#timbit-lover

TW: Mentions of assault statistics

Tim’s eyes burned. He sighed and backspaced through an incoherent sentence full of red squiggly underlined errors. 

“Big sigh,” Jason committed absently. 

“I put a ‘Q’ in the word ‘closed’,” Tim told him. 

Jason hummed lowly, “Skill issue.”

Tim grabbed the pen off of his casefile and threw it across the coffee table at him. Jason let it bounce of his thick chest without even looking up. 

Tim took his attention off of Jason’s chest strong-soft-touch-mine and put his eyes back on the screen.

They started co-working their cases because of one shared shit-show stint with Penguin, back when Jason was freshly reintegrating into the pack on Dick’s behest, and then they kept doing it because it was nice. 

It was nice to sit with pack. It was nice to have someone to groan and moan about case reports with, to bitch about Dick and Bruce with. To read over each others work and bounce ideas off of one another. It was nice to not be alone.

And, Tim would never admit it, but it soothed a part of him, somewhere between his hindbrain and aggrieved animal instincts, to be near Jason specifically. 

Jason put his casefile down on the coffee table and reached over Tim’s propped up feet to steal from Tim’s snack bowl. The side of his wrist brushed ever so slightly against the socked side of Tim’s foot as he pulled back with a piece of candy. 

It didn’t seem intentional, but Jason was too aware of his own personal space to touch someone accidently. Tim tried not to let the barest hint of touch go to his head. Jason sat back into the couch and propped his feet up next to Tim’s, close enough to touch. 

Tim wanted to knock his propped up foot into Jason’s socked one in response, in solidarity, in pack-want-close-touch-pack.

But Tim, Dick, and Bruce had made an agreement that Tim wasn’t going to break. Jason came to them. Jason touched them. Jason held all the power. They alpha-alpha-alpha did not want to- couldn't risk Jason’s tentative reintegration by reaching out for him, by scaring him away. By being the force-take-want-take bastards that they fought nearly every night.

Jason gabbed his laptop and earbud case before he sat back. His t-shirt showed off the attractive lines of muscle in his thick arms. Tim watched his deft, scarred fingers unwrap a Reese’s cup and looked away before they could get close to his pretty mouth. 

Jason was an O, so Tim’s biological ears perked up in Jason’s presence no matter how high-grade his scent blockers were. Jason was also a loyal packmate, an extraordinary vigilante, and one of his favorite people, so his presence also made Tim’s shoulders relax and breath come easier.

Jason was also a strikingly attractive, extremely capable, and infuriating charming O. Tim wanted him in a way that was bone deep and indescribable, and hated himself for it.

So Tim put his eyes back on his computer screen, suffered through the scratchy, dry burning under the lids, and spelt six things wrong in a row because his brain was quicker than his fingers would ever be.

His quick brain was interrupted by Jason’s earbud case landing on the couch cushion next to him. 

Tim glanced up. Jason’s focus was already on his computer but he only had one earbud in. Tim bit back a grin, put in the other one, and resigned himself to sharing Jason’s erratic music taste just for the sake of sharing something.

Tim broke the comfortable quiet six songs later, “Did you ever follow up on that blue corvette?"

Jason hummed, and said, “Leslie took me off of my suppressants."

A crucial wire in Tim’s brain shorted. He blinked at his computer screen, decided it didn’t matter, and looked up at Jason’s blank face. “What?”

“She’s said I’m at a cancer risk because of the dosage and how long I’ve been on them,” Jason said simply, quietly. Like he wasn’t opening up about the most closely guarded piece of himself. He kept his eyes on the laptop screen and his fingers kept tapping away at the keyboard. “It’s why the last one was so bad. No more modern medicine magic for me,” Jason huffed, and shook his head at the laptop. “She’s probably got a point,” he conceded, tone resentful. 

Tim, wisely, kept his mouth shut and just nodded. Cancer risk cancer risk cancer risk-pack-mine-safe-hurt-cancer risk cancer riskcancercancercancer-

“I’m gonna be fine,” Jason tacked on quietly, “Just gonna suffer more, the way God intended.” He huffed an empty laugh.

“You shouldn’t have to suffer at all,” Tim told him immediately.

Jason snorted. He finally looked from from his screen, only to suddenly sharpen into a icy, mean look. Tim read the you don’t know what it’s like loud and clear. 

“I’m just saying-”

“Don’t,” Jason snapped. His pretty mouth curled into tight snarl, “Don’t tell me what-” he cut himself off. Tim felt the stressed-hurting-scared in the air, he could taste it under Jason’s smokey omega danger-anger-danger.

Jason took one long, slow deep breath and visibly tightened his control on his scent. It was too late, Tim could taste the distress. He smoothed out his snarl, swallowed, and clenched his jaw. Jason bit out, “Yeah, I tracked that blue corvette down.”

