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Someone is yelling.
Tim’s eyelids flutter, a groan caught low in his throat.
“ -Bin!”
A leathery hand presses against his cheek. He cracks his eyes open, awareness slowly expanding outside of himself.
“B?” he rasps.
A dim street light glares in the left half of his vision like a lingering camera flash. Squinting does little to limit the stab of it.
A dark, pointy-eared shadow shifts to loom over him more completely. The hand on his cheek shifts to his forehead, cupping partially over his eyes to block the light, which he hugely appreciates.
“B, what - ?” he mumbles, and, oh, holy shit Batman, his head is killing him.
He tries to poke blindly at himself to figure out why his skull is trying to crawl out through his temple, but Bruce quickly grabs his hand before he can accidentally jab himself in the eye. “Don’t,” he grunts.
Tim freezes, obedience in the face of that tone engrained in him even when he doesn’t know which way is up.
“You’re okay,” Bruce says, words which would be a lot more comforting if he wasn’t still growling them in full I am vengeance, I am the night mode.
What’s got your ears in a twist? Tim tries to say. He’s pretty sure what actually comes out is a very sassy gurgle.
Bruce touches the side of Tim’s mask, the faint opacity of his lenses disappearing with a barely-there click.
Tim blinks trustingly up at the blank white lenses gazing down at him. The hand moves down his face.
And then betrays him by shoving an icepick through his eyes.
Tim yelps, jerking to get away from the stabbing penlight, the movement making the agony in his head flare hot and bright.
The light clicks off again quickly. It takes long seconds more for the pain to start to recede.
“You’re okay,” Bruce repeats, cupping his cheek to steady his head and keep him from moving any more.
The warmth of his hand through the leather is soothing, making him feel a little less like he’s spinning. Tim leans into the touch.
“You have a concussion. Do you remember what happened?”
At this new angle, his gaze settles past Bruce, on the three drunken dipshits now unconscious and zip tied on the alley ground.
A marginally more dignified position than he last remembers seeing them in. At least now they’re not trying to shoot each other and repeatedly missing from five feet away.
“Did one of them hit me?” Tim asks, putting the pieces together and deeply affronted by the picture they paint.
Bruce grimaces. “One of them threw a bottle at your head.”
Tim picks his head up slightly to stare at him. “And he hit me?”
The corners of Bruce’s grimace twitch upwards. “A testament to his luck, not your skill,” he says, leaning back and giving Tim space to awkwardly sit up.
“His luck or mine?” Tim mutters.
This time, Bruce doesn’t stop him from reaching up to gingerly prod at the side of his head where the pain is centered. He lets out a soft hiss when he finds the goose egg. His fingers come away tacky.
“Ow,” he says, rather pointlessly. He’s suddenly aware of the wetness cooling down the side of his neck, drying his hair into sticky clumps.
A bundle of bandages is pressed into his palm. Tim accepts them gratefully, the fabric quickly dampens between his fingers when he presses it against his head.
“Head wounds bleed disproportionately,” Bruce says quietly.
“I know,” Tim mutters.
And he does know - he wouldn’t exactly say he’s scared right now.
But the sensation of the bandages growing warm and damp at a rate that keeps pace with the pulse of his heart is an unsettling one.
He’ll blame the disorientation for why he allows himself to lean into Bruce’s supportive hands, even though he should really be quicker to reassure him that he’s fine - it was just a little bump.
It always affects Bruce a lot to see his Robin taken down. This is probably hurting Bruce a lot more than it is Tim.
“It’s not that bad,” Tim mumbles as Bruce tilts his chin to the side again to study his pupils in the light from the street. “I was only unconscious for a few seconds, I think.”
“Hm,” Bruce responds. “Can you stand?”
It turns out he can, though he doesn’t fight off Bruce’s hands when he stubbornly insists on supporting him. He remains at his side all the way to the batmobile, a steadying hand on his elbow.
Tim’s head feels heavy. It’s swimming slightly as he shuffles into the passenger seat, forcing him to move carefully to keep from swaying visibly.
