#timber fic

[littlepikmins]

Sea Monsters, Muffins and Cinnamon Apples

Despite waking up with his arms around Tim and his face nestled in his boyfriend's neck, Bernard feels restless and anxious rather than relaxed and comfortable.

He slowly removes himself from their shared bed, careful not to wake Tim.

Once he's managed to wiggle his way out from under the blankets, he makes his way to the kitchen where he can put his jittery hands to work.

He inspects the contents of the fridge and determines they have the perfect ingredients to make Egg-Stuffed Bacon and Cheese Muffins.

As he gets to work gathering everything he'll need to start preparing their breakfast, the restless feeling in his bones begins to settle. By the time he's whisking a bowl of batter, his hands are steady again.

He thinks of his mother as he scoops the batter up into a piping bag. Then, with practiced ease, he begins the process of filling each muffin cup with a little batter on the bottom, placing the soft boiled egg upright on top of it, and then piping the rest of the batter around the egg until it's covered.

His mom had taught him how to use a piping bag when he was around eight years old. Eager to try piping himself, she'd had to still his excited bouncing multiple times by placing her free hand gently on his arm.

"Pay attention closely now, Bernard," she would say with a small but warm smile on her face.

She was once so patient with him...

He goes about the rest of the process on autopilot, lost in his thoughts. It's only after he's placing the muffin tin into the oven to bake that he returns to the present thanks to the sound of Tim's sluggish footsteps approaching him.

Tim lazily wraps his arms around Bernard from behind and pulls him back against his chest, resting his chin on Bernard's shoulder.

Bernard loves when Tim is like this, because a groggy Tim is a relaxed and happy Tim. The fact that Tim is practically leaning all his weight onto Bernard is also a good sign - he must have just woken up from a fitful slumber and stumbled his way in here.

Bernard holds back a chuckle as his mind conjures up an exaggerated scene of sleepy Tim stumbling into the kitchen like a cartoon character and wobbling all over the place.

"I had a dream about Louis Grieve last night..." Tim mumbles by Bernard's ear. "I was at my locker with Darla... You ran over to us with a tupperware bowl full of cinnamon apple slices. Said your Mom made them and told you to share with friends."

Bernard's face heats up with slight embarrassment. Oh, high school... He'd definitely been a hardhead back then - specifically the kind of hardhead who did everything possible to seem like an 100% straight cool guy rather than a closeted gay kid who enjoyed watching superhero theories on YouTube and reading fanfiction all night.

"You used to bring us food almost every day," Tim continues to reminiscence wistfully. "It wasn't your mom making all those snacks for us, though, was it?"

Bernard breathes out a short laugh and wonders when exactly Tim had figured that out. He wouldn't be surprised if Tim had known since the early days of their high school friendship.

"What?" Bernard says with obviously fake and exaggerated, playful shock. "There was no way I was making snacks for you and Darla every morning before school."

He pulls away from Tim to spin around and face him directly.

"Don't forget, Drake, I was a cool high school rover that also happened to be 100% straight back then. Or did you forget the time I called your step-mom hot?"

Now it's Tim's turn to laugh as he pulls Bernard into a hug. Someone's cuddly this morning, Bernard happily thinks to himself as he wraps his own arms around Tim in return.

"I could never forget that. You wouldn't shut up about how hot you thought she was."

"Like I said, 100% straight guy. But man, that sure would've been nice of me to make snacks for you and Darla every day, huh?"

"Yeah, sure would've been."

Tim goes quiet for a moment in thought, and then, slowly, he starts to gently rock them from side to side.

"You woke up early this morning," Tim comments aloud. It's not a question, but Bernard knows what Tim's getting at.

"I had a dream that you and I adopted a duck as a pet," Bernard says.

Tim stops their rocking and leans out of the hug to look at him in surprise.

"Really?"

Bernard grins, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"Well, at the beginning, it was like that. Then the dream shifted into... some other things."

