#mbkverse

He's already grabbed the pot of coffee (and adding “Coffee Addict” to the “List of Things I Know About Tim Drake”), when he notices the post-it attached to the side.

“Drink me”, the bright square of paper tempts him in sturdy-looking block letters. Scribbled underneath, smaller but still bold, it says: “I promise I'm good. Hopefully still warm, too. A Brazilian blend and unsweetened, which is always a plus with you.”

Tim sniggers a little to himself, feeling the disappointment dissipating inside his chest, just like mist under the first warm rays of sunlight. He hobbles to the cupboard, reaching inside for a mug. He grabs the green one without thinking, and is greeted by a second post-it:

“You'd better eat something with that coffee,” with the word “better” underline twice.

Tim blows the hair out of his face with a little puff, but the look on his face is far from annoyed. He tries to school the giddy little grin into something more appropriate to his status of disgruntled, just woke-up alone, severely-wounded vigilante, but then remembers that he's home alone, and graciously allows the grin to stay where it is.

Pivoting on his heel, he goes back to the coffee-maker, fills his mug to the brim and takes a long sip. He turns toward the fridge, wondering if there's food stacked inside, and whether it's still within date, since they've been away for so long. He notices a third post-it. This time, the message is just a doodled arrow. Tim dutifully moves his eyes in the prescribed direction. A trail of post-it notes leads his eyes across the wall and towards the kitchen table. A cluster of doodled arrows greets him, each  one arranged as to point to a brown bag sitting innocently between a bottle of orange juice and a little pile of napkins on the table.

“Eat me”, invites the post-it attached on top of the bag, and then, added underneath as if as an after-thought: “You know you want to.”

When Tim is done chocking on his laughter and opens it, he finds a final note (“Stop chortling, Alice, it wasn't even that funny.”) and a blueberry muffin that melts on his tongue as if it were made of the same stuff as clouds.

He's sucking the last crumbles from his fingers when he notices a quick scribble on the bottom of the muffin's cup, this time in blue ball-point pen ink. It's short and to the point.

“You're welcome,” it says.

Tim murmurs a soft “thank you” before he's even aware of it.

After breakfast, he's tempted to reacquaint himself with the apartment. Explore around, search the cabinets with the hope to spark a memory, rearrange those books. But he's equally as tempted to prop his ankle on the armrest of the couch and tinker the day away on that laptop he glimpsed the night before. Temptation aside, though, he does nothing for a long, long while. Just glancing through the kitchen door at the living room makes his stomach churn with unease.

This is his house, he supposes. This flat, it's where Timothy Drake used to live. But it's not home. Not now. Not yet. Not to this amnesiac boy sitting helplessly at the kitchen table, with a crumpled muffin-cup sitting in his palm. He doesn’t feel entitled to do anything. Even wondering about this or that secret compartment (and boy, he can see a lot from where he is sitting) makes him feel like he's overstepping his boundaries, doing something forbidden.

Reading is not off-limits.

He thinks.

Hopes.

So he cleans after himself, carefully collects all the post-its (throwing away the arrows and pocketing the scribbled messages), and slips into the living room. He's chagrined to see an imprint of his body on the couch -  the contours of his ass, his back and legs are sketched in big, black strokes of coal dust on the pale fabric. It looks a bit like a Michelangelo sketched with charcoal on parchment. But Renaissance genius he is not; couches aren't canvases to draw upon, and all in all it's not a pretty sight. At all.

He has no idea where the cleaning supplies are, or even if he's up to the physical strain, which means that cleaning it is out of the question. He throws the couch a last guilty look and veers towards the bookshelf. It's brimming with classics. Not that he'd pegged either Jason or himself for the sort to read cheap harlequins, but it's staggering to see several copies of prize-winning novels in several different languages. Which one of them can read fluidly in Arabic, he wonders. And is that Russian?

He's engrossed in page 197 of a pocket-sized copy of Paradise Lost, when Jason comes in.

From the window.

Bright red domino mask on his face, a backpack on his shoulder and a number of bags festooning both his arms.

“Oh. Hi,” he says, voice and face utterly blank. For a loaded, absurd moment, it feels like between the two of them the one who is doing something strange and unusual is Tim. (And now panic settles in. Is he doing something strange? Wasn't he supposed to touch the books? Did he not enjoy reading before the accident?).

Carefully, Tim lowers his foot from the upturned box he'd used to prop it, tucks the book away and clears his throat.

“Uhm. Hi,” he echoes.

Jason is sitting astride the window, one leg inside the apartment, the other outside, looking rather like a strange cowboy. The heel of his boot is tap-tapping a circle on the floor. He keeps looking at Tim as though trying to get the other boy to read into his mind.

“You went shopping?” Tim prompts before the scene gets any stranger, his heart beating a nervous staccato against his ribs.

Jason ducks his head a bit, raises his hand as if he wanted to rub the back of his neck, but the weight of the bags impairs him, so he aborts the motion on the third try. He seems to weight his words very carefully for a long moment; then offers: “Just. Collected some of your stuff from... err... other safe-houses we've got in town.”

Tim leans forward, all eagerness all of a sudden.

“Tell me you've got a toothbrush in there?” he says, voice lilting hopefully at the end, eyes roving hungrily from bag to bag to backpack and then starting anew.

Jason blinks slowly at him, ducks all the way inside, and carefully sets his loot down.

“Why a toothbrush?“ he asks, eyebrows furrowing together. “There is a perfectly fine one in the bathroom. It's even your favourite colour and all.”

“Yes, Jason,” Tim says patiently. “I'm sure there's one toothbrush. But there's two of us.”

Jason snorts, straightening up and running a hand through his windblown hair, messing it all the more.

“No, I meant. There's one for you as well. You didn't even check the cabinet? Christ, for a moment I thought you'd gone and used my toothbrush to clean the toilet seat or some other shit.”

“I wouldn't do that!” Tim protests, wavering between amusement and horror. Jason folds his arms across his chest and quirks a challenging eyebrow at him. Tim drops his face in his palms, but his shoulders are shaking with repressed laughter when he says: “I totally would, wouldn't I?”

“Your words, not mine,” Jason answers, raising his hands and looking the perfect picture of innocence.

Tim snorts, gets an eyebrow-wiggle in return and retaliates with an eyeroll.

“So, if not a toothbrush, what did you get?”

“Well,” Jason looks down at the bags, eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Bandages and medicines, some weapons, gadgets. A few changes of clothes.” He lists. “I also got some food. Soap. CDs – all work related, though. Some stuff we can use to go undercover, uniforms and  the likes. I—I got you a laptop. Not yours, but. I got it at a thrift shop And... and a couple books, too. Some folders and shit on the last case you were working on.” He's massaging his fingers as if they ached. There are burned marks on his gloves, and dark smears across his shirt. When he notices Tim staring, Jason says: “Got troubles with the alarm system,” and leaves it at that.

Tim nods dubiously, not quite believing that Jason would have to resort to force the security of one of their own safe-houses, but doesn't ask. Jason probably ran into trouble on the way and just doesn't want Tim to worry. Tim doesn't like and doesn't need to be babied, but if Jason doesn't want to share, Tim can respect his need for silence.

For the time being, at least.

“Is that food I smell?” he asks, instead of pressing about the alarm system.

“I grabbed some take out on my way,” Jason answers, looking smug. “You hungry?”

