Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It started the way most bad habits do: internet access, not enough supervision, and an online forum of people who made it sound like a good idea.

Tim was curious by nature. He always had been, and he always would be. He wanted to know everything about anything and anything about everything. 

First, that curiosity had been focused on Batman and his cadre. He’d spent long nights hunched over his sticker-covered laptop, watching grainy clips uploaded to forgotten corners of the internet, piecing together timelines from decades-old headlines, and mapping the city through shaky, stolen rooftop photos.

While other kids were playing video games, Tim was researching the shadows of Gotham’s vigilantes like they were a puzzle only he could solve.

That was how he’d figured out that Batman was Bruce Wayne. And Nightwing was Dick Grayson. And Black Bat was Cassandra Cain. And Robin was Damian Wayne. And—well, you get the idea.

It was this habit of… researching (stalking) the Bats that had led to his next curiosity.

Drugs.

Tim had been on one of his many nighttime rooftop adventures, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gotham’s favourite shadows, when he stumbled across a dark shape hunched over in an alleyway.

At first, he hadn’t thought anything of it: he’d stumbled across his fair share of Gotham’s uglier corners before during his time gallivanting around the city. But this was new. There was something just… off.

When he dropped down for a closer look, he found a woman slumped against the brick, her skin washed out under the faint light cast from someone’s window above them.

She wasn’t dead—not yet—but she wasn’t far from it either. Her breathing was shallow. Her pulse, when he finally forced himself to check, was weak and uneven. Her arms were covered in track marks and bruises, and an empty syringe lay in the muck next to her twitching hand.

Tim froze.

She’d overdosed. That much was obvious, even to him.

His mind went blank. He thought about calling someone—he should call someone—but his hands didn’t move. His body didn’t move. He just stood there, as if observing a crime scene or a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

And as the seconds stretched into minutes, the rise and fall of her chest grew fainter. Then it stopped completely.

Tim stayed rooted to the spot, watching the light in her eyes dull to nothing.

He’d just watched someone die—not for the first time, Gotham had a way of making death familiar—but it was the first time he’d seen it happen like this. Quiet. Slow. Up close.

Death by overdose.

He wondered what that felt like. Whether it was euphoric or not, whether she’d had enough of her mind left to realise what she’d done, whether the end came as a blur or a blade.

Whether it hurt.

He went home that night with a new obsession.

Tim spent hours reading forums, combing through drug safety sites, and inhaling every article, post, and first-hand account he could find. He read about effects and risks, about bad trips and overdoses, and about the lines between use and ruin. He read and read and read, but he never took that final jump.

Not until, one day, six months after he’d witnessed the woman die from an overdose, when he walked in on two middle-aged men in the restroom at a charity fundraiser, in the middle of doing a bump of coke off the porcelain sink.

They’d looked at him, white powder smeared on their noses, pupils already blown wide, and laughed, already high as a kite. Then they’d offered him a bump in exchange for his silence.

Tim hesitated, all those forums and safety websites flashing behind his eyes, knowing that he should leave.

But here’s the thing: Tim Drake was curious by nature. And despite his extensive online research regarding drugs, he’d never actually… experienced them.

And how could he truly know everything there was to know about drugs, without ever experiencing what they felt like for himself?

So he shrugged and took the credit card they’d used to organise the white powder, tapping it on the sink as they poured out another baggie, and he followed their instructions. He took the rolled bill they offered him, lowered his head to the porcelain, pressed the one nostril closed, and sniffed.

It had stung, at first. 

His eyes watered, but he didn’t stop until the line was gone.

The taste crawled down the back of his throat like frost. Sharp and chemical. His heart kicked against his ribs, too fast and too hard, but beneath it—something bloomed.

The men clapped him jovially on the back, jolting him hard, which caused a bit of the powder that had apparently got stuck in his nose to trickle down his throat, making him cough.

The high hit fast. 

Faster than Tim had expected. Only a few minutes.

And just like that, Tim Drake wasn’t the quiet, anxious showpiece anymore. He was someone louder. Brighter. Floating. 

His parents didn’t even notice that something was wrong with him when he returned to the fundraiser.

Jack seemed delighted, even, by the change in Tim’s behaviour, clapping him on the shoulder with a wide grin and launching into a story that involved far too many fishing anecdotes. 

That was four years ago now. 

After that night, things fell apart quietly.

He dropped out of high school first—said he needed a break, though he never went back. His parents hadn’t cared, mostly because they weren’t around enough in the first place to notice.

Then his parents died. 

Accident on a dig site. Crushed. 

Tim didn’t even have bodies left to bury. Just empty graves and an even emptier mansion. Not that it had ever been any other way.

Empty mansion, full bank account, empty heart.

Tim had “buried” his parents.

Then he’d done a bump, found the seediest club in all of Gotham, and gone on a four-day bender that ended with him naked in a fish tank in some guy's apartment, sporting bright-red hair and a tramp-stamp of a bird he didn’t remember getting.

And then there wasn’t anyone left to tell him what to do.

So he leaned into the cliché.

The rich kid with too much time, too much money, and not nearly enough sense. Nights blurred together in flashes of strobe lights, empty glasses, and warm skin. He flirted with men and women alike, both within his age range and far above it. He flirted with danger and oblivion both, just to see if any of it would make him feel something real. It never did.

He could stop anytime, of course. He just didn’t. It felt too good—and feeling anything at all was a luxury these days. Curiosity had become craving, and craving was easier to live with than the nothingness that otherwise filled him.

The party glittered the way these types of afterparties always did. Full of too much alcohol, too much perfume, too many drugs, too much of everything.

It smelled like old money and new sins.

Tim moved through the crowd like smoke, slipping easily between silk gowns and crisp suits, the press of warm bodies both overwhelming and grounding. This wasn’t new to him. These afterparties were predictable: someone’s penthouse, too many expensive bottles, and music just loud enough to blur conversation.

He liked them for that. For the noise that made it easier to stop thinking.

There was a lightness in his chest that felt almost like joy, except it came from baggies of powder and meant nothing. It felt like being on the precipice of a laugh that never quite came.

Someone shoved a drink into his hand, cold glass slick with condensation. He didn’t ask what it was, just knocked it back in a single swallow and welcomed the burn as it slid down his throat.

Around him, laughter ricocheted off the walls. Two trust fund boys were doing shots off a piano. A young woman in a backless red dress pulled at his sleeve with a smirk and then handed him a cigarette. He smirked at her and let her put it between his lips, taking a heavy drag.

He leaned in, cigarette dangling from his fingers.

Their mouths met, and he let the smoke spill from his lungs into hers, slow and deliberate. She exhaled against him with a low, breathy sound, the last wisps of smoke curling out between them as they broke apart.