Chaos Monsters, Darla bleeding out, Red Robin falling to his death. The usual nightmare topics.

Tim picks up on what he means and moves to kiss Bernard's cheek and rub his back comfortingly. He doesn't ask any specific questions about the nightmare, and Bernard is grateful for it.

Bernard isn't sure if he should be concerned that his brain hadn't allowed him to startle awake from the nightmare. Instead, it had been like he was trapped watching one awful thing happen after another until finally he'd been able to slowly open his eyes.

"I'm making Egg-Stuffed Bacon and Cheese Muffins, you know," Bernard tells him. "One of my classmates showed me how to make them. They're delicious, you'll love them."

"Everything you make tastes delicious, honey. Including the snacks your mom supposedly made for me and Darla back then."

Bernard beams. "If you'd called me honey and complimented me like that in high school, I probably would've had to run off to do a gay little happy dance in the bathroom. I craved your attention all the time back then."

Tim's smile turns cocky and sly. "Tell me more about how much you craved my attention, please."

Bernard walks away from him to grab a bowl of apples.

"Nope. We don't need you developing an ego because all of your Louis Grieve besties happened to have a crush on you."

Tim's face pinches into his own unique version of a pout. It's like his body wants to full on pout, but the prideful part of him tries to fight it.

"But you're my boyfriend. I like hearing about your high school crush on me. It's cute."

Bernard manages not to completely swoon at Tim's words like he usually would. Instead, he opens the fridge and holds a plastic bag out towards his boyfriend.

"Go throw this in the ocean for me."

Topic successfully changed! Bernard thinks.

Tim takes it in his hands, peeking inside the bag with a raised eyebrow.

"And what's this for?" Tim asks as he pulls a large piece of meat out of the bag.

"The Gotham Harbor sea monster. Pie saw it in the water yesterday, and we decided that if we feed it, it might recognize the Marina as friendly territory and won't go after us when it attacks Gotham like everything inevitably does."

Tim's expression shifts to one of mild curiosity.

He puts the meat back into the bag and says, "If you want, I could set up a water sonar sensor and multiple underwater cameras. That way, we can monitor your sea monsters activity."

"No way. Depending on how intelligent it is, it could figure out we're keeping surveillance on it and get mad. I'll let you know if and when we'll need any of your tech."

He gives Tim a quick and teasing kiss on the lips as thanks.

"Now off you go!" Bernard lightly pushes his boyfriend away and returns to his task of peeling and cutting apples while he waits for the oven timer to chime.

***

Although Tim sets out to simply throw some meat into the ocean, he ends up running into Tuna who's aimlessly searching around the docks for his reading glasses.

After a tedious half hour of searching, they finally manage to find his reading glasses in a fisherman's pile of fish (leaving Tim to ponder how the hell Tuna's reading glasses had ended up there for the rest of the day.)

With that done, Tim returns to his boat. Upon opening the front door, the homey smell of morning breakfast delightfully tickles his nose.

He finds Bernard by their small dining table, setting two cups of coffee down beside a plate of muffins and a bowl of cinnamon apple slices.

Tim's heart warms with fond and familiar nostalgia. He remembers family breakfast with his mother and father, helping Dana cook hashbrowns early in the morning and he remembers a gangly blonde teenager with a smile like the sun sharing some of his own home-made lunch with Darla and Tim in the cafeteria.

Tim pulls Bernard into a long, thank you kiss before excitedly digging into their morning meal.

***

Author Notes: Somehow I ended up writing all of this in a Tumblr post 😅 It was initially just gonna be a short summary of an idea rather than a full one-shot fic. Anyway, I will also upload this on Ao3 eventually - most likely sometime tomorrow.

[river-bottom-nightmare]

the sky behind him was a rupturing flame, oil-painted and alive, warmth and light splintering the depths of the city in a smouldering haze. and yet, the alley Bernard is rushing down is pitch black. strange, this city of his.