It's a tricky question, and it shouldn't be. Tim takes careful stock of his body – he is aware he hasn't eaten in hours, and yet, he doesn't feel the pangs of hunger. He's also aware that this lack of appetite is not normal. All things considered – that he's wounded and in need of energy to recover, that he hasn't eaten properly in weeks – he should be famished. But he's not. Hunger is like an afterthought tucked like a secret far, far away in the back of his mind, a bad puppy that's been locked inside a closet in the farthest wing of the house. No one can hear it whine. No one will take it out.

Tim's eyebrows dip together into a frown, but it's not a lie when he says: “I could eat,” because he's been trained like that, to ignore his body needs, but also to force himself to satisfy them when the situation allows.

Jason frowns right back at him.

“We're gonna burn this food aversion right out of you,” he warns. He rips off the mask – literally rips off, rather than just peel it away like a sane person would. Doesn't he feel the pain? Doesn't he care?– grabs one of the bags and goes to Tim. They sit on opposite ends of the couch, the bag balanced between them, exuding strange and wonderful smells.

Tim peeks inside, and is genuinely taken aback when he doesn't see cheap fast food containers, soda bottles and a spill of greasy fries filling all the empty spaces in-between.

“What's this?” he asks, poking at one aluminium container. It's not burgers and chilidogs, it definitely is not pizza, and it's not a carton of Asian food either. What the—-?

Jason shrugs, reaches inside the bag, and takes out two container as if they were holy relics.

“Eggplant Parmesan” he says, taking the lids off both containers. He weights them in each hand, then hands over to Tim the biggest portion. “The good stuff,” he adds, as if Tim couldn't tell that by smell alone. His stomach went from being into knots to roaring with hunger in 0.12 seconds sharp. The smell is so good.

“Wha—is—I mean--Parmesan?” Tim asks, flabbergast, after the first mouthful. Oh, dear. And he thought he wasn't famished? This – whatever it is – is melting in his mouth like – like – like – he has no term of comparisons, sadly. He quickly shovels in his mouth another forkful or seven of steaming heaven, waiting for Jason to answer.

“Italian recipe. The original one,” Jason stresses, waving his plastic fork menacingly. “Nothing of that boiled-eggs-in-the-stuffing crap. This is fried eggplant, homemade sauce and a shit-ton of cheese.”

Tim blinks, fork balanced before his open mouth.

“We – are we of Italian origins?” he asks.

Jason is silent for a long moment. “The old house was in the Italian ghetto,” he says at long last, as careful as if he were weighting each word. “Which explains why the old man got involved with Two-Face in the first place. A contract with the mafia lead to more contracts and then bam! Prison for life.” Tim makes a non-committal noise, wondering if Jason remembers that he has no idea whatsoever who Two-Face is.

Jason must've noticed something in his face, because his eyes flicker up and away. He wraps his tongue around the fork and sucks it clean, the motion somewhat pensive.

“Bottom line is-” he pauses, licking his teeth; then seems to give much too stress to the following pronoun - “ I grew up eating this stuff.”  He angrily scraps some sauce from the bottom of the container – fuck, is it finished already? - but then his eyes go a bit wistful. “We didn't always have enough money. But mum always insisted I eat much, and that I eat well. Not that you'd hear me complain. She used to be the best cook outta the whole block. And for a while there, I thought that if I ate big I'd grow big and strong and be able to take care of her the way she took care of... me.”

His voice grows faint on the last word, and he has to force himself back on track with visible effort.

“As for being Italian... well. Maybe? I don't know the numbers, but the old man was at least part Italian and part Greek, and his Grandfather was Jew. There was from Irish blood from mom's side. Plus, I think she'd got some Arabic blood. Funny story, once I asked the Demon brat if he thought we might have a common grand-grand-something, and he sorta went ballistic. You should've heard the pitch his voice reached. I thought he was gonna shatter all the glass in the house.”

Tim makes another wondering noise, and Jason waves his fork once more, this time dismissively.

“Long story. One you'd rather not remember, I bet.”

“Is this Demon brat someone I don't like?” Tim asks, chasing with his tongue a runaway drop of sauce that's trailing down the inside of his wrist.

“Is the sky blue, Baby B?” is Jason's reply. To which Tim, being Tim, answers:

“Most of the time, though the exact hue changes with the time and the condition of the weather, shifting between basically all the colours of the spectrum.”

The eyeroll he was expecting, the fork aimed at his forehead he evades with his ninja reflexes, but the cap of the Parmesan container gets him square in the nose, splattering sauce across his cheeks and eyebrows.

Ducking into a side alley is like dipping into a bottle of ink – it's pitch black all around them, dark enough that the air seem disgustingly solid. The air reeks – not of sea things and wet reside, like it did in the narrows, but of beer and piss and dog hair. Tim wrinkles his nose and presses his face against Jason's chest. His brother stops immediately, props Tim against the wall and asks, urgent but not unkind:

“You ok?”

Tim nods a bit, then grimaces. His ankle and hip are throbbing with pain; it licks up his whole side with tongues of fire, making it hard to breathe or even stand up on his own. He grits his teeth and nods again. Jason studies his face for a moment, reads it like one would read a book, and then nods back.

“We're almost there,” he promises.

Tim swallows and offers a second nod. He understands. He knows. He will swallow the pain. He will trudge on, like a brave soldier. He can make it.

Jason doesn't think so.

With a sigh, he readjusts Tim against his side, and drags him to the edge of the street. Despite the late hour, there still are cars zapping by; some of those are fancy sportscars with their coats shiny, or hulking SUVs with darkened shields; some are dingy runabouts with rust on their bumper and mud on their wheels. There is also a veritable crowd mulling about: teens going to and fro between clubs, a few tired-faced people moving inside the market, pushing carts filled with whiskey bottles or baby diapers. Homeless people huddle close next to the liquor shops, girls in fishnets and mini skirts walk around the lamplights while shady faces do shady exchanges where they think no one can see them.

Jason looks at the crowd, then down at their soiled clothes. His eyes linger a moment on Tim's injured ankle – swollen so big now, it looks like he might've fit a baseball inside his sock. He shakes his head, and on the following exhale he asks:

“Tipsy college mate or ass-drunk lover?”

Tim blinks up at him.

The question itself, odd as it may sound, doesn't surprise him.

What is really shocking is that he understand what it means.

“Uh. Drunk lover. Please?” he attaches as an afterthought, telling himself that the warmth he feels spreading on his cheeks like wildfire is a result of the nipping wind, and most certainly not a blush.

“Thought so,” Jason admits. “That ankle oughta hurt like a bitch.” He pulls Tim into his chest. “Just lean on me, and remember to show signs of life when someone comes near, so they don't think I'm kidnapping you.”

Not sparing him glance, Jason rearranges Tim and his own stance, tucks Tim under his chin, makes his rock-solid body go softer, somehow, so that they suddenly aren't just touching but are moulded together, fitting like two halves of a single entity. All of Tim's weight is shifted until it's supported solely by Jason, and this, right here, is what the code means. If they had gone with the “tipsy mate” option, Jason would've just slipped his arm around Tim's waist and dragged him along, supporting their act with drunken chatter and boisterous laughter. But now, now Tim is more or less being carried, being cradled, like a lover, held and supported, and it's embarrassing, of course it is, but it's also convenient.

Tim slips into the part effortlessly, sagging against Jason and placing his head on the crook of his neck like a tired flower. He affects a tipsy gait as they go, and giggles drunkenly when someone gets within hearing distance, palming at Jason's biceps and the back on his neck in a possessive, intimate fashion. He lets Jason drag him for a few blocks – with heartfelt thanks from his ankle, which is getting a free ride and supporting no weight whatsoever – and then they are slipping into another side street and taking a rest against a cold brick wall.

