocre drip coffee. Jason could be a millionaire with a month or so of concerted effort; Tim knows he has money and lots of it because he can track the inflows of cash, enough to estimate. There's something about the chipped little mug with its faded diner logo, anyway.

Jason goes back to cleaning his guns until the coffee is all gone. He stands, and starts the involved process of putting his armor back on, and Tim belated starts looking for his clothes. His underwear will do, and his leggings are fine, but when he picks up his hoodie he immediately notes both the light spotting of blood and the heavy, visible comestains.

Which answers the question of what Jason used to wipe them both down.

Tim frowns at him.

"Here," Jason snorts, and hands over a hoodie from the neat stack of cardboard boxes in the corner. Tim pulls it over his head and pretends not to notice how Jason's gaze follows him around. It's large on him, draping over his hands and thighs in a way that's… nice.

Tim follows Jason from the safehouse, hands in his hoodie pockets, hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail. Jason doesn't say anything about his choice of hairstyle, but he offers Tim the spare helmet and tugs his arms tighter around his waist as they dip their way in and out of Gotham traffic, and offers cynical commentary on the job he's investigating.

Something about a new player in the dealer scene, something about cutting the usual meth with something a little weirder. Tim is listening, just… not very hard. It's Hood territory. It's a Hood matter. He's tagging along on Hood business. Jason doesn't need Red Robin and Tim doesn't much feel like being Red Robin, either.

They stop at a gas station for coffees for a trio of Hood's boys and he still doesn't say anything as Tim buys a cheap eyeliner pencil and a pair of comically large, obviously cheap sunglasses. He drags his eyes across Tim's face when he comes back from the bathroom with eyeliner smudged just right, reels him in with a hot hand on Tim's hip and licks his way across Tim's fangs, and he still doesn't say anything.

It's starting to seem like he won't. Like he likes what he sees when he looks at Tim, and doesn't think anything beyond that.

In the ragged hoodie and leggings, his hair up and eyeliner messy and sunglasses on, he doesn't look like Timothy Jackson Drake. He eyes himself in the little mirror clipped to the handlebar of Jason's bike and tabs idly through all the names floating around in his head. Robin, Red and otherwise, Alvin, Caroline, Tim, Timothy. Drake, Wayne, and…

"C'mere, babyface," Jason calls and waves him over. The twinks Jason's talking to eye him, not with the hard suspicion he's used to, but with the arch interest of competition.

He grins at them. Jason rolls his eyes.

He watches Tim from the corner of his eye as Tim rolls the brown powder in the little baggies between his fingers, judging their contents by weight. He doesn't interrupt Tim in texting the one boy willing to give out his cell number where to find tester kits. He puts his hand to the small of Tim's back on the walk back to the bike.

Tim yawns at him, fangs out and sharp, and he snorts and looks away, but he's pink. He does like what he sees. Tim discovers that he's… pleased.

"Y'know, baby bats are called pups," Jason says when Tim climbs on the back of his bike, helmet firmly in place. He waits for Tim to settle his cheek against warm leather, hands laced over Jason's belly. "I dunno, though, I think you're more of a kitten."

"f*ck off," Tim counters, and digs his fingers into Jason's sides in revenge. The bike swerves and Jason makes a very intriguing noise.

"Babybird," he snaps over his shoulder at Tim, and Tim buries his nose in the back of Jason's shoulder and grins.

Something has expanded the space inside his ribcage exponentially and he feels airy with it, light, weightless. Despite the wind whipping his hood around, there is a certain warmth in the pit of his stomach. He feels at the edges of it tentatively. It slips through his fingers, impossible to pin down, and he lets it go to focus on burying his nose in the back of Jason's neck.

He smells of himself, leather and gunpowder and sweat, and… and of Tim. His own scent on Jason's skin, his sem*n and spit and a hint of sweet arousal.

Contentment. Belatedly he places that warmth. He's feeling contentment.

He savors it until they reach what must be Hood's latest safehouse and Jason swivels on the bike to look back over his shoulder at Tim. He takes in Tim's face, the ponytail squashed and messy from being trapped in the helmet, the borrowed hoodie with the faded logo for some New Jersey construction company scrawled across his chest.

He looks a little dumbfounded. Tim smiles at him, a half-quirk with his lips closed, and he shakes his head.

"My therapist is gonna flip sh*t," Jason tells him, sounding rueful.

Tim blinks.

"Therapist?" he asks, a second too slow. Jason's wry smile spreads another few teeth.

"Uh huh," he says and jerks his chin. Tim gets off the bike and Jason spends half a second kicking the stand down and messing with the keys. He doesn't bother to chain the bike to anything, just leaves it in the haphazard parking spot on the street.

It's the Hood's bike, Tim figures after a moment. Anyone that tried to boost it would get exactly what one would expect.

Jason's thighs strain against his jeans when he dismounts. Tim can nearly feel them under his hands, the way fat and firm muscle dimple under clutching fingertips.

"You're serious," Tim says. Jason rolls his eyes, takes Tim's helmet from his lax hands and hangs both from the handlebars.

"As a heart attack," he says tolerantly. "You should try it sometime, Red. But speaking of, I, uh."

He trails off, still looking at Tim, vaguely embarrassed.

He's about to go to an appointment, right now. Jesus f*cking Christ.

"I gotta go," Tim says, because there are almost certainly approximately one thousand texts from Baby he needs to field and the expression on Jason's face is uncharacteristically hesitant. He pauses for a moment though, rocking on the balls of his feet. Jason doesn't really smell at all of blood anymore. He smells of bike exhaust, leather, deodorant.

Jason watches him, and doesn't flinch when Tim hops forward and leans up to press his lips to Jason's. His hands catch Tim by the waist and they're so gentle, so warm, and Tim can feel his own unsteady pulse beating like wings at the base of his throat. He nips at Jason's bottom lip, pulls it between blunt incisors and swallows the little noise Jason gives him.

"I'll see you soon?" he asks.

Jason looks like Tim hit him on the head for just a second before he manages to clear his throat.

"Try an' keep me away," he promises, and he's still watching from the doorstep as Tim rounds the corner on the way to his closest safehouse.

==

He settles into bed, hours later, head spinning with the second iteration of design documents for installing an MRI machine in the Nest.

It'll require another generator, or maybe buying the building next door and co-opting their electrical consumption profile. The material won't be that difficult to obtain, though the installation is going to pose a problem. He doesn't want to let a third party into his Nest, and it'll take a significant chunk of his next few weeks to work through how to do it himself.

He could ask Jason to help with the physical aspects, he decides, tugging his electric blanket around him and flicking it up to the highest setting. The technical aspects he can handle himself, and if he needs a second set of hands he can use Jason again…

His phone buzzes on his nightstand, abrupt and shocking. He flinches.

It displays Dick's photo ID, bright and lurid. He stares at it owlishly for a moment, two, before he scoops up his phone and answers.

"Is anyone dying?"

Dick laughs. It comes crackling, signal just a little degraded by the baffling in the Nest walls.

"No, no dying," he assures. His voice is… off. A note gone wrong that Tim can't quite place. He frowns and sleepily tugs the blankets back over him.

"Alright," he says. Sleep and the drugging contentedness of slaked thirst tug at him. He can't make himself care enough for subterfuge. "What have I done to deserve a call at ass o'clock in the morning?"

Silence, humming with the soundless churn of electricity through the Nest's walls, the distant rush of traffic outside, the shush of Tim's own breathing.

"You were with Jason," Dick says and Tim sighs, scrubs a hand across his face. "I just wanted to be sure… I wanted to check on you, Tim, that's all. Promise."

"O or B?" he asks, and when Dick doesn't answer right away, more sharply, "Barb or Bruce, Dick."

A huff, a rush of sound. A hand running through Dick's hair, maybe, or he's started to pace.

"B," Dick admits. "There were some reports that Hood got someone new with him, he pulled the security camera footage. But he didn't ask me to check on you or anything, I swear. He spilled tea all over himself and I got a look while he was trying to get it out of the utility belt."

Which is easily stupid enough to be plausible. He'll probably have Bruce on his ass soon, the second Bruce finally pulls enough of a coherent emotion together to decide whether he's coming down on the side of anger that Tim is spending social time with the Red Hood or relief that Tim and Jason aren't trying to kill each other anymore.

A later Tim's problem.

"I'm fine, Dick."

There's hissing silence on the other end of the line. Anxious silence, if Tim's any judge. He can practically hear Dick chewing on his lip, nervous fingers drumming on the closest surface. He closes his eyes and curls up tighter.

The blankets are new, he'd thrown the ones that smelled so much like Dick away. The Nest smells like dust and himself and nothing else. The heated blanket helps, but it's hollow somehow. Unsatisfying.

"I trust you," Dick says at last. There's something about how he says it, something slow and reluctant that lingers behind every word, and Tim rubs his cheek against the pillow.

It must be loud through the phone's speaker.

"Where are you?"

Tim shrugs, probably also audible.

"Bed," he says. The room is dark, just his dimmed phone screen lighting up the cavern of the walls and the drifts of his covers. Rendered in that monochromatic dimness, the soft shades of darkness, it feels unreal. Abjectly private. He can make out Dick's breathing, the rhythm of it, just a touch fast. "Are you going to ask me what I'm wearing next?"

There's a beat of silence. Tim closes his eyes and buries his nose in the blankets. His laundry detergent isn't the same, not nearly the same, but he can fool himself that the soapy smell is almost like Dick's own smell.

He wants Dick back in his bed. He wants that drugging warmth, that abject safety.

Dick's laugh, when it comes, is too sharp.

"Funny," Dick says, and his voice is further from the phone now. "You're hilarious. Are you… you're at the Nest, right?"

Tim smiles, alone in his dark bedroom.

"Wondering if I'm with Jason right now?" he asks, and over the silly sputtering noise Dick makes, "No, I'm at the Nest. All alone."

Another pause, another silence he knows must be awkward to Dick. He'd never been one for silence.

"Are you," Dick says at last, so slowly, and then makes a little frustrated noise. It hisses through the phone speakers, rough, ungraceful.

Tim lets the silence fall again. If he really lets himself drift, if he curls up tightly, the breathing in his ear isn't too staticy… he can pretend just for a drifting moment that Dick is in the room with him. That the warmth tucked around him comes from a body.

"Are you, you know, taken care of?"

Tim's eyes open again in the dark.

"Asking if I fed off Jason?" he asks and he should be angry but he finds he's snickering. The transparency of Dick's question, the absurdity of being asked at all, the contented fullness in him.

If he got up right now, the clothes he stole off Jason's floor are in his bathroom. He could bury his face in them and sleep with the smell of him like a phantom of sleeping in Jason's bed.

"Tim," Dick begins, sounding apologetic, and Tim snorts, cutting him off. He doesn't have the energy to get offended like he probably should.

"I did," he says. "It was… nice. It was really nice."

Silence, for a little length of time. The heated blanket still isn't quite right but it's something, it's pleasant, and fatigue hovers at the edges of Tim's thoughts.

"It was…" Dick begins and pauses, starts again. He's very far away from the phone speakers, his voice strained. Tim listens with closed eyes. "That's… good. It was good?"

"Very good," Tim murmurs.

In the dark his hand wanders to his chest, to the soft scar tissue slowly healing itself. He thumbs at the bite mark, the twin divots of the fangs. Skating that thumb over to his nipple is thoughtless, an accidental motion and then a bright jolt of pleasure.

He swallows the little noise that threatens to fall out of his mouth. A hitching little hum that lingers in a subvocal murmur.

Dick doesn't say anything. The silence in Tim's ear tells him Dick isn't even breathing.

The scars tickle under his palm, under his fingertips when they wander higher up his throat.

"Would you help me with something?" Tim asks. In the dark of his bedroom, Dick's silence on the other end of the line, it feels unreal. He feels insubstantial. Free from consequence.

A sharp inhale, edged with static through the poor connection.

His hand wanders up, up. To his mouth, pressing his lips against his teeth for the little spark of pain.

"Of course, Timmy," Dick says. His voice is so distant. "Anything, always."

"Would you help me with my scars?"

Silence, again. Breathless silence.

"What do you mean?" Dick asks at last.

It's close to midnight, his phone tells him. He rests his phone on the pillow by his head and stares up into the dark—his hand settles naturally into the depression of his pelvis. Where Dick had held him, in a dark room very unlike this one, stuffed full of humanity and breathless with daring. The throb of his pulse is settling lower in him and he tucks his face in the blankets again for more of that almost-right smell of soap.

He's not hard, not yet, but blood pools lower and lower. An indolence, a thick and luxurious heaviness between his thighs.

He doesn't touch himself.

"They're fading," he murmurs. His voice crawls up from somewhere deeper than it usually does, hooked from a tender place inside him and pulled out of his mouth. "The healing factor. Jay's scar… Would you cut it back into me?"

Dick makes a noise. A sharp, hurt sound. A knife to the stomach kind of sound, hitting Tim low in the gut. An org*sm sound.

"Jesus f*cking Christ, Timmy," he gasps. His breathing is loud again in Tim's ear, ragged, speedy. Tim presses his hand harder to the curve of his stomach, under his belly button. The sense memory is so strong of Dick's hands there, from that night in the club. Warm, heavy, even without touching himself his co*ck is thickening with it.

"I trust you to do it," Tim says. It comes out breathy, a thread of sound. Dick makes that sound again. A whine. He sounds like one of Damian's kittens, terrified and lost. "I want you to."

"Tim," Dick says.

He sounds wrecked.

"You'd keep me safe," Tim whispers. "I trust you, Dick."

"Christ," Dick whispers. "Tim, you—"

He doesn't finish the sentence. Tim's breathing fills the silence between them, ragged and wanting. He doesn't say anything either, feels instead the slow hard pulse of his heartbeat in his neck and stomach and co*ck. It takes everything not to touch himself, he wants to take himself in hand with a stupid intensity, but if he does he needs Dick to know.

"I have to go," Dick says, an eternity later, and doesn't. Tim is hard now, all the way there and aching. "I…"

"Dick," Tim says, and Dick makes that sound yet again. "It's okay."

"Tim," he says immediately, punched out of him, and then drags in a messy breath. "I love you, okay?"

And then he's gone.

Tim finally wraps his hand around himself and flinches. The pleasure goes through him, rough, lingering, awful. He grips tighter, drags his palm up his shaft and doesn't try to quiet the harsh shiver of his breathing.

He wants Dick's voice back. He wants Jason, his body, his awkward affection. Tim tightens his grip on himself and presses his skull back against the pillow.

Now, he speeds. The pleasure stings, hurts, hollows him out mindless and desperate. He drags org*sm relentlessly from himself.

In the aftermath, wet and warm and sated, he thinks about it.

He thinks also about hyperthermia, strangely. The way that it broke bodies down, made them more vulnerable to itself after the initial pass. Maybe f*cking almost-brothers is like that. Now that he knows the taste of Jason, the safety of him pulling Tim closer, he's been weakened in some way.

Maybe, maybe. If only the want didn't feel so familiar, like an old, old friend.

==

Robin's been following him for maybe ten minutes now, and Tim's a little amused by it.

He runs the rooftops like he normally would, catching the rare flick of Damian's dark cape from the corner of his eye. The kid isn't necessarily trying to avoid being seen but he doesn't seem ready to approach yet, so Tim drops into the street to stop a mugging.

When he's climbed back up to the rooftop, prickling with the familiar old annoyance at the incompetence of anyone in the GCPD that doesn't have the name Gordon, there's one more gargoyle on the roof than usual.

"Am I supposed to pretend I haven't noticed you?" he asks, hands on his hips.

It's a pretty decent position, backlit by the streetlight, and Damian is a champion at holding still. It's raining in dismal little spits and that makes visibility poor. If the smell of warm human hadn't soaked the rooftop already, it's even possible Tim might have missed it.

"Tt."

But not likely. Tim knows every gargoyle in Gotham, maybe the best of anyone. They're his constant companions, his childhood confidants, his midnight playground. Damian grew up with cold desert nights and assassins; Tim grew up with socialites and Gotham rooftops.

"So, no," he concludes, and Damian tosses his head in blatant disdain, relaxing from the pose he'd been holding.

"Your sense of humor leaves much to be desired, Red Robin."

Tim manfully refrains from a tasteless joke about Damian's mother, because he's an adult no matter how much Damian makes him feel otherwise.

"Sure," he says instead.

Damian's scowl indicates that he isn't pleased with this response either. Tim ignores it on the grounds that Damian probably wouldn't like anything Tim were to say.

"I have been watching you," Damian announces.

The imperious tilt to his jaw is easy to read. He's defensive. Uncomfortable.

Tim considers this, watching Damian.

Damian smells of animal, mostly. Fur, clean cat litter, dog shampoo, the hay of Batcow's stall. In the rain even that is muted, but even so Tim can pull Damian's scent across his tongue. He doesn't know the scent enough to say anything for sure, but there's no tang of adrenaline. No sour cortisol.

He says he's been watching Tim, but Tim hasn't noticed any new surveillance. No one's tried to break into the Nest or his file servers. Nothing in the room he uses at the Manor would give him away as anything but exactly what he was two months ago. Jason wouldn't give away his secrets, not to Damian. And Baby promised.

He's… he's probably safe.

"Alright," Tim drawls instead of permitting himself to linger and very definitely work himself into a panic attack, and Damian scowls.