(he can't quite say it's his, no matter how long he's lived here, no matter how much of this city has seeped into his pores and bled his veins. the boy lying before him has a much bigger claim to it than he's ever had.)

the lower district of gotham burned tonight. firefly wouldn't be out of his full-body cast in months, but the damage had been done. screams cutting the air, feet pounding the cobblestone, drug dealers and nuns piling people into cars and getting the hell out of dodge. and in the middle of it—tim. he'd gone to visit stephanie, grinning shyly up at bernard through his lashes, saying he had something just a little important to tell her, babe, i swear. i'm all yours tonight, i promise. they wouldn't do much besides cuddles and a movie, but bernard was pink-flushed anyway.

then the emergency report glitched onto the news, oracle's robotic voice ordering everyone to evacuate the lower district as quickly as possible. bernard, doing the complete opposite, snagging tim's bike and flying into town, hoping against all hope he'd run into tim on the way there.

the bats appeared on the scene almost immediately, whether to stop more fires, apprehend firefly, rescue civilians, or work damage control, no one knew. probably some unholy combination of them all. bernard couldn't find it within himself to be excited at how close robin was, the closest since the cult. he just tugged his shitty, two-dollar gas mask tighter and revved the engine.

or, at least, he was going to. that was before saw a figure collapse into an alley from the roof of an apartment building, a marionette with cruelly snipped strings. and goddamnit, he needed to find tim but—

but. he couldn't leave someone to possibly die on the ground while he's right here to help them.

bernard's thanking every slight tug of his conscience, every gear in his oiled moral compass, that he listened. robin's lying in front of him, bruised, bloody, burned, not breathing.

he stares for a moment, hands trembling out of his skin, a bolt of shock freezing him to the ground. his hero is collapsed on the dirty ally floor in front of him, his hero, fucking robin what happened? the bats were three streets away working on damage control, all present, all accounted for, according to a livestream update. but here robin lies, a baroque tragedy in a skin suit, and this is twice in much too little time that bernard is realizing everyone knows, everyone he cares for, is one misstep from the top of the world to becoming worm food in persephone's garden.

it's that thought that kicks him into action. robin is not dying, not tonight.

(he fought back to back with robin less than a month ago. and now. and now and now and now he may never get the chance to do it again.)

bernard runs through a basic medical checklist in his head. call an ambulance, but this is a vigilante of gotham, so that option seems useless. there seems to be a device in robin's hand, though, some sort communicator, gloved finger hovering near a button near the side. bernard picks it up, notices the bat symbol on the back, and immediately presses the button. there. backup plan in place.

next, to check if he's responsive. a quick shake and a small slap to the face yielded nothing but a limp body. check if he's breathing. the armoured chestplate isn't moving, but it's heavy. bernard can see a latch on the side, just like the kind tim builds into his puffy winter jackets, and pulls it. the chestplate loosens and bernard tugs it off to find and utterly still chest.

(god. god. what happened? probably smoke inhalation, probably lightheadedness from not enough oxygen and a dizzy fall off a roof but—this wasn't supposed to happen to robin. robin is far more alive than anyone else, burning bright with a furious and brutal type of heat that put him a touch above all others.)

check for a pulse. bernard pulls off a glove, undoing another fucking latch, wasting another fucking second, and slips robin's lower thumb in between his second and third fingers. he waits, hardly daring to blink, hardly daring to breathe.

there's a pulse. robin still has a pulse, robin's still alive. bernard gasps wetly, then immediately sobers. even if he's got a beating heart, he doesn't have breathing lungs. he doesn't need to do chest compressions, but he'll need to do rescue breathing. he'll need to—

bernard stares resolutely at the other boy's mouth. robin's pulse might give out any second. he doesn't have any more ticks of a grandfather clock to wait, no more beads to count as they slip by his fingers. he needs to act now.

with a hop over to robin's other side, bernard lifts robin's head with one hand and pinches his nostrils with another. he takes a deep breath, leans over, and seals their lips together, tight and bloody and terrified. then, he breathes.

and breathes. and breaths. and breathes again until he's ripping their mouths apart.

