#batsasks

[bi-bats]

18 + jaytim for the drabble ask? or any prompt you wish you were sent!

Wow it's SUCH a good thing that I kept a note that had all the actual prompts in them 😂 Thank you for waiting so patiently for this!!! And if you're on ao3 please reply with your link so I can gift it to you! I hope you enjoy 💚

Prompt: This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.

Keep reading on ao3 or below the cut:

“Okay. Our target will be entering the theater with his date sometime between 5:28 and 5:42. Research indicates that he likes to be in the theater long enough to see all the previews, and his date likes to have time to acquire snacks. I’ve seen the movie three times already, so even though the tickets say the movie starts at 6, it’s actually going to start at 6:14, and lights will go down for previews at 5:55. We’re going to enter the theater at 5:54 — question?”

“What if I want popcorn?” Jason asks, lowering his hand back down into his lap. 

Tim scoffs and rolls his eyes, turning his attention back to the map of the theater. “I’m not answering that—”

“—We’re going to sit through a two hour movie that you’ve already seen three times, I want snacks.”

Tim’s lips press into a thin line as he glares at Jason. 

Jason raises an eyebrow at him, and the standoff continues as Tim assesses his opponent.

The air between them is so tense, it’s sort of surprising that a tumbleweed doesn’t blow right through the nest. 

Tim breaks first, with a sigh and a roll of his eyes. “Fine, after a cost-benefit analysis in which the cost is adding time to buy snacks and the benefit is you not intentionally sabotaging our mission, I have determined it is in my best interest to add time for us to buy snacks.”

“The cost is also the actual snacks, you know,” Jason adds. 

Tim very graciously decides not to throw his laser pointer at him. 

“Focus up, Jason, this is a mission.” 

Jason scoffs and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, looking incredibly bored, but he nods at Tim and redirects his attention to the map of the theater.

“We will be entering the theater at 5:54. You’re going to laugh at something I say right as the lights are going down, so that I can shush you and draw the target’s attention. Then we’re going to find our seats, which are here—” Tim points the laser at a pair of seats two rows in front of the seat with a target drawn neatly on it, “—so that he sees us, but doesn’t have time to corner us. After we sit, you’ll put your arm around me — what is it now, Jason?” Tim sighs at Jason’s raised hand. 

“Why don’t we just tell them we’re dating?” 

Jason thinks he sees Tim’s eye twitch. 

“Are you insane?” 

“Are you? Look at this fucking plan, Tim.” Jason waves a hand at the map of the theater. “You saw the Barbie movie three times for this, and you’re going to see it a fourth.” 

“This is Dick’s eleventh time seeing it.”

“He’s Dick.” 

“Yeah, but it’s worth it! And I actually think you’ll really like it too, it has excellent commentary on—”

“—Not the point, baby,” Jason interrupts, shaking his head. 

Tim scoffs, getting that tilt to his mouth that only comes out when he’s really irritated. 

“So what, you wanted to sit them all down and tell them?”

“Ugh, no!” Jason huffs. “I figured we could just, like. I don’t know. Kiss after a briefing or something.” 

Oh, Tim’s eye is definitely twitching. 

“In the Batcave. Where we can be locked in?” 

“Oh, fine, yeah. I see that, alright. After a mission, before the briefing, then?” 

“So you want to be interrogated publicly.” 

“We can run!” Jason scoffs.

“From Dick, Damian, Stephanie, Cass, Duke, Babs, and Bruce?” 

“Well, Duke might not be there, we might have a chance if—”

“—Cass.” 

In the following silence, Tim crosses his arms over his chest and raises an eyebrow at Jason. 

“Fine. Fine!” Jason sighs, “Not that. One at a time, then?” 

“You want to have the same conversation six times?” 

“Why does everyone think I hate talking about feelings?” 

“Because you do hate talking about feelings,” Tim says, looking slightly amused. 

“I value my privacy, there’s a difference. Plus, in this family, you give an inch and they take a mile.”

“Fine. Let me walk you through what happens if we don’t do my plan.”

Oh, here we go, Jason thinks as he spots that one look in Tim’s eye that he gets whenever he’s setting a trap.

“Where do you suggest we start?” 

“Oh god, Bruce last.” 

“Fine, give me the order you would want to do it in.” 

