Chapter Text
Not for the first time, Tim wondered what his father would think of him if only he were alive to see. Jack Drake wouldn’t be impressed, of that Tim was sure. Jack Drake hadn’t been around enough to be all that impressed by anything Tim had accomplished—not even when Jack was alive, when the worst of Tim’s transgressions was sneaking out after a curfew no-one was home to enforce. But would he be disappointed? Would he shake his head and avert his eyes and wonder where he went wrong? Would he point his finger in disgust, let his voice raise in anger as he accused Tim of being different than the son he thought he had raised?
Tim had made many mistakes in his life. Tim had more regrets than the average seventeen-year-old—hell, more than the average fifty-year-old. But lately he’d been outdoing even himself. Lately, each day had been spent simply dealing with the fallout from yet another burning disaster of his own making. Tim was getting so tired of putting out his own fires.
“Mr. Connell?”
Tim’s head shot up to look at the well-dressed woman standing in the doorway. Subtly, he observed: glossy hair done in a tight, professional bun, blouse and pencil skirt prim and nails flawless against the clipboard in her hand. As Tim watched, her manicured fingers flexed slightly against the hard plastic. Discomfort, maybe. The slight pinch of the skin between her brows confirmed it.
“Yes?” Tim asked, the muscles in his calves already tensed to stand and his palms slightly sweaty from mounting nerves.
“I’m afraid children aren’t allowed inside.”
Tim didn’t bite his lip, but it was a near thing, the impulse squashed only by years of training himself to hide his reactions. That control helped in the boardroom at Wayne Enterprises just as much as it helped him calmly stare down the barrel of a gun while he was wearing the cape.
“I couldn’t get a sitter,” he said, as calmly and defenselessly as he could. The woman looked like she was struggling somewhere between distaste and pity.
“Perhaps we should reschedule,” she suggested.
“Look,” Tim said, and forced the emotion from his voice and his ass to remain in its seat to avoid seeming confrontational, “I really need this job. I can’t afford to reschedule for the same reason I couldn’t afford the sitter. He’s well-behaved and napping right now. We could still do the interview.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Connell.”
It was a dismissal, so Tim swallowed and rose to his feet. If the woman offered anything else, suggested rescheduling again perhaps, he didn’t hear. There was a rushing in his ears that drowned out all other sound as he shouldered his bag and gingerly lifted the baby carrier from its spot in the seat beside him. Carter was still sleeping, his face soft and relaxed and so very trusting; vulnerable. Tim pressed his mouth into a thin line and strode from the building without a backwards glance.
Sometime later, as Tim pressed his hip into the door of his motel room and nudged his way inside, he decided: Jack Drake would be more than disappointed in him.
As Tim gently set the baby carrier down and deposited himself more roughly into the only chair in the cramped, messy room, he decided: Bruce Wayne would be, too. But Tim had always known that part, of course. Tim knew Bruce better than he’d ever known Jack and had never needed to ponder that half of the parental disappointment equation. From the very moment he’d started down the path that had led him to that motel room, Tim had known exactly what Bruce’s reaction would be. And yet he’d still gone down that path—practically sprinted in his desperation even. That, above anything, was probably the worst of his offenses.
As Tim dropped his head into his hands, he decided: there wasn’t a single person he cared about that he hadn’t disappointed. His parents, his friends, his family; he’d ruined it all. Even Carter, who was developmentally about fourteen months old but who had drawn breath for scarcely two weeks, must surely already be disappointed. He was the one most impacted by Tim’s mistakes. He was the one with formula running low, with diapers running out, with a caretaker who had no idea what he was doing.
Tim didn’t cry, as much as he wanted to, as much as the situation probably called for it. Instead, he lifted his head as if it weighed as heavily as the baggage on his shoulders and pulled his notebook over to cross the company name off his list. There were others there, but not many. The crossed-off names outnumbered the hopefuls.
As flawless as his resume was, fibbed but with an official-looking paper-trail to make the lies stick, they all took one look at Tim; clean but slightly rumpled from late nights, clothes ironed but ill-fitted, and decided he wasn’t worth the trouble. His only suit now was rented, a far cry from the selection of pristinely tailored wealth markers he had hanging up at his penthouse apartment in Gotham. Somehow, the Armani suit hadn’t been on his list of essentials when he’d left the place behind. Just another regret to add to the pile.