Tim breathes in deep through his mouth. The City is familiar, just like Jason is. But she's a stranger as well. She is a constant surprise, but somehow a comforting one. She is as unpredictable as she feels reliable, seductive and distancing. As dark and mysterious as the deepest tangle of an exotic jungle, but warm and well-known like the beloved blanket you've clutched onto ever since childhood.

Then Jason is holding out his hand, shadows on his face and light in his eyes, a beautiful contrast, and Tim is pulled out of his musing and back on his feet.

Unpredictable and reliable and a stranger so deeply familiar it hurts.

Just like Jason.

_____________________________________________________________

They reach their home an unidentifiable amount of time later

(being hurt, Tim's perception of time is subjective and unreliable; so he cannot rightfully say if the trek from the shore took them two-point-five hours or a couple of aeons)

Jason has a spare key hidden in an interesting place, but more interesting still is that flipping aside a fake panel on the wall reveals a numerical pad with a fingerprint reader mounted on top of it. Jason puts the key in the lock, presses his thumb on the scanner, and punches in a short code.

Tim is vaguely amused at the obsessive security

(and not a little touched that the code is “Robin Flies”. His brother is turning out to be more of a sap than he thought he would)

and then they're tumbling inside, flipping the light switch on as an afterthought and – is that a couch? It is a couch. Tim suddenly has a intimate knowledge of how a man lost in a desert feels upon seeing an Oasis.

He tries to stumble towards the couch – stumble being the keyword. He doesn't even squeak too high or protest too much when Jason does a spectacular eyeroll, sweeps him up and carries him all the way to the couch. However, he does grumble and swats out blindly when Jason tosses him on the couch rather than put him down gently; but the only thing his endeavours buy him is a shark-like grin, wiggled eyebrows, and a smartass remark: “Sorry, you're not a real Princess, so you don't get the whole Princess treatment”.

“You're a brute,” Tim sniffs back at him, with as princely an air as he can muster. “Now leave me be, peasant; I'm going to sleep for the next century.”

“I shall wake you up with a kiss. Not.”

Jason does a mock-bow, and walks off towards a computer screen. He shoulders off his jacket as he scans quickly through a few logs, checking what could possibly be camera feeds, and then nods to himself. He turns back towards Tim, hands fisting the hem of his shirt and pulling up, revealing his naked stomach – his chest – his collarbone – and an array of scars and burns that Tim would find worrisome, if only he hadn't glimpsed a similar array on his own skin.

The shirt is bundled up and thrown haphazardly aside. It has barely hit the opposite wall that Jason has already toed off his boots. Both Tim and he are covered head-to-toe in coal dust. Jason's cheeks, his neck and hands are powdered in velvet-black that contrasts strangely with the gold-kissed skin of his chest. He should look funny, perhaps; like an old cartoon, all coloured wrong.

He looks anything but.

Sweat has mixed with the sooth and painted strange tattoos along the dips and valleys of his sculpted muscles, all the way down to his hipbones. He is checking the bleeding graze on the side of his ribcage, and while the wound isn't deep or worrying at all, the blood looks stark and deep-coloured like spilled wine across the canvas of his naked chest.

Jason prods the wound a few times, teeth sinking into his fleshy bottom lip as he reins in a low hiss.

“It's not that bad,” he decides. Then, looking at Tim from under his lashes. “Yours?”

Tim mumbles something incoherent, somewhat ashamed of himself for letting his guard down and getting both of them injured. Or at least, that where 60% of his blush originates from.

Helpless, he shrugs his shoulders and says: “Better than yours,” which isn't a lie, but.

Jason's eyes harden a bit around the edges, and Tim's own scurry down and away. He fidgets a bit with the zip of his hoodie. His hands, they are as black and dirty as Jason's, but the skin beneath all that coal dust is smoother, less ruined and a lot more pale, a bit like marble and a bit like milk. It makes Tim frown.

Jason sighs loudly, trudging back to the couch with a few fast, purposeful steps. His hand, as it descends on top Tim's own, is huge. It engulfs Tim's hand completely, swallows it whole, like a predator swallows its prey. It is also tugging insistently, pulling the zip down-down-down and revealing a shirt that used to be red, but it's now dirty enough to look a strange shade of burgundy.

Tim's eyes flicker up and to the side.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting this shit off you, since you're being lazy. You've already ruined my couch, no way you're ruining my sheets either.”

Tim makes an annoyed noise, but dutifully shimmies out of the jacket. His pants are a ruin, his shirt has a first-row ticket for a tumble in the washing machine. And he really, really doesn't want to think how his face might look like. Possibly like a Pierrot's, he guesses: all pale and moony and streaked with black.

Tim doesn't start whining until their hands are placed, one on top of the other, on the zipper of his pants. He blushes so violently, so suddenly, he thinks he might be steaming from the ears. He swats Jason's hand away, mortified. Jason leans back to sit on his heels, eyebrow cocked-up inquisitively.

“Now what?”

Tim mumbled something under his breath, which Jason prompts him to repeat, louder, since he didn't understand shit.

“I said,” Tim says, glaring up through the veil of his hair. “I don't. Need. To get. These. Off.”

“Uh.Uh.” Jason says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me you don't want to take a shower, you little cleanness-freak, and if you can do it while looking in my eyes I might even believe you.”

Ugh. Showeeeeeeee~eeeeeeeeeeeeeer. Before he can stop them, Tim's eyes dart around looking for a bathroom like it were the Promised Land.

“I... don't want a shower,” he mumbles.

“In my eyes, I said.”

Tim worries his bottom lip with his teeth.

“I want to take a shower,” he concedes. “I just. Don't need help with it.”

“Because you're so obviously gonna be able to stand on that ankle, oh ass-drunk-lover o' mine.”

“I. Uhm. Can try. On my own, I mean.”

“And fall flat on your bottom?”

“There's. Uhm. Got to be a handle of some sort inside the shower, right?”

“Because this is so obviously a PT gym and not a flat in Middletown. ”There is a trace of amusement on Jason's face, warring with the obvious weariness. “C'mon, stop playing coy. Unless you shitted me about your gender all these years, nothing you've got down there is gonna surprise me.”

Tim curls into a little ball, mumbling still. If he was steaming from the ears before, he's 90% positive his face is now glowing bright enough to power-up the whole city.

Jason rolls his eyes, tugs at his arm, and Tim makes himself smaller, and smaller still, until out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jason's frown turn into something different, annoyance shifting into worry, worry into something akin to fierce protectiveness. Jason's hands slide down Tim's shoulder to cup his elbows, and his voice has lost its teasing edge, it's gone kind and low when he murmurs his name.

Tim still won't look at him, so Jason draws him back, carefully, against his chest, and it is more crooning that whispering when he says: “Hey. Hey, Baby B. We can get you inside the shower with your pants on, if it's such a big deal. Okay? Yours and mine, too. I promise I can help you stand with my eyes closed, if I've got to. I don't--” he pauses, struggling for words that don't seem to come easily. “If it is just shyness, it's okay. You know it is. If. If it's more. Hey. If you're. I know you don't particularly like being touched, but I didn't think. I don't. I mean, if it's something more than shyness. It's just.” He blows out a long, frustrated breath. “It's all right. You're all right. You're my Robin, and I've got you,” he says bluntly, honestly, with a rawness in his voice that Tim can't quite place.

