Chapter Text
Tim startles as Jason's front door snaps closed. It's gotten dark since he first broke into Jason's house, the living room only lit up by the streetlight outside and the spill of light from the front entryway.
Tim blinks and Jason's standing in the doorway to the living room. “Hey, Tim,” Jason says quietly. “You ok buddy?”
Tim just looks at him. Honestly, he has no idea how he feels.
Another blink and Jason's standing next to Tim, looking down at him. Tim can't see his face too well, the lights are still off, but he thinks maybe Jason looks concerned.
“Can I sit here?”
Tim nods jerkily and Jason lowers himself onto the sofa, judging the space between the two of them carefully so that he's close enough if Tim want's contact but far away enough that Tim doesn't feel trapped. He appreciates it.
He appreciates Jason asking, “You, uh. You wanna talk about it?” a lot less. But-. Jason would understand, wouldn't he? It's why Tim had come to his house in the first place, probably. Everything's a fucking blur, but there must have been a reason.
“The Board bought Bruce out today,” Tim says. And his voice sounds weird to his own ears. Flat and emotionless, when he's anything but.
Jason must pick up on it anyway, because his own voice is careful when he asks, “How's he taking it?”
“Bruce has begun liquidating all of his non-profit-generating assets.” And he can't keep the snarl out of his voice when he says, “Including the penthouse.”
“Fuck. Tim-.” Jason shifts, like he wants to hug Tim, or leap to his feet, or something.
“I know.” He breathes out a long breath, trying to let go of the anger. The red hot rage burning through the numbness of disbelief. “I know. It's fucking stupid.”
Not only is the penthouse in a strategic location in Old Gotham, with good sight lines to a lot of neighborhoods, but the Bat Bunker underneath is a way more convenient place to store supplies than all the way out in fucking Bristol.
But Bruce isn't thinking logically right now. As much as he fucking loves to harp on the importance of objectivity, and keeping your emotions out of your analysis, he's throwing a fucking tantrum right now. Like a fucking toddler.
Stupid.
“You need a place to stay?” Jason offers. “You know my guest room's always open.”
“Nah,” Tim tries to smile, and it feels more like a grimace. He appreciates the offer but he would go nuts living side by side with two different other houses. He. There was a reason he moved into the penthouse aside from convenience. He liked the eagle-eye view of the city. The isolation. The silence.
“Babs is letting me crash at the Clocktower.” She'd been his first stop after the Board meeting had wrapped up. Tim vaguely remembers heading to the library, so fucking angry he was shaking, and telling her everything. Hoping. Hoping she could intervene somehow, which was stupid of him, but he'd been emotional too.
“You want me to kick Bruce's ass?” Jason asks, and he sounds almost hopeful.
And Tim appreciates the offer. Not that Jason doesn't get a chance to do that on a regular basis, but, you know. It's different when it's for him. But. Tim shrugs. “I don't think it would help anything.”
Jason nods. “Ok, fair enough.” There's a pause where Tim stares at the coffee table and Jason appears to think. And then, as a complete non-sequitur, he asks, “What's the penthouse worth?”
Tim is surprised enough by the question he snaps out of his brooding. “About three million at last year's tax assessment. Why?”
“I bet I could get it down to two. You know, if you wanted to buy it.”
Wait, what?
Tim knows Jason is building something of a real estate empire in the Narrows, but to knock almost a third of the price off a luxury penthouse apartment?
Even if he could do it, “I don't have that much liquid.”
Jason shrugs. “Sure, but you do own Drake Manor. Sell that off and you could buy the penthouse.”
And-. And Tim could, couldn't he?
He'd kept Drake Manor out of – not sentimentality – but because he hadn't wanted to go back there. He hadn't. He hadn't been able to go back there, to the silent echoing marble hallways and huge empty rooms. All the memories of his parents absence leering down at him from the museum-worthy plinths.
But he could do it, if there was an end goal waiting on the other side. And if Jason was willing to help him, he may not even need to go there himself. He could be rid of the lodestone around his fucking neck and have his real home back again.
And there he is, running off after something impossible. Because even if he could sell Drake Manor and raise the money to buy the penthouse. “There's no way it'll still be for sale all those months later. And for a million under asking?” Tim snorts. “You're fucking dreaming.”
Jason grins. “Watch and learn, Tim.” And he takes out his phone and presses a number on his speed dial.
“Hello, Gloria. It's Jason. Apologies for calling so late-.”
“Yes, I am still bringing lemon cake for Wednesday's meeting. Look, I'm calling about the Wayne penthouse.”
“Yes, it is a gorgeous example of Art Deco architecture, and that's why I'm calling. I just heard through the grapevine that Brucie's selling. And wouldn't it just be terrible if one of those flippers got their hands on it and turned it into some modernist monstrosity.”