Jason tilts his head to the side for a second, before settling on: “Duke, Cass, Dick, Steph, Damian, Bruce.” 

Tim opens his mouth, a glimmer in his eyes, and Jason adds, “Actually, switch Steph and Dick.” 

If anything, that malicious look in his eyes only gets worse. 

“Okay, fine. Starting with Duke is smart. Since he has the whole ghost vision thing, he probably already knows. He’ll have some questions, and he’ll probably tease us a little, but it shouldn’t be totally unbearable, right?” 

Jason winces.

“Next, Cass. She definitely already knows, but she’s been waiting for us to tell her because either she’s being kind, or because she’s also waiting for the opportunity to tease us. But again, we can take getting teased by Cass.

“Now, switching Steph and Dick. Either way, we’ve already fallen into a trap, because Steph will be offended if we tell Dick first, and Dick will be offended if we tell Steph first, and either way, both of them will be offended that we told Duke and Cass before them. Steph already knows we were sleeping together—”

“—What?”

“Oh, yeah, I told her ages ago,” Tim says, swiping a hand through the air like he can just wave away Jason’s surprise. “So us dating probably won’t be news, strictly speaking. But she’s going to squeal and hug us and be excited and so happy for us—” he drops his voice back down from the higher pitched tone he’s been using to mock his best friend, “—until she finds out that we’ve been hiding it from her for three months, and then this is going to be an actual, physical fight.”

“No, it won’t,” Jason scoffs, kicking at the coffee table. 

“Jason,” Tim says, crossing his arms over his chest. “She hit me in the face with a brick the day we met. She is going to punch you, and it is going to hurt.”

It wouldn’t hurt that much, Jason thinks. But he knows better than to try and stop Tim now that he’s really going, so he keeps his mouth shut and lets his head fall to rest on the back of the couch.

“Now, Dick. He’s going to be so emotional. He’s going to be so happy for us he could cry, and he might, and he’s also going to be indignant that we didn’t tell him first. And once he gets past that, he is going to have a thousand questions, some of which are going to be invasive and personal and deeply uncomfortable. And he’s not going to understand that they are invasive and personal and deeply uncomfortable! It’s going to be an interrogation, Jason. One where he asks us about our sex life.”

Jason refuses to wince at that. He does sigh, if only to voice his displeasure with everything about this situation. 

Well. Everything except getting to date Tim.

That’s been pretty great.

“And if we ever escape Dick, then we’ll have Damian. He does care about us and he will find a way to shovel talk both of us, but he probably won’t care that we waited so long to tell him. He is definitely going to be mad that he was the last to know, though. Actually, no one is going to be happy about not being the first to know. But revisiting shovel talks, Bruce.”

“Hey, I’m actually dying to see the look on his face when he finds out,” Jason says, a malicious grin pulling across his face. “That vein in his forehead is going to pop out, it’ll be funny.” 

“Oh?” Tim raises an eyebrow, stepping towards the coffee table. His palms press to the table as he leans down to look Jason in the eyes. 

The whole thing would probably be as intimidating as he was going for to someone who hadn’t seen imprint of bedsheets pressed into the side of his face this morning as he tripped on the sheets getting out of bed. 

But he’s a professional, so he carries on like Jason hasn’t noticed the intimidation isn’t working. 

“It’ll be funny? It’ll be funny when Bruce handles it by telling us we need to break up because he doesn’t have any time to process what it means for us and not what it means for the mission?” 

“He’s not going to do that, Tim.” 

Tim narrows his eyes at Jason.

“Are you sure?” 

Suddenly, Jason’s throat feels a little dry. 

“Okay, fine,” he concedes. “B doesn’t always respond well to emotional situations under pressure. But he won’t demand we break up—”

“—No?” Tim interrupts. “Then what, we’ll get a lecture on how we’re endangering ourselves and each other and everyone else with our feelings?”

“We won’t—”

“Even if we don’t, you think Dick’s interrogation was going to be bad? That’ll be the warm-up for Bruce. He’ll take each of us into his office alone and ask a million questions, and if, if he approves, it’ll still be exhausting and uncomfortable and—”

“Okay, okay!” Jason stops him, putting his hands up in surrender. The motion makes that one look ripple through Tim’s eyes that he gets whenever he wins, the one that’s always a little bit of a turn on when it’s not Jason who’s lost. “You made your point. We’re not going to tell them all individually.” 