It's easier to like Damian when he's like this. Concentrating on something that isn't the imagined competition between the two of them. They could have been friends, Tim finds himself thinking, and relaxes back against his gargoyle perch.

He's reasonably sure any halfway decent psychiatrist would take one look at him and call in reinforcements. On the other hand, he's starting to gain real faith in his pet theory that a sufficiently traumatic event will cure prior issues. By replacement, if nothing else.

Replacement. He snorts at the thought and watches Damian's eyes narrow.

"You are more calm than I expected, regarding my confession," he says after a prolonged and visible debate with himself over whether to take offense at Tim's laughter.

Tim shrugs.

The rain is nearly clean, he can smell that it came in from off the river. Someone bled nearby recently, though not much. For all that he hates it, aside from the thirst and the cold, the healing factor means there's no lingering aches, no pain. He's never felt physically better.

"Confession is a bit of a strong word," Tim says at last. "I don't know, I've been told it's hypocritical for me to get upset at being surveilled. What can I do for you?"

Damian sneers, though it's by far one of the least cutting expressions Tim's ever seen on his face.

"You're being disgustingly complacent," he says. The suspicion is obvious and Tim rolls his eyes.

"I got laid," he says, and speaks over Damian's sputtering. "Did you just come to hang out? I thought you hated patrolling this area."

"Drake," Damian snaps, which makes Tim laugh. He's well and truly rattled Damian if he's forgetting the no-names rule like this. It's a little adorable. He should have tried this tact far earlier.

"Well if I can't help you," Tim says and stands, and Damian snarls and gestures him back down with a toss of his head. Tim sits back down. Damian waits until he's settled in the lee of a gargoyle's extended wing, and then settles into a crouch himself.

"I have come to you," Damian begins, then stops and makes a horrible face. When he begins again he still looks like he's bitten a lemon. "I would like it to be clear that you were not my first choice in this matter. Not like that." He extends a hand, palm out, when Tim opens his mouth to complain. "I have… there are concerns that it would be…"

He frowns, shuffles. He's a hunched little figure, chin on his knees and hands tucked around his ankles. If he were even marginally less self-controlled, Tim gets the impression he'd be fiddling with his bootlaces.

"My acquaintances at school. Have familiarized me. With the concept. Of triggers," he says at last, stiffly. So stiffly that it chops his sentences up into fragments. "And I had. Concerns. Regarding yours. Until recently."

Tim stares at him. Damian visibly contains the urge to fidget again.

"Until recently," Tim repeats numbly. He isn't quite sure what his face is doing. He's too busy trying to figure out what his emotions are doing.

"You have been spending time with Red Hood," Damian says, and finally meets Tim's eyes. His expression is pinched, but not hostile. "With… Jason Todd."

"I have," Tim agrees cautiously.

Damian sighs. Rolls his shoulders. Makes a face at Tim like he's upset Tim isn't quick enough to pick up on what he's trying to imply.

"Would you tell me about him?" he asks quietly, and Tim blinks.

There is silence.

"My father won't speak about him," Damian says when the silence stretches too long. "Alfred is not as helpful as I would wish. And Richard… I do not like seeing him… unhappy."

Oh, Dick.

No, Dick wouldn't stop Damian from asking about Jason, but he would hate the questions all the same. He'd hate digging up the grave of the Robin Jason had been, when he's only so recently made his peace with the man that Robin became. He'd pick at the scars for Damian all the same, because that's the kind of person he is, and because Damian is who he is, he'd noticed. What a mess.

"Come over here, I'm not going to shout across the whole rooftop," Tim says with a sigh, beckoning Damian to the relative shelter of the gargoyle's wing. When Damian hesitates, eyeing Tim down the length of his nose with blatant distrust, he rolls his eyes yet again. "I won't bite, Christ. Get out of the rain."

Damian snarls, but eventually gets up and shuffles under the wing too.

Tim can smell him better from here. Soap and leather and steel are an undercurrent to the smell of cared-for animals. The garam masala of the vegan Pakistani restaurant Damian refuses to admit he stops at for his patrol breaks. Extra-strength deodorant because, despite all of his strident denials, puberty is still running over Damian like a truck.

"I don't know too much," he begins. Damian's chin rests on his knees again, his hands tucked into his lap and his gaze glittering green slits in his face, and he doesn't interrupt. "But I can tell you a little. And maybe I'll show you some pictures sometime."

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

The Cave has always been cool, a damp kind of temperature that was heaven in the summer and a minor misery the rest of the time. It's worse these days, with how Tim's temperature regulation is shot, but it's not like he can let on that anything's changed. Putting on a sweater would be inviting commentary, and he hasn't worked out how to include heating coils in his suit yet without upping the chance of electrocuting himself beyond acceptable parameters.

So he shows up for a group meeting like he always has before. He settles in at the conference table and tucks his hands into his armpits, and then utterly fails to focus.

Bruce is talking about something, and Tim can't pay an ounce of attention because Jason's hand is on his hip.

It isn't doing much of anything except resting there. Every once in a while, when Bruce says something Jason particularly doesn't like, his fingers twitch. His hands are warm, just like the rest of him is. Tim can tell, because he's been tucked into Jason's side in a way that should drive him crazy, and does, but not for the reasons it ought to.

He feels warm and sheltered.

Jason had pulled Tim to him casually, like his hands belong on Tim's body. The way he watched Tim before reaching for him is different too, though only subtly. He's always stared at Tim with something raptorial in his expression. The danger faded a while ago, passing from him with the worst of his rage, but not the habit.

Now there's a hunger in his eyes that could almost pass for green in some lights.

Dick is watching them. Not quite staring, he's too well-trained for that, but Tim can feel the burn of his gaze against the side of his face every time he looks away. He probably isn't listening to Bruce either. Stephanie and Cass are whispering to each other. Duke has his phone out under the table. The only ones listening to Bruce are Jason and possibly Damian.

"I'll post the notes to the shared server," Bruce concludes, and folds his arms.

He's not looking at the two of them. He's actually being pretty conspicuous in not looking at Jason's hands on Tim. Even with the whiteout lenses, it's obvious he's looking anywhere but in their direction. Tim considers how he wants to feel about that.

"Right," Jason drawls, and his hands tighten again. They're so warm, in the damp cold of the Cave. It takes more control than Tim wants to admit not to tuck himself deeper into Jason's side. "Thanks for wasting our damn time."

He doesn't want to care, Tim concludes. He's tired, and cold, and thirst is starting to creep up the back of his throat. Jason is warm, and smells like Tim's come and deodorant, and he's going to argue with Tim about which safehouse to spend the night in. Bruce has made it clear he isn't going to say anything, in his own way. It isn't approval, but it's something.

Tim doesn't want to care, so he won't.

Dick shifts his weight. He meets Tim's eyes for a long moment, and smiles, and looks back at Bruce.

Bruce sighs, and dismisses them. He's looking tired, grey at the temples and tight at the corners of his mouth. He doesn't hunch when he turns back to the panopticon of screens but it seems to hover like a ghost in the air, that those titanic shoulders might slump.

The guilt, Tim drowns with ruthless cruelty.

Damian strides away, and Alfred drifts to Bruce's side, and Stephanie pulls Cass towards the bikes with a hand around Cass's wrist. Duke is already gone. Only the three of them remain, Jason's hand still on Tim's hip and Dick's eyes carefully skating around the two of them.

Tim pushes at Jason's hip. Jason goes, grumbling but easy, in the direction of his bike.

Dick finally looks at Tim straight on.

"A word?" he asks with a brilliant flash of his teeth.

He smiles like a sunrise, even now when he's acting like a skittish animal. Tim pulls a breath in across his tongue, the roof of his mouth. The tang of norepinephrine and cortisol blossoms on the tip of his tongue. Fear. Dick is, somehow, for some reason, afraid.

"Of course," Tim says and quirks a smile, and follows him out to the training mats.

No one follows them, but he feels Jason's eyes on his back.

Dick loiters there, moves like he's going to stuff his hands in his pockets and belatedly realizes he's wearing his suit. The clean sourness of his scent is thickening, and Tim watches him rock back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet, and tries to sort the taste into something he can read. Scent is so frustratingly vague.

Dick looks up at him at last.

He looks lost. Utterly at sea, and desperate with the attempt to find his way.

"So, you and Jason," he says and tries on a cheesy smile. It settles uneasily. Tim shrugs and forces himself not to look back towards Jason.

"Maybe," he says. "Something like that, maybe. What's up, Dick?"

Dick makes a face, and then a different face, and rocks on his heels again.

"On the phone, before," he says, and stops. His hands move for pockets that don't exist again. He winces. "When you said… you know."

Tim co*cks his head.

Of course he knows. He just can't help the distraction, because Dick's pulse is pounding and Tim can't hear anything else.

"I remember," he says belatedly.

Dick's mouth pinches.

"Do you," he begins, and stops again. His hands flutter and then clasp behind his back in something like Alfred's customary stance. His gaze roams Tim's face. "Did you actually…"

"I meant it."

Dick doesn't quite flinch, but it's a near thing. Tim knows what to look for in someone bracing for a punch. He knows what Nightwing looks like when he's steeling himself against something. He's breathing through his mouth, shallowly.

"Okay," Dick manages, and the smile pulls at his mouth. It's a ghastly smile, stretched taut to contain the anxiety Dick gives away in how he shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet. "So… So you should… explain that to me? So I can understand?"

Tim studies him.

He feels removed from himself for a moment, watching their conversation from a long way away. He watches himself shrug, give Dick a smile much more sincere than the one on Dick's face. There's no fear where he is, and that alone feels miraculous. Only a little sadness, at how scared Dick still smells.

Dick looks small, for a heartbeat. Minimized to the defensive tuck of his shoulders, the way he's staying on the balls of his feet like Bruce taught them all. Ready to dodge in any direction. A self-soothing habit all of them have under pressure.

He looks hollow, tangled up into himself. Like he's curling up around a wound, protecting himself.

Tim wants to tuck himself into that hollow space. He could step forward into Dick's arms, fit himself against Dick's chest and tuck his nose against the hinge of his jaw. Press his lips to where the blood pounds so close to his skin.

Dick wouldn't stop him. He'd welcome Tim in. He would do anything for any of them, at any cost.

"I trust you," Tim says, and Dick flinches.

Another motion, another shrug of his shoulder, hands seeking pockets that aren't there.

"Timmy, what happened to you was awful," he says after a beat, and he sounds like he's grasping after the lines of a script that doesn't quite make sense. Like he's reaching after his Nightwing voice and not quite getting there, and doesn't know why it isn't easy. "I don't want to, to retraumatize… I can't hurt you, Tim."

Tim hums, rocks forward and back in an echo of Dick.

The cave is quiet. Damian, Alfred, and Stephanie are all upstairs already. Duke is gone again, off for patrol. Bruce is at the computer when Tim glances over his shoulder, absorbed in annotating blueprints to the Iceberg Lounge. Jason loiters by the bikes, stealing glances in Tim's direction.

That makes Tim feel warm, and he turns back to Dick before he can blush and give himself away.

Dick isn't looking at him. He's looking over Tim's shoulder, back towards Jason, and his expression is… very still. Strange. Familiar, but only barely. Tim can't read what he's thinking.

"It wouldn't hurt me," Tim says.

Dick blinks, looks at him, blinks again. It seems to take several long seconds for him to understand what Tim's saying, to remember what he'd said just seconds ago. It makes him seem so much younger, the way his lashes flutter. That strange expression lingers.

"Not for real, not for long," Tim adds when Dick opens his mouth, probably to argue. He grins, and it's for once entirely sincere. "Healing factor, remember?"

Dick looks at him for a really long time in complete silence. That strange expression is back on his face, and stronger now. Then he looks back over Tim's shoulder, and blinks.

"You good over here, Red? dickhe*d?"

"That rhymed," Tim comments, and quirks half a smile for Jason. He's looming at the edge of the mats, not close enough to be a threat by any means but certainly closer than he had been.

"Not really," Jason huffs at him, but he's looking at Dick.

Tim looks back at Dick. He's staring at Jason, and the strange expression has twisted, and Tim recognizes it now.

"We'll talk about it another time," Dick says, still looking at Jason. By the time he drags his gaze back to Tim he's smiling again, though. Small and quiet but still bright enough to blind. The sourness has gone out of his smell, Tim realizes abruptly. Whatever Dick had been afraid of, that fear is gone now. Tim wishes he knew why.

He wants to know why Dick is looking at him, and at Jason, like he sometimes looks at Jason's old Robin memorial case.

"Another time," Tim promises, and then Jason is tugging him away, and Dick is trying to put his hands in pockets that aren't there again.

==

"Dick looked miserable," Jason says later, much later. A rooftop in Chinatown, a plastic tub of wontons between Jason's knees and the taste of Jason's blood between Tim's teeth. Just a little bit, just enough to dull the burn, not enough to dull Jason's reflexes. Neither of them are that stupid.

Even so, Tim can't help himself from licking his lips, probing between his molars for a last little taste.

"He was… off-balance," Tim agrees, glancing at Jason from the corner of his eye.

They're technically doing stakeout duty on their patrol break. No one's entered or left the foreclosed corner store in an hour, though. Tim can't smell anything on the breeze wafting up from the street but old garbage and wet dog.

Jason hums, amused. He maneuvers his chopsticks with a graceful skill Tim had to practice for hours to achieve, fishing out a wonton without getting a drop of chili oil on himself.

"What did you say?" he asks around a mouthful of pork and cabbage.

He should lie.

Tim shrugs and ignores that his heart is high in his throat.

"I asked him to fix your scar up," he says, and snorts despite himself when Jason chokes.

"Cool," Jason wheezes, and thumps himself on the chest.

He doesn't sound upset, or judgemental. He sounds like he'd be laughing if he could clear his lungs.

Something in Tim relaxes.

"I don't think he was expecting it," he murmurs and Jason rolls his eyes.

"You f*cking think?" he says, and picks his chopsticks back out of the tub. "You're batsh*t, Pretender."

And the nickname comes out flavored with fondness and chili oil. Tim buries a smile behind his wrist.

==

"You've been getting laid," Baby observes over the book she has propped on her chest. Her gaze is a little blurry with the hours she's spent reading, but she's still plenty sharp. She's reading Emma, and he manages to stop himself from thinking about Jason's bookshelves before a blush can give him away.

He shrugs instead.

"I am an adult," he reminds her and she lifts her head enough to flash her teeth at him.

"Barely," she says and he scowls at her, and she settles back behind her book. When she speaks next, it's without looking at him. "Thought you weren't into him, Birdie. Change your mind?"

He scowls deeper, though his heart isn't really in it and she can't see him anyway.

"There were extenuating circ*mstances," he mumbles and she gives him a thumb's up without looking. "Can we talk about something else? How's the GED coming along, by the way?"

Her snort is eloquent.

"Great, thanks, asshole," she says. She's poking him in the thigh with her toes. "I'm thinking about trying for community college, quit the night job if I can find a good part-time thing. Willing to be a reference for me?"

"I can hack you a whole job history, if you want," he says absently, because it wouldn't exactly be hard. "Name the industry and it's all yours."

After a period of silence, he looks up.

Baby has put her book down in her lap, spine cracking in a way that would have Alfred wincing, and she stares at him.

"What?" he asks, feeling abruptly embattled. "What's wrong?"

She stares at him for a moment longer and then shakes her head, picks the book back up but doesn't hide behind it. She looks down at it instead, toying with the dog-eared corner of a page.

"Sometimes you're so normal, and then sometimes you say some of the wildest sh*t I've ever heard," she says. It sounds distant, like she's talking to someone else. Disbelieving, but wanting to believe. "You'd do that for me?"

It'd be easy, Tim nearly says, but swallows it down at the last second. Not every truth needs to be said aloud, he's not Damian. Instead he shrugs.

"Of course," he says easily. "It's the least I can do."

Her head drops back against the arm of the couch. Her toes, tucked under Tim's thigh, flex. The book lays abandoned again in her lap. He absorbs the sight of her, lax and relaxed and lit beautifully by afternoon sunlight slanting through the blinds. Files it away carefully, so he doesn't lose it.

"Dunno about the ethics of that," she says at last. "Aren't you supposed to be a hero? All, rah-rah morality, or whatever?"

He shrugs, though she isn't looking at him.

"I killed someone," he says, and she jackknifes up. He doesn't flinch, and ignores the way she stares at him. "I'm not sure that I get to claim any kind of moral convictions."

Her mouth opens, and then closes into a thunderous scowl. He sighs.

"I meant it as a joke," he says, and lifts a hand like it'll forestall Baby's protests. Her scowl doesn't ease. "I didn't mean it that way, I promise."

She settles, still scowling.

"I think I liked it better when you couldn't joke about it," she mumbles, but she picks up her book even if she doesn't return to reading it. Her toes dig into his leg viciously. He doesn't bother moving.

"Anyway," he says, slumping deeper into the couch. "Really, just say the word. I don't think it's particularly unethical, if we're looking to justify ends and means. Rectifying advantages you were denied, disadvantaged populations, all that. It's basic accessibility theory."

She huffs through her nose and props up her book so she doesn't have to look at him.

"Crazy sh*t," she mumbles. "Why aren't you going to college?"

"Dropped out of high school," he says with a shrug, and barely dodges when she throws her book at him.

She's forgotten to needle him about Jason, at least.