Someone shouted Tim’s name and slung an arm around his shoulders, pulling him away from the girl in red. “There you are, Drake. Making me chase you again?”

The voice was smooth, lazy, and familiar. Tim didn’t even have to look.

Evan Kade.

He smelled like expensive cologne and cigarette smoke as he pressed himself against Tim’s side.

Evan was a “friend” Tim had made years ago. He was the son of the Kades (politicians), one year Tim’s elder, and seen at parties like this even more frequently than Tim was. Which was saying something, because Tim was basically always at these things.

He was tall, blond, and brown-eyed. Muscular, but not buff. He had a small mole under his right eye.

“Didn’t realise you were looking,” Tim said, tilting his head back to take another drag and making eye contact with the man. He had to look up to do so.

His heartbeat was beating a drum in his throat, steady and frantic all at once. Everything felt too sharp. The light off the window, the tick of the clock, the seam of his shirt against his skin. It felt like his nerves had all moved too close to the surface.

Evan leaned in and plucked the cigarette from his lips, taking his own pull, close enough that Tim could feel the warmth of his breath against his cheek. “I’m always looking. You just keep running off to flirt with girls who can’t keep up.”

“Maybe I like the view.”

He felt both weightless and too heavy to stand, skin buzzing.

Evan smirked, slow, eyes flicking over Tim’s face. “You like the attention. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

He passed the cigarette back, fingers brushing deliberately over Tim’s lips. His hand didn’t move back right away, either; it lingered just long enough to make the air between them go taut with tension.

“You’re drunk,” Tim said, voice quieter now.

“Yeah,” Evan said, leaning in until his lips nearly grazed Tim’s ear. “And you’re high. Guess we’re both making bad decisions tonight.”

When am I not? Tim thought to himself. 

Evan laughed, low and rough, and grabbed a half-finished drink from a passing tray. He offered it to Tim, but didn’t let go when Tim reached for it—fingers tangled around the glass, a silent tug-of-war that left them both smirking.

Tim rolled his eyes at him.

“Drink,” Evan said softly. “Hydration’s important.”

Tim arched a brow, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him with a faint curve. “You know this isn’t water, right?”

“Tragic oversight.” Evan finally released the glass, brushing his thumb against the inside of Tim’s wrist as he did. The touch lingered, possessive in a way that made Tim’s pulse spike for reasons that had nothing to do with the coke he’d done off some guy’s bare stomach fifteen minutes earlier or the alcohol burning through his veins.

The music pulsed through the air, bass shaking the floor beneath them.

Evan leaned closer, voice a murmur almost lost under the beat. “Come dance, Drake.”

Tim snorted, finishing the drink in one swallow. “I don’t dance, Evan.”

Evan grinned, white teeth flashing in the low light. “Well, I’m sure we could find some other way to pass the time.” His hand drifted down to Tim’s ass. “Somewhere quieter.”

“Since when do you like quiet?” Tim asked, though he didn’t step back, blowing more smoke, this time directly into Evan’s face. Just to be a brat.

Evan’s mouth curved, unbothered by the smoke. He was used to Tim playing brat by now. It was part of the game. “Since I figured out it’s the only time you stop running your mouth.”

The music dropped into a heavier beat. Evan caught Tim’s wrist, tugging him toward a darker corner of the room. “Come on, Timmy. Let’s see if you still remember how.”

In the dim light of the secluded corner, Evan spun them so that Tim was pressed against the wall, covered by his body. It wasn’t quieter than the rest of the room, wasn’t more private either: just the illusion of it, shrouded in shadow with only the occasional coloured strobe light flashing over them.

His fingers ghosted along the line of Tim's jaw, his touch sending shivers down Tim's spine. 

Tim’s heart thudded louder, the drugs and alcohol in his system mixing deliciously with the want coursing through him. 

Evan smirked at him and leaned in slowly. His lips found Tim's in a heated kiss, his tongue teasing at Tim’s lips until he parted for him, darting inside and exploring his mouth with a hunger that sent a jolt of electricity through Tim’s body. Or maybe that was the coke.

His hands gripped Evan's hips, pulling him closer, feeling the heat of his body through their clothes. 

He was floating above everyone and everything. He felt limitless—which, deep down, he knew meant he wasn’t.

Evan's hands moved to Tim's chest, slipping up under his shirt, fingers tracing the lines of his muscles. Tim's breath hitched as Evan’s lips moved from his mouth down to his neck, his teeth nipping gently, sending waves of pleasure coursing through Tim's body.

He groaned slightly, head falling back against the wall. His heart continued to thump thump thump in his chest and throat, in time with the throbbing steadily growing between his legs.

Evan’s hands moved to Tim's belt, unbuckling it with a swiftness that spoke of practice, of habit. He kissed and nipped at Tim’s neck as he did so, determinedly working a bruise into his pale skin as if it were his God-given assignment.

“You feel good, baby?” Evan whispered in his ear, voice low and sultry.

Tim opened his mouth to respond, probably with something a little bratty and cutting, but his breath was cut off as Evan's hand slipped between his trousers and his underwear, pressing against him. So close to where he wanted him, but so far.

His breathing faltered, coming in short gasps, and his head thunked back against the wall.

Evan smirked down at him, face shadowed by the darkness.

Tim glared through half-lidded eyes, then broke off into a moan as Evan pressed his hand against him purposefully.

His fingers stroked against him slowly, a teasing motion that sent Tim's hips bucking against his hand in search of more pressure. Pressure that Evan refused to give him. Tim’s head fell forward against his chest, and Evan patted the back of his head almost mockingly, causing Tim to grit his teeth.

Another wave of weightless, euphoric pleasure ripped through him. It was like running downhill with no way to stop, laughing all the way down.

“Kade,” Tim grunted into his shoulder, tone biting and pissed, after what felt like forever with Evan just teasing him.

“Drake,” Evan murmured back, voice low in his ear.

“Stop being a tease,” Tim ground out, biting back a moan as Evan’s fingers brushed against him again.

“Hm.” Evan rolled his hand again, and Tim let out a stuttering gasp that broke off into a sound embarrassingly close to a whine. Evan grinned, teeth flashing. “No. I don’t think I will, Timmy. You were such a brat earlier…”

Evan's lips found Tim's again, their kiss deepening as Tim's hands moved to Evan's belt. Evan’s free hand grasped his wrists before he could get any further.

“No.” He moaned against Tim’s lips, panting heavily into his mouth. A string of saliva stretched between their lips. “Not yet.”

He pulled away slightly, removing his hand from Tim’s underwear. Tim groaned in displeasure, thrusting his hips against Evan’s in protest.

Evan grunted and shot him a look that said Behave. 

Tim did it again because his obedience had to be earned, and Evan hadn’t worked hard enough to earn it yet. 

