Work Text:
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Sparks popped behind his eyelids, bright, in perfect sync with his aching heartbeat. He vaulted over the edge of the fire escape, slamming his shoulder into brick. He should’ve come in civvies--- Would that look less suspicious than a vigilante breaking in? He carefully inserted a wingding through the crack, feeling for the trap’s failsafe from memory--- Augh---
He doubled over, pounding the palm of his hand into his right eye socket. It didn’t help with the stabbing headache assaulting the wall of his skull, but it was a decent distraction. He’d have a bruise later. Could he call in at work? Just the thought of applying makeup to hide the burst blood vessels made his skin itch. His spine clicked, tickling the back of his stiff neck; his suit was so soaking wet---
Dick pressed back against the rough wall, scrabbling at the collar of the Nightwing suit. He couldn’t breathe, he needed--- He needed out--- out of his clothes, out of his SKIN---
The shaking wingding blade finally caught on the failsafe. Dick threw the window open, landed a rough diveroll, and tore at the layer of cold dangerous wet---
“Here… let me help you.”
The zipper caught. His knees hit the floor; he punched the wood, straining against his closed throat for a whispered scream. His skin was prickling right off of his bones, sliding, boiling, he was going to DIE---
There was no time to freak out about the past. He was busy freaking out about tonight. About the blood still on his hands, the second too late, too long, that he could have used to turn away---
He could have used this stupid fucking suit as a shield. Instead it was a painted testimony to failure; an innocent child, a key witness shot to death in his arms.
He couldn’t breathe.
With a desperate mighty PULL, Dick broke the zipper, activating the waterlogged shock mechanism built to prevent anyone, anyone, anyone from forcing his suit from his body. The electricity jarred his every nerve, zapping his teeth, and for one blessed moment… he stopped being able to feel. He hit the floor again, head hanging, lulled. His thoughts went completely silent. Nerve feedback stopped; sensory overload went dead.
When he came back to himself, his half-conscious body was peeling the wretched material from his legs.
“Fuck---” He kicked the boots from his pruned feet, stumbling to the bathroom. Light skewered back into his brain; he slapped his hand to the wall, sliding the switch back off, and cold tile bit into his bare knees.
Water. He was supposed--- water. Cold… no, warm, that would…
He flushed the toilet as sense memory began to trickle away from the present. He could feel his own fingers now, gritty. Cold. Wet, still wet. Had he thrown up already? He tasted bile, but he couldn’t… It was too dark and his lungs were filled with sludge and his brain would EXPLODE if he turned the light on---
The clothes were too fucking small. He pawed through every drawer before settling on a hoodie, sweatpants--- Scissors, where were--- No, another wingding would work. He tasted blood. Had he bitten his own tongue? Oh God, had that kid’s blood spattered into his mouth---
He lurched back to the bathroom. He actually remembered throwing up this time. When he was finally done, when the world had stopped spinning, when the heat of his overworked nerves had begun to drown out every other overwhelming input, he shakily took the wingding to the sweatpants. The cut was pretty jagged, but the purpose served. Short shorts were much better than something that would restrict, would squeeze---
He should have thought of that. Before he had sought this place out--- Before he had decided that of all safehouses, of all bases he could’ve broken into, Tim’s apartment would be the safest to ride this out.
He collapsed onto the living room floor, shivering, and tucked his hands into the hoodie sleeves. He could still hear the fucking rain. It hadn’t washed away the blood.
The passage of time became… interminable… and he was just letting himself give in to the comforting tug of dissociation when he heard keys.
He’d been so sure that no one was home---
Dick looked up into the startled face of his little brother, panicked, and tried to pull the mask back on. Smile… nod… SAY something---
Tim held his hands up, empty. “I’m not here to take.”
Dick’s skull thumped against the back of the couch. It wasn’t permission, not really, but he could see it. The recognition in Tim’s eyes. The willing body language that shifted from casual business to determined strength. The calm way his hands shucked his bag, his jacket, his tie that told Dick--- Everything is going to be okay. I won’t look at you. Don’t mind me.
