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Tim was pretty sure that Dick didn’t actually understand Damian. Not really.
Dick was nice and caring and what every older brother should be. But Damian didn’t understand what ‘older brother’ meant.
Growing up it had always been an Us Vs Them mentality with his family. It was them against the world, and sure, his parents were shitty and neglectful, but they were still his unit, they would go to bat for him if anyone said anything, spread a rumor, questioned his competency.
Damian… didn’t have that. Damian had a Me Vs Everyone mentality, and for whatever reason, Tim was a threat where the others weren’t.
He was raised in a cult and needed to understand proper behavior, or so Dick said.
Damian understood proper behavior for the heir to the League of Assassins. He needed to understand what the rules were for Robin, for Damian Wayne, and for just Damian.
And that started by explaining what family meant to Damian. That it meant allies who would have your back no matter how little you liked each other. That you could turn your back on them and trust that you wouldn’t end up with a knife in it.
But that was not a conversation he could have with Damian, not the least because Damian would try and stab him for suggesting that he could trust Tim.
So he went to Bruce, to Dick, to Jason, and even to Barbara. He went with a detailed presentation and notes with citations.
Bruce listened and Tim was pretty sure just elected not to actually have the conversation with Damian. Dick and Jason didn’t even let him get to the presentation stage. And Barbara insisted that it was really a conversation Bruce or Dick should have with Damian.
So Tim was left back at square one with the urge to scream bloody murder.
He elected to spend the weekend at the tower with his team and not thinking about how much he wanted to stab his younger brother back.
1).
It was Damian and Tim’s first time on the gala shift alone together. Dick was working a shift at the precinct in Bludhaven , Jason was still publicly dead, and Cass just didn’t want to go. Bruce was… Bruce was god knows where and Tim didn’t care to find out.
The two of them had migrated to the corner together, held together by something like the mindset of it being better to hate each other together than alone in this crowd of people they would rather not be around.
That’s when the ladies who looked like they were middle aged and trying to hide it wandered into their corner. Gossiping and completely obvious to their presence.
Tim ignored them in favor of texting Kon about setting up a space for his new ‘Clone Club’ plans. Bizarro and Will Harper were both just as excited about it as Kon was.
“... completely uncivilized. I didn’t understand him taking in the riff raff as he has, but to think, he actually has a real child like that. And Bruice didn’t even marry his mother. For shame. Maybe now he’ll think about settling down with a nice local girl.”
Beside him, Damian had gone stiff. Tim wasn’t sure if it was rage, embarrassment, or both, but regardless, the comment couldn’t stand.
Tim swiped away from his conversation with Kon as he opened up his blackmail folder as he shifted forward, both to shield Damian and to catch their attention.
“It’s interesting,” he began as he pulled up the right photo, “Mrs. Attwood, that you think sex outside of marriage is shameful.” He flipped his phone around so both ladies could see his screen. “Isn’t this you with Mr. Coleman?”
Mrs. Attwood let out a gasp that was one part horror and one part offense.
And then her companion, Mrs. Coleman, slapped her right across the face. “You slept with my husband!?”
If they were smart, they would keep quiet, a cheating scandal would reflect poorly on both of them as well as their husbands. Mrs. Attwood clearly realized this and began trying to shush Mrs. Coleman. Mrs. Coleman responded by increasing the volume of her shouting.
Tim took a step back and reached a hand out so it was hovering just over Damian’s wrist. “Come on then, we don’t want to be here when the crowd forms.”
Damian followed Tim in a blank shock.
They ducked out of the gala hall and down the hallway until Tim guided them into an empty game room.
“I don’t understand.” Damian sounded adorably lost.
Tim went back to texting Kon, while he was perfectly fine bankrolling the clone club, he also didn’t think a public meeting place like a rec center was the best idea, especially for Bizarro.
He shrugged half-heartedly at Damian. “We’re family. I couldn’t let that bullshit slide. It’s fine.”
