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Tim had lost count of the number of times he’d had Jason’s back on patrol, how many times he’d protected Jason, and how many times over he had saved Jason’s life up until that moment. He’d also lost count of how many times Jason had saved his life in return. But never - never - had he imagined it would come to this, come down to him to playing literal ‘lifeguard’ to the Robin he’d grown up admiring, to the vigilante he’d grown to fear and then to respect - to the man he’d grown to love. He’d rescued Jason from scores of other scenarios, and all of those had frightened him to one degree or another, but this? This terrified him.
Jason Todd could handle (i.e. muddle through) a lot of things and come back fighting - bruises, bullets, being blown up and brought back again - but even he couldn’t fight the shock and weakness brought on by sudden immersion in frigid river water. No one could. Tim knew this. The fact that it was mid February, that Gotham was suffering through one of the coldest winters on record, and that they’d all been chilled to the bone anyway before Jason went in didn’t help matters.
Tim ran down the bridge, eyes scanning frenetically for an anchor point, already planning the logistics of his entry as he kept track of Jason in the water under the bridge. He pushed down the panic that tried to seize up his limbs and grind his thoughts to a halt; he staved off the panic, but the fear remained, and he let it, using the adrenaline it brought to keep himself moving. One way or another he would get to Jason, but whether or not Jason would still be alive once he got there was partially dependent on how long it would take him to get there. Tim didn’t let himself think about the other parts of that equation.
Finally, he found a place that would work. Jason had entered the water on the upriver side of the bridge, thankfully, so he’d passed under the bridge and only drifted a dozen or so meters down river. Tim anchored his grapple hook to the downriver side, securely attached the grappler set to pay out until he needed to pull them back in to the built-in harness of his suit (they all had one, in the under layers, just in case), and dove into the river as close to Jason as he could get.
He’d cursed a blue streak - over the comms and everything - when he’d first noticed the older vigilante surrounded, overwhelmed, and too far from backup earlier. It had been a hell of a night. The gang was all there: Batman, Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl - practically the entire group of Batfamily & friends aside from Alfred and Oracle - and nearly every Arkham patient the place had been holding up until three hours ago. There had been a mass breakout, massive destruction to the facility, and all security perimeters had gone down, allowing patients to flee to all four corners of Arkham Island.
The women had the northern bridges and roads - leading out of Gotham and towards the airport - covered while the men focused on preventing the majority of the inmates from flooding into the city via the north and south bridges of the Schwartz Bypass on the south side of the island. Most of the inmates had gone to the south end of the bypass, so only Red Robin, holding the center point, had been close enough to Red Hood to notice when the other man had drifted further and further north, away from backup, as a fair sized group of inmates pushed forward in an attempt to get into Burnley on the other side.
That had made him the only person around to notice that Red Hood had lost his helmet somewhere along the way, and the only person only person close enough to see a single inmate sneak up behind Hood, clock him over the head with a chunk of concrete and then shove him towards the other escapees, who then gleefully shoved Hood up and over the side of the bridge.
So it was up to him, and him alone, to extract Hood from the river before he was swept away by the current, succumbed to the cold, drowned, had a heart attack, or some combination of all of the above.
Tim exhaled in a painful gasp as he hit the water and the water hit back with an instantaneous rush of cold. Even through the leather, armor, and kevlar the chill was numbing.
He kicked and pulled with everything he had, pushing himself blindly through the dark water to the place he thought he’d last seen Hood. He didn’t think the man was unconscious - at his last glance Hood had still been at the surface and with the kind of armor and ammunition he was packing there was no way he would be floating if he weren’t actively treading as well - and he didn’t expect Hood to try to swim to the riverbank - between the cold and the weight, it was probably all he could do to keep his head above water.
As long as Hood stayed still at the surface, then eventually Tim would have to run into him along the trajectory he had plotted, but Jason had been in the frigid water for almost a minute already, so he wouldn’t have the strength left to hold himself up for very much longer. Tim tried not to think about what he’d have to do if Jason had already slipped under the surface, he just hoped Jason could hold out a little longer. He also desperately hoped he’d calculated that trajectory correctly.
His hopes and calculations were validated not long after that when his frenzied strokes abruptly collided with a solid mass in the murk. With one arm he grabbed on to what he believed was a torso and with the other he activated the automatic explosive reeling action on his grapple, giving him only the briefest second to hastily wrap his other arm around the body before they were both yanked away sharply. The line pulled taught, pulling them across the water and eventually up and out to dangle above the swirling waters of the Sprang. Tim held on as tight as he could and waited until the auto-brake system kicked in and left them dangling a few feet below the anchor point.
“Hood! Hood, can you hear me,” Tim shouted hoarsely over the howl of the wind and the raucous noise of the fighting down the road. “Hood, if you can hear me, grab on!”
Violent coughing. “T-tim?”
“Hood!” Tim cried back, completely ignoring the breach of alias etiquette in his relief. “I need you to grab on to me so I can get us off this line. Hood? Jay? I need you to grab on!”