Dick finally slipped into dissociation, steady tears streaming down his slack face. He rode through the haze of emptiness while his brother investigated the window, reset the trap, cleaned the bathroom, and took care of the suit. He couldn’t stop… that damn shivering. Then he felt the heavy weight of soft headphones sliding over his ears, and his chest spasmed---
Tim held them there without eye contact, without breaching the privacy that was needed with every fiber of his soul. He waited silently for it to sink in--- The inherent promise of I will be your hypervigilance. Only when the ringing pit-patter of rain was drowned out by the throaty humming of Sia did he get up, pull the curtains, and leave to change.
Dick’s eyes slid shut as he gave in. He couldn’t see… he couldn’t feel… and he couldn’t hear.
He could breathe, though. He could fucking… breathe.
Tim’s footsteps vibrated distantly through the floorboards. He was stepping harder than he had to, slamming doors, clanking pots. He was preparing… something… and he was making his presence known. Detectable, but far away. Like a dream Dick couldn’t quite reach.
Tim wasn’t ASKING anything of him. Not a presence, not a reassuring word, not even companionable silence. Intangible promises that only someone like Tim Drake-Wayne was capable of keeping. Like his identity was attached to his word. Like the lies were so regular, the truth so rare, that he stood his rock steady ground every time he really meant it.
Drying tear tracks itched at Dick’s face. It was sharp, the discomfort, but the headache--- That he was too checked out to feel. He tapped his fingers to the beat… and listened… and let the last of the sharp anxiety unwind from his spine.
And he breathed.
Rhythmic vibrations through the wooden floorboards interrupted the haze of exhaustion holding the million points of overwhelmed pain at bay. Dick cracked his eyes again. Almost every light had been turned off; Tim’s dusky silhouette was crouched ten feet away, tapping the ground with the flat of his hand to get Dick’s attention.
Amusement was a formless thing, but it still fractured the numbness covering Dick’s face. His lips smiled.
We’re moving to the couch, Tim mouthed carefully, holding his hands out to signal his approach.
Dick sat up, grunting--- Why couldn’t he stay on the floor? Moving reminded his aching limbs that he EXISTED, that sparking static was still dying down behind his eyes, between his ribs, and his bones were too tight around his lungs…
There wasn’t enough room for him in his body.
Tim’s arm slipped around Dick’s upper back, squeezing. His hand placement--- right under Dick’s armpit--- soothed the anticipatory tickle over the skin of his waist. It was different. It was RIGHT.
Tim was strong, stronger than Dick remembered assuming the last time they’d been in physical contact… and when was that? His support hovered beneath every flagging touch, every twitch, guiding the confused jumble of nerves that was Dick Grayson’s body to the couch.
Dick’s fingers spasmed, clenching. He didn’t want--- He couldn’t let GO--- If he let go, if he--- He would just float away, he would sink through the crust of the Earth, he would---
He had forgotten to remember--- I exist.
Tim sat down, tugging gently, and Dick followed before he could remember why he was anxious about that. His exhausted weight draped over his brother’s body, one leg crooked to relieve the fiery heat of pulled tendons, and then---
Then he could hear Tim’s heartbeat.
“Is this okay?” he thought he heard from far away, and he felt a gentle weight on his head.
“Hm,” he agreed quietly, voice scratching. He closed his burning eyelids. The headphone’s volume suddenly lowered, but he still… He couldn’t hear the rain.
Tim wouldn’t want to touch him like this, guard him like this, if he knew the form of failure that Dick’s nightmares always seemed to take.
“May I?” Tim was whispering, and Dick nodded, because he could already feel the fingernails scratching his scalp, the gentle tugging on his damp hair, and he thought…
He thought nothing. His skull was too heavy… His lungs were too liquid. His bones floated; his skin was cement.
The piercing headache… finally… stopped.