“I-- fail… to understand how my loss of face could be anything other than beneficial to your standing within the family. Father has explained to me that his public image is meant to be… disgraceful, however if I appear so, it-- it would only hurt my standing.”
Tim hesitated. Kon was taking his time coming up with a list of possible locations and Damian seemed willing to listen to him for once. “It’s not that complicated, Damian. You’re family, ergo I can’t let shit slide, no matter what our actual relationship looks like.”
“Because it reflects poorly on you seeing as we’re rather unfortunately associated with each other in the public eye?”
Tim bit his lip as he considered that. All things considered, it was entirely possible that had been his parents' reasoning. But… “No, not-- not for me. It’s… no matter-- in the League of Assassins, did they… could you trust anyone?”
Damian sniffed. “I did not need to rely on anyone’s trust. However… for a majority of members, you trusted your roommate not to stab you in the back while you slept and vice versa. That, I believe, is the extent to which one can trust a member of my grandfather’s league.”
“Right… so, family is like the people you sleep with. You don’t have to like each other or get along, but when other people come along and… threaten, embarrass, hurt your family, not doing anything about it is like stabbing your roommate in the back.”
Damian considered Tim. “I don’t understand. However, I do believe that I--” and here he heaved a sigh-- “owe you my thanks for the defense of my honor.”
Kon’s message finally popped up with a short list of locations for Tim to vet. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He said as he was sucked back into his conversation with Kon.
2).
Gotham academy was not a small school, not by any means, and as a result, Tim often forgot that it was technically a K-12 school and that Damian was also attending alongside him.
It probably didn’t help that Tim skipped school as often as he could get away with. The principal had decided to have a conversation with him about not graduating if he missed too much class so Tim had started going in and erasing some of the days he’d skipped from further in the past.
Still, he’d had a major test in chemistry and couldn’t exactly skip it without it having a serious affect on his grade, so he’d come to school.
That didn’t mean he was going to stay in school and he was sneaking out through the library.
Which was where he heard the voices.
They were hurling taunts and insults filled with racism and xenophobia and Tim would have worried they were talking to Damian if it weren’t for the fact that they weren’t screaming in agony yet.
Well, Tim could fix that one. He slipped his phone out and hit record, just to make sure the little shits couldn’t weasel their way out of what they had coming.
He waited another second. One, two, three. He’d caught enough of their hateful bullshit to act. He turned off the recording and started mentally mapping out which people needed to have the recording sent to them.
The problem, he discovered when he rounded a stack of books, was that it was actually Damian they were talking to.
Damian for his part, was glaring at them like he was picturing their innards strewn across the room and his fingers were flexing like he was missing the knife to actually do it.
“Hello there.” Two boys whipped around at the sound of Tim’s too cheerful voice. “Since we’re going to be verbally harassing people, I thought I’d join in.”
“We weren’t--”
Tim held up a hand. “Ah, buh buh buh bah. It’s my turn. Now, since I’m not a raging bigot I thought I could go over the ways I could permanently disable you if I had the proper tools on me. Let’s start with your tendons. Do you know what tendons are?”
One of the boys shook his head minutely.
“No, you haven’t had a human anatomy class yet? Well, they keep your bones and muscles together. Without your tendons, you’d be entirely incapable of moving. And some of them are oh so vulnerable. But if you gave me half an hour, I could properly ensure that they were surgically removed entirely. The best part? Anesthesia isn’t required.” Tim kept his PR smile on his face as he spoke and watched the two boys shrink further and further in on themselves.
“Now, I would never do that to you, right? But you now understand that words can affect people. You're nervous right now, aren’t you.”
“You just threatened us. I’ll tell my dad and he’ll--”
“What? He’ll sue? He’ll sue Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne? Are you sure about that? I’m not. Now, again, that wasn’t a threat, I would never do that to a human being. Unless, of course, I considered you subhuman the way you seem to consider my brother subhuman. But you don’t consider him subhuman, do you?”
