For the Batfam fic writing prompt post: Any characters + pushing through exhaustion?
The air felt too full, still reverberating with the vestiges of Tim's final shout. The ringing made his ears hurt, the sound already fading but the heat behind it remained.
Yelling had been less of a choice and more of a need, a way to vent off the pressure into a little explosion instead of one that would level city blocks. It was too much of everythingāthe case, the squabble over the comms with Dick, the knocked-over Coke can, the gritty sensation behind his eyelids. Bruce had just been the tipping point. Tim knew he probably hadn't meant to sound so... so Bruce about asking for an update. But Tim got prickly over perceived disapproval in the best of times, and this was not that.
Tim sucked in ragged, heaving breaths, not sure if he wanted to yell again, or cry, or turn his back on Bruce entirely and pretend this had never happened. Please, he just wanted Bruce to forget this had ever happened.
You yelled at Bruce. For asking a question. For checking in on a case he's working on. He's going to bench you, and you'll deserve it. You should have figured this out by now, you stupidā
Tim's shoulders had scrunched up to his ears of their own accord, a habit he thought he'd left behind in middle school. He was an adult now, practically, but he felt like a squabbling kid, mouthing off for no reason.
Bruce was staring at him, but not in horror or confusion. Anger? It had to be anger. Tim had snapped at him for asking a question. Bruce had to be angry. Dick had been angry. Maybe Bruce hated him.
"Tim," Bruce said slowly, and made Tim want to wince. This was it. He was going to get fired. Kicked out. Sent away forever and ever. "When did you sleep last?"
Tim blinked. That was irrelevant. But Bruce not yelling back was such a relief that he choked down the sob building in the back of his throat and tried to think.
"Uh," he said as he dug the heel of his hand into one scratchy eye. "Dunno. It's Thursday?"
Bruce's face had a way of changing without changing at all. Like, if Tim snapped a photo of a second ago and now, they would look exactly the same, with grooves scored into Bruce's forehead and around a mouth set into a flat line. But they were different, the one sort of settling somehow into the other, the rise and fall of a determination made.
"You're done for tonight," Bruce said, not an order so much as a statement of fact.
"No!" Tim protested even as Bruce reached out and flipped off the computer monitor. "Bruce, I have to, the case, I told Dickā"
He had told Dick he'd solve it, had all but bit Nightwing's head off for questioning how long it was taking him. Dick would hate him forever if he failed. Or maybe he already hated him forever, the snot-nosed idiot Robin wannabe who couldn't even crack the string of murders before the killer struck again, and this was Tim's one chance to make it right, andā
Tim whup!ed in surprise as Bruce lifted him off his feet with a grunt, too startled but to hold rigid like a fainting goat as he was hefted bridal style. The slight huff out Bruce's nose was his only concession to the slipped disc from last month but Tim remembered and it made the panic rise again in his chest.
"Bruce," Tim tried protesting again, but it was like trying to beg with one of Gotham's famed gargoyles. They really were eerily similar.
"Dick signed off hours ago, and you should have, too," Bruce said, and the even-toned rebuke made the corners of Tim's eyes prick with tears. "Jason and Damian are taking over for now."
Great, great, so he WAS the weak link, then, and everybody knew it.
Bruce carried him up through the house, not slowing or faltering. Tim was too concerned with pushing his luck or tweaking Bruce's back to struggle too much. Besides, just the act of being still, without his focus held captive by case files and police reports, had let exhaustion seep into his bones like acid, eroding the marrow into brittle, bitter strips. He hurt, he realized, in every joint from his cricked neck to clenched fingers to aching ankles. How long had he sat hunched in that chair?
Tim expected Bruce to put him down at every step, or, failing the sensible release, to set Tim down in his own room and leave. Instead, Bruce bypassed Tim's bed entirely and went to the hammock suspended in the corner. He sat crossways, the wide, interwoven body of the hammock stretched to support Bruce from his head to the back of his knees, and Tim still held against his chest.
Bruce breathed, a low and soft pushed between his lips, and closed his eyes.
"Bruce?" Tim whispered, unsure of what exactly was happening. Or, more pressingly, "I don't know what the weight limit on this thing is."
Bruce just grunted, appearing already halfway to sleep himself.
Tim's chest still felt full of hot, prickly static, but maybe the tears running down the back of his throat would drown it out soon enough.
"No one hates you," Bruce said, seemingly psychic until Tim remembered it was one of the fears he had shouted out in the echoing pit of the Cave. "You'll feel better after you sleep."
He wouldn't. He wouldn't feel better until the case was closed, until people stopped dying, until he was sure Dick didn't hate him, Bruce didn't hate himā
Bruce didn't seem like he hated him. Tim sniffed as Bruce's chest rose and fell beneath him in deep, steady breaths.
The calloused base of Bruce's thumb rubbed slow circles into Tim's temple. "Sleep," Bruce said.
This time, Tim did as he was told.