It didn’t help that he always came with a baby. No company wanted to hire a guy that looked years younger than the age he’d provided, in a clearly rented suit with a child in his arms. He screamed “young, desperate single dad”, or maybe “dead-beat on the run who may or may not have stollen that child”. Tim supposed he couldn’t blame them for turning him away.
A few steps away, Carter made a small noise in his carrier. It was one he recognized, and Tim leapt to his feet and crossed over just in time to see the baby’s face scrunch in displeasure. With Robin speed, he unbuckled the kid from the carrier and lifted him into his arms. The motion still felt awkward, but he hadn’t dropped Carter yet and Tim counted that as a win. It was a low bar, but he needed as many victories as he could get.
“Shh, shh,” Tim soothed as he rocked the child in his arms. Sure enough, Carter had started to wail. “It’s okay, I’m here.”
No smell, so the diaper wasn’t dirty. Tim glanced at the clock; the interview would have just been finishing if he’d been given the chance to carry it out. He always scheduled his interviews around Carter’s mealtimes to avoid showing professionals a fussy baby as much as he could, so it wasn’t quite feeding time yet.
“Did you have a nightmare?” he finally asked, voice pitched low in sympathy and no small amount of guilt. Carter’s sleep was hardly sound—already he’d seen and heard too much for it to probably ever be. Just another mistake, just another disappointment. Already, Tim had irrevocably damaged his psyche.
Carter wailed in reply, and Tim tucked the child close to his chest and fought the tears that threatened to fill his own eyes. He couldn’t let them fall, didn’t deserve to. Only Carter deserved to cry, so Tim whispered soothing nonsense into his tiny ear and hoped the warmth of his arms would be enough to console him. Carter cried for several awful minutes, until his tears had turned to hiccups and then, blissfully, to the gentle sounds of sleep. Tim held him close through it all, shoulders shaking but eyes stubbornly dry.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, even as the tiny hand Carter had fisted around his tie loosened in sleep, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Not for the first time, Tim wished it were his own father whispering those words.
Not for the first time, Tim wished he could believe them.
‘I know your secret.’
It was with only slightly trembling hands that Red Robin disabled the alarm, opened the latch on the dirty window and soundlessly slipped inside. The building looked abandoned, but he knew better. The warning had been a threat, and the League always made good on those.
As Red Robin slunk through the makeshift lab, heart in his throat, he listened. The only sounds were the faint hum of monitors, the gentle crackle of electricity, the soft bubble of liquid: all familiar. But Red Robin couldn’t count himself lucky yet and did not rise from his crouched position as he edged through the lab. With the League, one could never be too careful. He’d learned that lesson more than painfully and more than once.
His goal was further in the lab, and Red Robin made his way as quickly and carefully as he could around tables and equipment until he spotted it: the glass case of green liquid, illuminated sickly in the dim light. The sight of it always made his heart clench with grief and regret, but it was the visage of the man standing in front of it that felt like a true blow to the gut.
Red Robin straightened before he could finish reminding himself to stay low to keep the element of surprise, distracted as he was by the feeling of his heart hammering in his chest as he struggled to make out the form bundled in the man’s arms.
“Ah, Detective.” Ra’s al Ghul’s eyes pierced him at once and froze him in place. The man loomed large and imposing, the image of him so out of place as he gently rocked the bundle in his arms. “So nice of you to join us.”
“Ra’s,” Robin said, voice weak in a way he never allowed himself to be in front of that man. He struggled to steady it. “Get away from him.”
“Now, now, Detective,” Ra’s said, and finally looked down at the bundle of cloth—the child. “At least allow me a moment. It has been so long since last I held an heir like this.”
Heir.
Tim’s heart leapt to his throat.
‘I know your secret.’
“He’s not your heir. Get away from him now, Ra’s!”
In the next moment, there was a bo in his hands and his legs were splayed to fight. Ra’s posture remained unhurried and unconcerned.
“He is mine now. I will have this child for an heir.”
“I’ll give you anything you want,” Tim said, with rising panic, “I’ll give you me. You can have me, Ra’s.”
Ra’s finally peered up at him but did not turn his head. The action was dismissive, disinterested.
“What interest do I have with you now, Detective?” Ra’s bounced the child with surprising care, eyes downcast upon its face again. “I know what he is; a child with your intellect and Superman’s strength. A perfect specimen.” Ra’s eyes lifted back up to meet his. The green of his irises were Lazarus pits all their own, pulling him in with sharp and vicious claws.