He leans to peer past Bruce, narrowing his eyes spitefully at the men zip tied on the alley ground. “I can help - ”
“You can stay in the car,” Bruce interrupts him. It’s his don’t argue with me, Robin voice. “Keep pressure on that.”
Tim grimaces. But he obeys, pressing the bandages back in place from where he’d started to pull them away.
Bruce closes the passenger door, gently enough that the sound of it slamming isn’t lethal for his headache, and Tim sits back in his seat.
He allows his eyes to half close as he watches Bruce through the window. Batman is none-too-gentle as he lugs the men back to the batmobile and dumps them groaning into the backseat.
He doesn’t bother moving from the somewhat comfy position he’s found, cheek against the cool glass as Bruce gets into the driver’s seat.
He hears the click of one of the compartments under the dash opening. “Is it still bleeding?”
Tim grimaces, pulling the bandages away to dab at it with his fingertips. “Not much,” he responds, relieved. He hates making Alfred clean blood out of the car.
Bruce hums. There’s a plastic, snapping sound. “Put this on it.”
Tim puts out his hand and takes the offered cooling pack Bruce has just activated for him. It feels nice against the pulsing ache that he can tell is going to brew into one hell of a migraine by tomorrow.
The batmobile pulls away from the curb, rumbling off down the dark streets. He studies Bruce cautiously out of the corner of his eye, observing the way his lips turn down, the concerned tilt to his head. Tim can’t tell through the cowl if Bruce’s gaze is angled at him or through the windshield. He suspects the later.
His leather-gloved fingers flex around the steering wheel. “I can drop you off at the clinic,” he suggests.
Tim almost snorts. Good to know his concussion hasn’t affected his ability to read Bruce too badly. He settles for rolling his eyes.
And then immediately wishes he hadn’t, because ow.
“Why, so she can give me the same lecture on concussion care that you have memorized?” he huffs. “Nah. I just wanna go home and sleep it off.”
Bruce hums, but he turns the batmobile down a side street, heading for the jail to drop off their dumbass delivery instead of aiming for the clinic. “You’re staying at the Manor tonight.”
It’s an order, not an invitation. But Tim will take it anyway. “Sure,” he murmurs, propping his elbow up against the base of the window and resting his cheek in his palm. “Whatever makes you feel like you don’t need therapy for your anxiety.”
Bruce sighs through his nose.
Tim hides his smile in his hand, lest it show that it’s a little too genuine.
He stays in the car while Bruce dumps the men on the curb in front of the police station, half-dozing as he listens to Bruce haul the groaning guys out of the backseat. One of them is snoring. Tim thinks they have similar interests.
Bruce returns to the car, and Tim cracks his eyes open to watch the doors to the police station opening, light spilling out across the bodies on the concrete before the batmobile pulls away and the whole tableau slides out of sight.
“How’s your head?”
He’s gruff, but the growl is all but gone now that it’s just the two of them. Tim can practically sense Batman receding into the shadows, leaving behind only Bruce.
Tim is less intimidated by Batman.
“Fine,” he murmurs.
There’s no doubt now that Bruce is surveying him, the weight of his attention sending an uncomfortable thrill down Tim’s spine. “Any dizziness? Nausea?”
“Not really,” he answers, more or less truthfully. “Just tired.”
Bruce hums. “Let me know if that changes.”
It’s all Bruce speaking now. Like it’s Bruce who cares.
It makes Tim’s skin prickle like sticking a cold limb under hot water, but it’s not a bad feeling. Strange, but not bad.
The engine rumbles soothingly beneath them. Tim can feel himself being lulled into a very comfortable doze.
At some point, he swears he feels the brush of gentle fingers against his forehead, sweeping his hair out of his eyes.
No, it’s not bad at all.
***
Someone is speaking.
“Tim,” Bruce’s voice murmurs. There’s a warm hand on his shoulder, shaking gently. “Come on, chum. We’re here.”
Tim whines unhappily.
There’s a soft huff of laughter in response. A car door opens, the hand disappearing.
He groggily pries his cheek up off the plastic of the car door, grimacing at the sensation of drool drying sticky on his skin. He wipes at his face, blinking up at the shadow that’s suddenly appeared outside his window.
Bruce waits until he’s sat up enough that he’s not leaning against the door before he opens it.