“Why yes I did know that you were friends with several people on the historical register nomination committee.” And Jason sounds almost gleeful. “Yes, please do let them know.”
“Yes, see you on Wednesday. Goodnight.”
Jason turns to Tim, his grin sharp and glinting in the splash of street light slipping through the curtains. “That'll buy you at least a couple months. No one who'd want to buy and renovate it is gonna so much as sneeze next to it if they know the register of historical places committee has an interest.”
Tim, for the first time since the Board meeting, feels excited. They could do this. Jason- Jason could do this.
And then Jason turns to him, a hesitation to his body language that hadn't been present just a few seconds ago. “And Tim; if it's ok with you, I don't mind letting slip the fact our dear father is selling his son's home out from underneath him. You and I both got a lot more pull with the kinds of high society fucks that can afford the penthouse than Brucie Wayne does. And I'm not afraid to fight dirty.”
Tim. Tim lets out a long breath.
He hadn't.
He knew Jason didn't get along with Bruce. He thought that he'd probably be sympathetic, but that he'd be sympathetic the same way Babs was sympathetic. Thinking Bruce was being a shithead but also, what could they really do about it? Better to just keep their heads down and stick to trying to find the Red Hood until Bruce's mood blew over and he stopped hating Tim.
But Jason is one hundred percent ready to go to bat for him. Ready to undermine Bruce and get Tim the penthouse back while basically cheating Bruce out of over a million dollars. And he'd done it immediately, no hesitation.
And here he is, offering to do even more. To start a smear campaign, except it's not really a smear campaign at all. It's just telling the truth. And Jason's right. They've both invested the time into building the kind of relationships with the Gotham elite that Bruce had never bothered with. Just like he'd never bothered to actually run his company, and now they've cut the useless dead weight. Tim and Jason have played the game, and now – now they can use those resources against Bruce. Because he'd never bothered to even learn the rules, so convinced he owned the game board that he didn't need to.
Tim. Tim says yes. Because doing anything else would just be stupid.
And Jason smiles, a small genuine smile, and claps Tim on the shoulder. “Anything else you need, Tim. Just say the word.”
And Tim does. Because Jason is his brother, and he gets it. And they may as well be black sheep of the family together. “Sell Drake Manor for me?” There's nothing there he wants. And he's not going to set foot within a fucking mile of Bruce anytime soon, anyway. This is the best solution for everybody.
Jason's smile grows sharp. “You got it Tim.”
And Tim takes the first breath all evening that doesn't cut his lungs into ribbons.
He's still pissed, and he probably will be for the rest of his life. But he's got a solution, here.
And he can't pretend he doesn't enjoy the idea of giving Bruce exactly what he deserves for daring to try and strip his home away from him.
“So,” Jason says in a voice that brooks no argument. “You eat dinner or what?”
At Tim's non response, he heads into the kitchen. Tim sits there in the dark while Jason cooks him something that smells really good. His stomach rumbles and ok, maybe he is actually hungry. Jason comes back into the living room and turns on a table lamp.
He hands Tim an omelet and Tim, Tim fucking devours it like an animal. And everything after the Board meeting is a blur, but he's guessing he didn't eat lunch either. Fuck. He's trying to be better about that so he doesn't, in Steph's words, “fucking die of a heart attack by the time [he's] thirty.”
“Feel a little better?” Jason asks, and hands Tim a glass of water he's too busy drinking like he's been stranded on a desert island to answer.
Even when he comes up for air, he doesn't answer, but he does thank Jason for the water.
Jason just shrugs and takes Tim's empty plate. “Anytime, man. I mean it.”
And Jason goes back to the kitchen to do the dishes. And then Tim sits there in silence while Jason reads on the sofa next to him, and it's nice.
Nice enough that he must fall asleep because he wakes up in Jason's guest room a little after seven the next morning. He can hear the shower running in the bathroom across the hall, so Jason must be back from the gym.
Tim stretches luxuriously – Jason did not skimp out on the mattress, or the thread count on the sheets – and checks his phone. He's got a couple texts from Babs, asking if he's going to stay over at the Clocktower, and then telling him they have a hit on a Red Hood candidate, thanks to Dick having finally gotten through all fucking one hundred and ten fucking candidates while stuck on mandatory desk duty while his shoulder heals.
Tim sends her a selfie with Jason's guest room in the background, although she's probably asleep and won't see it for a few hours. But if she was really worried she could have just hacked his phone and found his location that way, so that's fine. And Tim totally ignores the Red Hood info. Cuz frankly, who gives a shit at this point? Not him! Not when he's got a lot of other shit on his plate.