“Fuck,” Evan cursed, as he rocked against him a third time.

Then he pinned Tim’s hips to the wall with one hand and slipped his other into his pocket, pulling out a small bag of white powder. He sprinkled some onto his hand, then offered it to Tim. 

“Try it,” he whispered, his voice deep with desire. 

Tim hesitated for only a moment, then leaned in and licked it off of Evan’s hand, maintaining eye contact as he did so. The taste was bitter.

Evan watched him, his eyes gleaming with a hunger that sent a shiver down Tim's spine. 

“Fuck,” he grunted, voice ruined as he watched Tim lick down his hand purposefully, and suck two of his fingers into his mouth.

Evan swiped his thumb along Tim’s cheek affectionately, then extracted his fingers from his mouth. He took the bag, sprinkled some directly onto his own tongue, then leaned in to kiss Tim, sharing the taste of the drug with him.

The room started to blur around them.

Their movements became more urgent, their bodies pressing together, their breaths coming in ragged gasps. Evan's hand slipped inside Tim's pants again, wrapping around him properly this time, stroking him slowly. Tim gasped, almost writhing beneath him, letting out little whimpers and moans that were swallowed by the thumping music.

They weren’t hidden at all, but they went largely ignored. Their behaviour wasn’t at all unusual for this type of party.

Blue strobe lights flashed over them every thirty seconds, casting Tim’s face in shadow where his head was tilted back against the wall, neck exposed.

His blood was buzzing with endorphins. From the sex, from the drugs, from the alcohol. 

He felt so alive.

“Evan,” Tim gasped, letting his head fall into the taller man’s shoulder. His fringe was plastered to his damp forehead, and his whole body was shuddering, “Eva—ah! Ah! Hmm, agh—”

Evan didn’t let up as Tim came, keeping the same pace until Tim was whimpering and trying to twist away. He had a dark, satisfied glint in his eye.

“Evan—ow—agh, mhh—Kane!” Tim smacked his shoulder, breathing heavily. “Stop, you dick, that hur—ah, hnuh—”

Evan had dropped to his knees in front of Tim, dragging his tongue along his length while staring up at him through lidded eyes.

“Can you go again, Timmy?”

Tim stared down at him like he was insane. “Evan—what the hell, I just came—”

Without Evan blocking his view of the room, Tim could see the whole party. The writhing bodies on the dance floor, the people knocking back drinks at the bar, the DJ in the booth. 

A cold sweat was slicking his skin despite the heat crawling over him. 

He locked eyes with the woman in the red dress from earlier just as Evan took him into his mouth.

His whole body jolted like he’d been electrocuted, hand flying down to Evan’s head. He grasped his hair, not sure whether he was holding him still or encouraging him.

It hurt. He was still sensitive. Far too sensitive.

Evan blinked up at him, eyes dark but shining in the blue light, and didn’t move.

The world was starting to sway a little, soft at the edges, blurring as if reality had lost focus.

Tim stared down at Evan’s blond hair spilling between his fingers, feeling strangely detached from his body. His arm felt distant—borrowed.

Slowly, tentatively, Evan moved his head lower, eyes still fixed on Tim’s face. Tim shuddered again, a sound that was halfway between a pleasured groan and a pained whimper ripping from him as he collapsed back against the wall.

He couldn’t tell if his heart was racing too fast or too slow. Everything was too bright, too hot, too close. The blue strobe lights were suddenly too much, his vision pulsing along with his heartbeat, blue, darkness, blue, darkness, blue—

The woman in the red dress was still looking at him, even as she ground up against some ginger guy on the dance floor.

The air felt thick like syrup. His throat was burning, and every breath scraped. The laughter, the voices, the music—they all started to crash together in a single, unbearable noise.

A thin thread of panic unspooled somewhere deep and small, smothered by the induced calmness the drugs caused.

His heart was thumping so loud in his ears that he couldn’t hear the music anymore, erratic and offbeat. He could feel it in parts of his body he shouldn’t be able to.

His limbs were starting to shake despite how distant they felt, tremors that had nothing to do with Evan going down on him shaking his body.

The pleasant blur that intoxication usually brought him was swiftly turning into something else. Something more. 

Something was wrong. 

He pulled Evan off by the hair, probably a bit too roughly, but Evan just groaned, eyes sparking with lust.

He looked up at Tim, still on his knees. “Timmy—”

Then he saw Tim’s face and the lust in his eyes quickly melted away, replaced by concern. “Tim, what’s wrong?”

Tim tried to breathe, but no matter how much he gasped, it felt like there was no air entering his body—like there was a metal band latched tight around his chest.

That thin thread of panic started to expand. 

Somewhere behind all the noise—in his head, in the room—a thought surfaced. He’d gone too far this time. Tim had fucked up.

He needed air. Just a second. Just enough to breathe.

“Gotta—gotta go—” Tim managed to gasp out, his words coming out slightly slurred.

He zipped up his trousers and staggered away from Evan, ignoring the confused shouts of his name.

Tim shoved past a pair of men arguing over a spilt drink and stumbled toward the exit. The lights fractured in his vision, doubling, then tripling. His vision kept flickering black, pulsing in and out. He hit the wall hard enough to leave a smudge of sweat and glitter on the wallpaper, but kept going. Someone, probably Evan, called his name again—maybe—but it was swallowed by the music.

He pushed through the doors and into the hall.

The bass thudded behind him, muffled now, like a heartbeat fading underwater. The quiet hurt worse than the noise had.

Tim's heartbeat continued to thunder in his ears, erratic.

The elevator was too far. He couldn’t wait.

No time. No time. Something was wrong.

He found the stairs instead.

Every step down felt like he was falling sideways. His whole world was doing backflips, spinning like he was inside a washing machine, rocking back and forth like one of those pirate ship rides at a theme park.

His hand dragged along the railing, slick with something—maybe his own sweat.

His pulse stuttered harder; his stomach lurched. The edges of the world flickered again.

Tim missed a step and went tumbling down the last flight of stairs, landing in a heap at the bottom. He stayed there for an indeterminate period of time, watching the ceiling above him spin, aware that that should’ve hurt but even more conscious of the fact that he couldn’t feel any pain. His limbs were numb.

By the time he managed to stumble to his feet, through the fire exit, and hit the alley outside, he was trembling all over, and his limbs had turned to rubber. The night air felt like a slap, but it did nothing to steady him.

He bent over, bracing his hands on his knees, breath tearing out of him in sharp gasps. The streetlights blurred, swimming gold and white around him until he was half-convinced he had a glowing halo of light spinning around his head. The world tilted again.

Tim straightened—or tried to. His legs didn’t listen.