==

The night is quiet, so Tim is hanging out on a rooftop across from the local headquarters of a hedge fund he's been investigating for insider trading for a month or so now. Jason is several blocks away doing something as Red Hood he'd been cagey about, and Tim hadn't pried. He has his own projects he doesn't want anyone asking about.

It's working out. Somehow. They're making it work.

Damian and Stephanie are arguing in his ear, something he's ignoring. Oracle buzzes in once in a while to try to stop them, not terribly effectively. Otherwise it's quiet, leaving him to focus on his stakeout.

There's always someone awake in the finance world, he's learned. Right now there are two people in the main office discussing the Japan Stock Exchange, and he's listening in through a bug and idly taking notes.

There's a beep in his ear. The sharp tone of someone triggering an emergency alert. Stephanie and Damian go quiet instantly. Tim sits up straight.

A beat of silence. The buzz of radio static and quiet, waiting breathing.

"Nightwing," Oracle says when no one says anything. "Report?"

Another beat of silence, and then… a grunt?

It's impossible to interpret the noise but Tim is on his feet anyway, his surveillance gear abandoned.

"N?"

Jason's voice.

There's another grunt, and then—

An explosion of noise—gunfire, rat-a-tat of semi-auto, shouting? A babble of voices. A thum-whumpf of an explosion—

A harsh sound. A voice. Pain, animal and vicious, cracking through the comms and interrupting Oracle.

The cry dies. More noises through the comm, distant thumping, the clang of metal on metal. Shouting, incomprehensible voices raised in anger.

Wet, panting breathing.

"Jesus, was that Nightwing?" asks Stephanie, and Tim is no longer able to breathe. He's a statue, one of the gargoyles posed at the edge of the rooftop. He is cold and numb and stone but for the hot acid churn in the pit of his stomach. He can't breathe. He can't blink.

"Hood, you're closest, it's five minutes from—"

A crunch. The wet breathing cuts out. All of the noises from Dick's comm cut out, all at once, and there is buzzing silence, and the bottom drops out of the world.

"Location," Jason demands and his voice through the comm is tight and harsh and Tim…

His head is swimming. That had been Dick's voice, that awful croak of pain. It had been Dick and he isn't saying anything, there is only silence. There is only silence and cold, an awful cold that seems to come from inside him, inescapable.

Tim's ears are ringing. He yanks in a gasping breath, and then another one, and the voices of his family filter back in.

"-corner of 45th and East Broad," Oracle is saying, terse. "It might be Pyg."

"sh*t," Tim says, but he can barely hear himself, and no one else is listening. Pyg. Professor f*cking Pyg.

Jason is breathing heavily into the comms channel, jolting rhythmically with how he must be running. There's chatter, Damian and Stephanie talking over each other, Bruce—-

Bruce is doing something with the Justice League, Tim remembers with another wash of sickness. He's off-world, out of range of any communication the Bats in Gotham can muster up.

He won't know what's happening until days from now.

He isn't going to come home to another dead son, Tim thinks, cold and clear like broken glass. The faint, persistent ringing sounds louder in his ear. He will not watch Bruce mourn another dead child.

Tim will not lose anyone else.

Corner of 45th and East Broad Avenue. Jason had been five minutes away.

Tim can make it there in seven.

He does not feel his feet touching the ground. He's never been so quick, so graceful, run the rooftops with such reckless abandon. Windows flick by him; lit, shadowed, lit again, figures moving behind glass his thoughts track without his permission. His awareness encompasses the whole world and it's too much, too much—

The panting in his ear cuts off in a skid, a slide of leather against stone, clattering gravel. A beat of silence from Jason and Tim's footing slips.

Jason screams. It's wordless rage, a buzz of sound peaking the comms before Oracle reduces the gain and Tim flinches and nearly topples over the edge of the roof before he can get his grapple turned the right way.

"Hood," Oracle snaps, but Jason doesn't answer and Tim is swooping past 33rd. Damian is hissing, the sound venomous, but his words slide away into irrelevancy. Stephanie is talking over him or maybe to him and Tim scales the tallest building in five square blocks and orients.

Jason is breathing hard. Leather creaks. There's a clang, the booming retort of a gunshot.

Again Jason screams. More anger.

The corner of 45th and East Broad is on fire.

Smoke spits up into the sky, greasy black and sullen orange. It's a department store, an upscale one, there are mannequins wreathed in greedy fire in the windows and in the distance the approaching sound of sirens. Gunfire chatters, in front of Tim and through the comm at a slight delay.

A whine through the comm. Distorted by the roar of the fire, by the poor comm reception, it's impossible to tell who it came from.

"On location," he reports curtly, and tips himself forward into free-fall.

"Dick." Jason's voice echoes over the comms as Tim lands, jarringly hard. Damian and Stephanie fall silent. Jason's voice is… confused. Young and soft and bewildered. "Dick? Hey, Dick, hey—"

No one says anything about names on the comm. Damian's breathing is picking up. He must be running too, though he's easily twenty minutes away. Oracle is silent but for the rattling of a keyboard.

There are bodies, clustered on the pavement outside of the burning building. Wearing masks for the most part, obvious Pyg handiwork. Tim stalks past them, following the smell of the freshest blood, the cigarettes-cordite-leather of Jason.

"Wake up, c'mon," Jason is saying. "C'mon, Dickie, Dickiebird, you gotta wake up. Wake up."

There's an alley between the burning building and the shabby apartment block next to it. It's cast in shadow by the fire, stark, a sucking hole in Tim's vision. There are more bodies piled around the mouth of it, five or six men in bulky body armor stinking of blood and fear. One or two of them are stirring and there are rubber bullets underfoot.

Fear blossoms around Tim as he vaults them and skids to a stop on slick pavement.

Jason looks up at him.

He isn't wearing his helmet. He isn't wearing a domino. His eyes are red-rimmed. His cheeks are dry except for a graceful spray of clotting blood.

Dick is cradled in his arms. His head is tucked into the crook of Jason's neck, his jaw slack, lips parted. There's blood crusted at a split in his bottom lip, one of his shoulders at an unnatural angle, the stink of blood hovers around them like a miasma.

Jason blinks up at Tim and Tim has never seen him so lost.

"Is he," Tim begins, and his voice chokes to a stop before he can finish the sentence.

"He isn't waking up," Jason says.

His voice is nothing like himself. So stripped-down and young.

The fire is roaring but it doesn't seem to touch him, the flickering play of firelight making it impossible to tell if Dick's chest is moving. There's blood smeared across the deep blue V of the Nightwing suit. The hand not folded awkwardly across his chest trails in the dirt. There's more blood smeared between those fingers, muddy and thick. He's so still and so limp. The lenses of his domino flicker orange-black-orange, reflecting the fire.

Tim hauls in a breath and then another. He can't taste anything but iron and salt and ashes. Air isn't reaching him. There is blood all around him. There isn't any way to know who it belongs to.

He takes a step forward. Jason doesn't try to warn him off, not like the feral cast to his gaze halfway suggests, he just watches Tim come and his eyes are wet and so blue. Tim takes another step. Dick is so still.

Jason looks down at Dick and cups his cheek.

"He isn't waking up," he repeats. He sounds so young.

Tim is on his knees at Dick's hip. There is no intervening memory. His knees hurt. He's going to throw up but he swallows it back.

Jason doesn't stop him from fumbling with the neck of the Nightwing suit. Disabling the countermeasures is child's play. He jams two fingers against Dick's neck and holds his breath.

And against his fingers a heart beats.

The noise he makes is creaking, thready, high-pitched.

"He's alive," he whispers when he's finally pulled in enough air.

Jason's fingers tighten around Dick's shoulder.

There's shouting behind Tim. Near the mouth of the alley, deep masculine voices and the thud of boots against Gotham pavement. A click—the safety of a gun.

Something blossoms in the churn of Tim's gut.

"He's alive," Jason rasps, looking back down at Dick's face. Now that Tim's vision has cleared a little, he can see how Dick's chest rises and falls. Jason's thumb sweeps back and forth across Dick's cheek.

The voices behind him are getting closer. That thing in the pit of Tim's stomach surges, acidic, sick and hot and rotting. His muscles are tight. His jaw is trembling.

He reaches up to the comm in his ear.

"Nightwing is alive, unconscious," he says. His voice is steadier than he expects it to be. "Have A prep medical. Hood is transporting."

Jason hasn't looked up.

"Acknowledged," Oracle tells him, and Tim mutes the channel. There are more voices behind him, a gunshot. The thunk of a bullet into soft brick.

"Jay," he whispers. Jason looks back up at him. His eyes are bloodshot. His grip on Dick tightens. Dick makes a little noise, a soft snuffle, and Jason blinks. The blue of his eyes clears just a little, focusing a little more. In the flickering firelight, his expression is animal. Watchful.

He doesn't say anything but his head tilts.

"I need you to get N to the Cave," Tim tells him gently. Jason's hands tighten on Dick, provoking another soft little noise. "A can check him over."

Jason stares at him for a moment and then his gaze flickers past Tim in the direction of the voices.

Hatred churns in Tim's stomach. Hot, sour hate. It tingles in his fingertips, the small of his back, like a mouthful of venom. Like violence.

"I'll take care of them," Tim promises, and Jason nods, and Tim turns his back on the soft croon of Jason shushing Dick's little noises. The rustle of leather jacket, the creak of body armor as Jason picks Dick up. Tim doesn't look back at the patter of retreating footsteps.

He is alone in his head. No voices in his ears. There is only himself, the bo staff he flicks open with one hand, the batarang he balances between his knuckles. His fangs, extended, and a rattling hiss echoing from his chest. Just him, and the stink of blood.

==

He's bruised and he dislocated a finger. He'd gotten shot a couple times, luckily only where he has the body armor to stop the bullets, and there's blood that isn't his on his elbows and boots. It doesn't stop him from guiding his bike into the Cave and fishtailing to a stop, vaulting off, sprinting to the medical wing.

Alfred hovers at the door to a recovery room, and his face is drawn with exhaustion but not with grief. He nods to Tim, and steps aside.

Jason sits at Dick's side.

He's bent over, his forehead resting in the crease of Dick's hip, one of Dick's hands between both of his in a parody of prayer. Folded in half like this, hunched and still, he looks smaller than a man his size should be able to. Damian stands opposite him, arms folded, ramrod straight and unflinching. As Tim steps into the room his eyes flicker over, and then back to Dick with no change in expression.

In the corner, a heart monitor quietly beeps to itself.

"How?" Tim asks. His voice is hoarse and his throat closes up before he can finish the sentence.

Damian inclines his head without removing his eyes from Dick.

"Concussion, several broken ribs, and severe lacerations down his back," he says. His voice is quiet and flat. Expressionless. His hands are fists with white knuckles. "His shoulder was dislocated. He is resting now, but as sedation was deemed dangerous in light of the concussion, I have been advised to remain quiet to encourage sleep."

Tim nods, and can't decide what to do next.

The room is silent except for that incessant beeping, rhythmic and reassuring. Jason hasn't moved yet, though Tim doesn't think he's asleep. His shoulders are too tight. Tim wants to touch them. He wants to tuck himself under Jason's arm and burrow into the warm space between his chest and the thin mattress. He wants to check Dick's pulse because the sound of the heart monitor, the EKG line bouncing rhythmically, isn't enough.

He pulls in a careful breath and breathes out again carefully through his teeth. Disinfectant stings in his nose and he has to swallow twice to keep the nausea down.

"And those responsible?" Damian asks and Tim swallows again.

The taste of smoke and blood still lingers in his mouth. His knuckles are bruised and the fist-sized bruises of bullets hitting kevlar body armor are already developing down his back and legs.

He shrugs.

"Handled," he murmurs, and Damian nods.

Silence sweeps in again. It's difficult for Tim to look at Dick directly. His gaze keeps flinching away from the livid split in Dick's lip, the bruises of exhaustion under his eyes. Even smoothed out with sleep there's pain in the lines of Dick's face that Tim hates with a visceral sickness.

He looks at Jason instead. The bent shoulders, rough hands clutching Dick's still fingers. He's still wearing his body armor and suit but no helmet, no domino. The smallness of him wrenches at something in Tim's chest, the tension caught in his absolute stillness. His breathing is the barest motion.

Tim crouches at Jason's hip and Jason doesn't move. Not for a long, long moment. When he stirs, it's just turning his head. A blue eye peeks out at Tim, red-rimmed and pink with sore dryness. His expression is empty.

Tim tries to find something to say, and can't. Instead he offers a hand, palm-up by Jason's elbow.

Jason looks at it, and then frees one hand to take Tim's. It's hot like a fever and damp with sweat. Tim laces their fingers together, settles on his knees, and waits.

Eventually Dick stirs.

It's slow, his waking. Eyelids fluttering, hands shifting under thin blankets. Jason sits bolt upright and his hand goes tight around Tim's, tight enough to grind the bones together, and Damian is at the far side of Dick's bed in a flash of movement. No one speaks until Dick's eyes finally open and squint against the light.

His gaze tracks around. It lands on each of them, bleary, hazed with pain and medication. He tries to move his hand and seems confused for the half-second it takes for Jason to let go of it.

"Jay," he whispers.

Jason doesn't answer. Dick doesn't appear to notice. He reaches out and his hand is clumsy in cupping Jason's cheek. He smiles, a dazed expression, tender as an open wound and unguarded with pain and sleep and chemicals.

"Hey, Jay."

Jason swallows. It clicks in his throat. His hand hasn't eased its vice grip around Tim's fingers. In fact, it's tightening. There's a shooting pain up Tim's wrist that he doesn't particularly care about.

"Hey, Dickie," Jason says. His voice is a hoarse rasp.

Dick smiles wider. It opens the split in his lip, a fat bead of crimson welling up immediately, but the expression itself is so sweet. Heartbreakingly so.

"Hey, Jay, hey," he whispers. His gaze travels to Damian, to Tim. "Hi Timmy… hi, Dami."

"Grayson," Damian acknowledges. His voice sounds even stiffer than usual. Brittle, almost. Tim can't speak at all. He just nods.

Dick's gaze turns back to Jason.

Jay," he says. "Jay, love you. Love you."

He says it so sweetly. His hand is still on Jason's face, thumb to the scar that twists Jason's upper lip into a faint, constant sneer. He's smiling as he says it, even as Jason jerks away, as he surges to his feet. It yanks Tim upright too, stumbling into Jason. Jason's body is rigid, trembling, the expression on his face terrible and incomprehensible.

"Take care of him," he snaps at Damian, stabbing a finger in his direction, and spins on his heel and speeds for the door. Tim stumbles in his wake, trying to keep up, trying to keep his feet underneath him.

Jason almost makes it to the door. Dick's voice catches him at the last possible second, one foot already across the threshold.

"Jason?"

Jason looks back over his shoulder. His hand goes impossible tighter around Tim's.

Dick is staring after them, hand limp on the bedspread now. His expression is perplexed. A little sad.

A tiny bone in Tim's hand gives with a dull snap. It hurts in a distant kind of way, like it would hurt very badly if Tim were to pay attention to it.

Something heaves in Tim's chest. It feels like a dry sob.

"Love you too, Dickie," Jason says, and yanks Tim after him through the door, and doesn't say a word until he's locking the door to the safehouse in the Bowery behind them.

==

"I'm not going to talk about it."

Tim glances up from his tablet.

Jason stands in the doorway to the bedroom, hands braced against the frame. Shirtless, and in the raking light of the streetlights through the safehouse windows, his scars are thrown into sharp relief. The thick quarter-sized circles of gunshot entry wounds and the spidery patches of exit wounds, the thin slashes of clean knife wounds, the pink shiny splashes of burn scars.

He's tense. His shoulders are high. There isn't enough light to really read his expression but Tim doesn't have to. Everything Jason is feeling is obvious in the way he stands, the way his shoulders hitch higher when Tim doesn't say anything.

He looks back at his tablet. He's picking at some predictive algorithms but in one corner of the screen is the camera feed to Dick's room. Damian had stared up at the camera for a while, but ultimately left it alone—for Tim or for Barbara, who is certainly also watching, Tim doesn't know and doesn't care.

"Okay," he says and closes the feed. Dick is just sleeping anyway, the restless sleep of someone too concussed for sedatives. Alfred's notes in Dick's medical file say it isn't as bad a concussion as it could be. He doesn't need to be monitored this closely.

Footsteps. Jason, coming a few feet into the room.

There's silence for long enough that Tim taps out another line of code, then deletes it. His focus is shaky.

"Just like that," Jason tests.

Tim peeks up at him.

His shoulders are still high. Tim can see his face better—his chin is set obstinately, but his eyes are pinned to Tim's face. The sneer he's put on sits uneasily on his face, scar pulling it a little askew. Tim wants to reach up and smooth it away.

f*ck, but he smells good. He smells like saline and cheap shampoo and a hint of blood. Even tucked under a blanket, Tim is cold. He wants to push Jason back into the bedroom, push him down onto the bed, crawl under him and curl up and not come out until everything has gone away.

He isn't going to think about Jason, about Dick, about how the word love always sounds coming out of Dick's mouth. When he tries, hot nausea surges up from the root of his stomach. Instead—coding. Coding, and surveillance, and waiting for the hot water to run out in the shower Jason stepped into as soon as they'd gotten in the door.

And taking half a bag of his little store of bagged blood. It had set the bone in his hand, though it still hurts in annoying throbs of dull heat. He can type with it, and it'll do until he can take more blood.

