Work Text:
Everyone says it’s no big deal but it is one and Tim knows it. Roy doesn’t have much in the way of family and he’s unflinchingly loyal to the ones he has, protective the way Jason gets sometimes but won’t acknowledge. So it’s a huge deal when Tim gets to meet them.
Especially under the circumstances.
Tim’s more than a little embarrassed by his unofficial introduction, the half-dressed man scrambling out of Roy’s new bed, scrapes and bruises everywhere, pants sliding down his hips with every step he took. Bad enough to be caught that way by Roy’s… Hawkeye, but there’d been the neighbours, too, two women and small children, and Tim’s stuck feeling awkward every time he’s seen them since.
This thing with Roy, it’s too new for meeting families, probably, like for people who aren’t them, but Roy’s already met and dealt with all the of the Bats long before Tim got him naked and Tim’s already put in his time with the League, he could incapacitate basically everybody Roy’s ever loved without a terrible lot of effort. They are even there, Tim figures.
The curveball is Roy’s neighbours, who’ve known him for years and who’ve apparently adopted him the way they’ve adopted his…Hawkeye.
Tim doesn’t know nearly enough about them.
So when the pink-haired lady he’s avoiding on the stairs sort of corners him on her way out one night, throws “See you at the potluck,” over her shoulder, Tim cannot let the opportunity pass.
.
Roy is completely unhelpful.
“What do you mean you don’t know what to bring? Come on, Roy, think. What is there usually?” Tim’s not desperate, it just feels that way. He’s already trying his deep breathing.
Roy shrugs. Glances around his kitchen like he thinks that might help, which it might if Roy’s kitchen weren’t also Clint’s, and so overrun with arrowheads and engineering scraps. “It’s not that kind of potluck,” Roy says in his own defense, but then he can’t explain any other potluck option.
Tim remembers Jason saying when he’d first heard who Tim was courting — Jason’s word, Tim refuses to label this — that half of loving Roy is suppressing the urge to throttle him, which Tim found unnecessarily violent at the time.
He’s since come to appreciate the thought behind it, if not the phrasing. Part of Roy’s charm is his ability to blow past the details he considers unimportant, to focus on what really matters. Roy just overlooks the things that set the worst of Tim’s anxieties off and he’s more than happy to play distraction, which is something Tim hadn’t even realized he’d needed.
So maybe Roy can’t articulate why this isn’t the sort of potluck where you work out what to bring in advance, but he feels it and he wants Tim to feel it, too.
Tim is…trying.
Tim is a planner. Roy sometimes seems like he’s from Mars.
Finally, Tim says, “Okay, what did you bring last time?” like that might jog Roy’s memory helpfully, and Roy just sort of stares in dawning horror.
Digs his heels in about sharing details, like Tim doesn’t have a wealth of interrogation training to fall back on if Roy’s stubborn.
Tim doesn’t even consider that food.
“I knew you’d make that face,” Roy mutters unhappily.
Tim pats Roy’s cheek absently, already weighing his options. He’s got less than 24 hours to come up with something that’ll make a decent first impression, maybe mend some fences after that whole half-naked-on-the-stairs scenario.
He needs a corkboard and a database, and he needs them three hours ago.
.
Tim comes at 11. Always, every time, Tim goes overboard. Not the way Roy does, Roy makes people want to come in closer even when they’re trying to push him away, but in the way that makes essay questions out of pop quizzes and wrecks the grading curve.
Tim doesn’t really hold things back, not if somebody needs him. Especially not for the people Tim cares about; he’s thrown himself out windows just to uphold their ideals.
Everything is achievable if he just works the numbers, Tim knows, and he just needs the plan, and—
“Bed, birdboy,” somebody says, hooking an arm across his midsection, and the only reason Tim doesn’t already have an elbow up is that Roy’s sleepy-kissing his hair. “Whatever it is, it’ll wait until morning.”
“I can’t bring Cheetos, Roy,” Tim stresses, and Roy just sort of nuzzles in, pressing more sleepy hair-kisses and murmuring quietly, more soothing by the moment.
“Bed,” Roy groans, stretches it out like it’s a zombie call, but if it was, at least he’d know what to bring. “C’mon, my turn to be the big spoon. You can call Alfred tomorrow.”