After a few long seconds Tim’s shouts seemed to sink in and he felt Jason’s shaking hands sneak up over his chest and lock behind his neck. Tim thanked their luck that he’d managed to grab Jason so that they were facing one another and that the larger man was nearly draped over him to begin with.
As soon as Tim was sure Jason could hold on, Tim dropped one arm to his belt to grab a loose line and looped it through the subtle harness loops on Jason’s uniform and secured it to his own; he wasn’t planning on letting either of them fall again, but you could never be too safe.
When that was done Tim pulled a second grapple gun and fired it up toward the suspension cables above. The anchor took and Tim slowly reeled them up and over the side rail, quickly assessing the scene on the bridge while simultaneously severing their original lifeline. Luckily Nightwing had swooped in and pushed the inane rioting back towards the center, leaving them plenty of clear and relatively safe space to touch down.
Tim set them down not far from the spot Jason had been tossed from the bridge then moved on to assessing their conditions without pause. Jason collapsed to the road surface almost as soon as their feet touched down, and Tim crouched down in a hurry, pulling out a flashlight and reaching to flick up the lenses of Jason’s domino mask.
“Hood? Jay? Hey, you still with me?” Tim asked as he flashed the light into Jason’s eyes. Jason’s eyes were clouded by confusion, but his pupils were nominally reactive; if they were lucky then maybe Jason had avoided any immediately-serious head injuries, but head injuries aside, neither of them were out of the woods yet as violent tremors started to overtake both of their bodies.
“T-t-t-t-t-t-tim,” Jason finally managed to chatter out, eyes sluggishly tracking upwards, failing a few times before they finally focused on Tim’s cowled face.
“Yeah, it’s me; it’s Red Robin. Hood, I need you to hold it together and stay awake for a just a little bit longer, and then we’ll get you somewhere safe and get you warm and dry,” Tim responded, trying to keep his voice calm and professional as he switched into 'comfort the victim’ mode, in part to keep Jason calm, but mostly to keep himself from falling apart as the aftershocks of the adrenaline caught up with him now that they had both been safely recovered.
With trembling fingers, he sent out the signal to call the Redbird to their location, and then he made a quick call to Oracle to pass along info on their status and to let her know that he was evacuating Jason ASAP.
“R-r-r-r-r-red…” Jason’s quivering arm rose, wavering as he reached out to the other man blindly.
“Yeah, I’m here, Hood,” Tim responded, a tad more gently this time as he let himself fall back into the role of terrified, concerned boyfriend now that the emergency calls had been sent out. He reached out to grasp Jay’s gloved hand and rubbed it between both of his own.
“H-h-hey,” Jason breathed, his eyes clearing slightly and the ghost of a grin settling over his pale face.
Tim let a gentle grin warm the lower half of his face as well. He wished he could drop his cowl to be a little less Red Robin and a little more Tim, but he hadn’t brought a domino along that night. “Hey, yourself. How’re you feeling?”
“C-c-cold.”
Tim smirked fondly. “Yeah, I bet. You got a headache or any dizziness or nausea on top of that, maybe?”
Jason shook his head but with all the other shaking he was doing it was hard to distinguish the gesture from the rest of it. “N-no. Just cold. L-little sleepy.”
Tim nodded. “Okay, that’s good. Let me know if that changes. And I know you know the drill, but make sure you stay awake. I called for Redbird and it should be here in a few minutes. Just hold out a little longer.” Tim rifled through his bandolier searching for the compartment that held a small space blanket. It wouldn’t do too much considering, but it would at least cut some of the extra chill from the wind.
“C-c-can do,” Jason responded, blinking quickly as he accepted the humble covering.
For the next couple of minutes they huddled close, Tim absentmindedly keeping Jason talking as he warily watched the fighting winding down at the other end of the bypass. Five minutes after pulling him from the water, Jason’s shivering stopped, but Tim knew better than to be relieved by the change.
Tim himself had started shaking considerably and he was starting to lose the feeling in his nose, toes, and fingers, but he forced himself to turn to Jason and reassess the other man’s condition. Jason’s face had paled still further, somehow, and his lips had taken on a bluish tinge. Jason continued responding to conversation, but his verbal responses began to lag and his eyelids were beginning to droop.
Tim reached both hands out to Jason’s shoulders and rubbed up and down in gentle but vigorous strokes. “Hood? I need you to stay with me, babe, I need you to stay awake. Only a little bit longer.”
“I…imma alway stay wid ya, babe… nah gonna leave you, bae-bird,” Jason slurred hazily. “Nevah… gonna give up… let ya down… d'sert ya.” Tim rolled his eyes beneath his cowl and huffed a laugh.
“Not what I meant, but thanks for the reassurance,” Tim responded fondly, tugging off a glove and reaching two fingers up to check Jason’s pulse. Steady, but slow. Too slow to be reassuring. Tim checked his wrist computer to get an ETA on the Redbird and scowled at the estimated two minutes remaining.
“Yur… yur mah hero, babe-bird.”