‘I know your secret.’
“You’re wrong,” Tim whispered. The lights were dimming, his vision tunneling. All that was left was the sight of Ra’s, cradling the child. The child, reaching hands up—no, over toward Tim.
“You know better than to lie to me so blatantly, Detective. Have I not now all but returned to you your father? As payment, I shall have your son.”
“I’ve paid my debts,” Tim said. His voice shook. “You can’t have him.”
“Whyever not? It is not as if you wanted the babe. You have left him here all alone for so long. I am practically his savior, and he will know me as such. Together, he and I shall rule this world.”
It felt like losing Kon all over again—this child that Tim had left frozen for fear of his own hand in its creation had simultaneously meant nothing and yet everything to him at once while he’d been none the wiser.
“You can’t have him!” Tim roared, but when he charged forward to grab the squirming bundle in Ra’s arms, he passed right through until all he gripped was cloth. When he looked down, a red shield caught his eye. Red against black.
So, so much red.
Red that dripped down his arms.
Red that stained his skin.
Red that meant death.
Tim awoke with a gasp to the sound of crying. He was on his feet in an instant, hand itching for his bo and eyes desperately blinking away the remnants of sleep. He was so sure the shadows were moving, so ready to feel bodies and blades press in against his skin. Instead, the wailing of a child echoing in a small room. In a moment, it all came rushing back: the lab, Ra’s, Carter.
Carter.
The child was wailing like his world was ending, deep and desperate as if he were so sure no-one was coming. Tim stumbled over to his crude bassinet and reached inside. Immediately, tiny fists clung to him. Tim lifted Carter to his chest and pressed his face against the beginnings of soft black curls and took a moment to breathe and calm his racing heart.
“Just a dream,” he whispered against the child’s hair, to himself as much as to the sobbing toddler, “It was just a dream.”
If a few tears finally squeezed out from his clenched eyes, there was no one to call him out for it. Just him and Carter, all alone.
The next morning, as Tim handed Carter his bottle, he stared at the dwindling supply of food with a mounting sense of unease. When he’d gotten on the bus that would ferry him away from his old life, now more than two weeks ago, he’d left with nothing but a single bag and Carter secured against his chest in a sling. Money had been a priority, of course, but he’d been so painfully aware of the circumstances of his departure. It would have been too suspicious to take out too much, it would have alerted someone that he was leaving and not coming back. For his ruse to work, no one could know where he’d gone. For Carter’s safety, Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne couldn’t just access his overflowing bank account whenever and wherever he wanted.
For Carter’s safety, Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne no longer existed, and the man that had taken his place, Thomas Connell, certainly did not have a black credit card handy.
He’d started with a few thousand dollars, the most he’d thought a billionaire’s adopted son ought to have taken out on a random Tuesday for daily expenditure. He’d thought he could stretch it, and he had. But a few thousand dollars evidently did not last long when there were motel rooms and baby carriers and diapers and formula to buy. Already, he was down to his last two hundred bucks.
Tim wet his lips and worried at the skin of a knuckle as he ran through his mental checklist for the third time that morning. Their only saving grace was the fact that he’d pre-paid the motel room for another week. They wouldn’t yet be homeless, but he couldn’t afford to run out of Carter’s food in the meantime.
It was with panic nipping at his heels and Carter happily sucking at his bottle that Tim opened the previous day’s newspaper and flipped to the classifieds. There wasn’t much to write home about, less that he was qualified to do. Tim circled whatever seemed even passably viable and relieved Carter of his empty bottle. Then he finished their morning routine: a bath and change for Carter and a quick comb through tangled hair and iron of his only rented suit for Tim. He’d run out of his oatmeal packets a few days ago, so breakfast was the terrible instant coffee provided by the motel that he gulped down too quickly to taste. It somehow still lingered.
Then they were off to the last two companies on his ‘hopefuls’ list: both jobs well-paying and in IT. The first took one look at Carter and denied having an appointment scheduled for him. The second begrudgingly allowed him in for the interview.
Tim left in a rush when Carter woke with a start halfway through, wailing so loudly that the interviewer snapped at Tim to “shut that kid up” without even trying to sound apologetic afterwards. He was shaking as he left, his desire to scream back at the men in fitted business suits reigned in with monumental force. Yelling would only make Carter more agitated, even if it would make Tim feel marginally better. In the end, it would just end up as another regret in the pile.