Tim didn’t say anything else for a while. He just let Dick use him as a pillow, an example of each inhale, each exhale. It wasn’t so hard this way to breathe.
“You’ll hurt more in the morning if you don’t stretch,” he finally whispered.
Dick grunted vaguely. He could not find it within a single tissue of his selfish, aching, waterlogged body to care.
Tim’s fingers moved back up to the top of his scalp, scratching gently down. He only made it to Dick’s nape before starting over. His touch was… expected… but different. Familiar.
Dick’s presence of mind had made it all the way to the gently pulsing state of dying embers, the precipice of welcome half-sleep, when he heard beneath his ear an afterthought. “We’ve gotta get you some ‘f your own pants. So y’ don’t have’ta take scissors to mine.”
Dick’s attention wandered back through his jumbled memories, trying to make sense of that sentence. When it finally hit him, he squeezed his eyes shut. He was wearing short shorts cut out of his little brother’s clothes. “S’rry.”
“‘S really okay. ‘M just glad you didn’ cut yourself.” Tim’s touch wrapped around his fingers, smoothing over irritated cuticles, dried blood that had come from Dick’s own body. “Do you remember doing this?”
Dick shifted uncomfortably, pulling his hand away to tuck between them. He could feel Tim’s heartbeat better this way. Blood circulation restricted, throbbing around the stinging of fingertips that he had apparently scrubbed too hard in the sink. “‘S not too bad.”
“I know, Dick.” Tim’s voice hardened, an edge now, sharp; threatening. “I’ve seen ‘bad’. I know you didn’t do this on purpose.”
“Th’n why’re you asking?”
“I am physically unable to make small talk.”
Dick’s chest shook. It wasn’t funny, but he still shook, and he barely had time to wonder if he was crying instead of laughing before the tears were streaming fresh down his face.
Tim fell silent, but not the kind of silence that realized it had gone too far. His fingers stroked with calculated pressure; his touch caught gently at tangles, never pulling too hard, and his breathing consciously slowed.
He was such a good kid… deep down… at his core. Beneath the planning that suggested a callous indifference to the little things, the sentiments that mattered. He was so fucking careful.
“Noodles’re almost ready,” he whispered.
Dick’s eyelids burned. He scrubbed his face against Tim’s shirt, nostrils flaring as he caught the scent of Alfred’s laundry detergent, bitter coffee, and gym mats.
Tim was wearing Bruce’s hoodie. Reminders of belonging… of home. Things that Tim didn’t believe belonged to him. Things that definitely didn’t belong to Dick.
“Okay,” he finally whispered back, and didn’t move. If Tim wanted to get up… he could…
but he didn’t. He brushed Dick’s hair… he stayed… and he breathed.
Dick’s bones slowly filled with the guilt he didn’t have the energy to process anymore, weighing him down into the couch. It would have been better to seek punishment; some twisted sense of justice in the form of self-sabotage, because he should not have been the scared kid seeking comfort from a friendly touch tonight.
Was he evil now after accepting, or would he be evil for turning it away? Was it too late to pull back, to run, to sprint until he couldn’t feel warm blood hitting his skin? Was it cruel?
He didn’t have the strength to answer. Or to stop CRYING, apparently. He scrubbed at his face again, frustration bubbling in his sick gut.
“Hey…” Tim’s fingers caught at his wrist, unyielding. “Hey… be still.”
The unexpected command was just… more permission… wasn’t it? Because he could do it now. He could lie still with his head heavy, his heartbeat weighed down by exhausted defeat, and listen to his brother’s slow breathing as the tears stopped on their own.
It wasn’t comfortable… but it wasn’t punishment. To be seen.
“Chill,” Tim whispered from far away. “We can do noodles later.”
Crimson red blended with the unbearable lavender of sleep. He wasn’t strong enough tonight… but maybe tomorrow. Maybe then the delicacy of balance wouldn’t escape his wobbling feet.