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