A few hours later found Tim in the corner of the library, public computer open to information on the jobs he’d circled that morning that he really had no experience with. Carter was fussy, his crying fit from earlier having upset his stomach, and Tim had to pause what felt like every few minutes to rock and console him. There were other people milling about, shooting him dirty looks whenever Carter would start his whimpering up again. Normally, Tim might have felt a shred of remorse for having disturbed them, but it was hard to feel anything through his fatigue. It was an exhaustion he felt deep in his bones, the kind of weariness that made him feel fifty instead of seventeen, that made him wonder what he was doing and why he kept trying, why he kept falling and picking himself back up.
But he knew why, so when Carter started up again, loud enough that several patrons stopped trying to hide their displeasure, Tim jotted down the last of his notes and dragged himself from his chair.
Carter cried all the way back to the motel. Tim didn’t bother trying to shush him, though he did gently tip the carrier back and forth to offer some semblance of comfort. Sometimes, tears were an appropriate reaction. How could Tim convince this child that there was no reason to cry when he felt like breaking down right there with him?
Dinner was more formula and some soft peas for Carter, who was technically old enough to start sampling solid food. For Tim, a packet of ramen he let soften in the not-quite-hot-enough water of the coffee maker. The texture and the taste were awful in equal measure, but Carter giggled while Tim stooped to gather up his fallen peas and it was hard to be annoyed when those otherworldly blue eyes sparkled like that. If Carter could still giggle, maybe cold, soggy ramen was an acceptable sacrifice.
That night, as he was tucking the child into his bassinet, Tim pressed a gentle kiss to a chubby cheek. Small hands tugged on his hair, and Tim breathed a quiet laugh against smooth baby skin.
When the formula ran out, Tim let himself panic. He still had a little money, but the long and short of it was that there wasn’t enough to feed them both for much longer even with Tim choking down instant ramen for every vital meal. Already he’d been pushing it, giving Carter exactly what he needed to survive and letting his own weight drop in the interim. As admittedly neglectful as his parents had been, they had always provided him with a roof and enough food to be comfortable. Cheap instant noodles were the stuff of stakeouts, the sort of food he ate when holing up at one of Dick’s safehouses away from Alfred’s prying eyes. Even when he’d just moved out and his depression had been at its worst, Alfred had always made sure he ate enough to maintain muscle mass while he’d still been in the city.
Galivanting around the world with the League hadn’t had many comforts, but at least then he’d known it was temporary. At least there had always been someone around who even vaguely cared that he ate enough to keep moving.
Now, it was just him. Him, but not even him that was Tim Drake-Wayne. Not him that was Robin—Red or otherwise. Him that was someone else entirely: Thomas Connell, a twenty-year-old who pursued higher education at NYU but who gave up the city life to live in suburban Canada and take care of his young son. Thomas Connell had no family, no friends, no home, and no food.
Tim shut the door to the empty mini fridge and sat back against his heels. He’d left most of his possessions in Gotham, laptop and phone included. Anything with a GPS had been considered a liability. Even his wallet had been left behind in his apartment, save for an ID under a different fake name and a single line of credit. As far as he knew, no one knew about the account—he certainly had never said anything about it to Bruce and hadn’t opened it under his legal name anyway. But the downside to being raised by the World’s Greatest Detective and his gaggle of orphaned protégés was that privacy was all but unheard of. Surely someone knew about it. Surely someone was monitoring it, watching and waiting for Tim to slip up and reveal himself.
Assuming any of his family was looking for him, anyway. Now that the indisputable evidence of Bruce’s survival had undoubtedly gotten back to them, they were probably too busy preparing to expend much effort on the certifiable second-youngest with a recent penchant for disappearing.
But Ra’s, he reminded himself, was just as capable as any Bat. For all Tim knew, Ra’s knew about the line. For all Tim knew, using it would be inviting Ra’s right to their borrowed door.
He had terrible instant coffee for breakfast again. At the store, he grabbed as much formula as he could and another couple packs of ramen. The change wouldn’t even pay his way onto a bus. Tim pressed trembling fingers against Carter’s back, secure as he was in the sling against his chest, and dragged himself to the library.