He thinks about it. Thinks back to Jason's gentle touch when he was feverish and dirty. To how trustingly he's been leaning into each and every one of Jason's touches; and then thinks, to himself, to lean the same way against one of the guys who have accosted them as they stumbled back home, fake-drunk and aching all over. His nose wriggles up, lips scrunching into a small grimace.

“It's not – I think it's just shyness,” he confirms, peeking up at Jason, and his brother releases another long breath, this one decidedly relieved.

“Christ. Got me worried there for a while.”

Tim makes a sheepish face.

“Sorry. I just – do I really not like to be touched?” he muses.

Jason looks down, visibly thoughtful.

“You're... selective,” he says slowly. “It never seemed to me like you had a trauma. Just. Yeah. Like friends and even some villains can touch you, but strangers and paparazzi and other villains are worse than radioactive, the way you lean away from them. It's. Odd. Never figured a pattern to it. But you seemed really distressed and it got me wondering and uhm--” he seems a bit sheepish himself, rubbing the back of his neck with a broad hand, and smearing more dust across his skin.

“You... were worried?” Tim says, surprised and with a hint of laughter in his voice. Jason goes all defensive, barriers snapping back up as he pulls away and barks:

“Of course I was, any decent human being would be if they thought--”

“Thank you.” Tim reaches out, taking Jason's hand loosely in his own. Jason's is bigger, it's true. And also darker and more rough, but the scars their hands bear, they are so similar. Rope burns and knife grazes and the soft callouses rubbed in by the gauntlets. Traces left behind by years of putting their lives on the line, of fighting and protecting and salvaging and fighting, fighting, fighting. So what if Jason's hands are calloused from handling guns? They are his brother's hands, and they always took good care of him.

“So. Uhm.” Tim says, sheepish again, all of a sudden. “I think you mentioned a shower?”

______________________________________________________________________

Scalding water on his skin, steaming rivulets pushing through his hair like questing fingers, his mouth tilted up and open like a cup to be filled with bubbling water – Tim feels, suddenly, a lot more like himself.

He doesn't know who Timothy Drake is, granted; but under the shower he has a sudden, startling epiphany about him: Timothy Drake likes to be clean. He loves being clean. It something that goes beyond the physical act of removing the grime. Soap and scalding water are almost like the recipe for a magic spell; they don't just clean him, they cleanse and batter him and remake and renew him, and he loves it.

He grabs the bar of soap and suds himself thoroughly, swaying and stumbling as he tries to balance himself on one foot only, his swollen ankle wrapped in protective layers of cloth. He sways and stumbles and Jason is there to catch him each time, spluttering and not-quite laughing when he is sent swaying himself and the shower spray gets in his face.

Tim flicks soap suds at him, then offers the back of his neck to the cascading water, groaning in relief as his muscles start to uncoil. He's not completely naked, and neither is Jason (the sap). It's to save time and clean the clothes as well, dipshit, it's his official reason, but Tim thinks that he is still worried about a trauma Tim quite possibly doesn't even have, and wants to play it safe.

The showerhead is mounted high on the wall over a small porcelain bathtub. Tim stands up and enjoys the spray for as long as his hip and ankle allow him, and then sinks down into the tub with a low groan. Jason steps back and out to allow him more room. He sits by the end of the tub with his back turned and a protective

(possessive?)

(reassuring?)

(proprietary?)

(It feels like all this and more)

hand cupped loosely around Tim's ankle, propped up on the edge and away from the water. His thumb is tracing slow circles against the swell of bone, back and forth, back and forth, slowly, in senseless patterns.

Tim shivers a bit, and it's not unpleasant. The warm water feels lovely, lapping gently at his sore muscles. The soap they use is scentless, but again it's familiar enough to be relaxing. For the moment, he feels drowsy, almost content. The various aches in his body have thrummed down to something dull and manageable. Even is brain is strangely abuzz: many a thought are whirling inside it, but none of them makes enough sense to catch his attention. He sighs, and doesn't realize he's been nodding off until Jason prods him gently.

“Hey. Briar Rose, no napping in the tub. Drowning is bad for you. Let's get something to eat into that caved-in stomach, and then it's naptime.”

Tim soldiers himself with a sigh, mentally preparing for the agony that standing up and walking will prove to be. He shouldn't have worried, because once again Jason is there, shouldering most of his weight as they stumble away from the tub. There is a frown on his face, though, and Tim makes an inquiring noise in the back of his throat, too sleepy and worn out to manage anything coherent.

“You're all bones,” Jason says, so low he might be talking to himself. “You weight nothing.”

Tim leans against him and then sits on the closed toilet to rub himself dry.

“I have unhealthy heating habits?” he ventures. Jason rubs his mouth, thinking.

“You used to eat a lot of questionable things,” he says, with a smile too crooked to be called such. “You put onions, bacon and artichoke on your pizza, and drank soda at all hours of the day or night. I caught you eating burrito on patrol in the early days when – when you fled solo and I was. Uhm. Just back from my training trip. But then. You up and went into an health kick at the turn of an hat and -” he trails off, doing a disapproving face and obviously making a connection in his head that doesn't please him. “We're getting some meat onto these ribs.” He pokes at them, steals the towel from Tim and starts drying his face and hair

(They aren't that organized, if they only have one towel, Tim thinks. Or are they just that close that they share everything? He side-eyes the cabinet over the sink, hoping it contains two separate toothbrushes)

and then the towel is scrunched up and thrown at Tim, covering his face.

______________________________________________________________________

They are too tired to cook something or wait awake for the pizza to be delivered. Jason grabs a container from the freezer, gives it a sniff, and then pushes it inside the microwave. When the timer dings much-too-cheerfully five minutes later, Jason retrieves the container, divides the contents into two bowls and presents Tim with some kind of stew. It's hot and spicy and obviously homemade, with chunks of meat and chopped vegetable swimming together in the steaming broth.

Tim doesn't realize he was famished until he takes the first spoonful. From there, it is not a matter of eating as much as inhaling the stew and hoping it goes down the right pipe. Jason watches him with an eyebrow crooked, his expression a mix of amused, surprised and smug. He probably cooked the thing himself, Tim decides, licking the last drops from his spoon. And if Jay is the appointed cook of the pair, what is Tim's role? The house-cleaner? That seems probable. Tim has already spotted dirt in the corners that he is hitching to clean away; plus there are some out-of-place books on the shelves he really ought to rearrange alphabetically.

Tomorrow, though.

Right now, a nap sounds good.

He hobbles to the sink, privately grateful when Jason doesn't try to either help or stop him. He settles down his bowl and spoon and quickly washes them and the soup container, putting them aside to dry as he waits for Jason to bring him his own bowl and utensil.

It's.

So domestic. Being nudged in the hip by Jason and flicking water in his eyes in retaliation. Appropriating his bowl and rubbing it clean while Jason dries Tim's own and puts it back in the cupboard (that contains precisely two of everything. Two mugs. Two plates. Two glasses. Even two bento containers and two Thermoses). It's not exactly familiar, but it feels like it should, and that in itself is as melancholy as it is nice.

They head to bed as soon as Jason has put everything back in the cupboards, and Tim has talked him out of taking a smoke.

It turns out that they have one room and two beds, but pushed together to make a queen-sized one. Jason walks briskly to the beds and makes short work of separating them. Tim tries to catch his eye, but to no avail. He wonders why they slept together before, and why they have to sleep separately now. Is it because Tim is hurt? Is Jason the sort who tosses in his sleep, and he doesn't want to accidentally aggravate Tim's injuries? It's feasible, but there is still the matter of why they slept together before. Is it because of the nightmares? Tim has heard Jason, deep in the bowels of the night, groaning and whining like a tortured beast, shaking and sweating and howling up at the moon in pain. Does Jason physically need his brother close to keep nightmares at bay, and is he now purposefully denying himself the comfort just because he doesn't want Tim to feel uncomfortable, sleeping beside someone he doesn't remember?