Both boys shook their heads somewhat frantically.
Tim leaned in even closer. “Good. Good. Now, if you ever, ever say shit like that again and I catch wind of it, as CEO of Drake Industries and heir of Wayne Enterprises, I will ensure that your parents lose their jobs, lose their money, and you will lose your current lives, you’ll be poor, destitute. But you wouldn’t say shit again, would you?”
They shook their heads again.
“I can’t hear you.”
“No.” The first boy squeaked, the one who’d tried to tell Tim they weren’t verbally harassing his brother.
“No, of course not,” The other one added frantically.
Tim’s grin stretched wider. “That’s great. Really, it is. Because that was a threat, just in case I wasn’t clear about that. Now, you’re going to fucking scram, do you hear me?”
Instead of answering they both made a break for it.
Tim turned his attention onto Damian, who was studying his shoes.
“You intervened because you consider me family, then?”
Tim shook his head even though Damian wasn’t looking at him. “Nope. I was planning on doing that anyway. I did that because they were being bigoted, racist little shits, and they weren’t going to change unless someone scared them straight.”
“I see.”
“Damian, was this the first time…” Tim trailed off at Damian’s murderous expression that combined with shoulders hunched in shame. “That’s a no then. Why didn’t you tell someone?”
Damian scoffed. “So that they could inform me once again that I am not permitted to attack civilians. That I should not retaliate to every slight?”
“Damian, what they were doing, that’s called bullying. Bullying is wrong. The administration might let them get away with it, the teachers might let them get away with it. But Bruce? He wouldn’t stand for it. If he had to threaten to withdraw funding, threaten to sue, actually sue. That shit doesn’t slide. But honestly, the best way to threaten bullies is to scare them. They like an easy target. Stay calm and chipper and threaten to feed them their tongues, or whatever you have to do. If you can, don’t let anything about it get traced back to you. But never, ever hit first.”
Tim considered that for a second. “If they do hit you, no knives, no permanent maiming, two broken bones max. But make it very clear who won the fight.”
Damian hesitated. “Understood, Timothy.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
He’d called Tim by something other than Drake. He’d called Tim by something other than Drake.
And he had definitely known that Tim was supposed to be in BC Clac, and yet, Bruce didn’t pull him aside for another conversation about skipping class. Which meant Damian hadn’t ratted him out.
3).
Bane had Damian in a cage with at minimum six broken bones and he was demanding that Batman surrender himself in place of his son.
And instead of doing something actually useful about it, he was securing the perimeter with Jason. And sure, that was important, but so was Damian.
Tim satisfied himself by planning out every little way he was going to make Bane’s life a complete and utter hell scape after he was caught.
Damian wasn’t even twelve. He was a kid and Bane thought he could torture a kid to get what he wanted and Tim hated him.
And then Damian let out a piercing scream.
Damian didn’t scream, he didn’t whimper, he didn’t show weakness.
But he was in a warehouse and he was screaming and he was Tim’s little fucking brother and Bane and just fucked up.
To hell with Bruce and Dick saving Damian. To hell with the perimeter. He was in the warehouse, Jason’s gun in hand, and shooting it straight at Bane before he’d even had the chance to think about it. Before Jason could stop him, before Bruce could stop him, before Bane could notice him and dodge.
The bullet landed home in Bane’s overly muscled right bicep. It wouldn’t be fatal. Tim shot both his knee caps out for good measure.
Bruce, despite his absolute disdain for guns-- justified if you asked Tim, he still didn’t like boomerangs--had made sure each Robin knew how to shoot and shoot well.
Tim wondered, distantly, if Bruce was regretting that decision.
Tim tossed the gun back to Jason as he came running into the warehouse after Tim. Jason caught it and his lack of shouting clued Tim into the shocked expression he was probably sporting.