"I don't particularly want to talk about it either," he tells the lines of code, white characters against a black background.

A weight drops onto the couch next to him. Jason, still watching him warily. Tim closes out the coding project; he won't be doing any kind of quality work like this. Instead he pulls up the inbox he's set up for the Drake Foundation.

Jason watches him sort through the emails for a few minutes. Plenty of spam, plenty of offers of partnership that make Tim roll his eyes. He knows his family's old associates well enough, and he knows business well enough, to spot a tax dodge when one is offered. A handful of genuine offers he marks for later research—

"That group does good work."

A hand swipes across the screen, pulling up one of the messages he'd marked for research. A needle exchange organization, one Tim only vaguely recognizes. He knows of at least one of their shelters in Robbinsville, he's pretty sure.

"Alright," he says, and forwards the message to the Foundation Board for consideration.

Silence from Jason for another moment. And then there's an arm around his shoulders, heavy and warm, and a thigh against his. When he lifts the corner of his blanket, Jason pulls it over his lap too. After another few moments, the TV clicks on. Volume low, tuned to a Jeopardy! rerun.

"Did I hurt you?" Jason asks, when half an episode has gone by. Tim blinks, coming back to himself, lulled into a sleepy, guilty contentment. It's so hard to fight, folded into Jason's warmth and his scent. "Don't lie," Jason adds. He sounds…

Tim lifts the hand with the barely-healed bone and flexes the fingers, highlighted in blue by the television. Jason takes it. His rough fingertips are very gentle and unerring in locating the tender new bone.

"Not badly," Tim says, which isn't a lie, even if Jason might disagree. In any case Jason tucks Tim's hand between his and lets it go, shoulders only a little tight. Tim lets him have that hand; he can type just as well with his left.

There's a message from Damian's number blinking at him from his notifications. Richard was asking for you, it says.

The lurch in the pit of Tim's stomach is enough to stop him breathing for a moment. Sick, painful something. A sister sensation to hunger, only a little more wretched.

I'll stop by first thing tomorrow, Tim sends back, and goes back to clearing his inbox. He's been neglecting it for a few weeks.

==

Dick isn't awake when Tim stops by. He stays for ten minutes or so, long enough for Alfred to press a cup of tea on him and for Bruce to fold him into a hug that feels so good it hurts deep in Tim's chest—

He leaves again, awkwardly tucking the stupid Nightwing t-shirt he'd bought ages ago for the next gag-gift opportunity into the crook of Dick's arm.

Damian texts him again, a day later. This time Tim doesn't respond, and Damian doesn't try again.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Jason's safehouses don't have security to anything close to Tim's standards. He lacks the permanence to facilitate that, moving constantly, seeking safety in a nomadic lifestyle rather than the fortifications Tim has dug for himself.

It's something Tim is workshopping solutions to, because the idea that what stands between Jason and a retaliatory bullet are a cheap window alarm and quick reflexes makes nausea curdle in his stomach.

He can do better. Something quick to set up and transportable, something that wouldn't be too costly to abandon if necessary. He hasn't worked out all the kinks yet though, and so—

The alarm goes off as Dick climbs in the bedroom window.

Tim cuts it in seconds but even those seconds are too much. There's a thump from the kitchen, and then Jason is in the doorway with his gun drawn, in ancient jeans that cling to his thighs and a shirt that's more hole than cotton.

He stares at Dick. Dick pulls himself fully into the room and stares back.

"Front door," Tim reminds him, because the silence is suffocating.

Dick shrugs.

"What're you doing here," Jason demands, holstering his gun. His tone is unfriendly, his posture stiff. When Tim crosses the room to him, he doesn't really relax at all.

This time, when Dick shrugs, he stuffs his hands in his pockets. After a moment, he pulls them out again. His gaze keeps darting across Jason's face, then to Tim, then back to Jason. He's standing awkwardly, not like he's in pain but more like he isn't sure how to stand.

"You've been avoiding me," he says at last. "Both of you. It's been weeks. And I… I wanted to talk."

It hasn't been weeks, Tim wants to say, but then he thinks back and… and it has been.

It's been nearly a month. Summer is gripping Gotham by the throat, drying out the alleys and maddening its population, and Tim hasn't seen Dick in all that time. Just a flicker of black and blue from the corner of his eye when he's out on patrol. Just a voice at the other end of a comm, and reports Tim reads every other night or so.

Jason hisses out a breath through his teeth. His hand is still hovering over the butt of his gun.

"Bruce put you up to this," he says at last, and Dick flinches.

"Jason," Tim says. The little fracture of emotion on Dick's face, there and gone again in a moment, had been painful. Tim hadn't liked it. He doesn't like the way mourning tastes in the air. He doesn't like the way Dick's stance keeps shifting.

Jason ignores him.

"You're always gonna do what your Daddy tells you, huh," he continues. He's grinning with all his teeth, eyes little slits of poison. He hasn't pulled his gun back out yet but his hands hover at his sides, ready and tense.

Dick pinks but he doesn't back down. His feet shift, stance widening.

"Bruce doesn't know I'm here," he says firmly.

Jasons' teeth flash in the light, white and blunt. His hand twitches.

"And I'm just s'posed to believe that," he says, and doesn't flinch when Tim lays a hand on his shoulder. He doesn't move at all. The muscle under Tim's hand is stiff, trembling with its own tightness.

Dick meets his eyes for all of a moment before his gaze drops to Tim's hand on Jason. What crosses his face is dark, complicated, indecipherable. He looks away in a moment anyway, shoulders squaring, back to Jason.

"I just want to talk," he says, and extends both hands. Palm up and empty. "Seriously, Jay. I'm not here because of Bruce."

Jason laughs. It's derisive, and not at all happy. Tim doesn't like the sound, and from the way Dick's face twists he doesn't like it much either.

"We talked plenty, Grayson," he says, voice rich with vicious amusem*nt. "We were talking just a while ago, if you remember. The ribs I cracked from talkin' to you just healed up, as a matter'a fact."

Dick flinches again, harder. Drops his gaze and pulls up into himself, retreating from Jason without moving.

A month ago. It feels like a lifetime ago but Tim remembers eventually—Killer Croc and a rooftop, the two of them dancing around each other with graceful violence. They had been talking, in a very loose manner of speaking.

"I… I overreacted," Dick whispers. He isn't looking at Jason. He's looking somewhere around Jason's hip, and he's pale enough to look sick. "I… you promised you stopped, Jay, but I still shouldn't have…"

Wanna hear all the dirty details? Wanna know how I did it?

"That's what you fought about," Tim realizes.

Both of them look at him, confusion painted in its various shades across their faces. He ignores that, ignores them. He's clawing out that memory again, the sodium-orange night and the lush smell of blood blossoming on each other's knuckles. He tries to pull their exact words to mind and fails.

But that doesn't matter. The bitterness between Jason and Dick is taking on a new, awful shape.

"You let him think you," Tim begins, looking at Jason, and something awful happens on Jason's face that stops his words up in his throat. A twisting pulse of warning. His hands balling into white fists. Anger, and a more terrifying desperation.

Dick is staring at him too. Incomprehension, and a kind of terror.

A Robin instinct, Tim thinks in a fracture of absurd, whimsical time. That terror is all Robin. The Robin instinct for knowing when the next shoe is going to drop. All the Robins, every single one of them has it. There's no good thing that can't be ruined.

"Don't," Jason says hoarsely.

"Jason," Tim says. Pleads.

"Seriously, don't," Jason repeats. His fists are so tight they tremble. "Leave it alone, okay, I did it for—"

He cuts himself off. Tim wonders how he would have finished that sentence. Instead Jason just looks at him, eyes a beautiful teal. His mouth is pinched so tight it's flushed the usual soft pink of his scars a sickly white.

"I don't understand," Dick says slowly. He sounds less like he doesn't understand and more like he's working something out, and from the way Jason's eyes flicker he hears it too. He looks abruptly trapped.

"Nothing to understand," Jason insists. His gaze darts from Tim to Dick and back. "Red, seriously. It's fine, okay?"

"Who was it that told me I didn't have to do everything alone?" Tim counters, feeling hysterical.

The breath that jolts out of Jason is flavored with incredulous laughter. Disbelieving. His eyes are narrowed slits.

"You're a f*ckin' asshole," he says. As if Tim doesn't know. He knows he's somewhat hit-or-miss vis-a-vis self-awareness, but it's not like it isn't blindingly obvious. "Look. You really don't gotta do this. I've got it under control. It's fine."

He flinches when Tim reaches out to touch his face. Cups a cheek in his hand and rubs the pad of his thumb over Jason's rough stubble. Tension trembles in him, strung tight and painful-looking, but he doesn't pull away. Jason doesn't try to run.

"I killed someone," Tim tells Dick, but he doesn't look away from Jason. Jason stares back at him and there is incomprehension there, in the lines of his face. "The vampire. I killed him."

Silence. Ringing, breathless silence.

"Self-defense," Jason grinds out. His voice is a wreck.

Tim shrugs and doesn't let himself look at Dick. He's a long shadow at the corner of Tim's vision, silent and still, and if Tim doesn't look at him then he won't see what expression Dick's wearing.

"I killed him," he says again. Something spiny and alive is writhing at the base of his throat and he swallows it away. He doesn't have time for that. "Jason lied. He… you were protecting me."

Jason's eyes close. The muscle under Tim's palm flexes as he clenches his jaw.

"You defended yourself," he says. He doesn't open his eyes. He's bent down to let Tim reach his face so easily, and he looks so fantastically ruined. Pale and shot through with scars and a little bit terrified. "I wasn't… you didn't need B judging you. Not for that. It not a big f*ckin' deal."

And Dick clears his throat.

Both of them look at him. Tim, and Jason's head shifting under Tim's hand. At Dick, so pale, still, luminous in the dimness. His expression, distant and preoccupied and blank.

"I tried to kill the Joker," Dick says.

Jason jerks upright. Tim's hand falls away.

Dick's eyes are flat, blue like dead water, like they never should be. His expression is curiously absent. Abandoned by the carefree joy Tim likes to see him wearing best. He's looking at Jason, and he's standing like he's ready to take a punch.

"You…" Tim tries to say, but the words fail him. Dick's face turns to him, still so empty.

He lets Tim reach out, at least. He lets Tim's hand cup his wrist. His pulse is rabbit-quick and irregular.

In the silence, their heartbeats are very, very loud.

Jason's head turns. His mouth is a thin line. In this light, green burns through his lashes. His gaze drags over Tim, over his hand on Dick's wrist, Dick's bent shoulders.

"Say that again," Jason murmurs.

Dick pulls in a quick mouthful of air, a stuttering little sob. It doesn't change his expression much.

"The Joker," he says again. "I killed him. I tried to."

He's angry. Jason's angry, among many other things, impossible to tell them all apart on his face. His weight shifts. Suddenly he stands like a predator.

"But he's alive," he says. Deceptively light, his voice. He's drifting forward, a familiar carnivorous prowl that brushes him past Tim. He spares Tim a glance, two fingers dragging from the corner of his jaw to the hollow of his throat, and gone again. "How?"

Dick shudders.

"Bruce," he says tonelessly. He's watching Jason come with shadows in his gaze, his muscles tense in his wrist. "Resuscitated him. Didn't want me to… be a murderer."

Jason stands in front of Dick now. Knee to knee, Jason looming over him. Dick looks up at him and there's no way he doesn't see the knives, the gun in its thigh holster, and he still doesn't make a move to get away.

"You never told me," Jason murmurs.

Dick's head bows at last.

"I failed, didn't I?" he tells his feet and the laugh the words ride on their way out is entirely bitter. His heartbeat is settling, the pulse pounding slower against Tim's palm.

He goes easily when Jason shoves him down onto the bed. Lets himself be pushed backwards, down against the mattress, and the calm acceptance blooming on his face as Jason bears him down is nearly beautiful. Jason pins him there by the throat, sitting on his thighs to keep them still in an effort that looks utterly unnecessary.

Tim steps forward. Jason looks at Tim, green and poisonous. Tim looks at him, mouth helplessly open, and then at Dick.

Dick shakes his head, just a little jerk of his chin in Jason's grip. His expression is complicated, but Tim finds he doesn't need to understand it.

Tim lets go of Dick's wrist and climbs onto the bed, drawing his legs up, wrapping his arms around his shins.

"I trust you," he murmurs, to both of them, and that must decide something, because Jason looks back down at Dick.

"Thanks, baby," he says, and his derisive tone curls so sweetly around the endearment Tim's eyes close without meaning to. Dick is watching them through the veil of dark lashes and hopeless resignation, his gaze following the track of the conversation from Jason to Tim and back again.

Tim can't stop himself from reaching out, despite his words. Trailing a finger across the back of Dick's hand.

He's nearly sure Jason isn't going to kill Dick. The pounding in Jason's pulse is familiar, a heady beat at the back of Tim's tongue. Tim remembers it, pressing against his soft palate and the back of his throat, gagging him just hours ago—

Dick's heartbeat is faster, harder. His hand turns under Tim's, his palm open. When Tim settles his fingertips there, Dick's fingers close on them in a grip all veiled desperation. He doesn't look away from Jason, though. His eyes meet Jason's, and there's barely any sign at all of how afraid he is.

Tim could dip down. Take those fingers, that heady pulse, into his mouth.

"You gotta work on that guilt complex, birdbrain," Jason murmurs and his grip tightens. Dick's next breath rasps, a thin little whine jerked from him. His grip convulses around Tim's fingers. "All f*cked up in that pretty little head, ain'tcha?"

This whine is pretty and high, a rasping fluting noise. Dick's pulse is speeding faster, faster.

Tim's fangs ache.

"You tried to kill the Joker for me," Jason murmurs, and poison green is spilling out over his cheeks. His lips pull back over his teeth, an animal snarl, and Tim has learned the smell of his arousal so well. The sex-wet thickness of it. "An' now you're just gonna lay there and let me kill you?"

Dick shrugs. His shoulders jerk up and down, squeaking against cheap sheets. His grip around Tim's fingers is like iron.

"f*cked up, Dickie," Jason says and lets go. The breath Dick hauls in is shuddering, damp, his grip around Tim's hand relaxing.

Tim tries to pull his hand away. Dick's fingers tighten again, then twist, and their hands are twinned together in a grip Tim knows he'll have to break someone's wrist to get out of. And Dick is looking at him, has turned his head against those sh*tty cheap sheets and fixed Tim in place with a stare like one of the damned.

Tim is frozen. Tim is unmoored on a thin safehouse mattress. Tim is miles from shore and the blue-grey he's looking into is too deep to see bottom.

"Did it for Tim, too," Dick says thickly, to Tim more than to Jason. His voice is a little f*cked up, a little scratchy. "For both of you. Never… never gonna let him touch you again, either of you. Swear."

Tim shudders. Jason twitches. Dick's grip grinds the fine bones of Tim's hand together. Maybe he's going to break one of Tim's bones too, Tim thinks with a dizzy surge of something f*cked up. Maybe the same one that Jason did.

Dick's head turns again, a wincing slow motion that speaks to how hard Jason had choked him. He won't have visible bruises tomorrow, but he'll feel them under the surface. Ghosts of Jason's fingerprints. Dangerous, but it doesn't seem like Dick minds. He looks up at Jason and smiles an awful, tender smile.

"I'll kill him again if I have to," he murmurs, cracked and mad and gorgeous.

Jason bites his mouth open, descending on Dick with a predator's hunger. Red, flashing tongue and teeth clicking, Jason's hands wound through black hair, Dick's free hand clutching at Jason's thigh hard enough to dimple the denim.

Dick's lip splits. Iron blood-smell strikes the air and Tim jolts.

He opens his mouth, stretches his jaw in a silent yawn to ease out his fangs. He can smell the two of them, the saturated stink of Jason's arousal and the sharp perfume of Dick's blood. The pounding of their pulses in his ears, indistinguishable.

Dick's still holding his hand, fingers laced together. He doesn't try to break Tim's grip though he must feel the shift of the mattress when Tim tips forward onto his belly, shuffles closer with his cheek to the sheets. There's blood smearing across their cheeks, beautiful as rubies. It strokes across his tongue when he breathes in.

Jason lifts his head like a lion, bloody-mouthed, snarling with something Tim would call joy if he could think at all. When Tim gets up on his knees to follow him he frees a hand from Dick to catch Tim by the hair, but he doesn't stop Tim from nosing up across his cheek. He doesn't stop him from dragging his tongue over the bloodstain. He watches Tim, blue-green and a few inches removed from sanity, and the smile he gives when Tim settles back is nearly gentle.

"How's he taste?" he asks.

Tim sticks his bloody tongue out. Jason snickers.

Dick whimpers.

The breath Jason hauls in is choked. He looks down at Dick, up to Tim, back down to Dick. His hand in Tim's hair has gone gentle, carding through the strands in a rough caress. There's hardly any green at all in the way he looks at them.

"Did you like it?" he asks and not even Tim understands for a long moment. Jason bares his teeth again. "Killing. Killing the Joker. Didja like it?"

"No," Dick rasps.

A beat of silence. Jason's eyes narrowing to slits of green.

"I'd do it again, though," Dick says.

Another moment. Dick's hand is tight around Tim's, enough to hurt. His breathing, hot and rapid and scented with blood. Tim licks his lips. He can taste the iron in the air. He can taste Dick's blood aspirating. Jason's hand, cradling the back of Tim's skull, is remarkably gentle.