The ground rocked beneath him, and his knees hit the ground. Hard.

Pain lanced through him, but it was distant. 

The alley tilted around him again, a funhouse mirror of wet asphalt and flickering lights. The cold cut through his clothes but didn’t quite reach his heated, sweat-slick skin. Everything was distant, muffled, like he was wrapped in static bubble wrap.

Tim tried to breathe, but his chest still wouldn’t move right. Each inhale came sharp and shallow, his heart hammering so fast it felt like it was trying to escape out of his throat—or maybe just straight through the skin of his chest, like one of those old cartoons.

His hands wouldn’t stop trembling.

He leaned over and vomited, acid burning in his throat.

Oh God. 

Was he dying?

Tim was usually careful with his self-destruction. Careful with doses, with lines, with his limits. He liked to know where the edge was before he leaned over it. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? To flirt with ruin, not marry it.

But somewhere during the night, he’d lost track of his limits. Of the edge.

He didn’t know how many bumps he’d taken, how many drinks he’d had, how much nicotine he’d smoked. 

Already, those were three things he should never have combined—coke, alcohol, and nicotine. And whatever had been in the baggie, the powder he’d licked off Evan’s hand.

God. He was so stupid.

Somewhere between the haze of smoke, the burn of alcohol, and Evan’s mouth on his skin, he’d lost track of his limits.

Now his body was cashing the debt.

His pulse fluttered again, uneven. His vision tunnelled to his pale hands grasping at the slick brick beneath him, at the vomit—his vomit—spreading between them, coating them.

It was yellowish, watery, slightly foamy, and made his sinuses sting faintly with the acidic tang of it. Distantly, Tim thought that that wasn’t what vomit was supposed to look like. That this was probably a bad sign.

The ground tilted again.

He thought back to the first overdose he’d ever seen. 

That nameless woman in the alleyway. The one with greying skin, track marks on her arms, and trembling hands. The one whose chest had risen, fallen, risen, fallen… and then simply… stopped, while Tim had watched, half-horrified, half-fascinated.

He’d seen overdoses since then. It was impossible not to, with the scene he immersed himself in. But he’d always been on the outside looking in. Always distant.

But now, sitting here with his pulse stuttering and his lungs refusing to fill, he realised how thin that distance had always been.

He felt... mortal.

It was a strange and unfamiliar feeling.

For the first time, he understood what that woman’s stillness must have felt like from the inside. The creeping numbness that started in the fingertips and worked its way inward. The fading of sound, of air, of thought. The way his world grew smaller until there was only the beat of a faltering heart and the question of whether it would start again.

Tim was going to die.

He knew that now. 

He’d once wondered if death by overdose was euphoric.

It wasn’t. Not anymore. The high had long since curdled into something hollow; panic wearing calm like a mask.

He’d wondered if there’d be enough of his mind left to realise what he’d done. 

There was. Too much of it, trapped in a body that wouldn’t listen.

He’d wondered if the end came as a blur or a blade. 

It was both—soft at the edges, sharp at the centre, cutting through thought until only instinct was left.

He’d wondered if it hurt. 

It did. Just not in the way he’d expected. Not pain in the body, but in the slow dawning awareness that he’d crossed a line he couldn’t uncross.

And Tim realised too late: he wasn’t ready to die.

Eventually, a sound broke through his haze of panic—thump thump thump. Like boots hitting pavement, growing closer.

But Tim wasn’t sure if they were real or if he was simply hearing his heartbeat again. 

“—hey—hey, kid. You with me?”

The voice sounded close but underwater. Tim thought they might’ve been speaking for a while, that he hadn’t been responding for long enough for them to get concerned.

Tim blinked, trying to focus on the figure crouched in front of him.

The red of the helmet caught the alley light first. Then the outline of body armour, a leather jacket, a gun holster glinting faintly in the dark.

Red Hood. Jason Todd.

Of course, it would be him.

Of course, the city wouldn’t even let him die in peace.

Jason’s voice cut through again, sharper this time, now that he’d noticed he had Tim’s attention. “Hey. Look at me.”

A gloved hand grabbed Tim’s chin, tilting his head upward. “Jesus. You’re burning up.”

Tim tried to answer, but only a wheeze came out. The words tangled somewhere in his throat.

“Alright, easy—hey, stay awake.” Jason’s tone shifted, the practised voice of someone used to emergencies.

His hand pressed to Tim’s throat, fingers searching for a pulse. The touch was grounding and terrifying all at once. 

Tim felt vulnerable, painfully so.

“Shit,” Jason muttered under his breath. “You’re tachycardic.” Then he grabbed Tim by the cheeks, tilting his head to the side. Tim let him, head a dead weight. “And your pupils are blown. What the hell did you take?”

Tim’s mouth worked soundlessly. His head lolled forward, then back, vision slipping in and out of focus.

Jason shook him lightly. “Hey. Stay with me. What did you take?”

Tim’s lips twitched in something that might’ve been a smile.

“Doesn’t… matter.” His voice was a raspy whisper. “Too late.”

Jason swore again, more harshly this time. “Don’t give me that. You’re not dying in my goddamn alley, kid, you hear me? Now tell me what you took.”

Tim hummed. Everything was starting to feel distant now. Different from how it did before. More... certain.

“—hey! Hey! Kid! Stay with me!” Jason gently slapped Tim’s cheek, causing him to frown and groan.

“Gerrof,” Tim slurred.

Jason gripped his cheeks again, pulling him closer, almost harshly. “Tell me. What you. Took.”

The movement jostled his head harshly, and Tim jolted a little—not from the movement, but from the secondary bit of powder that trickled from his nose down his throat. He hadn’t realised any of the coke he’d snorted earlier had got lodged in his nasal passages. The second bump was unexpected (and unwanted) in his current state.

“Dunno,” Tim rasped out. “... Everything.”

Jason swore.

He fumbled for something in his jacket, gloves moving quickly and efficiently, but Tim wasn’t really seeing him anymore. Just the way the red of the helmet glinted in the low light.

The longer he stared, the more the helmet seemed to pulsate with every uneven beat of his heart.

“Yeah, no, not happening.”

Jason’s voice was sharp with controlled anger. Or maybe not, he sounded almost... afraid?

He shifted closer, one hand steadying the back of Tim’s neck, the other tapping lightly against his face again repeatedly. Annoyingly.

“Come on, kid. Focus. What did you take? Pills? Powder? Talk to me.”

Tim’s head lolled sideways. The movement made the alley spin.

Jason was still tapping his face—would he stop that? Tim was trying to... trying to... what was he trying to do?

His thoughts were gone now; every time he tried to grasp for them, they dissipated into nothingness.

Oh wait. He needed to tell Jason what he took. Right. Well, that was easy, he'd taken... taken...