He kneels down to study him. “Can you walk?”
Tim grumbles, already swinging his legs out of the car. “‘Course I can walk, I’m basically fine - urk.”
Bruce catches him - not that he could have fallen very far, considering the seatbelt still looped around his front.
He can feel the man’s silent laughter as he helpfully reaches across to unclip Tim, keeping him propped up so he doesn’t fall on his face while he very gracefully untangles himself and gets his feet on the floor.
He doesn’t take his hand off Tim’s shoulder as they shuffle up the steps to the medbay, and Tim doesn’t shake him off.
Alfred is waiting for them with a sympathetic smile and his reassuringly professional demeanor.
For once, Tim finds himself grateful to be able to sit down on the medbay cot to run through the usual head injury exam. He’s more than ready to get this entire experience over with so he can go lie down and sleep this whole shitty night away.
“You certainly do have a concussion, Master Tim,” Alfred confirms a few tests later, to the surprise of exactly no one. “But I believe you’ve escaped the need for stitches, this time.”
“Cool,” Tim says, stifling a yawn behind his hand and already plotting how he’ll sneak some extra screen time under Bruce and Alfred’s noses while he recovers.
Bruce huffs softly, stepping out of the corner he’d chosen to loom in while Alfred checked him over. “Go get cleaned up,” he tells Tim wearily, glancing over towards the batcomputer.
Now that he’s assured himself that Tim isn’t about to drop dead at any moment if he takes his eyes off him, Tim can feel his attention slipping away, releasing Tim from its weight.
It’s a bittersweet relief.
“Get changed and head upstairs. I’ll just wrap up tonight’s reports,” he tells him.
Tim is perfectly happy to obey, eager to rinse the clotted blood out of his hair where it’s dried in spiky clumps.
He hops down off the medbay cot and makes a beeline for the shower room as slowly as he thinks he can get away with without being obviously unstable on his feet.
“No screens!” Bruce shouts after him, sitting in front of the batcomputer like a big non-concussed hypocrite.
He’s still there in exactly the same position by the time Tim returns, now dressed in a clean hoodie and sweatpants and as blood-free as he could get around the small but irritating waterproof bandage Alfred applied.
Bruce’s back is to him as he concentrates. If he hears the soft scuff of Tim’s feet, he doesn’t acknowledge him.
Tim takes the hint happily enough. He slips quickly away up the stairs without saying a word.
There’s a nice pillow upstairs that’s calling his name.
***
The distant clunk of the clock door swinging shut jars Bruce from his focus.
He blinks, rubbing his knuckles across his blurring eyes. Glancing down at the time, he realizes it’s been nearly a full half hour since Tim went to change back to civilian gear.
The shower isn’t running anymore, so it’s safe to assume that he’s headed back up to the Manor without him.
Bruce sighs, eyeing tonight’s report. It can wait until tomorrow for him to finish it, he decides.
He follows his Robin upstairs.
He expects Tim to head straight for bed, given how tired he looked earlier. But he’s not in the guest bedroom he usually occupies when Bruce pokes his head in to check.
He finally tracks him down in the smaller family den, stretched out across the plush leather couch. The TV is on, playing a true crime show on low volume.
Bruce sighs, coming to stand behind the couch. “I believe I told you no screens.”
The boy is lying on his back, one arm flung across his face to block the light. “I’m not looking at the screen. I’m just existing in the same room as it,” he mumbles. He sounds barely conscious, words slightly slurred.
Bruce sighs softly again.
He comes around the couch, reaching down to tap on Tim’s shoulder. “Budge over.”
Tim shifts his arm to blink up at him. He looks like Bruce just suggested he get up and bungee jump off the 4th story balcony.
He can’t exactly blame him for his surprise.
This isn’t normally the kind of thing he and Tim do.
Normally, Bruce would just take the empty armchair - plenty close enough to keep an eye on him and perform the necessary concussion checks through the night.
But Bruce is tired.
The dull, thumping ache of terror and adrenaline left over from seeing Tim go down tonight is a bruise deeper than physical, one that’s going to take longer than sunrise to fade.