Tim's heart pummels a bit.

Jason is doing so much for him, and what is he getting in return, if not grievances and inconveniences?

“I'm sorry,” he blurts later on, when their beds have been carefully pushed apart and the space between them feels as impossible to cross as a canyon.

Jason grunts back a reply from the other end of the room, where all is darkness and stillness.

“What for?”

Tim is sleepy, so sleepy, almost asleep. He's more dreaming than awake when he admits: “for being such a useless Robin. Such an hassle. A bad brother.”

There is a rustling of fabric. Jason is sitting up in the dark, hair in his face, eyes narrowed into slits.

“You're none of that, Baby B.”

“I am.” He knows he is. He knows it deep down. “But give me time. I will do better. I will be better. Just. Don't let me disappoint you anymore. And don't. Don't leave when I do.”

Has Jason come closer? Are those his eyes, shining in the darkness? Or is Tim deep asleep, dreaming already?

“You are so starved for affection,” Jason muses, a disembodied voice in the shadows.

“Am I?”

“Starved for affection. For approval. Just... how love-deprived are you, Baby B?”

“I don't know,” he says honestly, voice faint with sleep. “You tell me. Was I loved? Or wasn't I?”

Jason frowns hard and nothing and everything. He sits on the edge of Tim's bed, and Tim goes to him, rolling into Jason's side as if magnetized.

“I've never thought about it like that,” Jason mutters. “To me, you were the lucky one. You had it pretty cool, up to a point. You had friends. You had Bruce. You had Dick. Alfred. And Robin, too. It was mine, but you had it.” He touches Tim's neck, traces the jagged end of his scar. “But love? I never thought about it this way, but --- you didn't get much of that, I guess. Not much. And certainly not enough.”

But Tim is already asleep, face relaxed and buried deep in the sheets. Jason wonders how much of this, if anything at all, he will remember come morning. How much he will admit to remembering in the first place.

He watches his Robin sleep quietly into the night, wondering: What have I gotten myself into?

Things weren't supposed to go this way.

Nothing was supposed to go this way.

But life, as per usual, has a way to kick Jason in the face, ripping his plans to shreds.

Sighing, he gets up and wanders back to his own half of the bed, all the way across the room. He hopes the nightmares will spare him tonight; and if they don't, that they at least will have the decency to feature no broken wings and dying birds and ripples of hyena-like, hysterical laughter.

He's operating blind, carefully feeling his way into a world that's strange and new and doesn't make much sense. Jason, his brother, his partner, the other half to his Robin – he is the eye of the storm. The only pocket of breathable air in a world that's been dipped in thick, impenetrable ink. He doesn't know much, but he knows Jason, he thinks. He knows and

trusts

him. Following him is like second nature; it feels practised, somehow. Rehearsed. As though he's spent

years

following Jason around, learning his body language, his moves. Following him, predicting his movements... it's like muscle memory, at this point. It's so effortless.

Tim takes a moment to imagine himself, a little child scampering like a shadow in Jason's wake, little arms outstretched, smiling blindly, like a duckling following after its momma. He can almost see it. Little feet scurrying, a silvery laugh cutting through the night. The flash of a yellow cape? Is that possible? Yellow cape and red tunic. And bullets whizzing past Jason's wild curls, and just then something that little-Tim is holding goes flash! and whirr! and immortalizes Jason's heartthrob grin for posterity.

It's normal for a younger sibling to idolize the older, he supposes. Still, he wonders what sort of trouble he got in, trying to follow in Jason's footsteps. Did he have a secret album where he glued Jason's pictures, and later on the cut-out articles of his deeds as a vigilante? Did he use to steal Jason's clothes and go around wearing them, uncaring that they were three sizes too big, sleeves slapping as he moved, the holes at the knees letting in a breeze; uncaring that he would trip in the too-heavy cape, that his feet swam in the too-big boots?

He chuckles a bit, and it feels all sorts of refreshing. He breathes in deep, and if there is a smile curled at the edge of his mouth, he cannot help it. It feels good to be up and about. Out in the night.

And not alone.

Jason's eyes cut towards him as he laughs; they are like two chips of ice, in which what little light is available on the street goes to huddle like a secret.

“What?”

Tim grins.

“Nothing.”

“What?” he asks again, with that mean little growl that is so intrinsically Jason. Tim is so used to it by now, that he is starting to take it as a token of amusement and affection, rather than the thinly veiled death-threat that it is. It's strange, how immediately he's become comfortable around Jason, and at the same time it is not. It speaks volume of how deeply connected they were before. Why else would he feel so viscerally bound to Jason, if not because they used to be a well-oiled machine, almost two halves of a whole, before the accident?

“Just thinking,” Tim says aloud, and pushes those thoughts aside.

Jason snorts.

“You got a tendency to do that. Ever thought to put the brakes on that genius brain every once in a while?”

“Why?” Tim asks, allowing a touch of amusement to seep into his voice. “Quenching the voices in my head! Imagine that. Where would be the fun?”

“Newsflash, kiddo. You don't do fun.”

“Studying and understanding what is around me is fun,” Tim argues. “Making theories on how things work and then getting to prove I was right is also fun.”

“Modest,” Jason deadpans. He tries to repress a grin but fails, which triggers a chain reaction and makes his brother grin back like a mirror.

“I do try.”

“You really don't.”

Suddenly, Jason gestures for Tim to stop, and peers around the building. His shoulders unwind after a moment, and he ducks quickly inside the alley, signalling to Tim to follow. “Also: not fun.”

Tim shrugs.

“To each their own? I don't criticize you for your hobbies.”

Jason slowly tips his head around to stoneface Tim from over his shoulder. A silent eyebrow arches up in a look that manages to convey “are you kidding me” as clear as if Jason had shouted it in his face.

Tim flushes.

“Oo~oookay. Apparently, I do. Did. Got the message.”

“Oh, you're a little bitch, all right,” Jason rumbles, turning sideways to peer into another darkened alley.

“Jerk.”

Jason barks out a laugh. It is brief, and not (completely) unhappy. Still, when he says: “That's me in a nutshell,” Tim feels something inside him shift and harden.

“That's not true, and you know it,” he protests. “You are abrasive, I can't deny that. But a coarse exterior is not all that there is to you.”

“Of course it is,” Jason says, again with that not quite unhappy voice, honest and level as though he believed the nonsense that he is sprouting. Tim feels hotness flush up from his chest, creep up from under his collar and inundate his cheeks, his forehead.

“It's not.” And since he doesn't want to play the part of a three year old throwing a tantrum, he backs up his thesis with factual data. “You are a caring person, I know you are, you proved it to me; or should I remind you of all the things you've done for me these past days?”

“Tim,” Jason argues back, sounding tired. “That's not. I couldn't leave you alone and injured, could I?”

“And why?” Tim answers hotly. “Because I'm family? Family is just a word. It means nothing unless you give it meaning. Jason, we both know that the only thing that kept you from leaving me to fend for myself – is you.” Tim can't tell if Jason's bottom lip is jutting out for real, or it's just a trick of the light. “Seriously, Jay. You are a good person. Why do you fight so hard to deny it?”