Jason hauls in a sharp breath.

"You're undoing, just," he says, and takes his hand from Tim's hair to rake his own back from his forehead, "just, so much therapy."

The smile he wears is disbelieving, sharp-edged, and Tim wants to taste it. He licks Dick's blood off his lips instead. He tastes good, Tim would say if he thought he could speak coherently. He wants more.

"You go to therapy?" Dick asks. His voice is shaky in a way Tim's never heard it before, a frayed sound. He's shaking. Jason hadn't let go of his hair. It's probably a good thing, Dick looks like he's about to shake apart.

"Really not the f*cking point, Dickiebird," Jason says, voice rough, eyes rolling.

Tim stares at them.

He did it for me, too. The thought floats to him and he discovers he's never going to be able to undo hearing that. There's an awful fullness in his chest and throat. An abject… comfort. Animal, greedy, and desperately grateful.

He can smell blood and salty precome going to waste under cheap cotton and ancient denim. He wants to bite down. He wants Dick's co*ck down his throat. He wants to bite down. He reaches out and pokes Dick in the cheek.

"You're hard," he manages around his teeth.

Dick immediately goes brilliantly red.

Jason roars with laughter. Head thrown back, riotous and free.

"Yeah he is, babybird," he says, grinning down at Tim with pink teeth and beautiful blue-green eyes, and Tim feels something in himself purr. He looks down at Dick, watching them with astonished stupidity, and that something grows claws. Greedy and dark. He watches Jason move. It's a slow roll of his hips, flexing chest and abdomen and pelvis, sinuous. "He's real hard for us. You oughta feel it."

"I wanna," he gets through his teeth, and his clumsy tongue drags it out to wannnnna. He presses in closer to Dick. "Can I blow you?"

Dick is staring. His gaze is fixed, that blue that's nothing like Jason's blue, to Tim's teeth. His pupils are big and dark. His lips are parted, his pretty mouth, and Tim can sense all of it. His pounding pulse, the wet rapidity of his breathing. His arousal, thick at the back of Tim's tongue, and the acid tang of epinephrine and cortisol. Dick is afraid, and it tastes so good.

Tim noses up against his cheek, and can't resist a little lick.

Dick's blood is so good.

"Don't be scared," he manages, only drawing out the sibilant a little longer than he should, and Dick shudders.

Jason laughs at him. He's been laughing a lot, and what's left of Tim that isn't hunger and purring want, that part of Tim approves of it. Jason laughs beautifully. Tim likes the sound of it.

"I think Dick likes being scared a little bit," he says and when he takes Tim by the hair, Tim doesn't fight him. He doesn't fight Jason guiding his mouth down, lips and tongue over the corner of Dick's jaw to press his face against the impossible softness of the skin under Dick's ear. "I think he wants this, and he's just being shy."

There is the faintest catch of Tim's fangs against skin and then a hint of blood, and Dick whines.

Tim's breath shudders. He can't bite here, there's too much pressure under Dick's skin, he'd bleed out in seconds—he grazes his teeth over that skin anyway. Rubs smooth fang against silk, and presses his tongue to it, and tastes Dick's arousal eclipsing his fear.

"You taste so good," he murmurs, and pressed against Dick's throat it doesn't matter that he can't articulate properly. Dick cries out again, and Jason is still laughing. Gleeful and sweet and pleased. Dick's whimper vibrates against Tim's tongue.

"Hear that, baby?" Jason says. He's leaning over Tim's head to whisper in Dick's other ear. Both of them are so close, Tim's universe closes down to the two of them and the heart beating against his tongue. "You gonna let the pretty vampire suck you off?"

And Dick nearly bucks Jason off him with the force of his hips jolting. His throat moves from under Tim's tongue. Tim hisses again. His fangs catch on soft skin again, just a little, just a tease.

"f*ck," Jason snaps. His hand intrudes on Tim's vision, knocking Tim aside and snatching Dick by the throat. Dick settles, trembling, his eyes wide and damp and so dark. Tim hums and ducks to nuzzle Jason's knuckles. "You really like that, Dickie, huh. Bet you're wet. He wet, sweetheart?"

Tim lifts his head to scent. Yeah, there's the wet-salt smell of precome. So much of it, with all three of them.

"Uh-huh," he says. His mouth is watering.

"f*ck," Dick says. His voice is thick and he's covering his eyes with a hand. He's still flushed brilliantly scarlet, his chest heaving for air. His other hand still clutches at Jason's thigh, so hard his knuckles are white. "Jesus f*ck, Todd, you're gonna kill me."

"No." Jason knocks Dick's hand away from his face, takes it by the wrist and drags it between his legs. Tim watches Dick cup Jason's hardness, watches the stupid wonder dawn across Dick's face, his mouth opening slack and wet and pink. "No more dead Robins. You're gonna let Timmy suck you off and I'm gonna come on your stupid pretty face. Say, yes, Jason."

Dick moans. It's a sweet sound.

Tim pushes forward, can't help himself. He catches the tail of that moan in his mouth, laving the last of the blood from Dick's bottom lip. Dick kisses him back with wonderful hesitancy, and his mouth tastes of more blood.

"Say yes," Tim mumbles, and opens his mouth when Dick's tongue touches his. He lets Dick explore his fangs, and keeps himself from taking a little nip. When Dick drops away, gasping for air, Tim doesn't let him go far. "It's good, Dick, don't be scared."

Jason winds his hands through Tim's hair and guides him, his mouth back to Dick's, a messy smear of lips and saliva. His teeth catch against Dick's, a sweet thrill of pain, and the split in Dick's lip breaks open again. Blood blooms, and Tim catches Dick's lip between his teeth and suckles.

Dick's hips buck and Jason laughs, rides it easily. Tim feels it, the shift of the mattress, the way two bodies move beside him. There's blood on his teeth, he can taste it when he runs his tongue along them.

Jason's still pressing Dick's hand to his co*ck, rutting against his palm. Dick isn't fighting him, lets himself be used, tilts his head up to accept the kiss Jason digs from his mouth. He's shaking, pulled taut, his breathing harsh and noisy.

"Say it, Dickie," Jason murmurs against Dick's mouth.

Dick moans. It's a soft, broken noise.

"Yes," he whispers at last, voice just as broken, tender and aching, "yes, Jason. Thank you, please."

Jason groans and it's beautiful, pleased and triumphant and dark, and he heaves himself out of Dick's lap to make room for Tim to crowd in. He doesn't go far, perching at Dick's hip, Dick's hand still captive in his. He grinds against it, the soft curves of his body twisting and flexing as he works himself.

Tim watches for a moment, commits Jason in the dim light to memory, and turns to press his mouth to Dick's for just a moment. The way Dick kisses back is clumsy and desperate and too wet.

He gasps when Tim slides from the bed to crawl between his knees. He's shaking. Tim can feel it when he presses his palms to the lean muscles of his thighs, the frantic tremble, the pulse pounding through the femoral artery so close to Tim's fangs. The sour tang of fear has faded, though it isn't gone entirely, only an accent now to the wet smell of Dick's arousal.

He presses his nose to Dick's thigh, to the frantic thunder of Dick's pulse. The smell of him is a physical touch, a sweet and drugging force, Tim's eyelids drooping despite himself. It's safe where he is, he knows it like he knows the swoop of gravity as he swings on a grapple line. He could stay here forever, between Dick's legs with his cheek on Dick's thigh, and never be hurt.

"Timmy," Dick gasps, and his free hand flies to Tim's hair as he makes his way up Dick's thigh towards where the heat and the wet arousal are more concentrated. "I, I. f*ck, Jay."

His grip tightens as Tim noses up against the hard curve of his erection tenting his pants. It's hot against Tim's mouth even through the denim, straining and so hard it must hurt. The noises Dick makes when he opens his mouth to wet the denim with his tongue are delicious.

"C'mon, pants down," Jason urges. He's still working himself against Dick's hand. It doesn't stop him from reaching over with his free hand to jerk roughly at Dick's pants. "Let him in, Dickie, help him out here. Gonna help Tim out?"

Dick thrusts up into nothing with an obscene noise, a choking whimper. He scrabbles at himself, tries to help Jason get his pants down and mostly just gets in the way. He's red and beautiful, glassy-eyed, mouth slack and wet and swollen with kisses.

"Tim," Dick manages as Tim finally bats their hands away and pops the button, easing Dick's pants and underwear down at the same time. "Tim, love you, babybird, love you so much."

His co*ck springs free, wet and hard and an angry, painful purple-red. Tim takes the head in his mouth, to taste it, to avoid the words that hurt so good.

The noise Dick makes leaks out through gritted teeth, a punch of gutted sound. His hips jerk, rutting wildly against the roof of Tim's mouth. He gets wetter than Tim ever has, saline-wet against the back of Tim's throat and he laps after it, the flavor tingling on his tongue.

"sh*t, look at him. Look at 'im, Dickie."

Jason's voice is thick and pleased with itself and Tim takes Dick deeper, looking up in time to meet Dick's eyes. Dick stares at him, open-mouthed, gorgeous. His co*ck twitches in Tim's mouth, fresh precome rubbing across his tongue and it's so good filling his mouth, like he isn't thirsty at all.

When Tim sucks in a deep breath and takes him to the base, Dick shouts. It's a thin, wretched little noise and his thighs trembling, fighting not to thrust up into Tim's throat. Jason laughs, moans, a hand landing on the back of Tim's head to keep him there. Dick starts whimpering, a low little thread of sound.

Tim doesn't fight Jason's hand. He stays down, stuffed full, sipping air through his nose. He's hard, so hard it throbs through him, so hard his body keeps moving in aborted little thrusts up into nothing. The pressure of his pants against his co*ck is maddening, the hand in his hair is devastating, all thoughts gone and animal pleasure and craving all that's left.

Jason's hand working himself is so loud. Wet, rapid noises. His breath is hissing, grunting, the mattress shaking with the force of it. Tim presses a palm against himself, rides the pressure until it edges into pain, stars behind his eyes. Until the air he's getting isn't enough and he gags.

Jason pulls him off Dick's co*ck by the hair. Just for a second, just long enough for Tim to choke for air, and then pushing him back down until his nose presses to Dick's stomach. Dick's noises haven't stopped, helpless and wanting noises.

Tim blinks wetness from his eyes. Dick is still watching him, propped up on his elbows now that Jason's let go of his hand and his eyes are so big and dark, mouth open and wet and swollen with kisses. When Tim swallows, Dick's eyelashes flutter so prettily.

He wants Dick to come in him. He wants Dick to come down his throat, come on his face, he wants to climb on top of him and ride him until he's filled up and dripping. He wants Dick to come so deep in him it'll be leaking out of him for hours.

"That's it," Jason says. He's petting Tim's hair with the hand not working his co*ck, clumsy and a little too rough. "That's it, pretty bird. Timmy's a pretty bird, huh, Dickie?"

Dick moans.

"Yeah," he says, so hoarse, the words a rich rasp, "yeah, you're pretty, Timmy."

And Tim is abruptly so close to the edge he's dizzy, tight and molten in the pit of his stomach. He presses down on himself with one hand, hot and throbbing and painful, and clutches Dick's thigh with the other. Feels the muscle bunch and work and tremble and tries to breathe.

"You look so good on his co*ck," Jason tells him, and Dick thrusts up into Tim's throat sharp and uncontrolled like he can't help himself.

The tension in Tim snaps, spills over, and his eyes roll back as he comes. Shaking, gagging, stupid and noisy as he pulls off to choke for air. His vision goes for a long moment, leaving him blind and stupid and panting against Dick's thigh.

"Jesus," Dick whimpers, "Tim, did you—f*ck, sh*t."

He's started stroking himself, working himself with desperate speed. Tim blinks the wetness away, the soft lassitude, the tingling aftermath of pleasure, to watch his hands. Scarred knuckles, short nails, long fingers wrapped tight and rough and blurring with the speed of Dick's motion. His thigh under Tim's cheek has gone tight and hard.

"Christ," Jason whispers. He's leaning over now, still working himself, the wet redness of his co*ck appearing and disappearing in his hand. He's staring down at Tim, open-mouthed, at the wetness seeping through his jeans. It's hot and wet against him and he presses a palm to himself, staring back up at Jason. "You like having Dickie in your mouth that much?"

He nods. Dick makes a punched out noise and his back arches up and Tim closes his eyes.

Come splashes his cheek, his lips, across his tongue as he opens his mouth. It seems like it lasts a long time. Forever. A long, syrupy time of salt-bitterness on his tongue, the smell and flavor of Dick all around him. He laps after it, dreamy slow strokes of his tongue, catching the head of Dick's co*ck in his mouth and suckling.

Dick is whimpering, high in his chest, twitching as Tim sucks. Deeper and then away, frantic and jagged as overstimulation sets in.

Jason pulls him back at last, a rough jerk of his hair. He blinks back to himself, fuzzy and abjectly happy. Dick is panting, rough and so hard it shakes him. Flat on his back. Tim rubs his face against Dick's thigh, wiping away the come he can't lick up, and climbs back up onto the bed to see better.

Dick is bright pink, disheveled and gorgeous, his gaze all pupil. He looks at Tim, goes pinker, looks over at Jason and his hand speeding on his co*ck. He shivers when Tim presses closer but his arm opens to let Tim settle into his side. Warm and sheltered.

"You going to come on him, Jay?" Tim asks. His voice is a wreck, hoarse and quiet and broken. His throat aches faintly from Dick's co*ck and he relishes it.

Dick twitches. Jason grunts, a deep noise pulled from him by the buck of his hips. The smell of him is thick, heavy with arousal.

"Yeah," Jason grits out. His mouth is slack, his eyes slits of green, cheeks flushed. He's heaving for air and Tim can read how close he is in the tremble of his thighs, the tight circles his hips make up into his hand. He's so close. "Yeah, you gonna lick it off him? Gonna clean him up when I get him all dirty?"

Dick moves, a thoughtless sinuous roll. His eyes are wide, flickering from Tim to Jason and back.

"Please," Tim murmurs, sibilant through his fangs, and rests his head on Dick's shoulder. He is lax, loose with lingering pleasure, lazy in waiting for Jason to provide. He wants it. He wants Jason's come on Dick's skin with a raw, animal hunger. "Want to taste it."

"Please, Jay," Dick says, tilting his head back. Baring his throat. "Come on me?"

Jason hisses, thrusts up one more time, and comes.

Dick closes his eyes in time and Tim watches the come spatter his face, wetting his pink, wrecked mouth and dripping from his eyelashes. It stretches on forever, Dick's mouth opening, another stripe catching him across the bridge of his nose.

Jason is still coming when Tim ducks in and starts licking. Dick moves under him, shaking and twitching like he's come all over again, moaning as Tim drags his tongue over his eyelids and the come dripping from his cheek. He opens for Tim easily, takes the mouthful of come Tim lets drool into him with a soft sound. He takes it when Tim licks it back out of him.

When he's finally clean enough, Tim sits back. Jason is watching them, slack-mouthed and a little idiotic-looking with his limp co*ck still in hand. He perks up when Tim leans in to kiss him, kisses back clumsy and sweet.

Dick's eyes are open when Tim sits back. He's watching them both, glaze flickering between them again, and without the haze of arousal something else has room to fill his expression.

There's silence for a moment.

"f*ck," Tim says, and rocks backwards, and starts shimmying out of his pants. "I came in my goddamn underwear."

Jason laughs, a little mean. Dick does too, a second later. It's a little disbelieving, and he's staring at Tim as he strips naked, but that something else has faded a little bit. Which is good. Tim hadn't liked the way it sat on his face.

"Not our fault, Red," Jason tells him, and Tim rolls his eyes and throws his come-slick underwear at him. Jason dodges, still looking smug. "You did that to you all on your own."

Dick goes to sit up and hisses, freezes, going just a little pale.

Tim frowns at him. From the corner of his eye he sees Jason doing the same, head tilting.

"Uh," Dick says. The wan cast to his cheeks is fading, replaced with a hot pink. "Sorry, um. My back hurts."

Tim blinks. Jason snorts, and gets up to his knees to push at Dick's shoulder.

"Take your shirt off and lay down," he says, rolling his eyes. "All you f*ckin' Bats can't take care of yourselves for sh*t."

Dick makes a face like he has differing opinions on that, but turns over to lay on his stomach and doesn't flinch when Jason straddles his thighs. He arches up into Jason's hands when they smooth down his back, a pretty curve of muscle and bone and fresh scar tissue.

"Christ, your muscles are like rocks," Jason mutters. "And you're too f*ckin' skinny. After this I'm making dinner."

Dick is quiet for a little, jerking intermittently as Jason's hands start to search out the knots in his muscles. He's watching Tim in a hazy kind of way, like his thoughts are elsewhere.

"You don't mind me sticking around?" he asks at last, a little strained as Jason leans into a spot below a shoulder blade. His gaze has shifted away from Tim's face, down to his bare knee.

His voice is… small.

Jason doesn't pause the motions of his hands but he looks over at Tim. He co*cks his head, raises an eyebrow. Tim finds that, somehow, he's smiling.

"Obviously," he says and Jason nods, looking back down at his work. Dick's eyes flick back up to his. "There's no way you ate anything but cereal and protein bars today, and someone should be appreciating Jason's cooking."

"I had a milkshake," Dick objects, and grins at the derisive noise Jason makes. The expression is watery, mostly relief.