He'll still patrol some week nights. But just his territory – he's not going on any fucking wild goose chase for Bruce right now, and he's staying the fuck away from the Red Hood. Even stalking him in civvies feels a lot more dangerous now that two people have been laid up. He's sure not going to be the third.
So Tim switches to reading through all his Wayne Industries emails. He hadn't exactly gotten a lot done yesterday, and he's got some hot projects he needs to sign off on. And an email from the Board saying they want to speak with him at his earliest availability, which isn't fucking ominous at all.
Tim's still wearing his underwear and t-shirt from yesterday, but Jason hung his suit and dress shirt up so it's not too wrinkly and he should be ok to head into the office if he cleans up a little first. He hears the shower cut off, and Jason moving around in the bathroom, but he'd probably let Tim in to wash his face and brush his teeth and hair. Not like privacy was ever at a premium in the Batcave locker rooms.
Tim barges in on Jason in his underwear, standing in front of the mirror and fucking straightening his hair.
“Dude, what the fuck? Knock next time, asshole.”
“You fucking straighten your hair?” Tim asks, incredulous. He. He can't stop staring at Jason, holding a lock of hair in one hand and a straightening iron in the other. It just does not compute.
Jason always looks nice, dresses well. But he's the kind of handsome that feels natural. Like he just rolled out of bed that way. Not like he's spent time on it. Not like it's purposeful.
But apparently it is. Because Jason shrugs and says, “Yeah, obviously. What, you thought Ian Peters had a perm?”
“I guess I didn't think about it.” Which in hindsight was sloppy of him. But learning his brother was back from the dead, and speculating how, had sort of eaten up all of his bandwidth. But he looks now. Updates his internal profile on Jason from his (really severely) outdated one from way back when Jason was Robin.
The first thing Tim notices is that Jason is unusually smooth, for lack of a better word. Completely free from the scars that litter all of them, and that he knows used to litter Jason from both vigilante work and his life before. So the Lazarus Pit must work wonders. But he's also, like, weirdly hairless. And Tim's not gonna judge someone for doing some manscaping. He certainly does, all though some of that might be a holdover from the Robin days. Those leggings did not work great with leg hair. And the shorts Jason had to wear-. Well, enough said.
“Do you, uh, wax?”
Cuz Tim's not gonna judge him. But it absolutely does not match with his perception of Jason as, again, someone who doesn't put a whole lot of effort into his appearance.
Jason has gone back to straightening his hair. He shrugs. “Yeah, and I tweeze my eyebrows and moisturize all that other shit too.”
Tim peers at him. He does have good skin.
Jason rolls his eyes. “You're body's a tool, right?”
Tim's blinks at the non sequitur. “You mean like all of our training?” Even though Jason doesn't use it anymore, he still has it, and hones it with all those “sparring sessions” with Bruce. And honestly, given that Jason's beating fucking Batman sixty, maybe seventy percent of the time, he's got to be honing them outside of the “sparring sessions” too.
Jason snorts. “Nah. Like, for shaping how people perceive you. If you're blandly, inoffensively handsome, more people want to listen to you or help you out or whatever. So it pays to look good.”
Tim snorts. “You know, back when I first met Ian Peters, I was trying to figure out if you were some kind of like special forces reject doing corporate espionage or if it was just vanity muscle. I guess now I know the answer.”
Jason laughs. “Ouch. It's only like, twenty percent vanity. Maaaybe twenty-five.” He looks down at himself. “Though I'll be honest. I would not bother to maintain abs if I didn't think there was a possibility I'd be asked to do a shirtless photo shoot someday.”
Tim takes a seat on the closed lid of the toilet. “I'm pretty sure you'd make Vicki Vale's entire year if you agreed to that. And you know they can just photoshop those on, nowadays.”
And he imagines what Jason would look like if he didn't bother to maintain abs, or be photoshoot ready, or whatever. He can imagine him thicker, even more powerful. A real bruiser. A lot like what Tim had pictured the Red Hood to look like under the leather and the helmet and the Kevlar, actually. Especially if Jason stopped straightening his hair, let it curl naturally like he had as Ian Peters. He'd be an almost exact match for Tim's original profile.
It's an amusing thought.
Jason laughs. “Is that the secret to Brucie winning 'Most Eligible Bachelor' at fifty?”
Tim snorts. Bruce's body is one hundred percent real, and only getting more impressive. He doesn't think anyone's told Jason about it, but everyone else in the family (except maybe Damian) knows all about Bruce's weird midlife crisis or whatever it is that's making him copy Jason's workouts so religiously. And while Tim thinks it's all kinds of weird that the Batcomputer basically runs a constant stream of Jason working out on half the monitors, you can't say it hasn't born fruit.
