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It’s one of Tim’s rare nights off, both from office and vigilante duties, and he fully intends to make the most of it. He’s just woken up from an impromptu four-hour afternoon nap (which will definitely jack whatever semblance of a sleep schedule he’s got left, but hey, that’s a problem for Future Tim), blearily polished off half a takeout container of orange chicken and fried rice, and is now firing up the PS4 for some long-overdue vegging out, when his phone, which is lying facedown on the coffee table, starts to ring.
Tim groans and debates the merits of just not answering. If this is WE-related, they can suck it—it’s 7:45 on a Friday night and Tim’s thoroughly checked out for the weekend. He has a separate alert tone for Bat-and/or-Titans-related emergencies (which historically has been used for everything from doomsday attack warnings, to Bart informing him that they’re out of cinnamon pop-tarts), but that’s not going off, so it can’t be anything too serious. Most of his siblings have the decency to text first—with the notable exception of Dick, who sometimes calls on a whim to kill time when he’s bored on patrol (or filing paperwork, or stuck in traffic, or waiting for a frozen burrito to finish cooking in the microwave), but Tim just saw his eldest brother two days ago.
Tim relaxes back against the cushions, the phone’s fourth consecutive ring being drowned out by the sound of the console’s startup music. It’s probably nothing. Hell, it’s probably spam.
Shit, what if it’s Alfred?
With a frantic lurch, Tim shoots forward and grabs the phone from the table. He flips it over, then freezes when the contact name on the screen comes into view.
He didn’t even know he had the brat’s number saved.
“Damian?” Tim answers, unable to keep the surprise from his tone.
“Timothy,” the sixth-grader replies flatly.
Tim waits a few seconds for him to continue, but there’s only awkward silence on the other end of the line. “Well?” he finally asks. “What is it?”
There’s a deep inhale, like Damian is steeling himself for something. His words sound stilted, even for him. “I... require your assistance.”
Tim frowns, setting the controller down on the seat beside him. While it’s true that he and Damian have made progress in their relationship over the past few years, it’s been at a glacial pace. They’re definitely not at the ‘call each other for a favor’ stage.
Unless...
Tim sits up straight. Carefully, and with his finger already hovering over the hidden panic button on his watch, he asks, “Have you... seen my rain jacket anywhere?”
“I have not been kidnapped, Drake,” Damian snaps, finally sounding like his indignant self again.
“Well excuse me for checking,” Tim huffs. “It’s not like we’re on the top of each other’s favorites lists...” He pauses when an even more chilling thought occurs to him. “Wait, was Dick kidnapped?”
Damian sounds confused. “What? No.”
Tim frowns. “Bruce?”
“Tt. Of course not.”
Tim’s heart stops. “Oh my god, they got Alfred."
“No one has been kidnapped, Drake!” Damian hisses. He draws in a harsh breath, waits a beat, then continues in a more measured tone, “I merely require your assistance for a personal matter.”
“A personal matter,” Tim echoes, bewildered.
“Yes. I need a ride.”
“And you’re calling me about it?” Tim double checks his messages for the string of Arkham breakout alerts he’s now certain he missed—Isley, or Crane, or someone else with mind altering substances has got to be on the loose to explain this unprecedented behavior.
“You are capable of operating a motor vehicle, are you not?” the kid says testily.
Tim feels a flash of anger. “Listen, you little–” But his words are interrupted by the muffled sound of knuckles rapping on wood.
“Damian?” a female voice—overly-sweet, almost falsetto—calls in the background. “Damian, honey, do you think you’ll be coming out soon? The other boys are finishing up their cake now and they were going to start watching Nacho Libre, but I told them they had to wait for you.”
Tim can just make out the irritated little groan the boy is clearly fighting to contain. “As I stated before," Damian says through clenched teeth, speaking away from the phone now, “they are welcome to watch whatever mindless drivel they desire without me.”
“Okay sweetie, I’ll tell them to go ahead,” the woman assures, sounding completely unfazed. “Is your tummy upset? I have some medicine you can try–”
“No thank you, Linda,” he grounds out. “You may go.”
“Sure thing, hon…”
“Who the hell was that?” Tim demands as soon as the footsteps recede. “Are you at someone’s house?”
“That was Linda Crandall,” Damian mutters darkly. “Mother of Jacob Crandall, the insufferable idiot whose overnight celebration of yet another trip around the sun I am being forced to endure.”
The pieces are all falling into place now. “Damian...” Tim says slowly, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Are you at a sleepover right now?”