"please," he whispers shakily. "please, please, come on. you're fine, you're fine."

he puts his mouth on robin's again, keeps breathing and breathing until he feels something jolt underneath him. he lurches backward in time to see robin cough once, twice. then he gasps, body arching up the slightest bit, taking in air like he's never tasted it before, like venus' first greedy breath above the waves.

beside him, bernard finally lets out a sob.

--

timber week, day two: first kiss

tag list: @graysonisms @birdy-bat-writes @screennamealreadyused @subtleappreciation @calamityganon @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @maplumebleue-blog-blog @sundownridge @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption @capricorn-stark @batshit-birds @buticaaba @comics-observer @newsical @timber-week

[sunnymusingsao3]

won't you open the door, and try me once more?

Words: 3657 Rating: Teen and Up Warnings: Internalized Homophobia, Religious Trauma/Imagery Relationships: Bernard Dowd/Tim Drake, a smattering of Darla Aquista & Bernard Dowd Summary: A Bernard Dowd character study, which focuses primarily on the religious imagery angle, and a possible upbringing for Bernard wherein he struggled with internalized homophobia. Inspired by the song "No Place in Heaven" by Mika.

Preview:

Bernard Dowd couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when he’d learned that his sexuality was something to hide. He couldn’t even say it was just one thing that put the notion in his head.

But by the time he’d reached high school, he was well-versed in what people meant when they called something gay. And he knew what happened to guys who kissed other guys. And he could recite homophobic buzzwords as easily as he could blink.

He wasn’t a religious kid. At least, not in the Western Christian way. He believed that gods existed; he just also believed that they walked among them, sometimes putting on capes to save the mere mortals below.

Which—that he could pinpoint: the first time he’d ever seen a god in real life.

He’d been in Metropolis for a class field trip. Gotham’s natural history museum was still under heavy reconstruction after a recent Black Mask heist had ended… explosively.

Unfortunately for them, so did their field trip.

Bernard was ninety percent sure that it was because they were Gothamites. Too many of them in a certain concentration just seemed to beget trouble, even in other cities.

The news called it a failed police drone experiment. Bernard called it “more proof toward there being a secret worldwide oligarchy,” because no way should something like it have passed through the reasonable due process to obtain funding. But he was younger and more hopeful, then, too, so he still believed that politicians wanted what was best for their people. Because his parents were politicians like that, and if they didn’t have good intentions, then what did that mean for him?

Their word was law, not just in city hall, but in his household, too—which honestly could have posed as city hall anyway, with the way they carried themselves, even at home.

He didn’t come to realize how wrong he was about his parents until he was sixteen. They had opened his door to see him sitting on the edge of his bed, lips locked onto the cute brunette boy’s from his math class, and it… hadn’t gone well.

They told him that it wasn’t because he was a boy. It was just that the boy wasn’t good enough for him. Bernard wasn’t sure he really believed them, especially after the boy stopped texting him after that.

Bernard hadn’t told anyone about it. Not even Darla Aquista, or Tim Drake, the two people out of his myriad of fair-weather friends that he considered to be his actual, real friends. His best friends.

They were his best friends, but he didn’t even tell them, because what was he meant to say? That his parents had scared off a possible boyfriend? That they were doing what any parent might do, chasing off someone he’d been sneaking around with? He couldn’t guarantee that either of them wouldn’t freak out—or worse, tell other people—if they found out he liked boys the way he liked girls.

So he kept that to himself, just like he kept everything else that mattered to himself.

It was easy to do, after all. When he felt something bubbling up inside of him, something that he wanted to admit, he’d just slip one of his recent theories into the forefront of his brain instead, because they were distracting in a way that nothing else was. He loved trying to puzzle out the answers to things, and he loved how many possibilities there were for those answers to be something unexpected or exciting or bigger than himself, because in a world like theirs, everything was unexpected and exciting and bigger than him.