As book smart as Tim was, he had never spent so much time in libraries before. When he was particularly young and couldn’t yet order whatever he wanted online, the librarians had frowned to see him there alone. They expected him to have supervision, and after hours without a notable guardian they tended to ask probing questions that made it clear he wasn’t really welcome. When he was slightly older and his presence wouldn’t have been questioned so much, he’d had his parents’ credit card and unfettered access to the internet. So, the library, to him, had never been that special.
But there, in that small town in suburban Canada, miles and miles away from any home he’d ever had before, the library was a life raft happily bobbing in the frigid ocean.
Tim sat in front of the public computer and poured over job postings. The local fast-food joint was hiring. Tim yanked his fibbed college experience from his resume and applied. A well-paying job in IT would have been ideal, would have used a skillset Tim actually possessed, and would have let him work remotely so he could keep an eye on Carter, but he could flip burgers and pretend to like people if it meant the kid didn’t starve.
Most of the jobs he applied for never contacted him back. Tim checked his email on the public computer every day between fresh applications to be sure. When he couldn’t hog the desktop for any longer that day, or Carter had outstayed their welcome, he would sit in front of the motel room phone and make follow-up calls that made him feel even more desperate but that Jack would have said were a vital part of the job search. As if Jack had ever had a 9-5 and knew what the market was like.
He only had two nights left at the motel. Two nights, two bottles of formula, a single packet of ramen, and $2.40 in his wallet. Canada used coins instead of bills for the two-dollar part and didn’t use pennies at all. Tim could get behind that, because pennies really were a flawed part of the system for sure, but it made him feel like he had even less.
At his side, lounging in the crude bassinet in the middle of the motel room, Carter waved the cheap TV remote in his little hand with a small noise of contentment. Tim stared at the room phone and worried the skin of his knuckle until all he could taste was metal.
Metal, like the four coins that made up $2.40 sitting in his spare wallet.
Dick’s cell was a number he’d long memorized. It would be so easy to dial it, to pretend the last conversation he’d had with his brother hadn’t been an argument about Bruce and about Damian and about the state of Tim’s mind. It would be so easy to let a little emotion bleed through his voice, just enough to appeal to Dick’s brotherly instinct so they could both pretend they were still on speaking terms. If Tim called, asked Dick with a slight waver to please wire him some money, he was sure his brother would do it. Even if he was distracted by his newer, littler brother and his father-figure’s rapidly approaching date of retrieval, Dick would do it.
But Ra’s probably watched Dick’s accounts too. Ra’s was probably watching Dick’s call history. Was any of that possible? Tim was running on so little food and sleep he could hardly piece together enough coherent thought to be sure.
The TV remote went sailing across the room. It landed with a thump against the stained carpet, out of reach. There was a beat of silence afterward, the calm before the storm. Then, the wailing of a displeased toddler. Tim released the angry skin of his knuckle from between his teeth and stood with only a small wave of dizziness.
“I’ll get it, Carter. It’s okay.”
Returning the remote didn’t make the tears go away. Tim had to pick Carter up and walk around the room, rocking and humming nonsense for more than several minutes before the kid finally seemed to realize he wasn’t in pain or danger and his caretaker was with him. When that realization did come, Carter calmed and sighed. The toddler’s wide blue eyes lowered in fatigue, but when Tim tried to put him down to sleep, he clung to Tim’s shirt so tightly Tim was forced to bring the kid to his bed and lay down with him. Just for a few minutes, he decided.
It was several hours later that he woke up.
Dick would have still been awake. On patrol, maybe, with Damian-as-Robin at his side. Or perhaps sitting in front of the bat-computer, pouring over Tim’s notes on Bruce for the nth time. He would give Tim the money if only he called and asked for it.
Tim unplugged the phone.
At the library the next day, Tim checked his emails.
‘Thank you for your application. Expect to hear back within ten business days.’
‘Thank you for your application. Unfortunately, we have offered the position to someone else.’
‘Thank you for your application. If you are chosen for an interview, you will be contacted.’
Not even the local fast-food joint was desperate enough to get back to him so soon. Tim swallowed and dropped his head into his hands. Jack and Janet Drake wouldn’t even recognize him. They would take one look at Thomas Connell, sitting in a public library while fighting to keep from breaking down, and would wonder what had become of their son. The son that they’d left in their empty house as if he were a collectible, content to collect dust on a shelf.
There was a right answer to that question, of course: the question of what had become of the person once known as Tim Drake. There were reasons for the mess that was his life, for the mess that was Tim Drake turned Tim Wayne turned Tom Connell.