The exasperated scoff he receives in return is confirmation enough. Tim’s grin spreads wider; screw Assassin's Creed—this is far more entertaining.
“Father is refusing to pick me up,” Damian says bitterly. “He does not believe I’m unwell.”
“…Are you?”
“Of course not!” Damian snaps. “But I will be, if I have to spend another five minutes in the presence of this much rampant immaturity.” He lowers his voice to a hiss, “Do you know what these little cretins did earlier? They held a farting contest, Drake. A farting contest.”
Tim’s grin has officially reached the ‘shit-eating’ stage now. “So your grand plan was to– what? Camp out in their bathroom, waiting to be rescued?”
“Not rescued, extracted.” The phone buzzes against Tim’s palm. He lowers it to see a text message from Damian consisting only of a string of GPS coordinates. “How soon can you arrive?”
Tim snorts in amusement. “I’m not extracting you from a twelve-year-old’s birthday party.”
“And why not,” the boy demands hotly.
“Because that’s not a thing that people do!”
Damian makes an exasperated, furious little sound in the back of his throat. “Useless!” he spits. “ Every last one of you! Father, Grayson, Pennyworth, Todd, Cain, Brown–”
“Surprised you didn’t call Titus...”
“–and not one of you will extract me from this hellhole!”
Tim rolls his eyes. “Damian, this is dramatic, even for you. It’s one fucking night.”
“But it’s not!” the boy retorts, his tone just bordering on a whine. “I am already forced to endure seven and a half hours a day with these infernal children. Why should I also be required to spend my free time being mocked and derided and shoved to the ground and farted on and labeled a terrorist by a bunch of insolent little–”
“Hold on.” Tim’s grin freezes. He blinks. “They did what?”
“I–”
There’s a stutter, a split-second of hesitation, but it’s as good as an admission.
"It’s nothing,” Damian insists, the words coming out just a little too quick. “They’re just being stupid and juvenile.”
Tim’s mouth feels suddenly dry. “Dami,” he says, voice strained, “if they’re bullying you–”
“They’re not,” Damian growls, more frantic than angry, like a wild animal that’s been backed into a corner. “I shouldn’t have called,” he blurts. “I was simply annoyed by their childish antics, but the others were right, I can handle it. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
“Dami, wait–”
“Goodnight, Drake.”
The line cuts out.
Damian isn’t watching the movie, though his gaze is fixed, unseeing, on the television mounted above the fireplace. He’s lost track of the plot—what little there is of it—and is instead replaying the conversations he had earlier with the others, all of whom insisted he subject himself to such asinine company.
“It’ll be good for you, Lil D! You guys just need some time to warm up to each other outside of class,” Richard had assured him during patrol the night prior, dismissing Damian’s protests with a wave of his hand. He grinned infuriatingly and wriggled an eyebrow. “You know, I bet if you ask Alfred really nice, he’ll make you some snickerdoodles to bring. No one can resist Alfie’s snickerdoodles!”
Father had at least been more practical about the matter:
“Damian, your school social worker attended the last parent teacher conference,” he’d said gruffly when Damian presented him with a powerpoint presentation of all the ways in which he is intellectually and physically superior to his classmates and why therefore this moronic event is beneath him. “She’s concerned about your lack of appropriate peer relations. Cooperating in this matter will get her off both of our backs.”
Seeing as reasoning with them was proving ineffective, Damian then shifted his strategy to feigning illness. Pennyworth had been unamused:
“Master Damian,” he’d begun from the bathroom doorway, inside which Damian was sitting on the floor with his arms wrapped around himself, wearing the most miserable expression he could muster. “You’ll do well to recall that I raised the social hermit that is your father from a young lad. I am quite immune to such evasion tactics by now.” Moving a step closer, he frowned disapprovingly at the contents of the toilet bowl. “At least Master Bruce made the effort to include foods he’d actually consumed that day in his fake vomit. This is porridge and orange juice—I know perfectly well I cooked you an omelette for breakfast.”
It hadn’t mattered how much he’d argued or sulked, his family had been clear; either Damian would agree to attend Jacob Crandall’s idiotic birthday celebration, or he’d be banned from patrol for the next three weeks.
Damian may be stubborn, but he’s no fool; he knows when he’s beat. He’d scowled the entire drive from Bristol to East Burnside, where Father had deposited him on Jacob’s doorstep with his backpack, a sleeping bag, and strict instructions to Mrs. Crandall that she was to call him immediately if Damian should turn up missing or leave with anyone not on the list of approved family members that he’d just emailed her a moment ago.