The proof was in the god that had saved their school bus from being destroyed by a hulking mass of metal and guns. It was in a god whose eyes were bluer than any sky or ocean he’d ever seen, a god whose skin had glowed with the light of the sun.

A man like that couldn’t be anything but divine.

[Read the rest on AO3]

[ultfreakme]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

I’m useless and made an Bernard-centric Robin(1993) fic. Hope it’s fun~~

[littlepikmins]

Another TimBer fic recommendation!

I really loved this fic because it had an interesting and compelling plot with Tim solving a case, adorable Tim and Bernard moments and Bernard helping Tim with the case he was trying to solve! It's literally everything I want in a TimBer fic!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[river-bottom-nightmare]

the thing about life was that a flame could be so easily blown out, so people fought like hell to keep it alive. the tip of the candle could easily be cupped for protection, gentle breath given to let the flame flutter back to life. (is that what she did? when she pounded his chest again and again, her magic stronger than any human could be? when she pressed her lips to his and breathed the very essence of life back into his body?) what people often forgot was that you could simply relight the candle.

bernard hadn't thought about darla in years. people on online forums, ones he'll never tell tim how often he visited, spoke of their experiences with metas and myths and anyone in between. he knew what happened to people accosted by magic, knew of chains trapping them with their own terror, their minds turning against themselves as their nightmares came to life.

bernard, on the other hand, could say that he wasn't all that haunted by darla. she'd lifted his car off the ground in a display of power, told bernard she was laura fell now, no matter the fact that she looked and walked and talked like darla aquista, then threatened his life on behalf of her seemingly never-ending obsession with tim motherfucking drake. seemingly, because when bernard had brought up old times they used to spend with darla over lunch, casual as you please, tim had grinned a little before dismissing his fears. darla was training with some sort of enchantress to try and be good, growing more powerful by the day.

bernard wondered, for a moment, if all of his friends could make the earth quake with a press of their fingertips. if all of his friends could bend those figures of myth and meta and magic with only their will. if he'd spent his life in the company of gods in everything but name, right down to the perfect muscles pulling under skin and battle-worn glimmer in eyes too old to be on a faces so young. (bernard wondered, for a moment, if there was any way he could join them. if the madness in darla's eyes as she demanded tim's whereabouts and the screams of terror on his boyfriend's lips as he woke up with a knife in his hand were worth it.)

bernard knew there was nothing he could have done for darla. probably not now but definitely not back then. he had no power over life and death, he couldn't have saved darla from the bullet wound that cost her nearly everything had he even attempted to try. sometimes, darla shifted in his memories, morphed into someone with the same dark hair and same blue eyes, but with broader shoulders and a kinder smile.

there was the fear that one day, something would take tim down, a dark shadow grappling with his boyfriend's shining, golden soul before snuffing it out as surely as a candle. then there was the fear that one day, something would bring tim back, clawed fingers opening his boyfriend's eyes and twisting that golden soul into something dripping and jagged, as poisonously yellow as laura fell.

(bernard learned of what happened to jason todd on accident, a couple years after the cult of dionysus. there were some horrors he could force himself to speak aloud, some fates that he couldn't stomach.)

(if tim was surprised at the way bernard's fingernails dug into his back as he held the vigilante close, at the way bernard took advantage of the inches he'd lost to tim's late growth spurt to curl himself completely into his boyfriend's arms, then tim never showed a whisper of it.)

the quickest way to avoid all of that, bernard thought, was to just make sure tim didn't die in the first place.

"hey," tim said, bringing his hand up to flick bernard on the forehead. "only shit nurses get distracted when they're treating their patient."

"only shit patients have such abysmal bedside manner."