All his life, whether he was sitting in a big empty house or clambering up dirty Gotham buildings with a camera or swinging through the air on a line, he’d thought himself self-sufficient. Independent. He’d wanted his parents’ presence, sure. He’d wanted Batman’s approval. But he hadn’t needed it.
When Carter started to whimper, maybe more aware of Tim’s emotional state than he’d previously given the kid credit for, Tim realized something pretty damn important.
He had needed it. He really, really needed it. He needed his parents to come home early from their dig or their business venture and stay home for longer than a week, needed them to hold him and ask him about his day and remember the little things he told them. Needed them not to have died.
More even than that, he needed Bruce Wayne. Jack had been his father, but Bruce was his dad. Bruce was the one who’d come home, who held him even if it was rarely, who asked about school and patrol and who remembered throw-away facts about his life. But Bruce had still gone. Bruce was still gone. Bruce was hurtling through time at that very moment and Tim Wayne needed nothing more than to be the one to bring him home, to be the first person Bruce saw when he got back, to be the one Bruce looked at with gratitude in his eyes. He needed Bruce to pull him to his chest and hold him tighter than he ever had before.
“It’s okay,” he needed Bruce to say.
“It’s okay,” Tom Connell said instead to Carter as the child’s small whimpers grew louder. The words cracked on the tail end of a sob that he stifled against bloody knuckles.
“Hey, are you alright?” The voice was so sudden and so near, Tim startled and couldn’t help but mentally kick himself for being caught so unaware. He was always supposed to stay on alert, with Ra’s looking for Carter. But he was so damn exhausted all the time, it seemed even civilians could sneak up on him.
There was a woman standing nearby: mid to late-twenties, dark skin, tightly curled hair, wire-framed glasses, ears pierced twice on both sides, clothes casual, a nametag pinned to the front of a buttoned shirt that read: Rose. Tim had seen her around the library frequently but had never spoken to her before. Her body language was wary, but the concern in her eyes seemed genuine.
“Yeah,” Tim croaked, and subtly wiped at his eyes. Real smooth. Carter was still whimpering slightly, so Tim cleared his throat and nodded in his direction. “Sorry, I know he’s been pretty fussy. I just really need the computer.”
“You’re here a lot,” Rose said, conversationally but like she was building up to say something else.
Tim swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
The question threw him. Tim hadn’t been to school in so long he sometimes forgot it was a compulsory thing.
“I’m twenty,” he lied, “and graduated,” he lied again.
“Okay,” Rose said. She didn’t seem to believe him but also probably didn’t care that much. Carter’s subtle whimpering was starting to become a little louder, a little more choked. She added, “The kid’s probably hungry.”
Tim looked at the tiny clock on the desktop and felt his heart sink. It was absolutely time for Carter to eat. There was a bottle of formula in his bag, at least. The last bottle of formula. Another wave of tears misted his eyes and Tim covered his face before he could embarrass himself too badly in front of a stranger.
“Right.” His voice still sounded wrecked, like he’d torn his throat on gravel. Or like he was about to start sobbing in the middle of a public library in the middle of a town literally named Happy in the middle of who-cares-where, Canada. Tim bit his knuckle to keep all that contained and hoped Rose would just awkwardly edge away while he wasn’t looking.
Sure enough, there was the sound of shifting fabric that signaled movement. When the sound got closer instead of farther away, Tim forced his head out of his hands to watch warily as Rose pulled up a seat and sat nearby.
“Do you have something handy for him? My shift just ended so I can hold the computer for you if you need to go grab food from somewhere.”
Wordlessly, Tim fished the bottle from his bag. Carter was good at holding it, but Tim guided it to his mouth and held it steady for a few seconds anyway. His eyes were still misty, and he knew for sure that the way he wiped them was far from subtle the second time.
“I know it’s none of my business,” Rose said, and Tim desperately wanted her to stop talking, “but you don’t look like you’re doing okay.”
Tim wondered what gave it away. Was it the hastily combed hair? The blood-shot eyes framed by dark circles? The same pair of jeans and unwashed hoody he’d worn nearly every time he’d come to the library the past three weeks? Or maybe just the tears he’d done a stellar time hiding.
Rose didn’t wait for him to lie again. “You don’t know me, but I have to ask. Do you need help?”