“Can’t… remember,” he muttered. “Doesn’t matter.”

Jason cursed under his breath.

“It matters if you want to live,” he snapped, but his tone softened immediately after. “Alright, fine. We’ll do this the hard way.”

He reached into his jacket for the small med kit he carried, hands working fast. The cold sting of a vial brushed Tim’s skin, followed by the sharp smell of antiseptic. Tim flinched weakly.

“Good,” Jason muttered. “Means you’re still in there. Just hang on.”

Tim’s gaze drifted upward, unfocused. The red helmet wavered above him like a distorted reflection in water. 

“You look… stupid,” he mumbled.

Jason huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You’re delirious. Lucky for you, I don’t take fashion advice from half-dead strangers.”

Tim blinked slowly, trying to keep his eyes open. “Jaso—”

He broke off into an airless wheeze.

Jason froze. The syringe in his hand stilled midair.

“…What? What did you just—”

Tim’s head rolled weakly to the side. His tongue felt thick and slow in his mouth. Heavy. Huh. Had his tongue always been that way?

“Red doesn’t suit you,” he slurred. It took a lot of effort to get the words out. “You looked better… before.”

Jason’s breath caught, loud in the quiet. “…How the hell—”

But Tim didn’t answer. His eyelids fluttered once, twice, then sank shut. His body went limp, blissful numbness consuming him as he faded into that black nothingness.

Shockingly, Tim woke up.

It felt like surfacing through murky water—sound before sensation, voices blurring until eventually they started to form into words. Tim registered them first, faint and warped like a radio out of tune, but had to concentrate to try and make them out...

“…should’ve called someone—”

“I did,” another voice snapped.

Something metallic echoed; footsteps against metal, movement echoing in a cavernous space.

His chest burned like it was trying to claw its way open.

He dragged in a thin, ragged breath. It tasted sterile and cold.

“—you don’t just bring a stranger down here—should've taken him to a hospital—” 

Jason’s reply, because that voice had to be Jason, was sharp, dripping with contempt. “He knows who I am.”

The words hit like a stone dropped through still water. The ripple of silence after was almost deafening.

Tim’s eyelashes twitched, the world blurrily coming into focus.

Darkness overhead. The dull hum of machines. A strange weight against the lower half of his face. A leather glove pressing against his wrist. Someone checking his pulse? His fingers felt like static.

“What.”

A deep voice. Low and controlled. More dangerous than yelling. And very, very close to Tim. 

Probably the person checking his pulse.

It sounded familiar. But Tim’s brain was in a fog, and he couldn’t quite match the voice with the face.

Jason let out a humourless laugh. “Yeah. Was busy trying to figure out what the hell he took when the fucking kid insults my helmet and then calls me by my civilian name.”

Silence again.

Tim wanted to say something, anything, but his tongue felt too big in his mouth still. The weight on his face must be an oxygen mask, he realised, and it was making every breath sound fake and mechanical.

“He shouldn’t even be here. This is a liability—”

“This is a kid who almost died in an alley.” 

“Because of his own choices!”

“Doesn’t mean we should leave him to die!”

“Enough.” 

There was a beat of silence. 

Tim couldn’t figure out who was speaking, though he knew he should be able to.

Then more footsteps, and a new voice:

“Why is Timothy Drake in the Batcave?”

“Sunshine, what the hell do you mean? Timothy Drake—that guy over there? That one?”

A brief silence. 

“Uh? Yeah… that’s him. Met him at galas a few times before.”

“What?!”

“You seriously didn’t know what Timothy Drake looks like?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was a little preoccupied with stopping him from dying from an overdose in an alleyway.”

“You what?”

“Did all of you know that was goddamn Timothy Drake and you didn’t tell me?”

“Well… yeah? I thought you’d recognised him, though.”

The deep voice again. “It didn’t seem particularly relevant considering you had already brought him here, and he was in critical condition.”

Tim forced his eyes open, vision smearing the dark ceiling with the bright wash of light around him. His ribs ached. His pulse hammered too close to the surface of his skin. It hurt. Everything hurt.

“He's awake.”

A feminine voice.

They all fell silent immediately, and Tim felt the weight of eyes on him.

His body caught up to his brain in bursts, like lights flicking on in a blackout. Pain behind the eyes. Dry, acidic-tasting mouth. A tremor he couldn’t quite stop or control.

His heart was still beating too fast. Not in a pleasant, fluttery way, but in hard, uneven jolts that made his chest ache. His fingers twitched against the blanket. Cold. He was freezing.

“Easy.” Tim’s eyes snapped to his right, meeting the masked eyes of one Dick Grayson—uh, Nightwing. Dick’s voice lowered like he was talking to a frightened animal. “Don’t try to sit up.”

Tim tried anyway, because he'd never been good at doing what he was told. It was a bad idea. His stomach lurched, and a metallic taste flooded his mouth.

He gagged, coughing around the oxygen mask.

A gloved hand was on his shoulder before he could move any more. Tim followed the hand up to its owner and—oh. That was Bruce Wayne. Wait, no. Cowl on. That was Batman.

“Lie still.”

Jason swore under his breath. The sound drew Tim’s attention to the rest of the room. Or… not a room?

It was a cavern. A cavern full of very dangerous, very recognisable people.

He seemed to be in some sort of medbay. Which was… strange. Because the medbay didn’t really belong with the rest of its environment. It looked too clean against the jagged stone around it. He was surrounded by sleek monitors casting a sterile, bluish glow, light pooling against surgical steel and stark white sheets. Tubing and cables trailed off into shadow, disappearing into the ribs of the cave like veins. The air was cold, and the chill sank into his skin, making the tremors worse. His teeth almost chattered, but he clenched them to stop the noise.

His chest burned in ugly pulses. Every breath scraped against his raw throat, shallow and mechanical through the oxygen mask. The monitor to his left beeped too fast. He didn’t need to look at the numbers to know it wasn’t good.

He shifted his gaze, and the faces swam into focus one at a time.

Jason was the first one he registered, standing a little away from the bed, helmet discarded carelessly on a counter behind him. His hair was stuck up at odd angles, damp and dark except for a white streak in the front, and his jaw was locked tight. He didn’t have a mask on at all. The scowl he wore was tense as he stared intently at Tim.

Nightwing was closer. Dick Grayson. He was on Tim’s right side. His mask didn’t hide the way his eyes narrowed with worry, or how his hand hovered.

Bruce Wayne’s—Batman’s gloved hand pressed into his shoulder. Not crushing, but enough to make it clear that moving wasn’t on the table. It was both anchoring and suffocating, all at once.

At the foot of the bed, Robin, Damian Wayne, stood in full gear with his arms crossed and the faintest crease between his brows. 