"oooh, abysmal," tim waggled his eyebrows. "that word-of-the-day calendar is really coming in handy, huh?"

bernard sniffed. "i'll have you know that i am a well-read intellectual. fuckin' sherlock at this point."

in the movies, people with wounds like the glaring one on tim's shoulder sagged into the wall, made tearful confessions through a mouth full of blood, shuddered in pain at the slightest touch. tim's fingers hurt where he hit bernard's forehead, he didn't lose his smart mouth for anything, and was tapping his foot in impatience before bernard propped it up on the sofa.

"you're fucking sherlock? that's such a sweet pet name, you should use it more often," tim teased.

"don't get a big head, you're not that good."

bernard opened the first aid kit, unusually large and unusually used. his fingers found the small pipe bottle of water and the gauze. he tore a small piece off before wiping off the rest of the dried blood as gently has he could.

"you know," tim sounded almost contemplative, musing. completely disregarding what should have been a throbbing pain. completely trusting bernard to take care of him. "ra's al ghul called me detective once."

bernard's fingers closed around the saline solution with more ease than what was comfortable, but he had plenty of practice pushing those thoughts aside.

"i have no clue who that is," he said, feeling tim tense only the barest bit when he poured the solution over the wound. it had to have stung something fierce. bernard had seen grown men whimper at the sensation. tim sighed and tipped his head back instead.

"no one important," tim chuckled. "but i do kinda wish damian was here to hear that."

antibiotics next, and if tim felt the urge to shy away from bernard's fingers as he brushed the wound with ointment, bernard couldn't tell; he suppressed it as impressively as always.

"come on, no sibling talk when you're shirtless and i'm on top of you." bernard joked. neither of them mentioned the blood staining tim's undershirt-slash-makeshift-bandage, the dried blood flakes all over tim's lap, the way bernard's thighs were clenching tim to the point of pain.

between one blink and the next, tim was all wrapped up, gauze in place and bandage taped on top. his boyfriend's lovestruck little smile gleamed up at him, one bernard recognized. a pinch of awe and a dash of trust and a sprinkle of comfort. mix them together and bake at 350, bernard thought a bit hysterically, and you get love for a man who's terrified at how fast he can use bandages.

still, tim took precedent. every night bernard spent washing his hands too roughly at the sink was another night his boyfriend was breathing on the bed in the other room. every night bernard opened that unusually large and unusually used first aid kit was another night tim's soul stayed whole and shining and untarnished by whatever creatures took people beyond the veil only to drag them back. every night bernard spend trying to rub the scent of copper and the spill of liquid poppy off his fingers was another night bernard used his bloodstained hands to keep tim's flame alive.

i mayyyyyyyy have gotten a little too excited every time i used the word "boyfriend."

tag list: @woahjaybird @anothertimdrakestan @birdy-bat-writes @screennamealreadyused @subtleappreciation @bikoncon @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @bonkybearjpeg @maplumebleue-blog-blog @sundownridge @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption @capricorn-stark @batshit-birds @buticaaba @comics-observer @newsical

[river-bottom-nightmare]

it was a clear evening. the sky was all candy-floss pink and clouds were fluffy enough to bite into, the sun's final golden rays rippling through the air like it was the midas touch, and maybe it was because leaves were backlit enough to leave a glow and tim's skin no longer looked sallow and the gravestones scattered neatly around him were softer, rounder, kinder.

alfred had loved clear evenings.

bruce usually took a nap right before dinner and subsequent patrol, to make sure he was rested enough to be at his highest performance on in the field. but tim, still gripping tight to the throes of endless childish energy, could never bring himself to sleep.

instead, alfred would stir up some oddly-flavoured lemonade with whatever fruit he'd decided to buy that week, and the two of them would sink into the secret garden of wayne manor. the grand statement of a house was on a hill, so the lush manor grounds stretched out in front of the two of them, endless and full of any adventure tim's racing mind could think up.

it's hard to remember alfred as soft. no matter the gentleness of the pads of his fingers, no matter his ever-polite tone, there was a type of rigid backbone in him that tim now knew was rare to find a glimpse of. but here, treading those very same overgrown manor grounds, alfred's gravestone was a warm sort of gray, cable-knit and molten iron and downy feathers, far cry from the mocking sleet that tim was used to seeing when he bent his neck before a mausoleum. it was almost as if alfred was trying to offer him comfort from beyond the grave.