Tim reaches out and traces one of Dick's scars with a fingertip. Dick shivers. The scar is angry, a bright knotted red. He'd been dragged across broken glass, according to Alfred's notes, and they'd spent twenty minutes with a pair of tweezers to get all the little shards out. Shallow enough he hadn't needed many stitches, at least.

"Why don't you want to bite me?" Dick asks and Tim jumps and nearly falls backwards off the bed.

Jason huffs at him. He hums an apology, blinking rapidly.

Dick's watching him through his lashes. He's hidden most of his face behind his shoulder and it makes his expression difficult to read. Tim stares at him, then looks at Jason, questioning. Jason just shrugs at him unhelpfully.

"I…" he says at last and swallows, only a little painfully. "I do, though?"

He thought that was disgustingly obvious. So obvious just thinking about it makes a low burn of embarrassed frustration start up at the back of his eyes. He shakes his head and knuckles at an eye and tries to refocus.

Dick is still looking at him. His mouth is visible again, pulled into a moue of disbelief.

"You had a panic attack when I suggested it," he reminds Tim, which—yes, okay, fair. Jason is raising an eyebrow at him, Tim can see it out of the corner of his eye, so he avoids looking in that direction. "It's not a stupid conclusion to come to, babybird."

Tim winces, and knuckles at his eye again. f*ck.

"I didn't… not want to bite you," he says at last, deeply reluctant. "I just… you know. I wanted it, you know. Too much."

Silence.

"I didn't want to hurt you," he adds, perhaps a little petulantly if Jason's snort is anything to read into. "And I'd just escaped a kidnapping! I was a psychological mess, if you'll recall."

"Not that you'd admit it at the time," Jason mutters, and it's Dick's turn to snort.

Tim is realizing there are downsides to threesomes with the two of them, perhaps. He may have miscalculated—

"I understand," Dick says. His hand pats Tim's knee very clumsily before Jason grunts at him and repositions it. Dick just smiles, a little hazy. "I don't think you'd ever have hurt me, though. You're my Timmy."

Tim does not have anything to say to that. He doesn't even have a thought in his head.

He realizes he's touching his throat, the ghost of Jason's scar, and Dick is watching him. He swallows and tucks his hands between his knees. He's been doing that too much recently, and he can't pretend he doesn't know why.

"I was jealous, y'know," Dick says. He sounds drowsy, his eyes are half-lidded. Jason has shifted to massage the muscles at the small of his back, hands moving in firm circles Tim knows from experience are punishing and wonderful. "Of… of that."

"He tried to kill me," Tim says. His fingers return, press to the hollow of his throat, to the little white thread he used to consider the worst scar he'd ever have.

Now that there's a real chance it'll disappear without a trace, it feels like another of those stupid, awful cosmic jokes that characterize Tim's life. An awful, hurtful joke, and he wants to laugh at it all the same. How very like a Robin.

Dick looks away.

"You were jealous Jason tried to kill me?" Tim demands, somehow both appalled and smug.

"Didn't try that hard," Jason grumbles and does something with his hands that has Dick's eyes fluttering. "If I really wanted you dead you woulda been dead."

"Freak," Tim mumbles, and doesn't know which of them he's talking to.

"Therapy, dickhe*d," Jason says like it's a reminder of an ongoing debate. Dick looks like he wants to snap back, but Jason presses his thumbs into the swell of muscle in Dick's shoulders and his eyes flutter shut instead. Tim reaches out to touch his face with gentle fingertips, just because—the crest of his brow, the strong bridge of his nose, the soft skin of his eyelids shot through with lilac veins.

"Still can't believe you go to therapy," Dick manages after a minute or so, when Jason goes back to working the muscles along his spine. "What did Bruce have to say?"

There is a long pause. Jason's hands going still on Dick's back. Tim looks up at him, and finds he can't read the expression on his face. His mouth is tight and pale with how his lips are pressed together, but his eyes are blue and far away.

"No idea. You know that bastard would flip sh*t if he found out," he says at last, still distant. His hands start to move again, just little petting motions down Dick's shoulder blades. "Too much chance it's gonna compromise the Mission."

Poison seethes through the last word.

There's silence, in the wake of it. Tim looks at Dick's face because he can see even from the corner of his eye that Jason's face is raw and angry, and he wants to give Jason the privacy he can. Dick's eyes are closed but they pinch tighter.

"Probably smart," he murmurs at last.

Jason doesn't relax, but his hands resume a more purposeful motion. Dick's eyes slit open cautiously, meeting Tim's. There's a question there but Tim doesn't know what it is, doesn't know how to answer it. He leans in instead and presses his lips to Dick's in a dry, chaste kiss.

It feels daring. After everything between them, absurd, it feels reckless.

Dick kisses him back immediately.

"Maybe we don't talk about Bruce in bed," Tim says when Dick pulls away to breathe.

Dick winces. Jason snorts.

"If only," he mumbles, but his hands are still gentle on the fragile wings of Dick's shoulder blades.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

"I'm thinking about retiring Tim Drake," Tim says idly.

His response is silence that echoes off the high roof of the Cave.

It takes him a minute to register, as he peruses the real estate listings for waterfront properties. Abandoned clothing stores have been disappearing from the market at an elevated rate and he's found keeping track of supply and demand is an interesting forecast for the next rogue attack. He's been picking at predictive algorithms but the parameters are just too frustratingly vague.

When the quiet finally penetrates his concentration, he looks up and Dick and Damian are both staring at him. They're posed like statues at the edge of the practice mats, Dick's escrima stick lifted, Damian's blunted training sword halfway to a block.

"What?" he asks. Their expressions are something between shock and dismay and he's not sure why.

Damian's shock melts into a scowl that promises a violence Tim hasn't seen pointed his way in quite a while, but Dick puts out a hand before Damian can start forward. He's still staring at Tim too, and the shock is fading from his expression but not the dismay.

"Dami, a minute alone?" he asks. Damian opens his mouth, scowl growing more pronounced, and Dick shakes his head and turns his sweet smile on Damian. "Please. I'll come grab you after, promise."

Damian huffs, rolling his eyes so hard it involves his whole body, but backs up a step anyway.

"Don't do anything stupid, Drake," he sneers at Tim. Tim rolls his own eyes in answer, and Damian whirls away with sharp, graceful speed. The sound of his footsteps on the stairs echoes in the silence and then the dull click of the clock-door closing.

Another beat of silence.

"He's going to be listening in," Tim says at last.

Dick blinks, and shakes himself.

"Yeah," he sighs, tone reluctantly fond, and glances around. "Redbird backseat? He won't be able to listen in through that."

Tim shrugs. It's as good a solution as any. He'd swept it for bugs just hours ago, and neither Damian nor Bruce have been within a hundred feet of it since. It's probably the best guarantee of privacy short of the Nest.

It's nice too, laid out in the backseat of his car. It's spacious, and dim in the light that struggles through the tinted windows, and Dick had grabbed Tim as soon as the door clicked shut. Tucked Tim under his chin and pulled the two of them to lay down across the seats. Tim rests his cheek on Dick's chest, contorted just a little to fit, and listens to the slow thunder of Dick's heartbeat.

It's a little teen movie, if Tim's honest. He doesn't hate it.

"Talk to me, pretty bird," Dick murmurs. So close, in that quiet. Tim rubs his cheek against the material of the Nightwing underlayer. It's thin enough for blood-warmth to seep through.

"I'm… not sure if I age," he admits quietly.

For a time, Dick doesn't say anything. His hand slowly begins to move, stroking down Tim's spine. It's hard to feel through the armor and it prickles pleasantly against Tim's senses.

"I see," Dick says at last. His tone is neutral, though the kiss he presses to the top of Tim's head is a little harder than it could be. "So you want to… plan ahead?"

"Yes," Tim says, and pauses.

He could leave it there. It's a good enough reason on its own. It's even true.

It's not the whole truth.

He swallows back a surge of nerves, tingling nauseatingly in the pit of his stomach. Digging his nails into the tough, stain-resistant fabric of the seat cushion helps. So does the steadfast support of Dick's arms around him. He hasn't flinched.

The smell of old sanitization products and older blood wafts up from the fabric under his nails. He turns his face away, other cheek to Dick's chest.

"Tim Drake isn't… right," he says at last. His voice is tight, but at least it comes out mostly right. "Especially after… everything. It's a persona. Like Brucie. And I'm tired of wearing it."

There are no more Drakes, and the idea of being a Wayne makes something he can't identify lurch in the pit of his stomach. He's not even sure if he's the same species as the son Bruce adopted so many years ago, not anymore.

Dick's hand doesn't pause in its motions. There's a considering silence.

"I see," he says at last.

"I haven't eaten anything in a week," Tim admits into the hollow of Dick's throat. "I forgot."

He'd looked up from his computer two days ago to find fruit flies circling the rotting apples in the fruit bowl, and realized that he hadn't eaten for…

He hadn't been able to remember the last time he managed to choke down human food. It had taken scrubbing the entire kitchen and setting up a recurring auto-delivery of enough groceries to make his kitchen look lived-in to calm down.

He hasn't lost any visible body mass. He doesn't look malnourished. Another piece of evidence towards his theory that his whole situation is magical in nature. Even if his diet is entirely blood-based, he should need to consume more mass than he does.

Dick is silent. His hand pauses at the back of Tim's neck.

"I can't go to… to the galas, the charity lunches," Tim continues. A jittery feeling has settled into him, plucking at his nerves, making something twitch in his hands. "I throw a lot of food back up. The photosensitivity…"

Dick is quiet.

"I don't know what else Tim Drake is for," he says, and digs his nails into his palm so he doesn't dig them into Dick's ribs.

For another handful of moments Dick is silent, and then he sighs, gusty and a little sad. It stirs the hair at Tim's ear.

"Okay," he says. His hand doesn't pause in stroking up and down Tim's spine. "I'll support you, whatever you want to do. And I know Jay will too. Just be careful with something as public as your persona?"

Tim considers this, and nods. It has merit. Burning a persona, especially one as established and legitimized as Timothy Drake, shouldn't be done frivolously. And for now it costs him nearly nothing to maintain. He'd already done half the work, in the slow retreat from public life he'd accidentally been engaging in for the past year or so.

Something, one of the intricate knots of tension in his gut, is loosening. Just a little.

"I can wait," he says, and rubs his cheek against Dick's chest, the smooth material stretched over it. There's a seam down the center of it for some reason and it's an interesting texture, and he leaves his own scent clinging to Dick this way. It settles something in him, something he doesn't examine too closely.

There is another space of quiet. It's warmer in the backseat with the two of them and Dick must be a little uncomfortable, folded up like this, but he doesn't say anything about it.

"Damian was really upset," Tim says at last, because that's the only thing left that doesn't make sense. The violence on Damian's face, that way it had twisted up his mouth and bared his teeth. Tim hasn't seen it in years, and he hadn't missed it.

He'd thought that… he thought maybe they were alright now. With Tim retired from WE, Robin a long way behind him, Wayne Manor abandoned in all but name. There should be nothing left for Damian to want from him.

Dick hums.

"He didn't sleep, when you were missing."

The statement is a non sequitur. Tim frowns.

"It was a weekend," he says, which after a moment's thought was a stupid statement. Damian had never been much for weekends, as a metaphysical concept. Tim has met ex-military mercenaries with less regimented habits.

Dick snorts.

"Quit it," he chides, and squeezes Tim's hip in gentle rebuke. "He was worried. He canvassed your entire patrol route twice, you know."

This is news to Tim. He absorbs that, frowning.

"He didn't need to do that route twice," he says at last. "It's pretty quiet. He knows I've been focusing more on the white-collar end of things the past few years."

Dick makes a noise halfway between amusem*nt and disbelief.

"He was looking for you, stupid," he says and jabs Tim in the ribs. Tim hisses and bites Dick's nipple in retaliation, and relishes the shocked little grunt Dick makes.

He would press the advantage, the sharp double-beat of Dick's heartbeat, but he's distracted. Thinking over what Dick said. Trying to make sense of it—the words are comprehensible but their meaning is strange. An image of Damian keeps intruding. Damian's face that first day after… after everything. The stillness of his expression, pale and tight, and the speed of his retreat.

He still doesn't know what that expression meant.

"Huh," he says.

"I think he's trying, in his own way," Dick says, and ruffles Tim's hair, knocking free the loose scrunchy so strands spill over Tim's face. "And I should go grab him before he starts getting really impatient."

==

Jason's scar has faded to a faint brushstroke of white, only barely discernible unless he looks for it.

Tim presses his fingers to it. There's no distinction to the texture of scar and surrounding skin. It's going to fade entirely in a week or so, utterly gone, like it never happened. Like Tim was never Robin, was never a Titan, like the fraught years never passed between he and Jason.

The thought makes him…

He is not going to be angry, he thinks very deliberately, and forces himself to breathe in his slow meditation patterns until it's true. It leaves his cheeks flushed a faint pink but he ignores that to dig a nail into the scar. Just for a moment. It goes an angry pink, but only for a few heartbeats.

He could do it himself, he muses, kicking the bathroom door closed behind him. The tools he has access to are obviously sharp and clean enough. He could make it perfectly precise if he spent a few weeks tinkering with a remotely-controlled robot arm. A cut perfectly echoing Jason's steady hand with a blade.

The idea makes him snarl. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want perfect.

He wants…

"I still want you to redo my scar," he says and Dick jumps.

"Jesus," he wheezes, clutching the kitchen counter. He's visiting the Nest—both of them are, because Dick had wanted Tim's help with something in 'Haven and Jason had walked in at his heels looking vaguely rumpled and defensive. He'd been carrying groceries and camped out immediately in Tim's sham kitchen, making approving noises at the appliances and disapproving ones at the food going to waste in Tim's fridge.

Tim hadn't said anything about any of it. It felt too easy to break if he touched it, if he looked at it too directly.

"Did you think I changed my mind?" he asks, curious despite himself. Of any of them, Dick should know exactly how fantastically stubborn Tim is. "I trust you."

Dick hauls in a hysterical breath and lets it back out in a stuttering sigh that sounds like a horse.

"I thought," he says feebly. He's still clutching at the counter. "You know. Temporary insanity, or something."

"Nothing temporary about Red's insanity," says Jason from the doorway, and allows Tim to touch his elbow for a moment. Tim has gotten to quite like touching the two of them. It leaves his scent on them. It's… comforting. Among other things. "What does he want now?"

"Rude, I'm right here," Tim complains, unoffended. "Anyway. I want Dick to cut your scar back into me. I don't see why this is such a big deal."

Jason blinks. Dick sighs and lets go of the kitchen counter to scrub his face with both hands. He's pink-cheeked and his hair is wild when he emerges.

"It's dangerous," he says, sounding as though he'd very much like to sound firm and can't quite get there. "I don't want to do anything to you that might hurt you, or… or worse."

Tim opens his mouth to remind Dick of his healing factor. Jason beats him to the punch.

"S'unlikely. Sharp enough knife and make sure to sterilize it right before," Jason says, shrugging. He's toying with a switchblade he'd produced from a pocket like he's not quite aware he's doing it, spinning it in his hands with casual skill. Tim finds his gaze caught by his clever, rough fingers and forces himself to refocus. "Knives barely ever kill anyone, s'the blood loss that gets you. And if his healing factor is really that good…"

"It is," Dick says. The smile he quirks is a little bitter, but mostly fond. "If one of us feeds him right after, he shouldn't have time to lose too much blood."

Their heads bent together, Dick's body a curve up into Jason's, they make such a pretty picture. Dick's hand has landed on Jason's hip and he probably isn't even aware he's doing it and Jason has angled his body to keep the knife he's toying with clear of potentially injuring Dick. They breathe the same air like it's the only way they want to exist.

If only they weren't talking about him like he isn't there.

"You should f*ck me while we do it," Tim says, all thoughtless impulse, and Jason drops the knife. It bounces hilt-first off the toe of his boot, not that he seems to notice.

Both of them turn to stare at him.

"Jesus f*cking Christ," Jason manages at last. He's turning bright red and his eyes are big. Tim watches with interest.

"Timmy," Dick manages after opening and closing his mouth a few times. "That's… Tim."

Tim shrugs. They both look a little concussed and it's a little bit sweet, in a stupid way. And he's warming to the idea as he thinks about it—Jason inside him and Dick at his front, cradled between them and safe, kept fed and marked as theirs and stuffed full of co*ck…

He blinks. There's heaviness pooling in the pit of his stomach, but he pushes that away with reluctance.

"I don't see a problem," he says. "I'll have Jason in me while Dick has the knife. It's fine."

"It's fine," Dick echoes faintly, and then words appear to fail him.

"It's fine," Tim repeats. "I trust you! And if I get some blood right after, I'll be all healed. And it's my body, anyway."

"It's my dick you'll be sitting on!" Jason snaps. He's brilliantly flushed and his pupils are blown. Tim pulls in a careful breath.

Wet, bitter arousal. At least one of them wants it badly enough to have a bodily reaction at the thought.

"Yes," he says, swallowing back the flood of saliva. "That was the idea, yeah."

Jason's mouth snaps shut with an audible click. He looks baffled, outraged, and wretchedly turned on. Tim can't resist ducking forward to rub their cheeks together. His scent is just so good on Jason.

Jason lets him. He reaches out to pull Tim into his arms, in fact, though he's grumbling wordlessly the whole time.

Dick watches them. His gaze glitters, avaricious, but when he smiles it's gentle and rueful.