“And you still want to tell them all together? You want to handle all of those reactions at once?” 

“Not really,” Jason sighs. 

“Okay. In that case, hear my plan out: We let Dick see us on a date. He starts to suspect that it’s a date, and he follows us. We get dinner after the movie and let him follow us, and then you take me home, and we let him see us kissing through the window. He won’t interrupt because then he would have to admit he was spying on us, and he won’t want to walk in on us, but that’s key, because it gives him time to process it. And because he’s a horrible gossip, he’s going to tell everyone for us. And he’s also going to tell everyone to keep it quiet and not say anything to us, because he doesn’t want us to know it came from him. And that is going to give everyone else time to process it. And eventually Dick is going to get sick of trying to subtly ask us questions and he’s just going to blurt out a question about whether or not we’re actually dating, and we’ll say yes, and then he’ll be so smug about having ‘figured it out’ that he won’t ask half of the questions he would have if we’d sprung it on him, and by then he’ll have figured out that he doesn’t actually want to know the answers to those questions.” 

“One flaw in your plan.” 

“No, there isn’t,” Tim scoffs.

“Everyone’s going to be mad we hid it for this long anyways.” 

“But we did hide it for this long, so it’s a little too late to avoid that. And if anyone gets mad, we just tell them that we were worried that they weren’t going to accept us and that’s why we didn’t tell them, and then they’ll stop being mad because it won’t look good for them.”

“That’s kind of manipulative, Tim.” 

Tim shrugs at him. “And? Look, are you in or not?” 

“So, your plan is to let Dick see us on a date at the Barbie movie and then let him follow us home so he can see us kiss?” 

“Yes. Weren’t you listening?” 

Jason sighs and rubs his thumb and forefinger against his eyes. “This is the stupidest plan you’ve ever had—”

“—Hey!—” 

“—but yes, I’m in.” 

“That’s more like it. But for the record, it’s not stupid. It’s incredibly well thought out.” The little red dot of the laser pointer circles around the map of the theater, as if Tim’s proving his point. 

“That’s what makes this so stupid, baby. This is way too much work. You saw that movie three times for this.” 

“You’re going to want to see it again, too, Jason. I promise.” 

“Wait, wait, one last question, though.” 

Tim sighs, “Yes?” 

“We are actually going to fuck after Dick sees us kiss, right?” 

Jason ducks just in time to dodge the laser pointer soaring over his head as he cackles at Tim. 

“You’re lucky I love you,” Tim scoffs, rolling his eyes. 

The last of Jason’s laughter dies down as he fishes the laser pointer out from behind the couch and tosses it back to Tim.

“Every day, baby. Aw, don’t pout, come on. You can walk me through your plan again, if you want.”

“Fine. Now pay attention, and hold all your questions until the end, please.” 

They make it about as far in to the plan as they did last time when Jason raises his hand again. 

“Yes, Jason, what now?” Tim asks. 

Jason smirks, mischievous and playful. 

“What kind of snacks are we getting?” 

[bi-bats]

I swore this was your fic from some jaytim event, but I can’t find it. Was it yours or am I misremembering?

In it, Tim is cursed and can only repeat words that have been said to him? Everyone else had to remember to give Tim options that he could repeat back but Jason always knew what Tim meant. It was really cute and I thought it was yours?

Sorry, not mine! This does sound like a very cool fic though. Anyone able to help out?

[bi-bats]

3! I'd love to know more about your book!

Genuinely so surprised (and also delighted) that this is the one people want to ask me about!! Thank you so much for asking!!!

In the interest of trying to keep any manuscript material off the internet and also trying not to flat out summarize the story, I'm getting creative about answering these. Here's a moodboard/web weave about it:

[bi-bats]

PLEASE elaborate on the weird and horny rr damitim 🙏

Oh I mean please refer to my 45k word essay fic about them 😂

I know youve already read it but I think it says more than any answer could 😂 i will say though, as an avid JayDick enjoyer, I LOVE nighthood when its DamiTim like. Even more. I just think Damian is weird and obsessive about his mistakes and as the older "responsible" one i think that he wouldn't be as insecure about Tim's abilities in the first place, but I also think he'd take Tim's death as a personal failure and then when he comes BACK I think. Well. Damian is just always weird and obsessive about his mistakes and this is no different and also Tim in the role of Jaybin OBVIOUSLY has a secret little crush and Damian and then. Well. Those things meet at Weird and Horny! Anyways, feel free to refer to the essay which I will likely work on bc ive been thinking lots about it lately 💚 ily bisou bisou

[bi-bats]

trick or treat!! 3-sentence fic or wip sneak peak? (up to u!)