So he doesn’t stop to think about it. He just does as he’d do with one of his boys.
After a beat, Tim seems to come to the conclusion that yes, Bruce really does mean to join him on the couch.
He fumbles to sit up and make room, and Bruce puts a hand on his shoulder before he can move too much. “It’s okay,” he says quickly, lowering himself into the small space he’s opened for him, grunting quietly when his back twinges. “It’s okay. Lie back down. Get some rest, I’ll wake you up when it’s time for your concussion check.”
Tim remains frozen in place for a long moment, propped up on one elbow.
Bruce can feel himself holding his breath.
Finally, he lowers himself slowly back down. His head settles tentatively, pillowed on Bruce’s thigh with his face turned towards the television. He holds himself stiffly, like he’s expecting to be shoved off at any moment.
Artificial light flickers across the tense planes of his face, showing black and white evidence photos of x-rays of a bludgeoned skull.
Bruce grimaces.
He shifts his arm, not missing the way Tim tenses more at the movement. But Bruce just lays his broad hand carefully over Tim’s eyes, shielding them from the light.
“Don’t you get enough of this stuff downstairs?” he murmurs lightly.
Tim huffs, and Bruce feels him smile.
He relaxes slowly, in fractions at first, and then suddenly all at once, melting into Bruce.
“The boyfriend did it,” he mumbles after a few peaceful moments.
Bruce hums, lips quirking up.
By the time he’s watched enough to concur, Tim’s breathing has evened out. He’s completely limp against Bruce’s leg.
Dead to the world, perhaps. But still warm and alive, soft breaths puffing against Bruce’s knee.
Careful not to disturb the boy, Bruce reaches back and grabs the throw blanket draped over the back of the couch.
Tim doesn’t stir as he covers his small frame gently, tucking in the edges.
Bruce tips his head back to rest against the couch. He settles in to keep watch, cold case files droning quietly in the background and Tim’s breaths a steady clock to keep time by.
***
He wakes with a snort and a crick in his neck.
Wincing, he picks his twinging neck up slowly, blinking grit out of his eyes. The tv is still on, flickering in the otherwise dark room.
“Is it possible… that aliens are responsible for the tragic wreck of the Titanic?” a narrator is asking.
Tim is still dead weight across his legs. Bruce can feel a damp patch on his sweatpants where he’s drooled on him.
Bruce digs his phone out of his pocket, careful not to disturb him.
4:32am.
Fuck.
Tim was due to be woken up for a concussion check over three hours ago.
“Tim,” he murmurs, rough with sleep. “Wake up, bud.” He shakes him gently.
When he doesn’t stir, he shakes him again, harder, sighing softly - Tim always is dead to the world on the rare occasions he actually sleeps. “Tim,” he repeats, louder, a normal speaking volume.
He tugs on his shoulder, rolling him towards Bruce.
There’s no resistance.
Tim’s head lolls.
His eyes are half-lidded, a sliver of white visible under his lids. A string of bile trails from foam-crusted lips.
In the stark light of the TV, his pale skin looks blue.
This is a nightmare, Bruce thinks, too calm, staring down at the body in his lap.
He’s had this dream before. He’ll wake up, and there will be nothing in his arms.
He just needs to wake up.
Tim gurgles, soft and low in his throat. His limp fingers curl in like the legs of a dying spider.
Dying.
The child in his arms is dying.
Bruce is suddenly very, very awake.
And Tim is still there in his arms.
Bruce moves with an urgency that he reserves for his Robins and no one else. His unpadded knees hit the ground hard enough to send pain shooting up his spine, but he barely even notices.
He doesn’t waste time screaming for Alfred. His phone is already in his hand, the emergency contacts pulled up. He hits call with one hand, the other seeking out Tim’s pulse in his throat.
The phone rings. It rings again.
And again.
“C’mon, Tim, hey, buddy. I need you to wake up, sweetheart. Robin. Wake up, chum.”
Bruce can barely differentiate between the pulse under his fingertips and the trembling of his own hand.
Ring.
He pinches the back of Tim’s hand, hard, digging in his nails and searching for a reaction.
Tim’s eyelashes don’t even flutter.
Seven rings.