Tim looked at him. At the dark circles under his pretty ocean green eyes, and the tight set of his strong shoulders and the mean curl to his pretty lips. He looked at Jason and only looked, no matter how desperate he was to reach out and comfort-soothe-pack-mine-help. 

The words found their way to the tips of Tim’s tongue and held them, bit them back. It wasn’t his place. Jason had to come to them. They couldn’t push force-take-force Jason even an inch, it would result in blood and a packmate lost—again, for Dick and Bruce. 

But they needed to be said. Jason needed to hear them. Tim wanted to say them. 

“I- Don’t shoot me,” Tim prefaced quietly. He waited. Jason’s lip twitched up into a snarl and then twitched back. He gave Tim the tiniest nod, go ahead. 

Tim swallowed, “I know that I don’t understand it. But I also know that I could help. Dick could help. B, if you wanted, could help. Just being with family helps, and you have a family that wants to help you.” Tim shrugged lamely and whispered, “It’s hard to watch you hurt alone.”

“It’s harder to hurt,” Jason reminded, tone icy.

“I know,” Tim tried to reassure, “I know it’s bad. I know the last one was really rough. I know I’m lucky that I didn’t get the short end of the biological stick. I’m just saying- I want you to know that you have help available to you. I would- I know Dick would too, be overjoyed to do,” Tim fumbled for his words, “Literally anything for you. We can’t make it stop, but we could maybe make it better, easier. If you’d let us.”

Jason looked at Tim with cold, empty eyes. The hairs on the back of his neck tickled. It felt like looking at a dead man. “Jason,” Tim started softly, “If you’d-”

Jason interrupted, “If I’d just let you knotheads fuck me while I’m too wet and stupid to fight back?”

Ice washed down Tim’s spine. 

He felt the sour edge of anger and hurt rise under his skin before he could catch it, saw Jason catch it in the air, and watched his posture tighten in response—defensive. Tim snapped his laptop shut and walked straight out the door seething. 

Betrayal itched at his palms, insult made his checks hot and prickly. His jaw clenched down on the disrespect and the back corners of his mouth soured with hurt. The corners of his eyes stung with bone deep sadness for his person, his packmate. For himself. 

There was nothing Tim could ever do, no words he could ever say, no patience or kindness that he could ever have, that would outweigh his inherent biological threat. And it was agonizing. 

Tim sucked in a slow breath and looked up at the hallway fluorescents, blinking, like he could blame the first prickle of tears on the harsh light. 

His hindbrain instincts were just a signal, according to Bruce and every other expert on the field. Not a demand for action, not a command that must be obeyed, just a biological alert. There was a thin line between falling prey to instinct and completely ignoring it, and Bruce had them living on the tightrope.

Bruce had drilled it into Dick first, and then Tim, that the back half of his alpha brain simplify provided information—data about what he was experiencing. It was Tim’s responsibility not to react to that signal, but instead identify, contextualize, and respond rationally. 

And Tim was able to identify what Jason said as fucking hurtful, an insult to his integrity, and a stab at Tim’s place as safety and pack. 

Unfortunately, he was also able to contextualize it. On average, four out of five in-heat assaults came from pack members, not strangers. Last year’s data showed that 86.8% of domestic assaults were alpha-on-omega. Jason had good, factually-accurate reasons to be cautious, to be defensive.

Tim took a deep breath and shook his hands out. There wasn’t any way to get the acrid scent of hurt and anger off of him before he walked back in, but he could have a level head and a calm presence. He could prove himself as something other than the piece-of-shit hot head Jason was certain all As were. 

Tim walked back into his own apartment and turned the door knob before he closed the door behind him, shutting it as softly as physically possible. He stopped too far away from the living room and looked at Jason. 

Jason’s brows twitched up. “You good?” The cool and collected was a half-assed faux front. He had the worst acting skills out of any of them and everyone knew it.

“Yeah,” Tim lied. And then took a breath and said, “I know the statistics, and I understand that you have every reason to be cautious. But-” Tim’s throat caught. He swallowed and admitted even quieter, “I don’t like that you think I am capable of doing that to anyone, let alone you.”

Jason’s handsome face fell. “Tim,” he whispered.

“I-” Tim shook his head for no reason, “I- I wouldn’t,” he insisted, air desperate, “I would never-”

“Tim,” Jason cut in softly 

Tim took a stilted step forwards, “I’m not- I get it, I do, I just- I would never, not to anyone, let alone you-”

“Come here,” Jason said, sitting up, “I know, Tim, I know. I- Come here. It’s okay, I didn't- just come here-”

uuuuh imagine cuddling.

I'm still working on it! I've got like five different projects that I've been flipping between for the last few months, and this is the only intact chunk of the a/b/o one. I hope you like it! I hope to get a full 30k(ish) a/b/o thing out before the end of the year. It'll probably look really similar to the soulmate au in terms of format.