HELLOOOOO MY BELOVED!! HAPPY HALLOWEEENNNNNNNN

For YOU I have a snippet of the one shot I'm working on that was like. supposed to be a drabble for the prompt you sent me and has gotten. long. lmao.

also it's going to be a fic with smut in it and I haven't even gotten to the smut yet and it's already 2.5k words lmao

so here my TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO WRITING JAYTIM

~ ✨ ~

“Do you… well… I mean… I could give you a massage?”

Jason blinks at him.

“Did… I’m sorry. Did you just say you could give me a massage?”  

Tim’s face burns furiously hot. What does he say, no? 

Well. He kind of wants to say no, actually. Maybe he can just gaslight his way out of this one—

No, no. Jason heard. 

Damn. 

He tries to say yes, but it tilts up into a question at the end. 

“Yes?” 

Jason blinks at him, and Tim’s skin feels too tight. The material of the couch is suddenly itchy on the back of his arms, but the heat on his face distracts him from it. Mostly.

“…Okay.” 

There’s a stutter in Tim’s breathing, the slightest hitch between in and out, right after Jason answers. It’s unnoticeable.

If you aren’t a bat.

Jason raises an eyebrow, because of course he fucking noticed.

Tim can’t just sit there while Jason looks at him like that, so he moves. 

He shifts forward on the couch, scooting an inch or two closer and waving his hands in what he hopes is a gesture indicating ‘turn around so I can rub your shoulders’ and not ‘I have no idea what to do with my hands right now this is so awkward why did I offer this oh my god’. 

He’s probably fine. The gesture for that would have had more flapping. 

Probably. 

It still takes Jason a second to get in gear. He shrugs, tilting his head to the side in a way that says something like ‘eh, why not’, which isn’t exactly what Tim had been hoping for when offering to touch a guy he’s had a crush on since he knew what crushes were, but he’s letting Tim do it, so it’s better than rejecting—

Jason slides his shirt off in a smooth motion, reaching over the back of his head to grab the neck of it and tug it off. 

It’s like one of those fucking thirst trap reels on Instagram.

Tim was just watching him move over on the couch while his thoughts went on a little spiral, and then Jason reached for the back of his shirt, and bam.

The lights drop, the music starts, the speed slows down, and Tim can see every ripple in the muscles of Jason’s forearm, every inch of skin revealing as he lifts the shirt, every angle of the dips in his spine, every scar, every scab, every damn freckle — for god’s sake, he can even see about a half an inch of elastic above the top of his pants. 

It’s red. 

Of course it’s red. 

Tim takes a deep breath, trying to disguise it by shifting closer to Jason, who’s sitting with his back to Tim, his arms threaded through the shirt in his lap. 

He can do this. He can do this. 

It’s just a massage. 

“Come on, Timbo. Let’s see what those scrawny fingers got.” 

Tim lets out an exasperated scoff, and Jason’s shoulders shake two or three times as he chuckles. 

He considers digging an elbow into Jason’s spine, just to be an asshole, but he has a better plan. 

He’s going to wow him. It’s going to be the best damn massage in his life. 

Scrawny fingers, Tim grumbles in his head as he places his hand down on Jason’s left shoulder. 

Immediately, Jason flinches and lets out a noise of surprise, and Tim flinches back because he’s surprised.

Great start.

“Jesus fuck, your fingers are like ice!” 

“Sorry, sorry,” Tim mutters, even though he isn’t, not really. Still, he rubs his hands together quickly, just a few times to get some of the cold out of them. 

He puts his hands back on Jason’s shoulders, and Jason stiffens, but he doesn’t flinch away this time. 

Okay. Good. 

Tim starts applying pressure, rubbing up and down the muscles, and after a few moments, it’s easier to shift into a more clinical headspace, even with the warmth of his skin seeping through Tim’s fingers. 

“Where is it bothering you?” he asks. 