Seven rings while Bruce is alone in the dark with a dying boy.
Finally, a voice.
“Bruce,” Leslie sounds exhausted, fresh from sleep. “This had better be an emergency - ”
“Tim has a concussion and he’s not waking up.” Bruce has a difficult time connecting the voice to himself. It should be a single long scream over the line. “Glasgow score of - four, I think. No eye opening, no speech, very limited motor response. I - I can’t wake him up.”
A moment’s silence as Leslie processes. Bruce can hear the creaking of his own tendons gripping the phone with all his strength.
“Did this just happen?” she demands, all traces of sleep gone from her voice.
“This evening. He was conscious and responsive before he went to bed.” He takes a breath. “I was supposed to wake him three hours ago for a check. I fell asleep. I - I don’t know how long he’s been unresponsive.”
“Hospital. Now.” Bruce can hear rustling, movement on the other end of the line, can imagine Leslie grabbing her glasses and putting on her coat. “Not the clinic. A real hospital. The kind that has your last name on it and a CT scanner. I’m not a neurologist, Bruce, this is above my paygrade.”
Tim’s pulse flutters under his fingers like a trapped bird. “Yes,” Bruce says. “Yes, of course. I’ll take him immediately.”
Leslie takes a deep breath. “Bruce - ”
She lets it out again in a rush. “I’ll meet you there.”
Bruce doesn’t waste time with goodbyes. He hangs up.
Tim feels so light in his arms when he picks him up. Almost weightless.
It was like that with Jason, too, the last time Bruce held him.
Like there was something missing from the mass of him.
He cradles Tim’s head against his bicep with the palm of his hand as he carries him through the house, and it fits too well.
He buckles him into the front seat of the closest car to the door, pushing the seat back to let him lie down as flat as possible when he’s reminded that Tim can’t hold his head up even a little.
He peels out of the garage at a speed that would make a speedster blink. The moment they’re on the road, he reaches across the center console to grab Tim’s wrist, finding his pulse like a lifeline and not letting go.
He talks to Tim as he drives. He talks like he never seems to be able to do when Tim is awake.
“It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” he says, the term of endearment rolling off his tongue so terribly easily. “You’re going to be fine. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m here, honey.”
There’s no way to know if the boy can hear him. Part of him hopes he can’t - that Tim is somewhere too safe and deep to know that anything is wrong at all.
Too deep to know that Batman is scared.
Another part of him begs for Tim to hear him.
Because what if he doesn’t know?
What if his boy doesn’t know he -
What if he doesn’t get another chance to tell him?
“Just hold on, chum, we’re almost there.”
The neon sign of the hospital looms soft in the early Gotham morning fog. The first rays of dawn are just creeping their way sluggishly over the horizon with none of the panic Bruce feels.
He pulls into the emergency bay of the hospital. It’s almost physically painful to make himself let go of Tim’s weak pulse, even just for the short time it takes to throw himself out of the driver’s seat and rush around to the passenger side, stricken by the terror that he won’t be able to find it again.
But by the grace of god, or the universe, or simply a rare luck, Tim’s heart is still beating.
Although Bruce’s anxious mind could swear it’s the slightest fraction weaker than it was mere seconds earlier.
But it keeps beating.
It keeps beating as he unbuckles the boy out of the car, as he carries him running up to the broad glass doors. Inside, the intake nurse has spotted his approach, and he’s met at the door with a ready stretcher.
And then Tim’s small hand is slipping out of his.
Bruce’s lips are moving. He hears himself give some sort of explanation, make some sort of excuse - it hardly matters.
His attention is only on the child disappearing down the hallway, swallowed by the depths of the hospital.
Bruce’s hand feels so very cold.
***
Someone takes him to a private waiting room. The perks of having his family’s name on the building.
He sits in one of the cold, uncomfortable plastic chairs, hunched and staring at his clasped hands.
He should call Alfred, he thinks.
He should call Dick. If Tim -
Dick will be angry if he doesn’t call.
He should call Tim’s parents.
He wonders if they would even care enough to pick up the phone.
He can’t stop studying his fingernails, unable to get over the illusion of blood staining them.