“Hmmm?” Tim hummed distractedly, pulling out the flashlight to check Jason’s light sensitivity again. No change. The increased drowsiness and slurring must have been on account of Jason’s increasingly worrisome case of hypothermia.
“I said… yur mah hero,” Jason repeated, wincing and blinking unhappily at the light.
“Well, I mean, I am wearing the cape and all. Occasionally, I beat up baddies, I have been known to save the innocent now and again, and I am your boyfriend, so I guess that makes me 'yours’ and quite possibly 'a hero’,” Tim responded cheekily. Off in the distance, he spotted the Redbird cutting a path to them and he began the process of gently pulling Jay to his feet, trying especially hard not to jolt or jerk the taller man just on the off chance he was experiencing any of the cardiac instability common to victims of severe hypothermia.
“Nah… I mean you saved me… like… like a hero… guard… person…” Jay trailed off as the Redbird pulled up beside them and Tim briskly opened the passenger side door and herded Jason into the seat. Tim, reached over and turned the heat to full blast and began pulling at the catches and zippers of Jason’s suit. He wanted to get as much of the wet clothing off the man now so Jason could begin warming up in relative comfort on the way to Tim’s theatre lair; several of Jason’s safehouses were closer but Tim’s place was better stocked and better prepared to receive a hypothermia victim, and Tim highly doubted that near-delirious Jason would mind very much at the moment anyway.
“Am I a guard or a hero? Which is it, Jay?” Tim asked absentmindedly, mostly to keep Jason talking as he used a specialized knife to split the seams on Jason’s armored chest plates.
“Y're….” Jason trailed off and for a moment Tim worried he’d lost consciousness. “…a hero. But. My guard. T'night…” Jason wriggled restlessly in the seat at the feeling of the plates being peeled away and the motion set off a round of wet coughing that cut off that line of thought.
Convinced he’d pulled off as much as was prudent for the time being, Tim strapped Jason in, soothed the man briefly, then slid over the hood of the car and jumped into the driver’s seat. After programming the auto pilot to take them home, he started the process of peeling his own damp suit off his clammy cold skin. He yanked down his cowl as the car started to roll, and Jason picked up where he left off.
“Nah, nah, t'night… t'night you were my lifeguard.” Jason let his head roll so he could grin dopily at Tim. “Bes’ lifeguard.… at guarding… m'life… n’ stuff.”
Tim laughed outright and leaned over to kiss the corner of Jason’s mouth. “Thanks,” he murmured against his cold skin. Jason leaned into the contact and murmured an echo of Tim’s thanks.
“Th'nks f'r bein’ mah lifeguarder. Was… risky, jumpin’ in af'er me like that.”
Tim’s smile softened. “Totally worth it. And you’re welcome, dumbass.”
Jason smiled at that. “Y’re too good t’ me, Timmy. Don’ d'serve it.”
Tim scoffed with a grin. “Nah. I’m certain you’d do the same for me. In a heartbeat.” Jason didn’t verbally agree or disagree, but Tim saw the man nod emphatically out of the corner of his eye as Redbird finally pulled into his lair. From that point on they were both too preoccupied with warming up to think much on the topic after that.
---
Jason never imagined, however, that he would have the opportunity to prove that he would, in fact, jump in for Tim in a literal heartbeat not long after the younger man had pulled him from unforgiving waters, and Jason swore that if they both walked away from this new crisis he was never going to let Tim live down how he’d most certainly jinxed them by saying that.
It had started out as any ol’ blustery April evening on patrol. He and Tim had teamed up a week back to cover a case involving both their territories which had eventually made its way down to the docks. Several stakeouts later, he and Red Robin had been ready to make a move on the organization they were watching, when suddenly the crime ring pulled a fast one on them and ambushed them as they moved into position to ambush their ambushers.
In the frenzy of it all Jason had lost track of Tim and when the dust settled Jason had been alone in an alley between two rotting warehouses with ten downed thugs and no Red Robin.
Expecting that Red had probably been pulled by his fight to another part of the complex, it took Jason completely by surprise when he followed the breadcrumbs left by the baddies to the edge of the docks only to find Red Robin strung up on a meat hook by chains wrapped around his wrists, his arms strained painfully by a ball and weights chained to his bound legs, and his cowl down. There was blood staining the gag between his teeth from a gash on his head that had to have come from a lucky hit those two-bit hoodlums must have landed, one that would have given them the jump on the experienced vigilante.
Unsurprisingly, the jackasses tried to use the captured Robin to as leverage in negotiations to give their operation more leeway with the known “crime lord” Red Hood, but from the fierce look Tim shot Jason from across the pier, they both knew there wasn’t a snowballs chance on hell Hood was going to give in to that bullshit.
Jason had expected that as soon as those shitbags caught on that their posturing was going nowhere fast they would try to make a hasty getaway, pulling out while they still could and trying to regroup and reorganize elsewhere. He had expected them to leave the trussed up Red Robin as a distraction to buy them time.
What he had not expected was for them to yank Red Robin off the hook and throw him off the end of the dock, the weight of the literal weights, chains, and Red Robin’s own armor pulling the young vigilante down into the depths like a stone.