Further back, Duke Thomas leaned against a metal support beam, wearing sweats and a domino mask, posture loose. There was something like disbelief still lingering in his expression—as if he was still piecing together how exactly Timothy Drake had ended up overdosing in a Gotham alley.

Cassandra Cain was the quietest. Barefoot, dressed in soft pyjamas, with a domino mask sitting on her face. She was the one who’d said “He's awake,” Tim realised distantly.

Her head tilted slightly, eyes fixed on him like she was reading more from his uneven breathing and tremors than any monitor could.

The air felt heavy. Not just from the weight of the cave, but from the way they were all looking at him.

Tim’s pulse stuttered, his heart still running at the wrong speed—too fast, too hard. His stomach turned in on itself, nausea and exhaustion rolling through him in waves.

He wasn’t in control of anything: not his body, not his breathing, not the way his fingers shook against the blanket.

Someone adjusted something—he heard the hiss of air change pressure in the line feeding his mask.

“Hey,” Dick said, softer now, stepping into his peripheral vision. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

Tim almost laughed. He wasn’t okay. His chest hurt like it had been wrung out, his veins burned with leftover chemicals, and if Jason hadn’t found him when he did—

Yeah. He’d be a corpse in an alley right now.

The thought shuddered through him, cold and sharp.

Bruce’s hand didn’t move, but the pressure changed—more grounding than restraining this time.

“You’re safe,” he said.

Tim stared up at the ceiling, vision flickering in and out of focus. Safe was not the word he’d have picked.

Alive, maybe. Barely.

He honestly wasn’t completely convinced. He was half-certain that this was some sort of drug-induced death dream. Maybe his brain was creating a final safe space before he passed.

The machines near the bed started beeping faster. 

Dick leaned in, brow furrowed at the monitor. “Heart rate’s spiking again.”

“Not surprising,” Jason muttered. “You mix coke with that much alcohol, it masks the sedative effect. Makes your heart work overtime. Add nicotine, and whatever else he took on top, and it’s like lighting a match in a fireworks factory.”

Tim flinched. His ribs hurt with every breath. His head pounded in uneven, ugly pulses.

Bruce said, “You went into respiratory distress before Red Hood found you. If he’d been five minutes later—”

“Yeah,” Jason grunted. “I’d be hauling a body bag.”

The words landed like a punch to the jaw.

Tim clenched his jaw, eyes stinging. His fingers curled into the thin blanket. His breathing picked up again. The beeping grew even more intense.

“Your blood oxygen dropped dangerously low,” Bruce continued, as if he couldn’t hear the incessant beeping that was Tim’s heart laid bare for them all to see. His tone was clinical, but the tension around his mouth wasn’t. “We stabilised it here. But you’re not out of the woods yet.”

Tim was almost hyperventilating now. The monitors were going crazy.

“Stop.” Cass stepped forward, feet silent. “You are upsetting him.”

The effect was immediate.

Cass’s voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the rising noise—through the too-fast heartbeat hammering in his ears, through the beeping of the monitors, and through Bruce’s flat tone. 

Shockingly enough, Bruce did fall quiet.

Tim’s pulse still raced, breath too shallow, the oxygen mask hissing louder than anything else. The edges of his vision blurred and sharpened, blurred again. It felt like being trapped inside his own skin, lungs clawing for air they couldn’t quite hold.

He raised a shaky hand and tried to grasp the mask, tried to pull it off. He couldn’t breathe—the mask—it was suffocating him—he couldn’t—he couldn’t—he—

Someone—Dick, probably—pulled his weakly grasping fingers away from his face and pressed a hand over his mask, keeping it pinned to him. 

Tim continued to gasp and shudder. The monitors continued to beep, so incessant that it was almost one long, continuous sound.

He was vaguely aware of everyone staring at him, but it was hard to focus on any of that when his vision was going grey at the edges, and he couldn’t get air into his lungs, just like when—when Jason had found him. 

Oh God. He was dying again—he was back in that alley—this really was a drug-induced dream—

“Timothy. Tim—can I call you that?” Dick’s voice stayed soft and careful. His hand stayed holding Tim’s oxygen mask against his face. “You’re safe. You’re not in the alley anymore. You’re alive. You’re here. Breathe with me, okay?”

Tim couldn’t quite match the rhythm at first. His chest ached too much, each inhale catching. But Dick was patient, talking him through it with a gentleness and patience that Tim wasn’t sure he’d ever had aimed at him before in his entire twenty-one years of life.

The monitor still screamed his heartbeat to the room, but the spikes began to even out—fraction by fraction, beat by beat. The panic didn’t disappear, but it stopped choking him.

Tim forced air through his nose, the plastic mask slick against his skin. He blinked rapidly, trying to ground himself on anything—on the rhythm of Dick’s breathing, on the slight pressure of Bruce’s glove against his shoulder, on the cavern’s chill settling in his bones.

Jason muttered something under his breath but didn’t step closer. Damian hovered like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to help or just observe. Cass stayed at the foot of the bed, calm in a way no one else in the room was. 

The monitor finally dipped below panic levels.

Tim’s throat burned. His whole body trembled from exhaustion and the ugly, chemical crash he couldn’t crawl out of. His head pounded in time with his heartbeat. He hated how raw it all felt. How exposed.

Bruce exhaled through his nose, a sound that was almost—but not quite—a sigh, as if he wasn’t half the reason Tim had worked himself up into a panic attack in the first place. “Better.”

Jason scrubbed a hand over his face. “Christ, kid.”

Dick shot him a look, but Jason didn’t take it back.

Tim pressed the back of his head into the pillow, breathing hard but steadier now. Every muscle in his chest still felt too tight, like the world could slip out of his grasp if he blinked too long.

The shrill sound of Tim’s phone cut through the quiet like a gunshot in a church.

He flinched, the muscles in his shoulders jerking tight before he could stop them. The monitor blipped higher, almost perfectly in sync with the spike in his chest.

Jason swore under his breath. “Who the hell is calling you right now?”

Bruce didn’t move, but Dick reached toward the small table where someone must’ve dumped Tim’s things earlier. His hands were careful, steady, as he picked up the vibrating phone. The name flashing on the screen blurred and then focused in Tim’s swimming vision.

Evan Kane.

Dick’s eyebrow ticked upward as he observed the name on the screen. Maybe he was surprised Tim knew him.

A fresh wave of nausea curled low in his gut. Of course Evan would be worried—Tim had just… disappeared. In the middle of sex. With no explanation. No text. And he had no idea how long it had been since then. Hours probably.

Evan could be a dick sometimes, but he still cared. And it had been clear as day that something was wrong with Tim when he fled. Of course Evan would check in on him.