Then Roy sort of squeezes him and drops his chin on Tim’s head and maybe falls asleep, and every wild thought and worry in Tim’s racing brain disappears beneath the logistics of getting Roy back to bed without waking him up.
.
“I’m certain whatever you choose will be appropriate, Master Tim,” Alfred says. Tim knows he’s being judged. Probably found wanting, not that Alfred would ever say.
“It has to be good, though. And something I can make. Seems like cheating to just pick something up, right?”
There’s a lot to be unpacked in that moment’s hesitation. “Are you calling for advise, young sir, or shall I call a caterer?”
“No!” Tim blurts. “I want to do it myself. I can do this. I’m sorry, Alfred, I guess I’m just overthinking this. I just really wanted to get this right, you know?”
“Indeed.” Then, “If I might, sir: When your young man comes to dinner at the Manor, do you really believe any of us will care about what he brings?”
Tim stops and stares, unblinking and unbreathing until the whole of that thought is done washing over him. Thinks about Roy muttering about Cheetos and other kinds of potlucks. “I’ve been an idiot.”
“I can’t say I agree with your choice of words,” Alfred starts, though Tim thinks he probably wants to. “Now that that’s settled, if I might?” And then Alfred’s asking him about Roy’s neighbours, trying to help Tim narrow down his unwieldy list of possibilities, one set of options at a time.
.
Chemistry is not Tim’s science. He’s not bad at it, he’s normally pretty solid, but applied chemistry is hit or miss and his culinary ability is virtually non-existent in most potluck scenarios.
He can, however, follow instructions.
That’s basically just as good.
.
And when he finally gets upstairs to the door of Roy’s rooftop, his Alfred-inspired tray in hand, he finds half of the building and Roy’s Hawkeye besides already milling around over soft drinks and burgers, at obvious ease with whoever’s around them.
Tim is not at all sure about the contents of his tray anymore. Now it seems a bit fancy.
Roy leans into his side. “S’gonna be fine,” Roy says, grinning with the confidence Tim’s just not feeling. “They’re gonna l-“ Roy catches himself easily. “Really really really really really like you, birdboy. Probably try to adopt you.”
Tim doesn’t get adopted for reading people wrong. He’s just not sure this is the place and time to actually say so. And... "Is that a pop song?" Tim mutters. Tim won't be soothed with pop songs. Not until this meet the potluck business is over and he can breathe again properly.
Then Roy’s pink-haired lady neighbor pops up just to his left, breathless about something and apparently ecstatic. “Roy’s man friend! You made it!”
“I. Yes?”
She catches his hesitance, his incredulity, and the way her eyes flash suggest she knows why, that she’s read enough of him and Roy and them to get that this might be a thing. It’s less unsettling than Tim expects.
Instead of poking at it, she flashes him a welcome smile broad enough to shift her piercings half across her face. “Fantastic. And you brought something. That isn’t Cheetos. Are you sure you’re here with Roy?”
“Everybody likes my Cheetos,” Roy counters. “My Cheetos are the greatest.”
“That is still not food, Roy.” Tim can’t help himself. “I thought cupcakes. Because there’s kids?”
“You see what I put up with?” Roy huffs but he’s leaning into Tim again, plastered to Tim’s side like he means to get comfortable just where he is.
“Wait, are those animals on top?” Roy’s pink-haired lady neighbor says, hovering over Tim’s tin to inspect it.
“He wouldn't even let me try one,” Roy says mournfully, and then Roy turns his face to press his mouth just behind Tim’s ear, soft and circumspect given the source.
Tim’s fine with the contact, doesn’t mind the loss of his personal space, but if Roy fucks with Tim’s tin, Tim may have to end him.
“There are a lot of manhours in that icing.”
Roy’s pink-haired lady neighbor’s openly watching them with anime eyes and a fond grin, but she blurts a laugh for that.
“Futz, are we keeping you,” she says, just declares it, then, “Right, Tim, is it? I’m Aimee. Nice to properly meet you finally. C’mon, come meet everybody.”
And as it turns out, Roy's neighbor-family is pretty great.
~