Jason had to give it to them: that was a pretty effective distraction.
It took him all of about three seconds to run the fifty feet to the edge of the docks, criminals breaking around him like water, him paying them about as much mind as they paid him in their haste.
It took him another five seconds to initiate the air-tight seal and rebreather mode on his hood. He dove in without hesitation. The river was only about twenty feet deep at this point but it was still twenty-damm-feet deep and Jason’s boots and heavy clothing slowed him down. After his latest brush with drowning Jason had added an explosive inflatable flotation system to his armor that would add enough buoyancy to counterbalance at least three time his total weight - armor and all - so once that he got down there he’d have no problems getting them both back to the surface, weights or no weights, but first he had to get down there.
It took him another ten seconds to make it to the bottom and locate Tim by touch in the total darkness. He had thought Tim had been conscious when he entered the water, but Jason couldn’t sense any tension or struggle from the other man as he wrapped an arm under Tim’s arms and around his chest.
He gripped the limp body firmly as he activated his flotation system and braced himself as the water exploded with a rush of bubbles as the expandable pockets on his suit inflated from the vigorous chemical reactions therein.
Once they breached the surface a whole new struggle began. Jason’s floats would keep them at the surface for a good while, but the rapid expansion had pushed them away from the dock and even with two arms it was hard for Jason to keep a grip on Tim. It took him another ten seconds to get them to the dock, and then it took a terrible twenty seconds for Jason to awkwardly pull himself up a piling enough to swing over the edge all while trying to keep a grip on Tim with one hand. Then he had to lie prone on the slick wood and try to wrench Tim from the water in one adrenaline fueled burst of frantic strength.
A few spare seconds with a pocket cutting torch removed the chains around Tim’s hands and feet, and he tore the gag with his bare hands to remove it from Tim’s mouth.
All together it was barely a minute since Tim had hit the water, but all the same Jason felt a smothering anxiety as he glanced over the apparently unconscious young man lying flat on the grimy boards of that sorry dock.
Jason’s hands shook as he ripped off his gloves and threw off his hood. He kneeled down by Tim’s head, two fingers going to the side of his throat, Jason’s eyes staring wide at Tim’s soaked chest as he brought his ear down to almost touch Tim’s face.
One…two…three…four…
Jason sighed a shaky little gasp of relief at the rhythmic throb under his finger tips.
…seven…eight…nine…ten.
Jason felt a thrill of terror as he reached the end of his count. There was no movement, no rise and fall, no tickle against his ear. Nothing. Tim wasn’t breathing.
Tim was not breathing.
Jason leaned back on his heels for a dizzying second, staring uncomprehendingly, his eyes bizarrely fixed on a slow trickle of blood that had started up again at Tim’s temple and mixed with the water to run in rivulets down Tim’s pale face. Then in an instant the emergency training Bruce had pounded into them time and time again kicked in and Jason bore down on Tim with all the all the fury and determination of the big bad bat himself.
After hastily activating an emergency beacon, Jason tilted Tim’s head, pinched his nose and breathed into his parted lips for a moment, breaking away to count a breathy one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one thousand before sucking in another breath and repeating the process. He did that for about two minutes, holding back his fear, tamping down his panic, just as he had been trained to do from those earliest days in the cape.
After so many cycles he stepped back and leaned over Tim once more, fingers at Tim’s throat, Jason’s heart in his.
One…two…three…four…
Jason choked down a sob. There was still not even the slightest indication of a breath, not even an agonal gasp.
…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten.
It was ironic, a distant part of Jason’s mind thought, that in that moment he felt as if his heart might beat out of his chest in terror at the fact that, even after two minutes of rescue breathing, Tim’s own heart had slowed to barely nothing, faltering in his unmoving chest.
Jason almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it but the training won out and like a machine Jason switched tacks. Two hands, one over the other, right over the black and gold bird crest, Jason leaned his entire weight into thirty distinct compressions, timed at one-hundred beats per minute. Then he breathed two puffs into that slack mouth. Thirty more compressions. Breaths. Compressions.
With each cycle Jason felt like he fell further and further into his head, a nightmare unfolding under his hands. Without realizing it each beat of his verbal count turned into an unspoken mantra in his head - “One - Don’t - two - You - three - Dare - four - Give - five - Up - six - On - seven - Me- eight - You - nine - Dumb - ten - Ass” - that repeated three times, was followed by two breaths, and then repeated again. Eventually all the words turned into one and the same: Please.
So when, suddenly, there was a spasm under his hands, followed by a sudden racking cough, Jason almost didn’t react in time to roll Tim away from himself and onto his side, so Tim wouldn’t drown all over again on what he coughed up. The sound of the coughing was terrible - wet and choking and quickly descending into awful gagging - but in that moment it was best sound Jason had ever heard in his entire life.