"We're discussing this," he warns.

"Okay," Tim agrees easily. The smell of arousal in the air is just getting thicker. He doesn't think it's going to be an impossible sell.

==

He comes awake—

He's panting for air against Jason's throat and Dick's hands are in his hair and at his waist and his throat stings like he'd been screaming. It is dark and the room is unfamiliar and his mouth is full of the taste of blood and artificial sugar.

His body drags him, seizing, into the midst of a panic attack.

"—hey, hey, kiddo, c'mon," Jason is murmuring, voice a steady hum against Tim's temple. "That's it, baby, you're all good, that's it—"

The dream is gone already.

He is warm, sweaty. Dick slides an arm under his neck and tucks him in close, chest to shoulder blades, thigh to thigh, feet tucked under his. Jason comes with him, penning him in. His heartbeat slows, gentles down. He's an animal under the hands of his owners. He presses his fangs to the soft skin over Jason's pulse, not even thirsty, an instinctive self-soothe.

He's chirping. Little hiccups of sound. Calling after something, like a bird, like a baby robin. He can't stop and can't make himself want to, can't summon the shame, can't remember why he'd let it drown him in the first place.

It's dark in the room and no one knows where he is, no one will know the way he calls for Jason and Dick but the two bodies cradling him.

Jason's lips press to the bridge of his nose. Dick hums, tonelessly at first and then a melody Tim recognizes only dimly. Sleep laps at him. It pulls him under to the sound of Dick's wordless voice and Jason's thumb petting his hip.

==

Taking a night off of their night jobs together is much easier than Tim would have expected, with Jason's particular brand of self-employment and Dick's new gig as a social worker, so much kinder to him than being a cop had been. With both jobs splitting his time so irregularly between 'Haven and Gotham, his schedule is erratic. With a little luck, no one will ever put together where they'd been.

Even if they did, he thinks, pressing his fingers deeper into himself and ignoring the thick pulse of his co*ck, he doubts they'd assume anything close to the truth.

Three fingers is probably enough, he judges. He's taken Jason with that much prep before and he'll be tight, it'll ache just a little, but he likes it like that. He likes when Jason has to hiss and pause and hold him still, adjusting to Tim as much as Tim's body is forced to adjust to him. He likes the bruises of Jason's grip on his hips when it's nearly too much, faint little shadows.

He wonders if Dick will be the same, if they get that far, if Dick f*cks with his whole body the way Jason does or if that liquid grace translates differently—

He hisses in a breath and stills. There's tension in his core, the hot liquid tautness of impending org*sm drawing him in tight, and he doesn't want that. Not yet. He wants to come on someone's co*ck.

He's not picky about whose.

There are noises from the next room, Jason turning down the bed in Tim's second best guest bedroom to check the waterproof mattress cover and sheets. Dick's another room over, sharpening the knife with a focus that sounds a little obsessive and humming to himself. Tim listens to them and keeps his hands off himself until the burn of arousal pulls back to a low simmer.

He wants them to f*ck him. He just wants something else a little bit more.

Good thing he doesn't have to choose.

Jason looks up when he toes the bathroom door open and his eyes blow wide when he sees that Tim's naked. His arousal spills out into the air, dialed up so quickly his eyelashes flicker.

"You're all naked, babybird," he says, sounding gratifyingly stupid. His hands come up to frame Tim's hips when Tim steps between his knees.

"Astute observation," Tim says, only a little breathless, and puts a knee up on the bed. Jason helps him up, muscles bunching to lift him with little apparent effort to kneel spread over Jason's lap.

Tim takes his hand. Jason lets him, lets Tim guide his hand down and back and over the curve of his ass—

"Jesus f*cking Christ," Jason hisses, punched out of him. He heaves for air, the hand on Tim's hip abruptly gripping hard enough to hurt. The fingers that skate around Tim's hole are gentle by comparison, shaky, almost uncertain. They probe where Tim has worked himself wet and open and he moans his approval against Jason's shoulder. It feels good in glancing, teasing little brushes.

Not enough.

"Need you in me," he mumbles, and Jason makes a gutted noise.

"Christ," he manages at last, and drags his fingers back from Tim's hole with reluctance Tim can feel. "Dickie, get over here!"

Dick comes in from the next room, grumbling, and nearly drops the knife on his foot when he looks up. He stares. A flush builds in his cheeks, in the hollow of his throat, working down under the collar of his shirt.

Tim's mouth is full of saliva.

"Come feel," Jason says. A hand spreads Tim open, leaving him gasping, bracing himself on Jason's chest and hissing at the dry fingers stroking skin so sensitive it tingles.

When Dick's fingers join Jason's, he can't bite down the moan. He tries to muffle it against Jason's shoulder and hisses when Jason just tugs his head back by the hair.

The knife glints at him from the bed where Dick must have put it, at Jason's hip. Silver, wicked, beautiful. He blinks at it, stupid with pleasure.

"Jesus," Dick says, sounding dazed. Jason laughs. "You do this all by yourself?"

Tim hums, pleased, pleasured. Dick's fingers are questing deeper and Jason's free hand keeps toying with his rim and it's so f*cking good, a raw almost-too-much that has Tim clawing at Jason's shoulders and chest. Jason just takes it, solid and immovable and so warm.

"Yeah," Tim murmurs, slurred and drawn-out through the fangs he couldn't keep retracted even if he were able to concentrate, and presses his face back into Jason's shoulder. Jason lets him this time. His hand winds through Tim's hair, tugging on the longest strands.

"sh*t," Jason mumbles. It rumbles under Tim, his voice deep in him and pressed into Tim by how close they are. He hauls in a breath and tilts his head to press his mouth to Jason's pulse. The jugular vein pounds under his tongue, separated by just a layer of skin and fat and muscle.

"Think you should f*ck me now," he murmurs, lips moving slick and wet over Jason's skin. He feels the shiver that goes through Jason. Dick's fingers crook inside him and he hisses.

"Yeah, yeah," Dick says, and his fingers withdraw with gentle implacability. The air pushes out of Tim's lungs and leaves him limp, hanging from Jason's grip and pressing his ass back like he can chase Dick's fingers.

Jason laughs. It's a little mean and Tim whimpers.

"Get him turned around with me?" he asks, and Tim is being turned.

He tries to help. He can't, and the helplessness leaves him shivery, working his jaw against the need to bite down. There's too much skin. There's too much warmth, and his mouth is so wet with saliva and venom it tingles.

He settles back in Jason's lap, back to Jason's chest. Dick stands between his legs, hooked over Jason's thighs and spread so wide he can feel it. Just on the edge of pain. He stretches, and luxuriates in how the wetness of his hole grinds against the hard heat of Jason's co*ck trapped in his jeans. The roughness of denim is a tease, just for a few moments.

Dick's hands cup his cheeks. He looks up, and Dick is looking at him with an expression tinged with concern. Tim puts his clumsy hands on Dick's waist, his stomach. It's graceless and he doesn't care, pressing his fingertips into the give of muscle.

"Are you ready?" Dick asks. His thumb is sweeping across Tim's cheekbone. It's very distracting. "You can back out if you need to, babybird."

"We can just f*ck," Jason puts in dryly, sounding only a little breathless. Tim rolls his hips again in revenge, and relishes how Jason curses and digs his fingers into Tim's hips.

"I'm sure," Tim says. His voice comes out thick, but steady. "Stop second-guessing me, Richard."

Jason laughs again, at Dick this time, and Dick rolls his eyes but there's a smile lightening his face as he does and he pulls his shirt off. He strips quickly, moving under Tim's hands, pink and only a bit shy as he kicks his pants and underwear free.

He's hard. Hot red and wet at the tip, and Tim pulls the scent of it in greedily. Arousal, rich and sweet. He reaches for it.

"You too, Jay," Dick says, catching Tim's hands by the wrists. He holds strong as Tim tugs against his grip and the croon falls from Tim's mouth before he can quite catch it. It just feels so nice, to be held like this, to be kept where Dick wants him.

"Hold him, then," Jason snips back. The smile is evident in his voice.

Dick lets go of Tim's hands to catch him as Jason heaves him up. Tim lets himself get moved, grinning, taking the opportunity to cup the firm swells of Dick's chest. Dick rolls his eyes but lets himself be felt up, attention absorbed with the rustling of clothing behind Tim.

Warm skin presses up behind him. Bulk, rough hands settling on Tim's hips, bending to press a mouth to his ear. Jason's erection presses to Tim's ass and like this, nothing between them, it's so hot it burns. Thick, velvety, and so hard.

"Put that in me," Tim says. It comes out miserably slurred and wet. Jason's hips jerk against him anyway.

"Christ," Jason mumbles, pressed to Tim's temple.

"You heard him," Dick says. He's so red, flushed and breathless, his heartbeat pounding under Tim's palm. Gorgeous. So abjectly beautiful. "Sit down, we gotta get you in him."

"f*ck you," Jason mutters, but he pulls away from Tim's back and there's the creak of springs, the snap of a lube cap, a wet noise that bolts through the pit of Tim's stomach—Jason's hand around himself, wetting him for Tim. Without his warmth, cold air strokes down Tim's spine and he shivers, pressing forward. Dick pushes him back gently, step by step until Jason's hands catch his hips and he eases down to sit on Jason's thighs.

Warmth folds him up again. Sound climbs his throat, another croon, and he swallows it away.

"Alright," Jason says, and then Tim is being lifted, both sets of hands working together. He whines, clings to Dick's waist to try to help.

Jason's co*ck slips over his hole and catches once, twice and they both hiss, a whine dropping from Tim's mouth, a grunt from Jason as he shifts and presses firmly up.

There is pressure, blunt and hot. Jason's co*ck feels so big. Too big, a flutter of mindless panic in the pit of Tim's stomach for a moment at how relentlessly it presses in. A hint of pain. And then Tim's hole begins to give, his body opening up, and Jason groans as the head of his co*ck finally presses in.

Tim gasps for air. It comes out in pathetic little noises. Dick presses their mouths together in a messy slide of lips and teeth.

Jason doesn't stop. His hands on Tim's hips dragging him down, down in a torturous slide. His co*ck is massive inside Tim, forcing him open, hot and impossibly hard—Tim's mouth drops open in a scream that doesn't emerge.

Dick hums in sympathy. His tongue is hot against Tim's mouth, his cheek, the tears leaking from the corners of his wet eyes.

Jason bottoms out with a hitch of his hips and Tim moans. It's a thin sound, forced out against Dick's cheek.

"sh*t, baby," Jason grunts against his temple. "sh*t. f*ck, you're tight."

He's impaled. He's broken around Jason's co*ck, cracked with pleasure. Sparks flash at the edges of his vision. Need gathers in a knot in the pit of his stomach, tight, unbearable.

"Don't come yet," Dick demands. Tim lolls in his hands. They speak over his head and he can't drag out the energy to interrupt. It's all he can do to stay, lax in Dick's hold, struggling to adjust to the impossible stretch of Jason inside him. He can't stop the soft crooning noises from coming out.

"Not gonna," Jason says and shifts. His co*ck moves inside Tim, sparking behind Tim's eyes, forcing a little ah! from him. "You should, f*ck, you should feel him. Hole's f*ckin' perfect."

He's hard, he realizes only as Dick's hands smooth up his thighs. They're stretched wide over Jason's lap, splayed open and vulnerable, and he shakes. He's so hard it aches, a throbbing need for Dick's hands on him, and Dick only skates his hands up Tim's hips and back down again in a useless soothing gesture.

"Hear that, Timmy?" Dick whispers to him, and Tim turns his head, seeking. His mouth finds soft skin, the press of Dick's pulse against his tongue. He suckles it. "You feel so good for him."

Tim hums against Dick's throat.

"Bet we can keep him going, after," Jason says, and hitches his hips. Tim wails. The noise is thin and muffled by Dick's skin. "Bet he'd want you to take a turn. You want that, babybird? Want Dickie's co*ck in you too?"

Tim pants, stupid with how every shift presses Jason against his prostate. Jason's hand in his hair, hauling him up, just drags more crooning whimpers out of him. Cradled in the bulk of Jason's body, solid and hot at his back, Tim can't stop himself from writhing. For reaching for Dick with clumsy hands, sliding down his chest and over his waist.

"That what you want?" Jason asks, pressed against Tim's ear. "Want Dickie to cut you up and then come in you?"

"Jason," Dick snaps, and Tim watches his co*ck twitch with dim interest. Dick's so hard it looks like it must hurt, flushed a deep red. He's so wet, precome beading at the head and beginning to dribble down. Tim's mouth waters.

"Yeah," he manages, and hooks his useless hands at Dick's waist. His pretty waist, Tim wants to sink his teeth into it. "Yeah, please."

"See?" Jason demands and his thighs flex under Tim, his co*ck rocking impossibly deeper, Tim's eyes flying wide and mouth dropping open. Blind, stupid, wanting. "He wants it."

Dick huffs, an annoyed noise, but his co*ck twitches again. The smell of his wetness is thick in the air.

"You're a degenerate," he says, breathless. "Help me get him positioned right."

They move him together, four hands on him, Jason's co*ck shifting torturously inside him and his limp body refusing to cooperate. He paws at Dick's chest, his hips, digging clumsy fingers into soft skin. He moves against Jason helplessly, tries with trembling muscles to work that hot thickness deeper into him until they settle properly at the edge of the bed. Tim, spread across Jason's lap, and Dick knelt between Jason's knees.

Jason pulls Tim down to sit deeper onto his co*ck, hand on his hips for leverage, forcing a guttural sound out of him. Dick's hands cup his cheeks as he pants after air. It feels like Jason's co*ck is so deep in him it's crushed against his lungs.

"Feel good, baby?" Dick croons, mouth smearing messily against Tim's. Tim's fangs catch on his lip and the hint of blood blooms at the tip of Tim's tongue. "You ready?"

He moans in answer.

"He's ready," Jason says, laughing.

Tim manages a nod, head loose, wrung out already. Want sits heavy in his pelvis, thick arousal, and giddy anticipation, and a thrill of fear. Dick takes his chin in hand and he blinks stupidly up at him. Knelt between their spread legs, he's still taller than Tim by a little.

"Yeah, you're ready," Dick whispers, and kisses him again.

Tim's wrists fit in one of Jason's hands and he tugs on them a little, just to feel how impossible escape is.

It settles something in him. When Jason moves, shifts him a little closer to where Dick crouches by the side of the bed, Tim stays spread limply across his lap. He just sits on Jason's co*ck and rides the pleasure of Jason inside him, so thick, so full he feels insane with it. When Jason takes his chin in hand and turns it, he goes easily.

Dick rests a hand on Jason's knee. In his other hand is the knife. It's one of Jason's knives. It shines, liquid and silver. So impossibly sharp. Tim looks at it and licks his lips.

"Ready?" Dick asks, voice low and intimate.

"Don't," Tim says, and shifts, and chokes a moan at Jason's co*ck moving inside him.

It takes time to gather himself. Dick waits for him, patient, knife backwards in his hand so the flat of the blade rests against his forearm. Jason waits. His grip on Tim's wrists doesn't shift, his hand holding Tim's chin. They both wait for him.

"Careful," he manages at last. "Of my blood."

Dick's eyes go so soft. He leans in to press a kiss to Tim's throat, to the faint line of Jason's lingering scar, chaste and warm and lingering.

"Of course," he tells Tim, earnest. He watches Tim with an intent Tim basks in.

"Won't letcha hurt us," Jason adds. The hand on Tim's jaw shifts, a palm over his mouth, then a wrist pressing his lips gently back against his teeth. His pulse pounds in Tim's ears, against his mouth, inside him. Tim is so filled up with him there's no room for denial, no room to think about anything but the unrelenting pressure of being so full. "We're gonna take care of you, Red."

Tim moans, at his words, at the shift of Jason's wrist drawing his head to the side. He's full, he's warm, and Dick's hand cups his shoulder. The knife is cold, sharp, Dick lays it against his throat with aching gentleness. It's so sharp the kiss of it against his skin feels like nothing at all.

Dick hauls in a breath, adjusts his grip on the knife. His pupils are massive, his eyes dark and crazed and beautiful. He smells deliciously of fear.

Heat. A strange tugging sensation. And then agony spills into him.

He screams.

In his ear, Jason groans as Tim clenches down on him. His fingers bite into Tim's wrists, the pressure against his lips and teeth turning towards pain, and Tim's whole body sings with it. His hips buck once, twice, and the co*ck in him shifts. Pleasure stars behind his eyes, made into a new kind of agony.

Blood spills down his chest, thick crimson blood, too much. For a second he's in the Tower again, he can smell Jason, but he had been cold then and he is so warm now, so warm and full and filled up—

The wrist against his mouth vanishes and he chirps, chirps again, sharp high noises of want and desperation he didn't know he could make.

Something moves, a shape in front of him. Skin touches him, against his mouth, his nose filling with the sweet clean smell of it. His lips are wet and tingling with venom, his fangs down and aching. When he opens his mouth the taste of the skin drags another trilling noise from him, and he bites down.

Skin parts for him cleanly, and above the scream of pain in him, he hears a stuttered groan. His mouth fills, sweet and wet and rich.

Dick whimpers.

The song of pain fades.

In its place warmth, a little clarity. The agony, the old memories washing away with Dick's blood in his mouth, Jason moving in such tiny, hitching motions inside him. The pounding of two heartbeats.

