matrix !!

poc | he/any | 18+ only | timber!!!

[akaanmo]

[thatthingthathappens]

I think the reason I love Bernard is because he could either chill Tim out and make him clam the fuck down or he could match Tim's freak so well that he becomes another problem

[matrixx-level]

sometimes i want to wake up in a meadow, having already put the knife through my unyielding flesh, and feel the soft, fluttering flowers and warm, sinking soil soak up who and what i used to be; draining me of my anguish, and making trees out of it.

sometimes, i never want to wake up again.

sometimes, all i can do is curl my limbs around my fragile body, and pretend as though my mind isn’t shattering for the thousandth time as i try to imagine waking up in that meadow.

sometimes, i dream of freedom, and it tastes like iron on my tongue, and flowers in my hair.

[matrixx-level]

happy birthday, tim<3

“Is this thing recording?”

“Bear, I don’t think you’re doing it right-”

“No I’ve got it, hold on-”

“Just hand me the camera, Bear-”

“No! Okay okay, smile, Timmy!”

“Don’t call me that-”

Tim Drake smiled a small, exasperated smile at the viewfinder of the barely working camera in Bernard’s freckled hands, rolling his eyes as Bernard fumbles with it so he can visibly zoom in further. Tim sighs, quiet with affection and endless patience, as he holds up his lit sparkler to Bernard’s own, watching as his boyfriend tries to frame their hands and Tim’s face perfectly in the shot.

“You’re so beautiful,” Bernard whispers, smiling a little with the camera covering up the rest of his face. Tim tries to suppress the light blush that immediately wants to spring into his cheeks, looking away before looking back at the camera with a small thanks. “Happy birthday, Tim. I hope every birthday from now on is the best kind.”

Tim smiles again, helplessly melting at the sincerity he hears in his boyfriend’s voice. “Only if you’re there,” he says, his fathomless eyes glittering with the fluttering light of the sparklers in the darkness of the night. Wind blows through their clothes and ruffles his hair just right for the video, the sea breeze carrying notes of salt on it as they taste it and feel it on their skin. Their legs are pressed close together, sinking into the shifting sand.

All day Tim had been bombarded with well wishes and gifts thrown at his face by his family and friends, pulled every which way and getting confetti thrown into his face as they surprised him with a birthday party at his and Bernard’s shared apartment. It was a good day. His heart had never felt so full. But it quickly got overwhelming, and he was relieved when things started to wind down, and more people left as the hours passed.

Once everyone had either left or fallen asleep in his living room, he had expected for it all to be over. He had gone to his and his boyfriend’s room to change so he could fall into bed, exhausted, when he had stopped short at the sight of Bernard, wide awake and changed into comfortable clothes prepped for the cold, sitting on the ledge of the window with a bag on his shoulder.

Tim had sighed heavily, shaking his head as he moved further into the room to look for his tennis shoes. “Where are we going, baby?” he had whispered, hopping on one foot as he shoved the other into its matching sneaker.

Bernard had laughed, his long blonde hair shuffling with the night breeze, his smile backlit by the stars and the moon. He had been the most beautiful thing Tim had ever seen, and Tim knew he would follow him anywhere. Tim didn’t know why he didn’t think his boyfriend would do something more for him, something between just the two of them. But he had been happy to jump out of that window to follow after him.

And now here they were, their sparklers burning down to the nub, the moon hidden by the clouds, the beach empty and filled with midnight’s secrets, Bernard holding his camera and filming this video of Tim, smiling at him with all the adoration in the world, their shared breaths loud in the quiet.

“How much longer are you going to record for, Bern?” Tim asks, shuffling closer as the wind whips up again, trying to keep from shivering as he steals more of his boyfriend’s warmth. Bernard laughs softly, leaning closer to Tim and keeping the camera between them as he captures Tim’s sparkling deep blue eyes, his beauty marks, his ruffled black hair, his button nose.

“As long as I want to capture this moment,” Bernard says, breathing the words into the air like he only ever wants Tim to hear him.

Tim’s laugh will sound crackly through the audio of the video, like this camera is a device only meant for bottling moments of the past in that exact way that makes your chest ache, and your teeth sing of nostalgia.

Tim gently lays his hand atop the camera, and pushes it down so that Bernard’s hands let it fall softly into the sand between them, and Tim leans ever closer. The sparklers are nothing but burning embers now, also to be forever buried at this beach, and so there’s nothing stopping him from holding Bernard’s hands in his own, the warmth and the texture and the safety more of a birthday present then the camera (which Bernard planned to give to Tim, so that Tim could get back into photography) or the sketch pad and pencils (Tim was experimenting with drawing lately, but only doodles on notes when he had the time.)

And now that the camera is pressed against Tim’s knee, it only sees darkness. But it hears as Tim whispers, “Thanks, Bear. For taking me out here. I didn’t know I needed this until we got here.”

And Bernard just breathes out a quiet giggle, the sound of their hair brushing together making it seem as though they had pressed their foreheads together.

“You’re welcome. I want you to be able to remember this, any of it, forever,” Bernard says, murmurs, his clothes rustling as he shifts impossibly closer. “I love you.”

Tim’s reply is so quiet the camera barely captures it. “I love you too. More than anything.”

And after a few minutes of utter quiet, that’s where the recording ends.

Tim replays it every birthday, in the darkness, his lips curling as he stares back at his own face.

“You’re so beautiful.”