He steadied Tim with one hand on his hip while the other hand rubbed circles Tim probably couldn’t feel into the material covering his back. The violent coughing quickly descended into full-scale vomiting, followed by more coughing, and then eventually some desperate intakes that were cut off midway by still more coughing. Eventually, when the coughing had all but subsided, Jason slowly rolled Tim back onto his back and brushed a gentle hand up one side of his face, willing the younger man to open his eyes and give Jason undeniable proof that he was still there.
“Tim, Timbo, love, you with me? Open your eyes, Tim, I need to know if you’re okay, if you’re with me now. Open your eyes babe, lemme see those baby blues,” Jason rattled off absently, stroking the side of Tim’s face as he reached to grasp Tim’s closest hand and squeeze. A few more seconds of chiding, a few firm squeezes and gentle touches, and then, finally - finally - Tim’s eyes opened a crack.
“Tim, babe, love, Timmy, Timbo, dammit, god…” Jason rambled nonsensically. Tim’s eyes widened a fraction further and he managed a weak squeeze in return. The effort set him off into another round of wet, painful coughs but this time he had enough self-awareness to curl in on himself and turn his head to the side.
Tim hadn’t tried to speak yet and Jason couldn’t be sure sure how with it Tim was in that moment, but he felt secure enough then to turn around and reach for the comm in the helmet he had thrown away. He removed the detachable earpiece, inserted it into his ear and made a call into the Cave to verbally repeat the request for backup and to apprise the Bats on their situation. Tim in the meantime sagged back against the ground, eyes screwed up, and continued to pant raggedly. Jason turned back to his downed partner.
“Tim, buddy, hey?” Jason reached for Tim’s hand again and waited until Tim opened his eyes again before going on. “Hey. I just called in the cavalry and they’re gonna be here in ten minutes tops, bringing you some oxygen and blankets and taking you back to Alfred where he’ll get you back up to speed in no time, okay? You just need to take it easy, stay awake and whatever you do - keep breathing - okay? Can you do that for me?”
For a moment, looking into Tim’s the hazy eyes, Jason thought he wouldn’t get a response. Then the Tim’s gaze sharpened, he coughed, then winced, and then…
“-‘kay.”
That single, broken word broke something in Jason. The relief that flooded through him was so intense, so visceral he thought he might pass out. It brought tears to the corners of his eyes and he squeezed Tim’s hand once more, getting an encouragingly stronger squeeze in return.
They stayed like that, Tim lying flat on the dock and Jason holding his hand and babbling whatever popped into his head to keep Tim grounded and awake, until Batman and Nightwing showed up with the Batmobile just under ten minutes later.
At that point Jason helped Tim push himself up to a sitting position, and Dick hurried over to check Tim’s head wound and then assess for internal injury while Bruce grilled Jason for the essential details of the situation. Dick declared the injury a moderate concussion as he wrapped a quick bandage over the nasty cut. Bruce wanted to carry Tim to the car once Dick had finished, but Tim firmly protested, so Jason helped Tim hobble down the dock to the parked car, instead, while Bruce and Dick hovered anxiously.
Once they’d all crammed into the passenger-rated version of the Dark Knight’s iconic vehicle - Dick in shotgun and Jason in the back with Tim leaning up against him as Tim breathed deeply into an oxygen mask - Jason finally allowed himself to relax. Tim slowly melted into his side as the relief from the oxygen and the stress of the incident caught up with him. Jason rubbed and prodded and asked him enough questions that Tim never fully drifted off, but by the time they made it back to the cave, Jason wasn’t getting much more than an occasional ‘mmhm’ and ‘uh-uh’ from the younger man.
Their arrival at the cave resulted in the expected amount of fussing and frustration from Alfred - not to mention the tuts of exasperation from Damian - but when everything was said and done it seemed everyone, Damian included, was more than glad things hadn’t taken a turn for the worst, as it often did for their family.
The night ended with Jason sitting bedside to Tim in the med bay; Alfred had decided to keep Tim down there for the night to keep him on supplemental oxygen and keep him continuously monitored after Tim had started running a fever and Alfred had noticed some strange lung sounds. Jason was still holding Tim’s hand - he’d barely let go for a few minutes at a time since Tim had first regained consciousness back on the docks - and now he was slowly stroking small circles over Tim’s knuckles, across raised veins, following the subtle ridges of tendons and muscles. He’d thought Tim was asleep, so he startled slightly when Tim spoke suddenly, not even bothering to open his eyes.
“So how many?”
“Excuse me?”
Tim cracked an eye and went on in a hoarse tone. “How many heartbeats passed before you jumped in after me?” he asked with a teasing grin. It took Jason a moment to remember the inside joke they’d shared after his own near-drowning two months prior.
“Good god, Tim,” Jason breathed, scrubbing his free hand through his hair in exasperation. “None, I think. I swear my heart stopped the moment your feet touched the water.” He fixed Tim with his stinkiest stink-eye and squeezed Tim’s hand hard enough that Tim was compelled to open both eyes and meet his stern gaze. “I swear you jinxed us with that line, babybird. Next you’ll be saying shit like 'you’d trade your life for me’ or 'you’d follow me into the depths of hell’ and wouldn’t you know it, I would, and, of course, then it would actually happen.”