“Oh, uh. By my spine. And…” Jason pauses for a moment while Tim’s palm digs into the meat of his shoulder, and when he resumes speaking, his voice is a little higher. “…my neck.” 

Tim nods, letting his palm dig in again. He wishes he had lotion or something. Jason’s skin drags against his every time he moves his hand, and it’s uncomfortable. Also, Jason’s skin is warm, flushing pink under the area he’s been rubbing, and… a little bit up his neck, too actually. The tips of his ears are pink, Tim realizes as he works his way up to the crook of Jason’s neck. 

He digs his thumb into the muscle right by the top of Jason’s shoulder, and he’s just starting to lose himself in it when he hears a breathy noise, almost like… 

No. No, Tim’s making shit up. Jason did not audibly moan. Tim is putting things where he wants them to be, because that’s what he wants.

On the next roll of his palm, Jason says, “Ngh, Christ, Tim.”

With Tim’s hand frozen on his shoulder, he can feel the way Jason tenses, has a front row seat to the burst of color across his neck.

Thank god they’re in Jason’s apartment. In Jason’s living room. With Jason’s cameras recording. He doesn’t have to memorize the way that sounded coming out of Jason’s mouth.

No, he can go hack into his files and save it as a clip and then back it up on three separate servers, and then also a hard drive, and maybe also on a USB in a lockbox buried in the woods somewhere, because he doesn’t think he can live another moment of his life without having access to the way his name sounded coming out of Jason’s mouth. 

“Sorry,” Jason mutters, and he sounds… meek? It’s weird, but Tim doesn’t think he’s ever heard Jason sound shy. 

“No worries,” Tim says, feeling like he’s regained some ground. 

“You can… make noise,” Tim adds. 

Immediately, he feels like he’s lost that ground. 

Jason clears his throat a little. “No, it’s — it’s fine, I’m good. You can, uh. Keep going.” 

A grin tugs across his mouth as he resumes his massage, listening to the way Jason’s breathing is getting heavier. 

“I thought my fingers were scrawny?”

[bi-bats]

👉🏾👈🏾May I inquire about "Know Yourself," if your book is off the table? Lore or a piece you're really proud of?

You absolutely may!

Honestly, what I'm really proud of is the way the slow development of their relationship pans out? Some lore would be that the best enemies to lovers writing advice i ever got was that it has to happen in stages: enemies to allies, allies to friends, friends to lovers. I have the plot structure divided in the same way, too! They just landed at friends. Which means... *waggles my eyebrows*

Thank you for the ask!!! 💚

Wip list the asks are from

(Also my book is not off the table btw I'm just surprised people want to know about it!! But as an honorable mention Ill gladly tell you that one of the songs on my playlist for it is Back to the Old House by The Smiths)

[bi-bats]

Trick or treat? >:3c

HELLOOO FENRIS!! HAPPY HALLOWEENNNNNN 💖💖💖💖

But oh NO! You've missed trick or treating!!

Luckily for you, this is now a house party, which means I can post an NSFW snippet!!! This picks up right after the end of the massage prompt I snippeted in this ask earlier 😇

~ ✨ ~

Fuck. Jesus fuck. Jesus fucking christ. 

This was a bad idea. This was a really, really bad idea. 

10 minutes ago, Jason did think Tim’s fingers were scrawny. Now, they’re warm and long and lean and making a magical trail up and down his shoulder, and it feels fucking amazing. 

Hell, how long has it been since someone touched him this… tenderly? He’s so used to every touch being a hit, being painful, that he can’t remember the last time someone touched him for longer than a few seconds and was gentle about it. 

And Tim… Jason’s not blind. He’s cute most of the time, and then he gets that one grin that makes him look a little like a mad scientist and Jason’s heart starts ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum-ing like Bugs fucking Bunny. And he’s not an idiot, he’s seen the way Tim blushes around him. 

But he already decided not to do anything about it. And if he teases him a little more and goes out of his way to annoy him so he can see that pretty schoolgirl blush, that’s his business. 

So why the fuck did he agree to this? Something is wrong with him. Colossally. Mentally. He wasn’t going to fuck Tim! He wasn’t going to pick him up by those pretty legs and slam him against his wall and fuck his tongue down his throat, wasn’t going to see just how much of his cock he could get in his mouth—

Another moan rumbles out of his chest on the next sweep of Tim’s thumb across his shoulder. It’s low and deep and jesus fuck he sounds like he’s being fucked slow and good. 