Tim watches as Jason rubs his mouth, looking pensive, and a trifle lost. Isn't he used to Tim defending him? Being honest? Just was sort of

(shitty)

brother is Tim, if Jason can't take – can't believe a compliment coming from him?

“It's all right,” Tim trudges on, suddenly apprehensive, pulse hammering at the hollow of his throat, because, no, no, no he's not the kind of brother – the kind of Robin – who starves himself and cuts himself and forgets to be honest and grateful to the one single person who cares about him in the world.

“Kindness is not a sin. You don't always have to hide behind an excuse to help people. You like to look out for the ones you care for. You're brave enough to stick your neck out to protect them. What's so bad with it?”

Jason closes his eyes, he looks away.

“It gets you killed,” he mutters. “Killed and forgotten and never, ever revenged.” And then, before Tim can gather his wits enough to for a reply, he hisses, “Hush now,” sounding low and urgent and angry. He makes a slashing motion with his hand, peeved and commanding at once. Tim finds himself dropping into a defensive stance, his back to the wall and holding his cane with both hands like a weapon.

“What is it?”

“The bike.”

Jason doesn't elaborate further. Peering over Jason's shoulder, Tim sees a motorcycle parked behind a crane a dozen metres from them. It's an old model, all chromed and slick, with an unusually large rake, custom-built exhaust pipes and ape-hanger handlebars, at least 20 inches tall. At a closer inspection, Tim notices a tattered sheet lying crumpled next to the front tyre, as though it had been used to cover the motorcycle and someone had gone and ripped it off.

Uh-oh.

If – as Jason's behaviour suggests – the bike was their way out, and it's been discovered, then---

“Get down!”

Tim doesn't think; he just obeys. He goes down in a crouch, ignoring the pull in his ribs, allowing Jason to jump over him and punch in the face the guy who was creeping up to them from the docks. Tim catalogues him swiftly – 30-something years old, salt-and-pepper beard, a greasy headband in tones of blue and a jacket with a demon-skull insignia. Jason punches him square in the jaw, then pushes him backward with a palm-heel strike to his solar plexus. The guy clutches his chest, wheezing as he goes down. Jason has already moved on to a second band member, and Tim has his hands full with another two – a pair of tins dressed in incongruous white overalls and unlaced boots. He strikes one, then the other, his impromptu cane

(staff)

cane moving like a living snake in his palms, striking fast and true. His mind sharpens and blurs at the same time, and how such a thing is possible, he has no idea. His body moves on autopilot, and he's left in the backward seat, with no clue of what he's about to do until he's done it. Punch to the jaw. Swirl. Duck. Palm strike. Roundhouse kick. Dodge. Duck. Punch-kick-punch. Somersault backwards. Leave your assailants in a heap on the ground, very much alive, but broken all over. Teeth fly. Blood spill. And he doesn't like it; he doesn't like it at all, if he were to be honest; but he's surgically precise and cold as steel as he disables the gang members one by one.

He hears the gun being cocked before he sees it.

He swirls around, heart in his throat, mind screaming “JASON!”. But his brother isn't being held at gun point. No. He is the one holding a gun. Training it to the forehead of a man wielding a combat knife.

Air. It suddenly becomes too thin, too little, too cold. Again, Tim moves before he consciously tells his body to and “NO!” he yells – orders, really – as he grabs Jason's wrist with both hands, leaving himself open wide – open. Wide. – for an attack.

Several things happen at once.

Jason stumbles, curses, tries unsuccessfully to wrestle his hand out of Tim's grip. The guy on his knees makes sharp sound. Tim speaks again. Yells, orders, something, angry and clipped

(and desperate and begging)

and there is a second curse from Jason, the sound of boots slipping on the slimy concrete, and Tim gets yanked around, so that the knife only just grazes him – grazes them both, actually – dealing next to no damage. But the guy barks out a curse (Russian?), rears back his fist and jams Tim hard in the ribs – his bruised, wrapped ribs – and tears of pain rise unbidden in his eyes, a curse raises in his mouth, slips past his gritted teeth. Jason echoes it as he yanks his wrist up and away from Tim's hold, shouts something angry and savage and slams the handle of the gun, hard, on the side of the man's forehead. He slumps down, groaning and spluttering and possibly foaming at the mouth, but Tim is too busy trying to breath through the pain – breathe through the agony – to really care.

Jason yanks him to his chest, mutters, “motherfucker”, and drags him to the bike. He flings the gun at one of the white twins, who's kneeling up with a bloody nose and a bloody smile. He gets hit in the middle of his face, and goes down like a sack of potatoes.

Jason hoists himself and Tim on the bike, chanting an endless stream of “fuckfuckfuck”s under his breath. Tim clutches him, clutches the hand that Jason's offers him and lays his forehead against Jason's shoulder, breathing open-mouthed in the scent of sweat and leather and too-much smoke. The bike roars into life, bucks and rears like a crazed mare and then it's launched at neck-breaking speed towards---

--a dead end.

A long stretch of concrete, that hurls itself towards the open sea.

Tim struggles to move, mutters: “Jason, Jason, what---?”

But Jason just pushes Tim's head back against his chest, growls: “shut up and trust me!”, and that's all it's needed for Tim to go boneless against him, because he trusts his brother, he really, really does.

The bike manoeuvres between cranes and rubbish, squelches algae and rotten fish under its thundering tyres; it roars up a platform and jumps – it flies – it soars – high and higher up – and for a perfect, breathless moment they are airborne, suspended, and then Jason is kicking the bike away and cocooning himself around Tim as they fall and fall and fall.

It's not the arms of the ocean that welcome them; they land into and roll down the side of a mound of coal. The bike lands a few metres to their left, sinking deep into a similar mound. The engine is still going, the front tyre is rolling still; the bike whines and groans like a kicked beast as it skitters down to the foot of the black hill. The coal barge keeps floating on, undisturbed, gliding silently away from the Narrows, the gang war, the garbage ditch that has been their refuge for the past days; leaving everything behind: the Meth lab and that cursed accident and all of Tim's memories.

Tim rolls away from Jason's chest with a groan; he rasps and coughs and hopes that the small, black cloud puffing up from his mouth is just a figment of his overstimulated imagination. He's coated in black from head to toe and aching all over; and judging by the stream of curses still going in his left ear, Jason is doing no better.

“Tell--” Tim coughs, then inhales deep, feeling his nostrils and mouth and throat and all the way down to his lungs getting coated with coal dust. “Tell me that was planned.” He coughs again, holding his ribs as his whole body shakes with a round of hacking coughs.

Jason rubs his forehead, basically drawing himself a second set of eyebrows with his dirty fingertips.

“Yes.” Coughs. “No. I mean.” Coughs. “Kinda.” He rolls onto his side and his shoulders heave as he tries to fight some hacking coughs himself. “We were meant to board this thing. Just not--”

“--with the acrobatic jump?” Tim supplies, trying to sit up and deciding that no, he's fine where he is, half-sunk like a shipwreck in a few inches of coal. If you don't count the insanely amount of satisfaction he feels for straying Jason's hand, he doesn't feel any much better than a wrecked ship.

“Hey.” And now Jason's bottom lip definitely jutting out, now. “Not my fault we got hold up!”

Tim flops back with a groan, then regrets even that move when his ribs and his shoulders start protesting.

Loudly.

In unison.

Not to mention the sort of agony the knife-wound or the ankle are stirring up.

Shit.

Is this what a vigilante life is like? Give him the required forms. He's resigning. Effect immediately.

“How's the wound?” he asks, watching idly as the bike's front tyre finally draws to a silent stop.