“Sorry,” Tim apologized morosely, staring distantly at their clasped hands. Jason shifted uncomfortably. He griped, but he mostly meant it in jest; Tim, however, seemed to take it all seriously. Before Jason could open his mouth to lighten the mood, though, Tim continued.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” Tim breathed. He shut his eyes and grimaced, a flush riding high on his cheeks that could have been embarrassment but was probably his fever rising. “I’m sorry I got into that mess in the first place. I fucked up.”
Jason raised a hand to cover Tim’s forehead, unsurprised by the unhealthy warmth, then ran the hand back through Tim’s hair to ease the younger man’s head back against the back of the gurney. Tim’s eyes fluttered shut and he sighed into the cool, soothing touch.
“It happens. To the best of us, sometimes. So don’t beat yourself up about it.” Jason squeezed Tim’s hand once more. “And I really would follow you into hell, if I had to,” Jason added seriously. Tim’s eyes opened and met Jason’s briefly before he smiled sadly and placed his other hand over their clasped ones, squeezing gently.
“I sure hope it never comes to that, but you know the same is true in reverse. Always.”
They didn’t talk much after that and eventually Tim drifted into a fitful, feverish sleep. Alfred returned a little while after that to check on Tim and chase Jason off to get a little sleep for himself. However, if Jason spent the majority of his non-patrolling hours for the next three and a half weeks after that holding Tim’s hand while the younger man struggled through the resulting pneumonia, then no one bothered to say or do anything to try to chase him away from his partner’s side then, not even to eat or sleep. It was just so much easier to encourage them to eat and sleep together - they actually listened if the one was there to keep the other accountable - so they did.
---
“How… do we… keep… getting… ourselves… into these messes!”
“I swear, man, I think we cursed ourselves,” Jason responded, glancing over at Tim treading water beside in him as waves ripples high around them.
They were out in the the middle of the freakin’ Atlantic, in the middle of the day, no life-preservers, emergency flotation devices exhausted and ruptured, and strength dwindling fast. Just another day in the life of Red Hood and Red Robin, right?
“Arghhh! I just wish I knew what caused that fatal malfunction in the hydraulic system in the first place!” Tim fumed for what what felt like the billionth time since they’d gone down. They’d been hitching a ride on one of the spare Batplanes when a sudden catastrophic failure had prompted them to bail out. They’d only been twenty miles from shore and Bruce or Alfred were sure to know something had gone wrong by now so it was only a matter of time before someone came looking for them.
“Yeah. Well, like I said the tenth time you complained about it, doesn’t matter much now does it?”
Tim huffed. As much as they grated on each other after three hours of floating, treading, and trying to pass the time arguing over what had caused the crash, it was clear they were both starting to worry that the other might not have the strength to hold out long enough for rescue. They were both strong swimmers, but it doesn’t matter if you’re an Olympic-class athlete, being left adrift in the ocean with no respite is a death sentence for anyone without swift and timely rescue. Their only saving grace was that at least it was August and the ocean was relatively warm this time of year.
They’d already stripped off their gear and left it to the fishes to reduce their weights - there hadn’t been much of a point to keeping the added weight after the emergency floats Jason had installed on both their suits gave out after an hour. They’d made a point to consume all their emergency water and rations before dumping most of the other non-essential items from the utility belts they did keep on just in case (Jason swore to all things good that if he actually had to use Bruce’s damn ass shark repellent, then so help him…), but with their few advantages depleted, their chances of survival rapidly diminished as time went on.
They had only been treading for about two hours but Jason could already hear the strain in Tim’s voice, and Tim tried to conceal it, but whenever he lost focus, his breath was came in short pants that had Jason more than his fair share of worried.
Jason would have given Tim crap for not speaking up about his fatigue, but Jason’s left leg had cramped an hour ago and now his right leg was cramped up, instead, so now it just felt like a waiting game to see how long it took before both of his legs cramped up at the same time. Jason was waiting until it got really bad to tell Tim, because there was no way in hell he was going to let Tim try to hold them both up and drown them both in the case that Jason couldn’t keep it together anymore. Jason figured Tim was waiting to tell Jason about his difficulty breathing for similar reasons.
“Ughhhh, if only we could find some piece of wreckage or flotsam or a buoy or-oh, oh, oh my god! Jason! I… that's… I THINK I SEE LAND!”
Jason cocked an eyebrow and squinted at Tim. “Where?”
“That way!”
“Okay, you’re gonna have to be a little more specific than that, Timbo.”
Tim rolled his eyes and pulled an arm out of the water to point in a direction. “That way, you smartass.”
Jason squinted skeptically in the direction Tim pointed. “I dunno I mean-wait… wait… oh my god you’re right, that is land!”
Jason couldn’t believe it. For the the first time in three hours Jason suddenly felt there was something they could do, and by the look on Tim’s face, they were thinking the same exact thing.