And Tim… doesn’t say anything. Of course, he doesn’t say anything. Jason’s panting like a dog in heat while Tim rubs his magical fingers up and down his back, kneading the muscles, pulling out the tension, and Tim’s probably got that smug little grin on his face, and holy fuck Jason should say thanks that really helped and kick him the fuck out of his apartment so he can spend a solid 10 minutes in the shower with his hand. 

And if he thinks about how Tim’s hands would feel flat on his back, holding him down while he fucks into him, or how those hands would feel digging into his back while Jason fucked into him, that’s also his business. Fantasizing is fine. 

Tim’s hand cups the back of Jason’s neck, and he practically yelps so he doesn’t moan. 

There’s a pause, a moment where Tim could be— fuck, he could be doing anything. He could be laughing, he could be smirking, he could be confused, and Jason should say something, he should say something, fuck, he should explain but he honestly really fucking can’t explain that Tim practically scruffing him really gets him going—

“Are my hands still cold?”

“No, you just—” Jason has to clear his throat because it’s coming out fucking sex drunk, that’s awesome, “caught me off guard,” he finishes. 

Tim hums an acknowledging noise, and then he starts rubbing again. Jason digs the fingers of one of his hands into his leg, hoping his torso hides it from Tim’s line of sight. 

And the whole time Tim rubs his neck, all Jason can think about is what Tim’s fingers would feel like scraping up his scalp, threading through his hair, grabbing a fistful of it, tugging it like a handle, and thank fucking god his shirt is covering his lap. 

[bi-bats]

trick or treat <3333

TAURIA MY BELOVED!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEENNNNNN!!!!

In the spirit of the season (and giving out full size candy bars) you get a snippet from an idea that I have not talked about on Tumblr yet!! Everyone say thank you to Tauria and go read a bunch of her fics on Ao3 her stuff is so good!!

ANYWAYS this is a snippet of a DamiTim piece I've been working on in the vein of Now Kiss! It's probably going to be a oneshot with multiple little scenes, and it's an urban fantasy fic that's not a no capes!au. It's based off of this one super short tumblr post (that I cannot find ughhh) about magic in the modern era between a self-taught sorcerer and a classically trained one arguing about the ways that they do certain thins, and I saw it and was like "I have to hit that with my DamiTim beam rn" soooo more urban fantasy from Misha for you all!!

(stealing your formatting Tauria because this is too long to indent the whole snippet)

~ ✨ ~

“Why are you keeping the sample in here?” Damian asks, his voice losing just enough of its edge for Tim to answer him sincerely. 

“It combusts at room temp. That’s how the fires are catching so fast and staying lit for so long. You know, B didn’t have to send you to come get it, I could’ve just—” 

A small, glowing portal opens up at the next snap of Damian’s fingers, deep green sparks lining the image of the fridge in the Batcave on the other side.

Yeah, that. 

Tim rolls his eyes as Damian’s eyes flicker over the contents of the fridge. 

“It is unbelievable that you’ve made it this far in life without accidentally drinking your work,” Damian scoffs at the rows of bottles on the shelves.

“Hey, glass can shatter and plastic doesn’t! Besides, I’m recycling.”

“Is that what you call it?” Damian mutters as he pushes aside a gatorade bottle half full of a deep red, viscous liquid. “Which one?” 

“The caps are labelled.” 

After a few moments of watching Damian rifle through the bottles, Tim scoffs and pushes away from his desk. 

When he gets to the fridge, he slides in front of Damian — which infuriatingly, reminds him of the inch of space between the top of his own head and the tip of Damian’s chin — and grabs the Power-C Vitaminwater bottle that has a few tablespoons of an orange, oily liquid pooling in the bottom.

He slips his hand through the portal and drops it on the shelf on the other side before pulling his hand out. 

At least Damian’s spell doesn’t singe him at the fingertips the way his magic used to. 

It’s still a near thing, though.

When Tim turns back around, he almost flinches at the realization that there’s only a few inches of space between his nose and Damian’s chest. He looks up at him — ugh, who let the demon brat get so tall? — and raises an eyebrow. 