Jason, who's still on the idea of photoshopped abs, shrugs. “Regardless, I think it's worth the extra effort. You can only fake so much, you know?”
Tim leans in, interested despite himself. “Like what?” Jason's Ian Peterson disguise had been pretty good, even if Babs had seen right through it. And while Bruce had given Tim some training in undercover work, who knows what Jason learned when he was with the League?
“Like attitude. You know, if you carry yourself with confidence, more people follow your suggestions. Or, like. Making yourself appear less threatening by making yourself smaller, avoiding confrontational posture. But you don't wanna go too far and look weak, either, so you gotta strike the right balance.”
“Do you do that?” Tim asks. “Make yourself less threatening?” He doesn't think of Jason as a particularly threatening guy. Sure, he's big, and he can be pretty blunt when he answers questions – case in point, this entire conversation. But he's not scary.
“Sure,” Jason says, nonchalant. “And so does Bruce, when he's being Brucie and not Batman. And you carry yourself differently when you're Red Robin, too.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. Like crazy different. I saw some surveillance footage back with the League and I almost couldn't believe you were the same guy when I met you at Wayne Industries. So good job with the disguise.”
Tim frowns. “Thanks, I think.” Maybe he should study some surveillance footage himself and see what the fuck Jason is talking about.
“Anyway, I'm trading pretty heavily on the Wayne name right now. So it's better if I play up the resemblance. Same hair type, similar style. I'll admit, I cribbed more from your fashion sense than Bruce's – I hate three-button suits, I think they make everyone who wears them look like forties mobsters. Or, like eighties business men. But anyway, I got brunch with the Mayor and a bunch'a other city bigwigs this morning.” And ok. Jason wasn't kidding about having connections. “It's better that they see the heir to the Wayne name than some punk kid from the Narrows, right? So,” Jason shrugs, hoisting the straightener, “I'm giving them that guy.”
Tim. Tim has never really thought of things that way. He's pretty much the same person all of the time. Unless he's donning a disguise for a case. But as Tim, he's just, Tim. Right?
But Tim thinks over all the times he's seen Jason interact with people out in public, and even with different family members. And he realizes that Jason does change pretty significantly depending on who he's around. He changes how he talks, how he holds himself.
And Tim wants to tell him that he can be himself when he's around Tim, and that Tim – Tim wants him to be. That he doesn't need to make himself nonthreatening, because – because he couldn't be a threat, not to Tim.
But he's not really sure how to do that. Or who Jason is, now that it's clear he's playing so heavily with people's perceptions. Is the “real” Jason the guy who breaks into Tim's apartment to yell at him to do laundry and who makes him dinner? He likes to think so. But maybe that's just who Jason thinks Tim needs him to be?
“You're over thinking this,” Jason says dryly, cutting through Tim's admittedly spiraling thoughts. “You're my brother. I'm not fucking pretending around you, or anyone else in the family.” He laughs bitterly. “What you see is what you get.”
And Tim frowns, because there's definitely one family member who'd rather have something different – someone different – for a son. For two sons, now.
He changes the subject. “So, you mentioned meeting with the Mayor?”
“Yeah,” Jason says, seeming pretty happy to move on from the topic of family himself. “Now that the office renovations are almost done and the harbor revitalization project is starting up, I gotta get the seal of approval to start renovating actual apartments and shit. So I gotta go glad hand all the people who make that happen. Plus,” he says slyly. “There's a architect who currently works for the city I'm trying to poach.”
Tim laughs. “Seriously?” Jason wheeling and dealing like any Gotham crook, but in service to the people instead of his own ends is. Well, strangely fitting, maybe. “You're crazy.”
Jason shrugs, and puts the straightener away. “Yeah. Probably. But she's got a degree in historical restoration and she's fucking wasted working for the city, putting up the same boring municipal buildings all the fucking time.”
“Well, good luck I guess.”
Jason claps Tim on the shoulder as he squeezes himself out the door. “Thanks man. And don't worry. I got an appointment with my Realtor to go over Drake Manor later this afternoon. It's my top priority.”
And then Jason's disappeared back into his bedroom, and Tim works to make himself mostly presentable so he can go get whatever newest crisis the Board wants to talk to him about fucking over with. Though he does stop to eat breakfast, because Jason made some kind of rice porridge with fish that is incredible and he's not missing out on that. And also because Jason would look at him all disappointed if he didn't.
God, having Jason around is great, but he's also a huge pain in the ass. Which makes Tim think he's probably telling the truth about being his real self around him. If he was trying to ingratiate himself with Tim, he'd probably be way less of a dick.