“I know this sounds crazy, Jay, but maybe we shou-”
“Yeah, nope, definitely, let’s do it,” Jason eagerly agreed. It was monumentally stupid to move themselves further away from their last known location without any guarantee of success, but at least if they were going to be stupid they would be stupid together. Maybe the two of them combined had some chance of pulling off the improbable if they could just keep each other going long enough.
Of course, the moment they’d made up their minds had to be the exact the moment that Jason’s left leg decided to cramp up again, joining rather than alternating with the right as it had before. Perfect.
“Okay, let’s go!”
“Wait. Um. Tim. I, uhhhhh, kind of have a confession to make.”
Tim raised confused eyebrows at him.
“My legs have been cramping one at a time since the the floats died and just now I lost control of both, so…”
Tim blinked at him. “Okay… okay… well… then… how about you paddle and I’ll grab your legs and kick?”
Jason’s blinked back, thinking it through. “That… might just be crazy enough to work. Let’s do it.”
So they did, and to Jason’s surprise, they actually made headway. It seemed that some bit of luck was on their side and the currents carried them slowly but steadily closer to shore. The only problem was that they knew it couldn’t be that easy the entire way.
Of course it wasn’t; they made it to within a mile of shore - one measly mile! - faster than they could have hoped, but at that point they caught some of the near-shore currents, which tried to push them parallel to and up the coast but wouldn’t allow them anywhere near it.
Jason remembered from something he’d read as a kid about rip tides that you should try swimming at an angle to the beach to make it past the current without exhausting yourself. They changed their angle of attack and started making slow forward progress again.
On the upside, the feeling and movement eventually returned to his legs so that he and Tim were able to rotate who kicked and who pulled so neither of them would tire out on a single task. The new problem, however, was just how much struggling against the currents took out of them.
Progress was slow but Jason felt like he had kicked enough times to cross that distance three times over already - and had the bone numbing exhaustion to prove it. Tim was having an even harder time. To make things easier on himself he had flipped over onto his back and was pulling with backstroke arms. However, that gave Jason the perfect opportunity to hear just how ragged and harsh his breathing had become.
It had been nearly three months since Tim had declared himself - with Alfred’s hesitant approval - ‘recovered’ from his bout of pneumonia, but Jason swore Tim wasn’t as 'over it’ as he claimed. The closer they got to shore, the worse Tim sounded and the shallower his gasps became. Jason suggested they slow their pace 'to preserve energy’ - and it was a testament to how exhausted Tim was that he didn’t argue - but even taking it easier didn’t help Tim’s shortness of breath more than a little. Finally, just when Jason was about to call for a stop, his toes brushed something silty and slimy.
“Tim! Tim, hold up! I can feel the bottom!”
He didn’t get a verbal response, but Tim nodded and waited as Jason tested out the depth. It was still a little too deep for walking but this was a good sign. They swam a little further until Jason could stand firmly, and then he towed Tim along until he, too, could stand. Together they slowly plodded through the water. They were too exhausted to feel happy, but the fatigue hadn’t dimmed their eagerness to make it to shore so they could await rescue from the comfort of good ol’ dry land.
At one point Jason considered that the shore looked a little far off still for it to be this shallow, but he silenced that thought with a question of who was he to question good luck when they had it. He shouldn’t have felt surprised, then, when suddenly Tim slipped under the surface ahead of him without so much as a sound. Jason, on the other hand, cried out and dove forward to drag the other man back up again, but Tim surfaced just as Jason discovered that it wasn’t passing out from exhaustion that had pulled Tim under, it was the damn-ass floor falling out from under their feet. They’d been on a blasted sandbar.
Tim looked as if he was about ready to cry as he retreated back to the bar. Jason followed. They rested for a time, hoping the rest would give them the strength to cross to the next bar and the next after that until they finally found the ramp to the beach, but it wasn’t long after they started out again that Tim started huffing and puffing all over again. They switched frequently and rested twice but by the time they made it to the next sandbar Jason knew Tim was done. Hell, even Jason was pretty close to done; he could feel the cramps sneaking up on him again and not just in his legs, but across his whole body. They didn’t have much left in them and the longer this dragged out, the worse it would get.
So he pushed. He took Tim by the hand and dragged him along the second sandbar until Tim stumbled and inhaled water, and then Jason put him on his back and carried him piggyback until they reached the next gap, where Jason turned onto his back, had Tim lay with his head on Jason’s lap while his arms grasped Jason’s hips, and Jason pulled with backstroke arms. Jason told Tim to kick slowly and 'only if you want to’ and as time dragged more and more so did Tim’s legs, meaning that Tim had either accepted the break - fat chance - or he simply didn’t have it in him to kick anymore. Jason tried not to think about what would happen to them if he also hit that point of exhaustion before they made it back to shore.
They went on like that, walking and swimming in turns, until suddenly land was less than a batarang’s toss away and the sand underfoot started to slope upwards. Jason slung one of Tim’s arms over his shoulder, put his arm around Tim’s waist, and together they walked past the first break, the second, and then up onto dry sand. Tim collapsed immediately and Jason had just enough energy left to turn Tim onto his side into recovery position before he sank to the sand himself and let himself drift.