Jason shrugs.

“How's yours?”

“Just a graze.”

“Same here.” Jason pauses. Licks his lips. Then starts heaving all over again because ewwww- coal. Tim rubs his face with both hands, not quite sure if he wants to laugh or go to sleep or just curl into a ball and die here.

“Please,” he says. “Tell me we're going home now.” And it's not a question.

Jason shifts, casting his eyes up, to the small lakes of starts visible amidst the grey clouds overhead.

“We are,” he says, with an odd tone of voice that Tim doesn't bother analysing.

Home.

Never a word has sounded better to his ears.

They are a study in contrasts, the two of them; even in small things such as these. Jason is slouched, the effortlessly royal sprawl of a big jungle cat; whereas Tim is sitting so precisely straight one might mistake him for a toy-soldier arranged to ride into battle, an elfin figurine all pointy limbs and right angles. From the outside, he looks unapproachable, aloof, guarded. Even prim. But he is not feeling particularly disconnected, though; and that is the odd thing. No matter what his severe pose might suggest to the casual observer, he is relaxed, albeit bone-tired. It's just. One of those mysteries about himself he has no hope to unravel. How much has he trained himself – how deeply has he been conditioned – that even with his memories gone, it comes natural to him to keep his body under such a tight leash, never showing weakness, no sign of pliancy, even in private?

“Here's the plan,” Jason begins in a no-nonsense tone. Tim makes an encouraging noise in the back of his throat, even though he doubts that it is required. “Two, three days top, and we're outta here.”

Tim can't help it.

“We?”, he blurts.

Jason glances sideways, eyes tightening as though Tim has said something particularly dimwitted.

“I'm not leaving you in this rat-hole,” he articulates slowly. One of his eyebrows arches up in question. “Or did you think we actually lived here?”

“Uhm.”

Tim wisely keeps his silence because, yes, he has entertained the notion. He feels the tip of his ears turn warm with the beginnings of a blush, so he looks down and away, picking imaginary lint from the clothes that Jason has just Laundr'omatic-ed for him.

From the other end of the couch, Jason snorts.

“Yeah. Don't answer that.” He starts rummaging inside the brown paper bag, jostling the contents this way and that. “Thing is, this is a shitty neighbourhood, and there's a gang war escalating outside. You can rest another couple days I guess, but then we make a run for it. Think you'll be up for it?”

“I am up for it now.”

“Like hell you are,” Jason says curtly. “But you'd better be when it's time to go. So rest, and don't overdo it with the therapy.” He tosses a tablet bottle at Tim, who catches it without looking. “Hope you're done with the nausea, 'cause those are gonna be a bitch on your stomach. Oh. And--” he fishes a second bottle from the paper bag, some cheap multivitamin from a multimarket. He tosses that one at Tim as well. “Take these, too. Can never hurt.”

Tim twists open the painkillers bottle, puts two tablets in his mouth and starts chewing down on them. Jason scowls, looking as though he wants to comment, but ultimately holds his tongue.

“Is this that you've been doing? Preparing a way out for us?” Tim asks, popping a couple of brightly-coloured vitamin pills in his still-tingling mouth. The ibuprofen, or whatever it was, left his tongue feeling dry and a little bloated.

Jason shrugs, one-shouldered and weary (though he probably was aiming for lazy, instead). The paper bag yields a bottle of beer, a Styrofoam sandwich container and a can of soda. He pushes can and container towards Tim, along with a handful of napkins and a box of salad with a miniature plastic fork included. The can fizzles when Tim nails it open. He washes his mouth with a quick mouthful, then takes a second, more measured sip. The soda is cool and bubbly and tastes of grapes. It gets his seal of approval.

Jason has a private smirk on his face when he leans back against the couch. He unscrews the top of the beer, and tilts his head to drink the bottle half-empty.

“Between other things,” he answers mysteriously. Tim lifts an eyebrow. “Getting a lay of the lands and planning an escape where part of it. But I also had to keep the shady people away from this building, without letting them realize this place was important. Which meant implementing a shitload of distractions all over the area. Not funny.”

Tim stops poking at the greasy sandwich container and turns a wide-eyed stare on Jason.

“You've been. Running yourself ragged. To. Make sure I was---?” he doesn't finish.

Jason shrugs.

“Well, duh. Someone had to? It's not like we have fancy equipment, alarms or weapons in here. Or you thought that patrolling 24/7 is the norm? Wait. Don't answer that one, either.”

His tone is clipped, borderline annoyed. But. Tim is learning too look beyond the gruff mannerism and catch a glimpse of what's hiding underneath. He grins. Jason lowers the bottle slowly, squinting at him in the face.

“What?”

“Uh. Nothing.”

“What?” There is a bit of a growl in his tone, but also a bit of a grin at the corner of Tim's lips. Sandwich forgotten, he focuses on the salad box. He rummages inside it with his miniature fork; idly, he divides the chunks of tomato from lettuce, pushing each into a side of the bowl and leaving the onion in the middle. He shrugs.

“It's just. I think I get you.”

“You don't get me.” Jason says, tone icy, but Tim shakes his head quickly in negation.

“I don't remember you,” he corrects. “But I get you, all the same. I like it. It's. Intimate. Familiar. Makes me like to be with you. Trust you more.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about.”

Tim shrugs.

“I don't. Having an idea would imply remembering things about you, things that I could use to translate the meaning of your actions and react accordingly to your expectations. What I have is a feeling. Of how you operate.”

Jason takes another mouthful of beer, rolls the bottle between his palms and then slams it noisily on the coffee table.

“Getting into people's head is a nasty habit,” he warns Tim, very low, very cold. His head titled, he glares a Tim from under his lashes, his eyes like chips of ice.

Surprisingly, Tim brightens up at that.

“Did I use to do that a lot? Get into people's head? Into yours?”

“Yes,” Jason answers. “Stop it.”

Tim doesn't.

“You're always angry,” he says. “And also very physical. You've been hurt, I think. That's why you're so guarded. You pretend you don't care, but you are a protector at heart. You make people feel safe, and you like it.”

“Shut up.”

“You like being useful. You are reliable, and very passionate. Once you give your word, it's forever. And once you set yourself to a task, you give it your all.”

“Shut up, I said.”

“Which is exhausting. Because. Your efforts don't get any recognition. Ever. And you tell yourself that's all right, that it's what you wanted, but it's not and--”

Jason is on him in the next instant, all patience lost, his face set, teeth gritted, knees locked tight around Tim's hips, pinning him down, flat, on the lumpy couch, and here it is, the hand against his neck, like an obsession – the flat of his palm pressing down on the tender flesh of Tim's throat, unyielding pressure, stifling, its weight like a stone, and he's leaning down, nose-to-nose with his brother, tightly-clenched fist reared back, poised right above his head, ready to fall, corded arm taut, trembling with the strain.

But the fist never comes down.

Tim blinks. He is the picture of calm.

Jason makes a muffled noise, somewhat like a growl, and presses his face closer still, until his mouth is breathing hotly against Tim's own, and his eyes are spearing through Tim, roaming across his face as though it were an unsolvable puzzle.

“Why didn't you stop me? Why don't you fight back?”

Tim takes a breath, his forehead furrowing in the middle.

“Should I have?”

Jason tilts his head. Anger gone, the look on his face has turned assessing. He takes a moment to think, then:

“How would you throw me off?”

Tim purses his lips, weights his options. His left hand slowly lifts up, fingertips brushing along Jason's collarbone, blunt nails trailing along the shirt collar, catching in the fabric, before settling in the warm hollow behind his ear, applying the barest pressure.