Tim stalked up to Bane, mindful of getting too close to the downed man who could still seriously hurt him. “Listen to me and listen closely. You can do whatever you want to try and conquer Gotham, that’s fine, we will stop you every single time. But if you ever so much as touch another hair on Robin’s head, I will personally make an injection to make you near fatally allergic to your precious fucking venom. And then, I will break every bone in your body and stomp on your dick. Are we fucking clear?”
Tim didn’t wait for an answer, he just turned around and stalked over to the entrance to the warehouse. “O? I need a batmobile to our location, now. N is handling Damian, I’ll drive.”
Damian spent nearly two months completely benched, and when he reentered the scene, most of the rogues avoided hurting him too badly, word of Red Robin’s threats had spread, after all.
Damian started letting Bruce schedule them for patrols together without more than a token complaint and he was actually willing to work with Tim.
It was progress. It was more than progress. Damian trusted Tim to watch his back and he watched Tim’s in turn
+1).
Damian was not a fan of the media.
They usually left him alone because his father could and would sue the imbeciles into the ground for daring to approach one of his minor children without a guardian present.
Every. Single. Gotham. Paper knew better than to approach him.
In the past two days, six separate reporters from out of town had approached him, desperate for a comment.
His classmates were asking him for comments.
He was sick of it. So he’d asked his father to schedule an interview to put all the rumors to rest already.
And thus he found himself sitting in front of Vicki Vale, a woman he was profoundly not a fan of.
“So, there’s been quite the hype around your brother, hasn’t there?”
Damian blinked at her slowly. “If by ‘hype’ you mean his privacy was invaded and a photo of him and his boyfriend was published resulting in a media frenzy where you and those like you insist on bothering me to demand my opinion?” Damian wasn’t entirely sure if it’d been Conner or Bernard that Tim’d been photographed kissing, he didn’t really care, neither Bernard nor Conner were his family and he had no need nor desire to protect them.
Vale’s smile became that much more forced. “I guess you could put it that way. So, what do you think about it?”
“I am deeply annoyed by the press’s inability to leave me alone and their insistence that this matters at all.”
“Yes, but what do you think of Mr. Drake being gay?”
Damian grit his teeth. “It is Drake-Wayne. Timothy is bisexual. And I hardly see how it should affect me. I have no more interest in spending time with his boyfriends than I do with his girlfriends.”
“So Mr. Drake has multiple partners then? Is it true what they say about bisexual people?”
Damian couldn’t believe that she was a real person. “Drake-Wayne. I meant ex partners as well. And your assumption is bigoted. I suggest checking yourself by reading up on the forms biphobia may take.”
“I see. Maybe we’ll put out a reading list after this is aired?”
Damian had insisted on a live show so that they could not cut his honest opinion. No doubt, Vale was regretting that.
“Perhaps.”
“So, do you mind if I ask a question that’s been making the rounds the past two days?”
Damian resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You are welcome to ask.” He said it in such a way that it was clear how little he thought of the woman and her questions.
“Well, I think the most important one is about Mr. Drake-Wayne’s competency to lead Wayne Enterprises. He’s acting CEO after all and taking a much heavier hand than Brucie ever did.”
Damian’s eye twitched. “I don’t understand the correlation.”
“Well, there are just some concerns, you see. We were hoping someone close to the Waynes might be able to assure us?”
Damian leaned forward in his chair. “Timothy is perhaps one of the most competent people I have met. He is fully capable of continuing to act as CEO for both Wayne Enterprises and Drake Industries. Anyone who would question him, for his age, his sexuality, anything at all, should consider themselves utter fools.”
He stood up. “I believe I am done talking with you. I have fully expressed my thoughts on the matter and I find your company distasteful.”
Richard was waiting off stage and he gave Damian a high five as he walked off stage. Damian reluctantly allowed him to.
“I’m proud of you, Dami.” Dami gave Richard a long look and didn’t admit how much the praise meant to him.
Timothy was waiting at home and Damian walked into the hug he offered. “Thank you,” he whispered into Damian’s hair.
Damian wrapped his arms around Timothy in return. “We are family, are we not?”