"sorry for not visiting earlier," tim said, then immediately winced. alfred never failed to admonish him when he started off a conversation by apologizing. still, shame trickled down tim's spine in a frigid pattern when he realized just how far back in his priorities alfred had been pushed to.

"i was," tim started, then paused to huff at himself in irritation. "i had a lot on my mind."

a wretched apology masquerading as an excuse

the words hung in the open air for a moment, caught by the fading golden sunbeams' web, tangling with tim's regret and anticipation and fear. he let the silence stretch out for a second longer, unwilling to ruin the peace with his fumbling words, before he sunk down cross-legged in front of the gravestone.

"i don't know if you remember this." tim said, staring at the grass in front of the grave instead of the painstakingly hand-carved inscription. someone had kept it trimmed, yet beautifully wild. "you were always busy, either cooking or restocking or organizing. but i used to come to the manor from school, once i got a bit more comfortable around everyone, and i'd tell you about things that happened at school that day."

those rose-tinted memories were a staple of tim's childhood; one of the first things that gripped his wrists tight and drew him into wayne manor's fold, telling him without an ounce of hesitation, you are one of ours.

"there was this one friend that i may have mentioned once or twice. he was, uh, one of my best friends in high school. civvie friends."

god, he hoped he didn't start stuttering. put him in front of a crowd and he could channel bruce's confidence, dick's smooth charm perfectly, bending them under his palms he way his family taught him to. but put him in front of someone he cared about, someone whose opinion took root inside of tim and grew like the most scopic of flowering plants? his confidence crumbled.

you're being dumb, tim told himself. it's a goddamn gravestone.

that didn't stop him from rubbing his fingernails together, from forcing his lips to keep moving.

"i saw him again a couple weeks ago. we were just supposed to catch up, but," a bitter chuckle, "things went a little sideways. like they always do."

tim sighed, bringing one leg up and folding the other underneath. "he got kidnapped. i went to rescue him as robin. and he said something that made me,,,well. i didn't exactly panic. but my brain wasn't working on anything but autopilot for a while afterwards."

the gold in the air was gone, replaced by a soft violet instead, and tim could just see the kind twinkle in alfred's eye, his mustache twitching minutely. do go on, master timothy. i'm riveted.

(and tim would cry stop making fun! and then alfred would say, no not at all, and tell tim exactly what he thought of the middle-school-drama situation he'd landed himself into, would tell him exactly what tim should do, and tim would just revel in the feeling of someone paying attention to what he had to say.)

"i went to go see him afterward," tim continued. "as tim drake, not robin. and he—" a waver, a quiver in tim's voice, balancing on the edge as delicately as a coin. "he asked me to go on a date with him."

tim's voice was almost a whisper when he said to the ground, "i said yes."

the trees kept gently swaying, light was inking across the sky in a deep indigo, and alfred's grave sat silent and still. the world didn't stop moving because tim told someone he went on a date with a boy.

of course it wouldn't. for all alfred could be old-fashioned at times, he'd loved every one of his children and grandchildren openly, wholeheartedly, unconditionally. phantom wrinkled fingers tipped his chin up, an imagined smile spilled over all warm and reassuring, and tim was looking right at alfred's gravestone for the first time tonight.