Jason plucked the phone from Dick’s hand before anyone else could react, thumbing the green icon without asking and switching it onto speakerphone.

“Yeah?” Jason’s voice wasn’t exactly gentle.

On the other end, Tim could hear Evan’s voice crack with panic, loud enough that Jason winced and held the phone further away from him.

“Timmy! Are you okay? You left in the middle of—did I do something? You haven’t been picking up and—”

“This isn’t Tim.” Jason cut him off, eyes carefully studying Tim’s face. No doubt watching to see how he reacted to Evan’s voice.

Evan fell silent.

“Who the fuck is this—where’s Tim? He’s not answering, I’ve called like thirty times, and—”

Jason rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Calm down. He’s alive.”

“Alive?” Evan repeated, breathless. “What do you mean alive—where is he? Is he hurt? Is he—”

Tim swallowed hard, throat raw. He opened his mouth. “Evan—”

The word came out as a rasp, thin and frayed. He barely recognised his own voice.

Jason cut him off. “Don’t talk.”

Dick’s hand landed lightly on Tim’s shoulder, not a restraint, just a steady weight.

“You need to rest. Your body’s already fighting to keep up.”

“He’s not exactly in shape to have a long conversation,” Jason said into the phone. “He overdosed. He’s in medical care. He’s gonna make it.”

Evan’s inhale was loud.

The room went painfully silent except for the hiss of oxygen and the rhythmic beeping of the monitor.

Tim’s fingers flexed weakly against the blanket. The monitor spiked a little again and then settled. The word overdose hung there—heavy and ugly and too real.

On the other end, Evan’s voice cracked again.

“He—what? What the fuck do you mean overdosed? He—Timmy never—he’s responsible, he never—”

Jason’s jaw flexed. He didn’t sound angry, exactly. Just tired. “He did. He’s not dead. You should be grateful for that part.”

Evan’s breathing was quick and harsh. Tim could picture him pacing the floor, hair messy, hands shaking the way they always did when he was scared... or really, really high.

“But—how? How did he OD?” Evan sounded truly confused. 

Half of the Bats were watching Tim, the other half were watching Jason talk. 

“Too much coke, I imagine,” Jason said dryly, not sugarcoating it at all.

Tim wrinkled his nose. An involuntary, tiny, stupid reflex he couldn’t quite control. Well… yeah… but it probably also had something to do with the unknown drug he’d licked off of Evan’s hand. That definitely hadn’t helped matters. 

Cass had been watching him closely, and now she interjected quietly, tapping Jason on the arm to direct his attention back to Tim. “Upset. Frustrated.” Then she tilted her head toward the phone. “By him?”

She glanced back at Tim, as if to gauge his reaction to her statement.

Jason’s gaze had cut back to Tim the second Cass spoke, sharp and assessing. The others followed, like a pack scenting blood in the air.

Tim hated it; hated how exposed he felt under that collective scrutiny. He tried to school his expression, but the effort only made his jaw ache. Cass’s read had hit too close. And apparently, everyone here knew it.

Evan’s voice crackled through the phone again, panicked and loud. “Timmy, please—just say something. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

Jason didn’t bother softening his tone. “What exactly happened before he left?”

A sharp inhale from Evan. “Why the fuck are you asking me that? Who are you people—where is he?”

“Answer the question,” Jason said, tone flat.

“I—uh—he just left!” Evan’s voice jumped half an octave. “We were together, and then he freaked out real bad or something—he wouldn’t talk to me, he just bolted—”

Cass’s eyes flicked to Tim again, narrowing slightly.

Bruce cut off Evan’s flailing panic. “What were you doing when he left?”

Evan hesitated. The sound was obvious even through the speaker. Too long a pause.

“Evan,” Dick said, a warning under his breath.

Evan groaned and muttered something the phone didn’t quite pick up. Tim imagined it was something rude.

“…We were hooking up,” Evan said finally. He sounded cornered. “Jesus, is that what this is about? Why he won’t speak to me? We’ve done this a hundred times before, it’s not—”

He cut himself off like he’d said too much.

Tim felt the heat crawl up the back of his neck, even through the fog of exhaustion. He couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, but he didn’t need to. He could feel their reactions in the room. Damian made a sharp sound—half scoff, half disgust—while Duke shifted awkwardly near the foot of the bed.

The numerous hickeys he was certain Evan had sucked into his neck earlier suddenly felt incriminating. Embarrassing.

Jason’s mouth twitched. Not like he was amused. More like this was confirming a theory he really wished wasn’t true. 

“Uh-huh,” he said. “And did you maybe give him something while you were hooking up?”

Evan froze on the line.

Tim slumped back against his pillows.

The silence that followed said everything.

“Evan,” Jason drawled. “Gonna need an answer.”

“It wasn’t—fuck, okay,” Evan blurted. “It wasn’t like I drugged him or anything, alright? It was just—he licked some off my hand. I didn’t make him do it, we do this shit all the time—”

The oxygen mask suddenly felt like a vice against Tim’s face. The room swayed a little, nausea curdling at the edges of his gut.

“What was it?” Bruce’s voice was cutting.

Evan stammered, “Just—just a little molly. I swear, not a big deal. We’ve done it before, he’s never—”

“Not a big deal,” Jason repeated, incredulous. “He flatlined.”

Tim flinched hard. He hadn’t realised his heart had started pounding faster again until the monitor informed him—loud and relentless.

Dick crouched a little closer, catching Tim’s eye through the fog of panic threatening to drag him under again. “Hey. Stay with me, okay? Don’t let his bullshit get in your head.”

Bruce stepped closer to the table, his gloved hand coming down on the edge with a quiet thunk. “Evan,” he said, voice cold, “you gave him MDMA on top of cocaine, nicotine, and alcohol.”

Tim closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at anyone.

“Y-yeah,” Evan stammered. “But he was fine, he—he’s always fine. He can handle it—”

Jason laughed once, humourless. “Yeah, well, his body didn’t get the memo.”

The weight of the conversation settled over the room like a storm cloud. No one was pretending this was fine now. Not when the word flatlined was still ringing in Tim’s ears.

Evan’s voice cracked. “Can I—can I see him?”

Tim cracked open an eye.

Everyone was looking at him again.

Jason looked down at him, eyebrow raised. The unspoken question hung there.

Tim clenched his jaw. Every muscle in his chest felt stretched thin, brittle. He didn’t trust his voice, didn’t trust that if he opened his mouth, he wouldn’t just choke on all of it. But the answer came through anyway—small and hoarse through the mask.

“No.”

Jason didn’t even hesitate before hanging up. The click was final.

For a moment, all Tim could hear was the steady hiss of oxygen and the machine ticking out his heartbeat, too fast and too real.

Then Dick let out a slow breath, running a hand down his face.