He moans, and finds his hands have caught Dick by the waist. He squeezes, feeling taut muscle moving under his palms. It's the meat of pectoral muscle against his mouth, under his fangs. Dick is making such pretty, hitching noises, sweet little sighs at Tim's tongue working around his fangs. Jason is moaning too, quiet little noises deep in his chest, noises with an edge of tightly leashed desperation.

He wants Jason to f*ck him. He wants that co*ck forcing him open to move, Jason's thighs slapping against him, Jason's weight holding him down, the power of him behind every thrust. He's starving for it, wants to rock down, wants to f*ck himself onto Jason's co*ck. Only Dick's skin and Tim's fangs in that skin stop him, the possibility he might hurt Dick.

He bites down harder, despite himself, and Dick whimpers.

"Jay," he hisses, and Jason groans from deep in his chest, and his fingers dig into the bones of Tim's hips. Tim murmurs, mouth full. Blood is leaking down Dick's chest, messy and so wet. It slicks Tim's fingers, pawing at the soft muscle, painting Dick in his own blood.

Jason's hand finds his co*ck, soft against his thigh in the wake of the pain, and wraps rough fingers around it. So hot, squeezing him tight, just a touch too rough in working the pad of his thumb over the wet head. Tim whines, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. He shakes and Dick's hands catch his shoulders, holding him, caging him between two bodies.

His co*ck is filling too quickly. Pleasure ripped from him, sparking behind his eyes, his body jerking. He shakes, his mouth full, Dick's blood slicking down his throat and Jason in him so deep.

"C'mon, babybird," Jason manages. His voice is gravel and he finally lets go of Tim's dick to catch Tim's hair, pulling his head back just a little. His fangs slip free and he chases the well of blood, mindless, chirping and smearing it across lips and cheek. "Wanna f*ck you, princess, you all healed up yet? Dick—sh*t—he stopped bleeding yet?"

A shuddering breath, not Tim's, a sound of pleasure only a little more human than Tim.

"Yeah." Motion, blurry through Tim's wet lashes. Something wet and cool against his throat, his chest, leaving cool damp in its wake. A cry bubbles up in him and, relentlessly open, surrounded and filled and sated with blood, it spills from his mouth. A croon, a trill, a whimper of pleasure as Jason shifts inside him again. "Yeah, it's—you're all healed up, Timmy, I got all the blood. You're good, sweetheart."

He's clean. A taut fear he's only just now aware of relaxes in him.

He braces his hands on Jason's thighs and lifts himself, trembling, a trill falling from him at the slide of Jason's co*ck out of him. So thick, so hot.

He drops, filled abruptly, a whine punched from him, Jason's grunt in his ear. He tilts his head back, temple to Jason's cheek. His vision is blurry, wet, a smear of dim colors and warmth.

"f*ck me," he whispers, and is rewarded with laughter.

They move him together. Four hands again, lifting him, turning him. Dick is underneath him, in front of him, warm and solid, fingers drawing through his hair and across his shoulders, the tender rawness of his new scar. Jason settles behind him, hands cradling his hips, holding him in place as he tries to work himself on Jason's co*ck. He's surrounded, trapped, a willing sacrifice at the altar of their hands on him.

Jason's body rolls in an easy, liquid thrust.

His co*ck rocks in Tim, so deep it presses a whimper from him, so deep he chokes. He tries to push back into it, clumsy and unbalanced and desperate for more, deeper, harder, and his body doesn't work. He can only sway, accept Jason's co*ck slow and deep, pant against Dick's leg.

He can only feel the power Jason holds back, the trembling restraint in his thighs pressed to Tim's, his fingers digging into Tim's hips.

"Puh," he tries. "Please. Please."

His voice is a wet smear against Dick's skin. Dick's naked—when had he lost his pants? He turns his head and Dick's co*ck brushes his nose, his cheek, hard and slippery with precome already. The smell of it fills him up, wet and salt and arousal. The smell of both of them cradling him, of come and blood.

"You want more, baby?" Dick asks. His hands are in Tim's hair, petting him, tugging his head back. Tim looks up at him blurrily and tries to nod and sobs for air as Jason presses in deep and stays there, carving room for himself in Tim's body, rocking against him so deep and impossible Tim finds himself clawing for purchase in the sheets, at Dick's legs.

"So f*cking tight," Jason says, terse, tight and barely controlled. He's shaking and Tim can feel it in his own body. Jason's co*ck forces precome from him, the head of his co*ck brushes the sheets in awful little touches that drag little noises from him—an ah, ah, ah high in his throat.

Dick lets him go, lets his cheek come to rest on his thigh again. He shifts, and Jason shifts, and Jason's co*ck shifts inside him to press against his prostate unbearably hard, and Tim keens.

There's a wet sound above him. His cry dies to whimpering. They're kissing, the wet sound of mouths sloppy with speed and want.

"Give it to him," Dick says low and intense, and his hand threads through Tim's hair again. He's pressed down, held in place as Jason shifts again. "Wanna see you, Jay. Let me see you f*ck him, Little Wing, c'mon."

The noise Jason makes is wordless, guttural and from deep in him, and Tim feels the throb of Jason's co*ck, the way Dick's demand nearly pulls an org*sm out of him. He's breathing hard, harsh whoops of air, clawing for oxygen and Tim feels that in his own chest.

"Please." Tim's voice is broken, high, barely understandable and muffled by Dick's leg.

Jason's hands tighten on his hips and then he's pulling out in one long, torturous drag. Tim sobs, clawing at the sheets again, and the feeling of being empty is suddenly overwhelming and awful—

Jason slams back into him.

He screams. He screams, and digs ragged nailmarks into Dick, and Jason drags back out of him and slams home again. Hard, deep, a slow rhythm. So slow Tim is going to go insane, he's out of his mind at the drag of Jason's co*ck inside him, at the not quite enough.

He grinds his cheek into Dick's leg and tries to push back against Jason's hands, tries for more, faster, harder.

Dick's palm brushes over Tim's jaw, down the curve of his throat, and away. Tim watches him take himself in hand through wet, blurry eyes, watches the slow lingering pull of Dick stroking himself. The head of his co*ck, dark and shining and painful-looking, sliding in and out of his fist slower even than Jason's co*ck in Tim.

"Faster," he hears Dick say over his head, deep and lilting with arousal. Jason grunts, and slams home, and grinds in for a moment. Tim sees stars and makes a noise like breaking glass. "Know you want to, baby, really give it to him."

Jason's hands are shaking, and tight on Tim's hips. He's going to leave bruises and Tim wants it, presses back into Jason's hands in a silent plea. He wants to wear Jason's marks, wants to feel how bad Jason wants him, wants to feel both of them inside him for days. He can smell the precome coating Dick sticky and mouthwatering, wants his tongue on him, starved for Dick's co*ck in his mouth.

"M'gonna come too soon." Jason's voice rips out of him, deep and harsh and aching.

Dick laughs.

"Do it," he says. His hand on himself slows, an excruciating slide. Tim's mouth opens. His fangs are dropped, aching for skin, his tongue lolling out over his bottom lip to brush Dick's knuckles. "Thought you wanted me to f*ck him after. Do it, Jay."

Jason huffs. One hand releases Tim's hip, slides up his back, a trail that feels like fire up his spine. Tim arches into it and moans and Dick catches his shoulders, smearing precome on his skin, lifting him up to sit back on Jason's thighs.

He thought there was no deeper Jason could go, and he'd been wrong, Jason is so deep in him that he's reduced—nothing but sensation and fullness and pleasure. He gags on pleasure, sobs with it, gasps for air, limp and stretched taut and thoughtless.

Jason groans from deep in him, a rumble Tim feels against his shoulder blades.

"Fine," he hisses, guttural, his breath to Tim's ear. "I'll f*ckin'… I'll give it to him."

And he f*cks into Tim in one quick jerk, and Tim can't brace himself. Little noises break from him each time Jason bottoms out. He tries to help, tries to press back into Jason's thrusts and can't, the hands on him lifting him bodily to drop back onto Jason's co*ck.

The noise is slick, a wet noise of skin against skin. He's groaning, thick noises dragged out of him each time he bottoms out. Tim echoes them in little chirps, panting, pulling in the smell of sweat, precome, feeling the pound of Jason's pulse.

He can feel it inside him.

In seconds the rhythm falters, Jason's co*ck rutting in him, graceless and desperate. His hand is at Tim's belly, pressing him back against Jason's co*ck by the pelvis. His fingertips brush the root of Tim's co*ck, press in, a flash of pain.

Jason chokes out a sweet noise as he comes.

Tim whimpers. It feels hot inside him. Warm and foreign and Jason—

"sh*t," Jason grunts, rasping, hoarse. "f*ck, baby, feel so good."

Jason ruts into him again.

Tim moans. Moans and writhes on Jason's softening co*ck, shaking at the wet squelch of come and lube, at the smell of them combined. He smells like Jason's come. He smells like Dick's blood.

He's panting when Jason finally pulls out, limp, weak. His co*ck throbs, so hard it hurts, a pulsing need to touch himself he doesn't act on.

He's eased down on his front, four hands on him once again. Chest to the mattress, ass up in the air. He's leaking come, he can feel it. He can feel their eyes on him, where he must be open and wet and wanting. His lips part on a sigh, a croon.

He'd hated the noises, he dimly remembers that, and can't remember why. When he chirps, a hand comes to thumb at his hole, reassuring. Dick's, he thinks. He's lax and used and indolent, even with the strung-tight desire to come.

"You look good like this, Timmy," Dick tells him, and laughs at the disgruntled noise that's all Tim can summon in response.

He should f*ck Tim too. The thought comes, and stays, and Tim shifts back against the thumb rubbing at his hole. Tries to ask with his body for what he wants, because his mouth hangs open and stupid.

Dick feels him, blunt fingers so gentle against the hot soreness of Tim's hole. He presses into the mess of lube and come, into where Tim is soft and opened and aching to be filled. First one finger, and then two. They slip in easily, a glide that arches Tim's spine into a sharp curve, sparks of too-much behind his eyes that still aren't enough.

Noises fall from Tim's mouth. Chirps, needy demands, words half-articulated. Dick hums, tone all delight, and presses in with three fingers this time.

Tim whimpers and takes it, shaking. Slick is leaking from him, a dribble down his thigh going cold. It's not enough, he needs more, he needs more.

"Jay," he manages at last. "Ja—ay."

"I'm here," Jason says, guiding his head up. Tim goes, blind, searching out Jason's mouth. Jason kisses him, clumsy and sated and pleased. Tim tastes the blood in his mouth, new all over again fed back to him from Jason's lips.

"Make him," he pants, "make him f*ck me," and both of them laugh this time. Happy, happy laughter. Dick's hand withdraws, and Tim only whines a little, because surely Dick will f*ck him now.

And then he hears Dick spit, feels fresh wetness drip into his hole, and Dick forces four fingers into him.

He falls away.

He doesn't come, not quite. What ripples through him isn't quite org*sm. He might scream. The stretch consumes him. A white, roaring sensation of fullness, the rocking of Dick's fingers through his whole body, a shocky throb as fingers press to his prostate somewhere on the other side of pleasure.

He's so open, so full, he's sobbing. His cheeks are wet. His mouth is open and he's making noises, nonsense noises.

"You're a freak, Dickie," he hears someone say somewhere above him, a voice like soft gravel, a voice like smoke and ashes. Jason, he puts together, long eternities later. Those fingers rock in him, in and out, deeper and deeper and he can't stand it, his body is going to break around them and he needs it.

A huff of laughter. Soft sensation against his ribs, the fluttery numbness of his scars. Lips moving over him. There's a hand around his throat, light and comforting.

Dick's knuckles press to his rim. Too wide. He sobs.

It's too much. It's too much and he wants Dick to force them inside, to open him even more.

"Yes?"

He's crying. Great heaving sobs, his cheeks wet. Reduced to nothing but this, but the wet soreness of his cheeks and Jason's thumb stroking his scar and Dick's breath on his shoulder. And fingers in him, four of them, impossible pleasure, impossible pressure. He's going to break.

"Please," he manages.

"Give it to him," Jason says, all dark satisfaction like a predator brooding over its kill, and Dick groans, and bears down on Tim.

The pressure is so much, too much. He keens and digs his nails into the sheets and feels himself fluttering around Dick's fingers, feels how wide his hole stretches, trying to let Dick in, and—

He heaves, relaxes, and Dick's fingers slip in, up to the join of his thumb.

His vision is stars and faint colors. He's babbling, sounds and half-formed words and names falling among the disheveled sheets, Jay, Jay, Dick. Tension coils in him, taut goodness, aching pleasure beyond words. His body tries to move, tries to press back against the sheer extremity of the intrusion, rubbing Dick's fingertips against the place in him that has wetness leaking from the corners of Tim's eyes.

"Jesus," Jason breathes.

"You're right, he's so f*cking tight," Dick says. His voice sounds strained and he's trying to keep his hand still but he can't, he's shaking and Tim can feel it, most of his hand is inside Tim. "Hey, Tim, Timmy, you okay?"

His mouth is open and sound comes out, little sighing noises, moans of abject fullness.

"Hey, babybird." A hand cups his cheek. Rough hands, scented with come and lube and a hint of cigarettes. The thumb brushes across Tim's mouth, wet and slack. "You good? Let Dickie know if you're alright?"

"Mmm," Tim manages. His body isn't his, it belongs to the intrusion of Dick's fingers. His hips buck again and he chokes, manages to haul in a damp breath. Nodding is just a limp flop of his head. "Yuh. Yes."

"Want him to move a little?"

Tim nods again. Words are beyond him, the tension coils in him tighter and more awful and more overwhelming, an edge he is being dragged to with every brush of Dick's fingers shifting in him.

"f*ck yeah." Jason's thumb presses to his bottom lip, smearing through bloody spit. "Make him come, Dickie."

And his thumb slips into Tim's mouth. Past his blunt teeth, to press against the sharp needles of Tim's fangs.

Blood blossoms fresh in Tim's mouth, and Dick's fingers crook in him. They drag relentlessly over his prostate, so deep and stretched so wide it must be ruining him, destroying him, his vision goes white and he must be screaming.

He comes.

It goes on forever, for hours, Dick's fingers working inside him until Tim must be dry, must be coming empty. His voice is raw, and he's sobbing in earnest, and still Dick works him through peak after peak. It hurts, it's unbearable, and still he lets it go on and on until he finally can't stand it and grabs at Dick's wrist with clumsy hands.

Dick stops. Tim is still stretched wide around him, still full in a way that has him nearly nauseous with pleasure.

Jason had taken his hand away at some gauzy point Tim can't remember, cupping his throat instead. The rough pad of his thumb rubs over the raw scar tissue. Tim might be making noises. He doesn't know. He's limp, used-up, strung-out. Still shaking. There's a haze in him, a thoughtless blanket of dumb pleasure.

"M'going to take them out," Dick murmurs, and doesn't wait for Tim to say anything.

The withdrawal is slow, gentle, both of them careful with his useless, trembling body. As Dick slips free Tim's body gives up with no warning, knees slipping out from under him, dropping him to his stomach. His hole is sore, it hurts deliciously, and he clenches against it.

The emptiness is distracting. Almost disquieting, until Jason slips two fingers into his mouth and the crooning noises he'd been making without realizing quiet down.

"You gonna f*ck him?" Jason asks. His fingers pet Tim's tongue. They taste like come and sweat, and Tim suckles at them as best he can. His body feels loose, without Dick's fingers inside him. The lax heaviness blots out everything else.

Dick hums. His hand rubs Tim's hip, sticky with lube and come.

"Not gonna last that long," he says after a moment, rueful, laughing. Jason snorts. Tim smiles around Jason's fingers. He's following the conversation, a little, but not well. He likes when they laugh. "Want me to come on you, Timmy?"

Tim nods. It sounds nice. He likes the smell of Jason's come on him, inside him, almost like his blood but more potent, more specifically Jason.

He wants Dick's come on him too.

"Where do you want me to come?"

He thinks, or tries to. Jason's fingers are plunging deeper and deeper, pressing to the back of his throat. His hole is sore and empty and he reaches back thoughtlessly to pet at it, to feel where he's open and leaking and used. It's so hot to the touch.

"sh*t." Dick's voice is abruptly rough. "Yeah, okay. Get his ass up, Jay?"

Jason laughs, and pulls his fingers from Tim's mouth.

"C'mon, babybird," he murmurs, and Tim tries so hard to help but his body won't stop trembling. It's all Jason's hands turning him over and helping him lift his hips, folding him in half so his knees nearly touch his ears, propping him up like some obscene, cherished work of art.

He lays there in Jason's arms like—like something special, maybe, because Jason's hands are so gentle on him, Dick stares at him like he can't bear to look away. His hand is a blur on his co*ck, the head slippery and red and painful-looking between his fingers.

Tim feels used, and wanted, and a dangerous warmth glows under his ribs.

Dick comes on him with a groan that sounds punched out of him. Hot wetness, spattering against Tim's inner thighs and slack hole, running down inside him to join the mess of blood and lube and Jason's come.

Tim sighs. It comes out a croon.

They move him. He doesn't stop them and certainly doesn't try to help. Warm, soft cloths wipe carefully over him, there's a weightless few moments before he's deposited in a new bed that doesn't smell so strongly of sem*n. They're bickering about something, Jason and Dick. Whatever it is, there's no anger in their voices.

He falls asleep like that.