"i said yes," he said, louder, calmer, more sure. a hundred gathered matchsticks and a spark of novelty in his chest.

alfred's tombstone didn't change, but within the quiet of the buzzing, skittering air, at almost seemed like there was a gossamer thread weaved into it. it almost seemed like acceptance.

tag list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @anothertimdrakestan @screennamealreadyused @subtleappreciation @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @bikoncon @maplumebleue-blog-blog @sundownridge @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption @capricorn-stark @batshit-birds @buticaaba @comics-observer

[river-bottom-nightmare]

tim's not nervous, not exactly. nervous would be reaching out with shaking fingers to rewind the taped news footage, to make sure his eyelids hadn't grown glass shards, to make sure he wasn't looking into a mirror where his two greatest heroes were one. nervous would be picking at the skin of his nails, standing with trembling feet in front of ariana as he attempted to figure out how to tell her he'd gone and fallen in love with his other best friend, the one he trusted with his life along with his heart. nervous would be letting the red hood treat the wound on his neck in dirty back alley, ever-aware of the pain rained down upon him the last time those scarred hands were this close to his neck.

nervous was not fighting back to back with someone he was only just now realizing he trusted, enough to bare his defenses to. nervous was not feeling the confirmation of all the feelings shooting through his body that he'd always ignored, only to be given a name at last. nervous was not leaning into an arm thrown across his back, cheeks flushed for reasons tim couldn't begin to imagine, the word date deciding to burrow into his brain deeper than the universe itself. so no, he's not nervous.

but with the warm daylight taking all the worst parts of red robin and turning them into something soft and blossoming, bernard's house looked normal the porch railing was well maintained and the unfogged glass stretched across a door that tim had rarely hesitated to throw wide open in the past. tim still had a sluggishly bleeding wound on his calf, and the last time he saw bernard before their dinner, their date, bernard had loomed over him.

tim rang the doorbell and bernard opened the door and all of a sudden, tim realized he was looking down at the other boy, that those stupid sunglasses he'd wanted to yank off blonde locks every damn day for some godforsaken reason were nowhere to be seen, that his own shoulders filled out a shirt that used to be dick's but bernard was drowning in his hoodie. he almost turned around and left right then and there.

he couldn't muster up the courage to talk to steph unless the learned comfort of a domino was resting on his face and he only wandered aimlessly around the city or flopped on the edge of his bed when he wasn't thrumming with the adrenaline of another fight and swinging his fists like it was life or death, mind or madness. so who the hell gave him the idea to look bernard in the eye and tell him that tim drake wanted to date him? tim drake could barely keep a hold on robin.

except, listening to bernard's stammering and watching a grin that threatened to reach over to tim and swallow him whole, he remembered it hadn't always been like that. tim drake had always been as important as robin, if not more. tim's not sure when they fractured apart so far, he wasn't sure he could piece them back together.

stepping forward to see bernard offer him that same sly grin, tim decided it might have been when he stopped talking to this,,,,,,,,,this boy, this friend, this part of him that he'd failed to nurture. it might have been when bernard falteringly messaged him, texts getting shorter and shorter every time until they petered off completely, while tim put his phone on silent and ignored a part of him screaming at his own stupidity, his own self-destructiveness, throwing himself into his grief instead. it might have been when he stopped getting ice cream with cass after patrol, when he realized he was calling kon "superboy" in his head, when he learned to live with half of himself wasting away.

bernard had always been particularly good at dragging tim drake out hiding, though, and no one in the world could convince tim that the warm streaks of lightning electrifying him from the inside out when bernard asked him on a date was anything other than swell of an orchestra's climax, than the realization of oh.

i want that, tim said, and he didn't know when he'd let himself want things again, but he'd stay this way forever if it meant hearing bernard's breathless little laugh and seeing the hop in his step as he tugged tim into a hug more familiar than the weight of his bo staff in his hands.

~~~

this is me, desperately trying to forget what happened in ff life story because dc's giving me everything i want while marvel decided to shove their greedy little hand into my chest and rearrange my ribs till they reached my heart and just squeeze it until i'm crying. so i'm distracting myself with canon bi tim but this just turned out angsty instead. fml

currently trying to make sense of the kinda fuckin weird characterization dc's been giving tim as of late. he's probably completely in character but just doesn't line up with the version of tim i have in my head, but whatever, take some introspection. i'll write fluff and funny dialogue later.

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