Even if the camera hadn’t been there, Tim doesn’t think he’d ever forget that. Not in a thousand years. Not in a million birthdays.

inspo @akaanmo the goat

[akaanmo]

happy bday timmy!!

[plagueislost]

them 💥💥💥🔨

[akaanmo]

[plagueislost]

quick pit stop on patrol

[thcyn]

Fragile Love [Part 1]

CW: death

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[akaanmo]

Robin

[plagueislost]

july swimsuit special

[plagueislost]

theres something in the water

based on this thread by my friend soapie :) (whole thing under the cut cuz twt sucks ASS)

and pt 2:

[dr-paint]

You're not always nice, but you're kind.

[plagueislost]

i liked supergirl

[plagueislost]

more painting studies. i wanted bernard to get in on the pool action

[matrixx-level]

tw: implied, non-explicit self harm

timbern and its bernard waking up in a fog, impressions of the nightmare that never leaves him soaking his cold-sweat skin in the phantom of something like blood, something like love, something like all the lies he’s ever been told.

and he leaves his room in a daze, his arms aching with a god’s kiss, and he finds salvation in going through the motions. he eats, and drinks coffee (not something that would warm him from the inside out, burning him as it fills him, like a star dying out, like a supernova because the star destroyed itself and only had itself to blame), and he leaves his apartment, his home, the only place he’s ever known (the only place where it was just him and Tim, yes, tim drake has been the only one to touch the places bernard has been without his parents, without the people who made him just to tear him asunder, yes, only tim drake, only Tim), and he walks along gotham’s streets, her cursed hum vibrating under his shoes and into his bones where he can taste her love, and her hate, and her anguish.

he goes to work, and he makes something of himself there, and once it’s all over, hours later - the minutes having stretched like dough on a counter, like blood clots when you stress them, like his sanity snapping taut - he goes to the only class he has that day at gotham u, and through all of this his veins are singing and his fingertips are aching and he is thinking of Tim, yes, just tim drake, he thinks of no one else, he blinks and breathes and thinks of warm, calloused hands in his, a bright, knowing smile that has carved out all of his secrets, and deep, sharp pools of blue that have beholded him unlike how anyone else has.

he goes home, after everything, after all that he has seen and touched and tasted and heard and smelt, and in that sacred, unknowable place, in that place of only he and Tim, tim drake is there, waiting for him, smiling smiling smiling, reaching for him like bernard is an undying light that tim drake could not possibly get enough of. like bernard is his, and tim drake must get a taste of him that day, every day, all days that he can have him, like bernard’s flesh is not tainted, constructed of all the sins of the past, like tim drake enjoys the feel of raised tissue beneath his hands, and a yawning darkness that swallows all that get close.

they meet, in their home, and they kiss and hold each other, and it is like this is where bernard is meant to be. like his arms do not ache, and his fingertips do not sing sing sing. Tim goes to the kitchen where bags of takeout await them, and he tells bernard to go freshen up while he sets everything up for them to eat and watch a movie. and so bernard- he finds himself in the bathtub, the water overflowing, the leaking liquid dripping onto tiled floor, and everything is dyeing a soft, watery pink, the world as foggy as when bernard had woken up from something like this, something full of love and stinging arms and his fingers ache. they ache. they sing. they pressed close, and they wrote Tim’s name into warm, pliant flesh, because yes, this home has only been touched by two people and bernard had been touched by his father in a way that yielded the gods’ favorite colors, black and blue and green and yellow blooming like flowers, like wilting bleeding flowers, across his pliant pliant flesh. but only Tim has felt him, has held him, has licked him clean and tasted his sin-sewn skin and seen heaven.

so yes, the world is blending and swirling together and Tim joins him in the bathtub and presses something stinging to bernard’s aching arms, and their legs are tangled close, and Tim is awash in pink but he does not seem to mind. their warm bodies are pressed close and Tim wraps bernard’s aching aching singing arms, so the melody croons a muffled tune, so that bernard can only look into his sad, solemn, melting blue eyes, and find home, salvation, a dying star that only has itself to blame but also an entire Milky Way of stars that glitter at him with something like love, something that is love.

“i love you, baby,” tim says, his tim, the only tim that bernard has ever known, the only love that bernard has truly felt. his father had dug him out of the soil and so bernard had loved him, but it was a love that made iron paint his teeth, that made bernard hide away in a place that released him from flesh-made prison, the prison he had not asked to be set in, the prison he could not hope to escape.

but this. this is love. this is love that he sees in dreams that are only meant to flay open his soul and watch the blooming leaking flowers flow out, this is love that presses soft, butterfly kisses all over his face, and over his aching, muffled arms, and holds bernard close to tim’s chest, in the watery pinkish overfull tub. this is love that washes him, dries him, sits him on a couch and presses Chinese take out into his warm, quiet fingers, holds him closer still as something softly plays on the TV. this is love that looks at him with knowing, bright, sharp, gentle blue eyes, and smile smile smile at him, like he is the sun in the sky, who had hung up all the stars just for tim drake to gaze upon. the sun that warms tim with golden rays, and brightens his days and nights, and steadily stays by his side. this is love that bernard cannot help but sink into, finding home and salvation and Tim. his tim. the only love he’s ever known. the only love he’s happy to give back.

softly inspired by @plagueislost and by a poetic post i saw on tiktok by @/mouthlikeheaven

[hatte135]

watching your loved one sleep while you unravel