Finally he forces himself to shut his eyes, drawing on all the meditative training he’s got to try and banish the visions haunting him.
It doesn’t help much. But it allows the time to pass.
Minutes trickle into each other until they’re indistinguishable from hours. His phone buzzes in his pocket more than once, but he doesn’t open his eyes.
Until the door to the waiting room opens first.
Leslie enters, shutting the door quietly behind her.
His eyes rake over her, taking in every wrinkle in her white coat, every tense line around her eyes and fly-away hair like it will tell him what he needs to know.
But Leslie knows him well. She doesn’t make him wait for long. As soon as she meets his eyes, she smiles, tense and tired but genuine. “He’s stable,” she tells him.
It’s like someone has slashed through a belt wound tight around his lungs, the way the air rushes to fill them so fast it leaves him dizzy.
He’s still trying to catch his breath as Leslie comes to sit in front of him, pulling up her own plastic chair. She sits down, hands clasped in a mirror of him.
“He had a bleed in his brain,” she tells him bluntly, not taking the time to sugarcoat it. Bruce supposes he’s grateful for that, even if it feels a little like a sledgehammer to the chest. “It was a relatively small one, which is why he’s still alive. But they had to do surgery to relieve the pressure.”
She pauses for a beat, letting him process before continuing. “The surgery went well. We’ll be monitoring very closely for infection, given the open hole in his skull, but outside of that there’s a low chance of fatal complications at this stage.”
Bruce breathes, slow and even. “What’s the likelihood of brain damage?”
“We won’t know for sure until he wakes up,” she says honestly. “I’d say I’m optimistic about his prognosis, and the neurologist I consulted with agrees. But heads are tricky - I don’t want to make any promises until he’s awake and we’ve had a chance to assess him.”
Bruce scrubs a thumb against the side of his nose. His lungs are working again, but there’s an ache to every breath. “If I had gotten him in here sooner - ” He breaks off, unable to bring himself to ask the question.
But Leslie understands, and she is not kind enough to let it go unanswered. “It’s impossible to say what would have happened if things had gone differently,” she says gently, her gaze weary but sympathetic. “What matters right now is that you did get him help. You got him here fast enough, Bruce. It could have been a lot worse. Okay?”
She leans forward, forcing him to meet her eye. “Stop beating yourself up for not being perfect. Tim doesn’t need your guilt, he needs you to be there for him. We got to him in time, Bruce. Focus on that.”
There are no words, really. Bruce’s tongue is a meal he cannot swallow and cannot spit out. He cannot say thank you, he cannot say he’s sorry.
But she never needed to hear that from him anyway.
“Would you like to go see him?” she asks gently.
“Yes,” he croaks.
She smiles.
They stand up, and she takes him to go see his son.
Tim is in a small private room a little ways off from the early morning bustle of the rest of the hospital. He hears the door click shut behind him as Leslie quietly makes her exit, leaving him frozen just inside the room, staring.
It’s quiet and loud here all at once.
The room seems filled with the soft whirring and beeping of the machines hooked up to the boy in the hospital bed, his heartbeat projected to fill the space.
Tim, in contrast, seems to take up almost no room at all.
There are white bandages wrapped around his head. The rest of him is nearly as pale, but for the bruises under his eyes.
Bruce sits at his bedside, letting out a soundless breath. It feels dangerous to break the silence, as though their little bubble is only safe so long as they keep quiet and don’t draw the attention of whatever deity has managed to overlook and spare them this time.
Despite the steady beep of the heart monitor, Bruce’s hand still gravitates to Tim’s wrist to seek out his pulse, careful of the IV.
It beats beneath his fingers, lazy but strong.
Vital.
Alive.
For the first time in hours, Bruce takes a breath and feels like it actually reaches his lungs.
“Hey Tim,” he says softly into the quiet. “Hey sweetheart.” He swallows thickly. “You’re doing so well. I’m - I’m so proud of you.”
He strokes a thumb back and forth across Tim’s knuckles. His hand feels as delicate as a baby bird in his.
He leans over and presses a kiss to his forehead, right under the bandages.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
He’s answered only by the clear and steady beat of Tim’s heart, and that’s enough.