---
He must have lost consciousness sometime soon after that because the next thing he knew he was waking up to painfully bright light that wasn’t quite daylight but was too bright to be the twilight he thought had to be coming on by that point. He groaned and shifted, then felt a warm, familiar hand fall onto his shoulder.
“Welcome back, Jay.”
“Fuck you, too, Bruce. What the hell was wrong with that plane. And what took you so long?”
Bruce blinked impassively at Jason’s part-teasing, part-serious griping. “You’re welcome. We’re still not sure what went wrong - Nightwing and Robin are still trying to locate the plane’s black box, but at this point I feel it might be a lost cause.” Bruce paused and Jason took a moment to take in his surroundings. He was in the cave, near the Batcomputer, but set up on a gurney with a nearly empty IV line feeding some clear fluid into his vein in a slow but steady drip. Tim was nowhere in sight.
“As for why it took so long, whatever issue there was with the plane it must have interfered with the private mayday transmission because we didn’t even realize anything was wrong until you two failed to arrive as expected. It was smart of you to activate your personal emergency beacons and keep them on you even after you dumped the rest of the gear, but you know how limited the range is on those; we had to get quite close before we finally picked up a traceable signal.”
Bruce gestured to the IV line. “As it was, it was nearly dark by the time we found the two of you passed out on the beach, completely unresponsive and only feet from the rising tide.” Bruce paused to shake his head, probably at the close shave that had been, then bored his intense gaze into Jason’s face. “I look forward to hearing your report on how you managed to make it from open water to that beach, but that can wait until you’re rested and ready.”
“What-” Jason stopped to swallow against the dryness in his throat. “What about Tim? Is he okay?”
Bruce frowned and glanced toward the med bay. Jason followed his line of sight but couldn’t see anything from his position. “He will be,” Bruce sighed. He leaned back against the console of the Batcomputer looking as exhausted as Jason felt.
“Both of you were significantly dehydrated and suffering all the classic symptoms of prolonged exposure by the time we found you, but Tim was also running a dangerously high fever, had pronounced shortness of breath, and his blood oxygen-saturation was correspondingly low. X-rays showed significant lightened sections in his lungs that consultation with Leslie confirmed to be a relapse of the pneumonia Tim suffered a few months ago.” Bruce paused to scrub a hand over his face and Jason nodded. Looked like he was right, after all.
“It’s likely that he was already suffering this relapse before the two of you went down, but the exposure and stress clearly exacerbated the issue. Right now we have him in isolation on an aggressive intravenous antibiotic regimen, other various intravenous fluids, and positive pressure ventilation plus oxygen until his fever breaks and his stats rise to normal levels. Alfred is hopeful to have him resting comfortably in his own room again by tomorrow evening, but we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Jason nodded. That was distressing news, but, again, not surprising. He was kind of amazed Tim had lasted as long as he had as sick as he had been - this time, Jason vowed, he wasn’t going to accept that Tim was 'fully recovered’ until he was sure of it himself, and Jason was sure Alfred felt the same way. Jason wondered if part of the reason Tim had lasted that long was the similar to the biggest reason Jason had - that he hadn’t wanted Tim to give up, so Jason hadn’t given up on himself.
“Twenty miles.”
Bruce stared. “Excuse me?”
“We swam twenty miles with the currents until we approached the shoreline, then we fought against the currents,” Jason explained in an uncharacteristically quiet tone. “If we hadn’t set off when we had, if we hadn’t had the favorable conditions we’d had, if Tim had just been that one bit sicker than he’d been, I don’t know that we would have made it.”
Bruce blinked, then turned to stare off toward the med bay once more. “I guess it was a good thing that the two of you had each other, then.”
Jason raised an eyebrow.
“The odds of your survival after crazy accidents seem to be higher when Tim is there to watch your back. And vice versa.” Bruce turned back to offer a quiet smile and a nod - the bat equivalent of abject approval. “Turns out you two are the best 'lifeguards’ you’ll ever meet.”
Bruce turned away and made his way over to the case that held Jason’s old Robin uniform. “As long as you two stay close to each other I can rest a little easier knowing that one of you will be there to catch the other when he falls, so to speak.” Bruce tapped the glass of the case. “It makes me feel hopeful that I’ll never need another one of these, for either of you, despite the crazy risks you both take.”
Bruce glanced over and there was no mistaking the fondness in his tone or in his eyes. He made his way back to Jason and clapped a hand to Jason’s shoulder once more as Jason looked up at him speechless. “Get some rest Jay-lad. Goodness knows you need it,” he advised, and then Bruce left the cave.
If not two minutes after Bruce left did Jason get up, drag his IV stand over to the cordoned off section where Tim slept, and carefully climb into bed with his ailing partner, then when Alfred came down five minutes later to check on them or when Bruce came down an hour after that, neither one made any attempt to separate them. They both knew it was pointless, if not outright counterproductive. After all, Tim and Jason really were better off together than they were apart.