“Here,” Tim says, and doesn't elaborate further.

Jason nods slowly.

“Nerve-strike,” he says, and he sounds approving. “Good. But I would expect that from you. It's your typical approach.” He tilts his head, clamps Tim's fingers between jaw and shoulder in a brief admonishment, then lets them go. “What else?”

Tim rolls his hips up experimentally, hooks one foot around Jason's calf, digs the heel in the muscle and gives a tentative push, ignoring the painful tingle in his abused muscles, the ache in his ribs.

“I could...?”

“No.” Jason shakes his head. “You're injured. You can't pull this sorta move off.” He doesn't budge an inch.

Frown deepening, Tim casts a quick glance down and across Jason's face, his chest. Slowly, he raises an elbow, gently places the knob of bone against Jason's jaw, and gives a push. Jason's head moves with it, slowly, eyes never leaving Tim's own.

“Then?”

Tim places his fist against Jason's throat, mimics an attack that would serve to cut off his air supply. He pushes against Jason's solar plexus, following him up as he slowly rears back on his knees. He mimics another attack, elbows locked together, a swing that – were this a real fight – would have definitely pushed Jason off and away from him.

Still going with this unwritten script they're performing, this odd dance of violence that is slow and careful and not violence at all, Jason rolls off the couch, slides onto the carpet. Tim follows him, sits perched on Jason's tights, and place one fist on each side of Jason's head.

They remain locked in position for a long moment, and then Jason nods once, a curt, satisfied motion.

“Well. It seems that the blow to the head didn't make you completely useless. I'd been wondering.”

Tim feels something disengage from the bottom of his stomach and flutter around in his chest, a butterfly or a balloon. It's a weightless, euphoric feeling, and Tim has no idea why a muttered half-compliment, something more jab than praise makes him so gleeful inside, as satisfied as a cat. But it says a lot about him, doesn't it? That he is so inebriated by praise, so starved for it?

Suddenly, Jason's face darkens again. He grabs onto Tim's wiry wrist, thumb digging into the pulse point.

“Why didn't you do this from the start?” he grinds out. “Why did you let me pin you down? Why didn't you fight?”

Tim's confusion is as genuine as it is deep.

“Why would I want to do that?” And at Jason's noise of disbelief, he elaborates: “You are my brother. I don't want to hurt you.”

“I was going to hit you,” Jason reminds him.

Tim shakes his head.

“I have nothing to fear from you,” he says, and the laugh that statement gets him is startled and bitter and low. “We are family,” he insist. And then: “I am your Robin. You said you'd care for me. You won't ever hurt me.”

He doesn't get what he's said wrong, he really doesn't. But Jason's face closes off suddenly, it goes as blank as a milk puzzle. Something unaccountably sad flashes by his countenance. His big hands cup Tim's waist, hoisting him up and away, and then he's nudging out from between Tim's legs and springing onto his feet.

Face averted, fists pumping, he grabs his beer – it's gone flat now, it's warm and cheap and thick against his tongue – but he swallows down the last dregs, then wipes his mouth. There is something terribly sad in the curve of his spine, the way his head is turned down and away, like a dog that's been beaten often and long.

“Don't try to get into my head, kid,” he says, and goes out.

Tim hears the bottle slam against the kitchen table. Hears a muttered grumble. Then grinding, muted noises, a chair being dragged through the rubble, a weight sinking down into it, a punch, a grumble, a sigh.

He rolls onto his side, tucked between the coffee table and the coach, and watches the dust motes dance in the slanted rays of light.

(a yellow cape billowing and a camera's flash illuminating the night and his own eyes reflected on a curved glass case, a petite domino mask splattered with red)

crowd and flee his mind, too quick to make sense of.

Tim shifts on the bed, huddling deeper under his flimsy, tattered blankets. He bites his lip, and it is only partly due to the pain from his injuries.

It's been five days since he first woke up, and his aches are starting to dull. He is recovering swiftly. His fever broke a couple of days ago. The spells of dizziness and the drowsiness disappeared soon after that. Just this morning, he's dragged himself out of bed, across the room and all the way to the bathroom to splash some water on his face, and his knees started wobbling only on the way back. From here onwards, he will get better in leaps and bounds.

(he doesn’t know why, but he can tell that's how it's going to go. He can predict his own recovery time; he has it down to the day and hour and minute, as though he's been trained to calculate his body's response to injuries and pain, as though he's honed his body, or been made to hone it. Train it. Temper it, like a Knight's blade)

He huddles deeper still, breathing in the musty, sweaty air, and thinks about Jason's Caribbean eyes. Thinks about what they might see, when they focus on Tim. He thinks about the frown that is in perpetual residence on Jason's handsome face, and thinks if it ever lifts – if it ever lifted before, just for Tim, and if ever will again.

He thinks of what will happen, once he's back on his feet. Tim shifts again, restless. He clenches his fists. Licks his bottom lip, and tastes sweat. No matter whether his eyes are open or close, he can see his immediate future unroll like an awkward stop-motion film, a sequence of blurry stills, all coloured the tasteless, faded brown of mud.

Tim will get better.

And.

Jason will send him away.

Tim wants that, he thinks. To remove himself, since his presence is such a bother.

Except that he does not.

Not really.

What he wants is to stay.

Stay with Jason.

Jason with his Caribbean-eyes and his perpetual frown and his gruffy mannerism and his flashing anger; Jason with the hurt that crinkles at the corner of his eyes and with the demons clinging to his back and with that curious white streak that makes one want to run their fingers across his hair, to tug on and play with it like one might play with a cat's tail.

Tim has no fear of the unknown. He has no doubt he will survive. Even devoid of his memory and his identity, he has no doubt that he will make it, out there, on the streets of Gotham. If there is something he knows for true in his confusion, is that he is a fearless little solider. A survivor. If

(WHEN)

Jason wants him gone, Tim can go. He can go and he can make it.

He just.

Doesn't want to.

Tim is used

(he thinks)

to pain.

Like a seasoned knife eater, he knows he can swallow down every hurt, every adversity, every harmful word or blade thrown his way; knows that he is trained to withstand the feel of their sharp edges cutting down his throat – blood welling up, asphyxiating him – and say not a word of complaint.

But.

The thought of losing

(abandoning)

Jason

(again)

hurts in strange and entirely new ways.

Maybe he's just being selfish

(bad boy)

and doesn't want to lose the one certainty he has, the one family he has, the one person to recognize and care for him.

He doesn't know what to make with these feelings

(with himself).

He clenches his eyes shut.

His head throbs with pain.

(so much for getting better)

The air feels humid, heavy like a tongue coiling around him. On his side of the room Jason shifts, exhaling long and low through his nose, disrupting the synchronism of their breathing patterns, making Tim's own chest stutter and freeze, his heart tripping on itself.

Careful not to make too much noise, Tim begins to shift. His shirt is too big. It is sweaty, too, and it sticks to his chest. The coarse cotton chafes against his burns. The boxers – not his own, just like the shirt – hang too low on his hips, making his face burn. He feels like a child playing dress-up with his big brother's clothes. A skinny, scrawny child. Inadequate child.

Beyond his cocoon of blankets, Jason mutters something in his sleep. A name, perhaps. Or just a louder exhale of breath. Outside, the first rays of dawn break through the screen of low, grey clouds. They catch the windows on the tallest skyscrapers, turning Gotham into a beast with one million, fiery eyes.

A new days has come.