In the time it takes for Tim to let out his breath, Damian glances down at him. His eyes flash with something, pink rising to his cheeks again—

And then he’s stepping back, out of Tim’s space entirely, a scowl carving across his features as he looks around Tim’s study.

“You know—” 

Great, here we go, Tim thinks. 

“—there are cleaning spells you can employ to prevent your space from looking like this.”

“Again, Damian, just because I’m mostly self-taught doesn’t mean that I’m stupid.” 

“I was not—” Damian scowls, his voice gruff, defensive and god, here we go for real, Tim thinks.

But Damian doesn’t continue. He breathes out slowly, his voice coming out softer when he finishes his thought. 

“I apologize. I was not trying to insult your intelligence. I was merely suggesting that you may want to employ one of those spells before you trip over a stack of reference books or…” Damian kneels down to pick up a receipt off the ground. “Slip and crack your head open on something. Do you need this?” 

The urge to snatch it from Damian’s hand rises up in him, but he pushes it down.

He apologized, after all. 

“Yes.”

Damian raises an eyebrow at him before flipping the receipt over. 

“Is that… a spell?”

Tim snatches the receipt from his hand.

“Yes. Not all of us have time to copy our spells into a book—”

“Why don’t you just spell your pens?” 

Tim stops mid-step to frown at Damian, the receipt crinkling in his hand.

“Spell them how?”

Damian’s other eyebrow rises to join the first. 

“With a mirroring rune? It will copy whatever you’re writing into your grimoire as you write it.” 

Damn it. Fucking runes. There are just so many to keep track of, and Damian always seems to know them. 

“Here. Where’s your ritual knife?” Damian asks, striding past Tim to his desk, looking around for a pen. 

“I just use a batarang.” 

“You what?” 

“Yeah, anything sharp will do the trick.” 

Tim pulls one out of a drawer and passes it to Damian, letting himself snicker at the displeased look on his face. 

“You have the money. Buy a ritual knife, I am begging you,” Damian scoffs. 

“I don’t need one — don’t argue with me about it, I’m begging you. The rune, come on.” 

He watches Damian’s thick fingers curl around the pen as he carves the rune into the plastic with smooth, precise motions. He means to be following the lines of the rune, but his gaze catches on the scar on Damian’s knuckle, and before he knows it, Damian is handing the batarang back to Tim and muttering, “Grimoire?” 

“Oh, uh…” Tim moves a few piles of papers around, looking for one of the dozens of notebooks lying around this place. 

Okay, maybe Damian has a point. 

He gives up searching manually and waves his hand through the air, waiting for a notebook to soar from somewhere random in the room.

Nothing happens.

Why is nothing happening? 

Tim looks around, waves his hand again and with a little more sass, and then there’s a crashing noise as a pile of books collapses to the floor, his notebook responding to the summons and flying into his hand. 

He flips it open to a blank page and ignores the heat on his cheeks and the look Damian’s giving him as he passes it over. 

“Is it a time constraint preventing you from maintaining your space?” 

Tim scoffs, paying attention to the lines of the rune this time instead of Damian’s fingers. “Yes, Damian, it is pretty clearly just another thing I don’t have time to do.” 

“You could ask for help. I’m sure Jason would love to teach you some cleaning spells.” 

“He’s banned from my study for that exact reason. I still haven’t figured out where he put everything last time. Does the direction you draw the rune in matter?” 

“It’s a rune, Timothy. It always matters.” 

“Fucking runes,” Tim mutters, rolling his eyes. 

Damian laughs a little, and suddenly Tim realizes that this is the longest amount of time they’ve spent together when they weren’t in masks in… 

Well. Since Tim moved out, probably.

They get along fine (comparatively) these days, but it’s not like they spend time together unless it’s for a case, and they haven’t worked a case together since… last year? 

Which is probably why he’d forgotten how Damian’s laugh isn’t the same condescending noise he remembers from when he was a bratty little tween.

Or why the low, warm rumble of it catches him off guard, makes something in his stomach squeeze. 

“Here,” Damian says, jotting down the directions for the rune on the same page. “I can’t help you with organizing it in the notebook, especially since you have more than one, but—” 

“Oh, that’s not a problem. I just use summoning spells anyways.” 

There’s a silence long enough for Tim to look up at Damian’s face. 

Is his eye twitching?