“Well,” he muttered, “that explains a hell of a lot.”

Duke muttered something that sounded vaguely like, “It’s a miracle he’s alive.”

Bruce’s jaw was locked tight. Cass hadn’t moved from the foot of the bed, and her eyes hadn’t left Tim. But she wasn't judgmental... just steady. Watching.

Tim wished the bed would swallow him whole. He closed his eyes again, utterly exhausted.

Someone was muttering about how MDMA took longer to kick in than cocaine, about the long-term effects of being on both at the same time, about needing to ask Tim how he knew Jason’s name—

But someone was petting Tim’s head, fingers gently tugging the knots out of his hair. 

And Tim was exhausted.

Within seconds of closing his eyes, Tim was asleep again.

When Tim next awoke, most of the others had gone. The only people who remained were Bruce, Jason, and Cass.

The cave was quieter now, the hum of machinery low, rhythmic—almost peaceful if it weren’t for the sterile chill that still clung to the air. Someone had dimmed the lights. Shadows pooled in the corners, softening the edges of the world.

His body still ached. His chest felt bruised from the inside out, every breath thin and uneven. His tongue was dry, metallic. Sweat clung to his skin, gone cold now, tacky against the sheets. He could smell himself—smoke, party air, sour adrenaline—and the realisation made his stomach turn. He wanted a shower. He wanted to crawl out of his own skin.

Jason was leaning against the counter, arms crossed, the tension still set deep in his shoulders. Cass sat near the foot of the medbed, posture loose but alert, eyes still hidden behind a domino mask. Bruce’s order, no doubt. He was probably hoping Tim only knew Jason’s identity. 

Bruce stood closest—his cowl was still on, hiding most of his face—but the downward twitch of his lips as he studied Tim suggested that he was caught somewhere between calculation and concern.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Jason said, voice half-cheerful and half-strained.

“Do you know where you are?” Bruce asked.

Tim’s gaze flicked between them. His heartbeat stuttered—still too fast, still wrong.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “The Cave—uh, the Batcave.”

Jason’s brow furrowed. “That’s not something you should know.”

Tim hesitated.

Bruce took a small step closer.

“Tim,” he said quietly, almost carefully, “how do you know about this place?”

Tim glanced at him, then away.  His pulse picked up again, that jittery rhythm that felt like someone had replaced his heart with that of a small bird’s.

He hated how weak he sounded when he said, “Doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Bruce said, voice calm but firm. “You know Jason’s identity. How?”

“Yeah, kid. You dropped it like it was nothing. So, unless you’ve got x-ray vision, I’d really like to know how you pulled that off.”

Tim groaned, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. His skin was clammy. “Can we not do this right now? I just—nearly died. I feel like garbage.”

Jason’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, you and me both. But if you’re gonna start throwing around civilian names like that, we kinda need to know how deep this goes.”

Bruce stayed silent. But the silence was heavy. Purposeful. Silence designed to make you feel so uncomfortable that you cracked and told them what they wanted to know. Bat-silence.

Tim sighed, slumping back against the pillows. “Fine. You really want to know?”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “That’s kinda the idea.”

Tim exhaled, long and resigned, before muttering, “You’re not gonna believe me.”

What followed was an awkward, excruciating conversation in which Tim confessed that, yes, he knew who they all were. He’d known for years, actually. He explained that he’d pieced it together bit by bit through patterns, sightings, and, okay, maybe a little light stalking. The word “research” came up, and then Jason laughed, short, incredulous, while Bruce’s expression went from disbelief to something darker, quieter. Cass just listened silently and removed her domino mask. By the time Tim finished, he’d wished he could sink into the floor about three different times and wished he’d actually died from his overdose about eight.

There was a pause after that. 

Bruce removed his cowl, revealing ruffled, slightly damp hair and tired eyes. 

Then he asked the question that mattered most. The one they’d all been dancing around.

“How long have you been using?”

Tim hesitated, his stomach knotting. His hands felt heavy in his lap, pale and trembling. “A while.”

Jason shifted his weight, the scrape of his boot on stone the only sound. 

Bruce’s eyes didn’t move from Tim’s face. “How long is ‘a while,’ Tim?”

Tim sighed, eyes flicking toward the ceiling, unable to meet his eyes.

“...Ah… well. Four years.”

Bruce’s eye twitched. “Four years.”

Tim nodded, eyes now glued to his hands. Someone must’ve cleaned his vomit off them at some point. But his fingernails were still rimmed with grime. He could still see traces of glitter from the party. He hated it.

Cass slowly reached out and took his hands in her own.

“You were seventeen?” Bruce asked, sounding strangely devastated.

“Yeah,” Tim muttered, grasping Cass’s hands tightly. “Got offered blow at a party, and uh—well. I’d done research on drugs. So much research, I guess I was… curious?”

“Curious,” Jason repeated, tone flat. “Sorry—you did coke because you were curious?”

His voice rose with incredulity. 

Tim flinched, still not looking at them. “Uh… yeah. It was—it—I had it under control, at first. It was fine. I wasn’t addicted—I—I’m not addicted.”

Cass shot him a pitying look.

Bruce just sighed and asked, “How often do you use?”

“Off and on. Depends.” 

“Depends on what?”

“On whether I’m trying to feel something,” he muttered. “Or... trying not to, I guess.”

The words hung there, too honest to take back. Too raw. Cass’s head tilted slightly. Bruce’s expression tightened. Jason looked away.

Bruce’s tone softened, just a little. “You need to stop.”

Tim almost laughed, though it came out more like a ragged cough. “Yeah, I figured that part out.”

“I’m serious,” Bruce said, low and even. “Your heart barely survived tonight. Next time, you won’t be that lucky.”

Jason cut in before Tim could answer. “He’s right. You mix that much coke with molly and booze again, and we won’t be having this conversation. You’ll just be a name in the morgue.”

Tim flinched.

“Thanks for the pep talk.”

Jason sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. “I’m not trying to scare you, kid. I’m telling you the truth. You can’t keep doing this.”

For a long moment, the only sound was Tim’s uneven breathing and the quiet hum of the machines.

“I don’t—” Tim started, voice cracking. “I don’t even know how it got that bad. It was just—I just wanted to know what it felt like, at first. And then—well, then it was just supposed to help. Just a little. Take the edge off, you know? I—the noise, the pressure, then my parents—”

He broke off, swallowing hard.

“But then it didn’t. It didn’t help.”

Bruce’s voice softened again. “It never does.”

Cass finally spoke. “You stop. We help.”

Tim looked up at her, blinking like he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. She didn’t elaborate.

Jason huffed softly, crossing his arms again. “Yeah, kid. Guess you’re stuck with us now.”

And for the first time that night, Tim wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.