Tim swallowed roughly and watched Carter suck at his bottle. He was so small, so trusting, so very vulnerable. If Tim were alone, maybe he’d let himself be self-sufficient and independent to the grave, denying the things he needed until it was too late to get them like he always did. But Carter was right there beside him. Carter was just a baby, an innocent bystander in the dumpster fire that was Tim’s life.
So, “Yes,” Tim admitted, soft and fragile and wrecked, “I really do.”
Rose took Tim to a little Mom-and-Pop around the corner that served breakfast until dinner. Tim ordered a water and insisted he was fine for food, but when his stomach outed him with a misplaced growl, Rose ordered two plates of eggs with a pointed look aimed in his direction.
As the server wandered away, Tim slumped in his cushioned seat. Carter was squirming in his highchair but settled quickly enough when Tim reached over to offer the kid his hand. The lack of toys and pacifiers Tim had to occupy him with had never made him feel like such a failure until there was someone else around to notice. Thankfully, Rose didn’t comment on it.
“So,” she said instead, “what’s your story, Tom?”
Tim winced. Of course, he’d come up with a backstory: that he’d been studying computer science at NYU, but left early and immediately moved to Happy, Ontario to take care of his young son. His partner was dead, his family estranged, but he really was a nice and hardworking young man that would be a great asset to any company, Scout’s honor.
It was easy enough to put the basics of that in a resume, to lie to a man in a suit that was undoubtedly lying to him too. To sit and spew it all to Rose—who had picked him up out of the trash purely out of the goodness of her heart—felt different. Slimy.
But Tim was used to lying with a straight face, both to people that deserved it and to those that didn’t. So he said his piece, put the appropriate inflection where it belonged, and told himself the choked quality to his voice was part of the ruse and not because it really was close enough to his painful truth to cut him to the quick.
“I’m homeless tomorrow,” he finished with a soft, incredulous laugh that was only a little hysterical. Was that a victory? He decided to count it as one. “Guess I overestimated how much sway Carter’s cute face would have on stuffy businessmen. I’ve been looking for a job for weeks.”
He really didn’t want to look at Rose, but when their plates of eggs and bacon and toast were set in front of them, he chanced a glance in her direction. She was looking at him with so much sympathy Tim couldn’t hope to meet her eyes for longer than a moment.
“Sounds like you’ve had a hard time.”
“Yeah.”
Tim felt like his stomach was tearing itself in two, but he didn’t touch his eggs. Rose didn’t either.
“There’s a youth center,” Rose suggested quietly. “I know you said you’re twenty but, let’s face it, you look sixteen. I’m sure they wouldn’t turn you away.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t let me keep Carter, either.”
Rose had nothing to say about that. Neither of them touched their eggs. Carter was still pulling at Tim’s fingers. The tension was so thick, Tim imagined chucking a birdarang at it just to hear the satisfying thunk.
Finally, Rose sighed, and then straightened with a firm nod. “You can come to my place.” Her voice was surprisingly confident. A moment later, she picked up her fork and speared a section of egg as if the matter were resolved.
All at once, the tension seemed cleared. Tim gaped at the woman across from him.
“Are you sure?” His voice was barely above a whisper.
“Am I sure? Yes. Am I sane? That remains to be seen.” Rose let the fork relax against her plate. “But you admitted you need help, and what kind of help would I be if I said ‘tough’ and walked away?”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Tim reminded her.
“That’s true enough,” Rose agreed, “But I’m the one that noticed you were struggling. I’m the one that asked you if you needed someone. Now that I know you don’t have anyone to rely on right now, it’s only right that I be that person. At least for a few days.”
Tim sucked in a steadying breath. He looked at Carter, innocent and trusting as he drooled on Tim’s outstretched hand. The black hair on his head was starting to curl, loose and bittersweet. The blue eyes that turned to meet his were so vibrant Tim’s heart ached.
“Just for a few days.” Tim turned his attention back to Rose, who was watching him with soft brown eyes. He wondered if she had imagined love on his face as he looked at the child she perceived as his son. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it, kid.” Rose smiled and pointed her fork at him in a gesture he assumed was meant to look menacing. “Now eat your eggs.”
Reluctantly, Tim grabbed his fork with his free hand. The eggs weren’t the best he’d ever tasted, but after weeks of nothing but soggy instant noodles, it was a near thing.
Sorry, Alfred.