Chapter Text
This. This is what a baby mer should be: curious, energetic, and absolutely adorable. Dick takes a deep breath and kneels down in the saltwater pool as he holds both arms out. He just catches Tim’s muted tailfins out of the corner of his eye, and his fingertips just barely brush Tim’s side. He hears the mer’s excited squeals of delight, and then something pinches Dick’s calf. He stands up, shakes his hair out his eyes, and then pulls his goggles off.
“No biting,” Dick says firmly as he wags his index finger at Tim who lurks just below the surface of the water and out of reach. “I don’t have a wetsuit on. No biting.” Dick wants to sound angrier because Tim’s little nibble is going to probably bruise, but Tim’s just so cute and tiny and- Dick feels his mouth turn up, and Tim dives down into the pool once he’s flipped his tail out of the water. This is what Dick missed out on; a happy, healthy, itty bitty mer baby.
“Just wait until you have to feed him,” Bruce warns from his pool chair.
“But he’s so cute,” Dick gushes. He never got to experience Tim as a playful baby, just a sickly infant. “I bet he’ll eat anything I give him.”
Bruce rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses. “He was a picky eater as a baby. And most of time, he ended up regurgitating his food.” Bruce shudders. “Alfred remembers. Right, Alfred?”
Alfred just nods from beneath his umbrella where he’s been steadily working through his crossword puzzle with input from Jason who’s spread out on his back with his swim shorts rolled up for maximum sun exposure. He’s fast asleep now, but he had been helpful earlier in the day.
“I will have no part in feeding Tim,” Alfred says distractedly as he pencils in another word. “I did my time, and so did Master Bruce. Never again. I’d sooner let Tim starve until that nasty bit of magic wears off before trying to feed him.”
Dick looks at the mer who’s spinning circles around an inflatable duck toy. “How much trouble could he be?”
Bruce just chuckles darkly, mutters something about wearing a bib, and then leans back in his chair.
Tim starts to tucker out before lunch, and Dick wraps him up in a cold, damp towel before heading for the kitchen, mer tucked beneath one arm like a football.
“Bruce and Alfred said you were such a fuss to feed,” Dick says as he grabs a bag of fake crabmeat from the fridge.
He sets Tim, towel and all, on the counter before heading for one of the deep sinks. He turns the water on, makes sure it’s cool, and then clicks the button to turn the stream of water into a rainspout. He sits Tim beneath the water and smirks at the door that leads out to the patio; who do Alfred and Bruce think he is? He can understand Jason maybe struggling to feed the baby mer, but Dick’s works at an aquarium: feeding babies is literally in his job description.
“Alright, Tim snack time,” Dick says as he tears a strip of Pollock-crab mix into a much more manageable size. “Come on, food.”
Tim turns his nose up at the offered fish and goes so far as to hiss and snap at Dick when the food gets closer to his mouth. Dick quickly retreats, shocked. Tim rolls around in the sink with a quiet chirp.
“Alright, alright, fine. There’s plenty of other snacks for you,” Dick says. “We’ll find something you like.”
Tim eats a piece of baked salmon so quickly that Dick almost loses a finger, but Tim vomits it all up seconds later. Dick tries pacing him, giving him bites at a time, but Tim starts to cough and gag and then pink and white mush begins to ooze out his gills. Dick has to grab the spout and carefully wash Tim until he’s no longer choking.
“I need help,” Dick admits to Bruce and Alfred; he’s not about to waste two hours trying to feed Tim. He already gets to do that at work, but at least he gets paid to get puked on. “He keeps vomiting everything I give him, even when I feed him slowly.”
Bruce pulls his sunglasses off, offers a grin, and then closes his hand into a fist. He and Alfred first bump in the air, and then Bruce settles back into his chair.
“There’s an eyedropper in the cabinet to the left of the sink in the junk drawer. Shove some fish, no fake crab, into the blender with warm water and a pinch of salt. Tim should get one full eye dropper every fifteen minutes. Any sooner, and he’ll most likely spit up.”
Dick rocks Tim in his arms. “How long did it take you to figure that out?”
Bruce groans. Alfred huffs. “Too long.”
Jason wakes up shortly after Tim’s been fed and Dick is settling him into some type of floating pool basket that consists of a salad spinner, pool noodle, and what seems to be copious amounts of barge cement. It’s clearly old, and the pool noodle glued around the rim of the salad spinner is starting to peel off. Jason just stares at Bruce and then motions with one hand. Bruce doesn’t notice.
“What the fuck is that?” Jason asks while Dick deposits the mer into the basket and then gives it a little push into the pool.
Tim grabs onto the noodle and pulls his head above the lip of it, but Bruce whistles sharply at him, and Tim dunks himself. Jason get up and watches Tim curl himself up into a little ball.
“I was scared he’d get sucked into the filter if he fell asleep,” Bruce says distractedly as Alfred passes him the crossword puzzle. “I wanted to be able to keep an eye on him while Alfred and I gardened.”
“So you glued a pool noodle to a salad spinner?” Jason asks. “You couldn’t have gotten him any type of actual pool toy or one of those mesh floating chairs?”
“Tim likes sleeping in enclosed spaces,” Bruce continues while he pencils in a word. “I think it’s a safety thing. Dick, make sure you put the top on. I don’t want Tim getting burned or some bird thinking they get an easy meal.”
Dick sighs, but he swims out to the basket and puts the top on. He peeks through one of the holes and finds Tim staring back at him, but he’s only got one eye open and it’s nearly shut.
“You two live very, very strange lives,” Jason tells Bruce and Alfred.
“It was weirder when Tim got too big for the tank,” Bruce explains. “He spent almost two months in the bathtub. I kept forgetting he was in there when I went to go take a shower. It was horrifying.”
Tim gets caught in a little current beneath the diving board, but Bruce assures Jason and Dick that he’ll be fine and that they can take a break and get some lunch for themselves: Tim’s perfectly capable of getting the top off by himself and dragging himself to the kitchen. Or he’ll just cry until someone comes back out.
Dick and Jason start throwing foam footballs at one another after lunch. Headshots are perfectly legal, but Dick’s too focused on grabbing the nearest toy and hurling it at Jason to notice that the oblong thing he grabs next is slippery and alive. Tim gets thrown across the pool, hits the side of Jason’s head, and then flops into the water. Jason shouts, puts a hand to his head, and Dick freezes and covers his mouth with both his hands while Tim surfaces and begins to squeal. Jason grabs the mer in one hand while Bruce jumps into the pool.
“Let me see, let me see.”
“I’m okay,” Jason says as he prods the skin next to his eyebrow. “He’s pretty squish-“ Jason cuts off short and stares while Bruce takes the mer in both his hands and cradles him against his chest.
“Hush, hush, let me see.” Bruce holds the mer up with one hand around Tim’s torso and the other at the end of his tail.
Tim continues to squeal, but it quickly turns to sniffles.
“No bumps, no blood,” Bruce announces. “You’re alright, Tim.”
“Um, what about my skull?” Jason demands while Bruce holds Tim out to Dick who takes him with a gushing apology.
“You’re fine. Tim’s mostly cartilage.” It sounds dismissive. “Tim actually likes being thrown,” Bruce tells Dick. “Alfred and I would play catch using him. You just startled him is all.”