Linda had laughed as though he’d made some sort of joke, but the look Father had fixed Damian with left no room for misunderstanding. He would be following through on his threat.
It was one night; not even a full twenty-four hours with the little imbeciles. Damian would simply have to endure them.
And endure them he had.
“God, Jake, why’d you even invite him? He’s so fucking weird...”
Damian is kneeling on the welcome mat in the Crandall’s entryway, working a stubborn knot out of his shoelace. He doesn’t look up; he doesn’t have to. After a year and a half at Gotham Academy, he could recognize Alex Hoffman’s sneer anywhere.
“Shh! I told you, we can’t say the f-word around her or she’s gonna flip!” Jacob hisses, glancing nervously across the room at Linda, who is busy ushering several of his classmates into the kitchen for snacks.
“He really is though,” another boy, Caleb, agrees in a stage whisper. “Like, did you see the book report he turned in for Old Yeller?”
“Oh yeah!” Alex starts laughing. “Mrs. Wheeler was like, ‘I just need a brief summary of the story’ and he turns in like fourteen fricken’ pages about how the dog wouldn’t have had to die if they’d just acted sooner and had access to advanced veterinary care and used this super specific experimental treatment and blah, blah, blah…”
“Guuys,” Jacob whines. “I told you, you can’t say fricken’ either. She’s really strict.”
“Seriously man, why did you invite him?” Caleb asked. “You know what he’s like at school.”
“Look, it wasn’t my choice, okay?” Jacob shoots a glance toward the kitchen, lowering his voice a little. “My mom said I had to ‘cus she thinks he’s like, ‘on the spectrum’ or whatever”—he puts air quotes around the term—“and I gotta be nice or she’s returning the PS5 she bought me.”
Alex snorts. “Should’ve known the kid was a fucking sped…”
“Stop saying ‘fuck’!” Jacob exclaims in frustration.
“Jacob!” Linda barks from the other room. “Language!”
“Uuugh, it wasn’t me, Mom...”
The others all have a full lap on Damian by the time he gives up mashing the infuriatingly useless buttons on the Wii remote, Yoshi still idling at the start line.
“The controller you’ve provided me is faulty,” he states.
“It was working for me before,” Alex says innocently, eyes glued to the TV screen as he zips along, hurling a green shell at an opponent. “Are you sure you just don’t know how to play?”
“Yeah, maybe try pressing the buttons harder, Damian!” Jacob suggests over his friends’ stifled laughter.
Another car slams into Damian’s from behind, sending him spinning off the edge of the track.
“Whoops,” Caleb giggles, “my bad…”
“Nose goes,” Alex whispers as Linda ushers them all into her minivan on their way to the laser tag park.
Damian pretends not to notice when the last boy to touch his nose begrudgingly slides into the seat beside him.
“Now!”
It’s Ethan—someone who’s supposed to be on Damian’s own team—who tackles him from behind during their final round, and then immediately all five other boys are piling on top of him, pinning Damian to the ground.
“C’mon, Damian, we need a judge!” Caleb taunts, sitting on his face and letting one rip. “You gotta tell us who’s the Fart King!”
It takes only a few seconds for Damian to throw them all off and scramble back to his feet, cheeks burning, fists clenched at his sides.
The music stops abruptly and the overhead lights come on. “You boys alright?” the laser park attendant’s voice crackles over the speakers above them. “That was quite the pile-up.”
Jacob looks up to where the security camera is located above them, broadcasting their game to the outside lobby. “Yeah, we’re fine. We just tripped,” he calls.
The lights go back down and the music resumes, just in time for Damian’s vest to light up with three separate hits.
“Did you see the way he was glaring at me during that last round?” Ethan whispers in Caleb’s ear.
Caleb giggles quietly. “Dude, right? Like he thought that laser gun was actually going to kill you…”
Damian is sitting on the floor, watching Jacob unwrap his presents while Linda enthusiastically snaps pictures for a future scrapbook. He’s close enough to the two boys on the couch that they must know he can overhear their whispered conversation.
Alex, who’s on the far end of the couch, leans across another boy to add in a hushed voice, “You know, Jake says his real last name isn’t Wayne, it’s like, ‘Abdullah’ or something.”
“Figures,” Caleb snorts. “His family’s probably al-Qaeda. He’s got the beady little eyes for it…”
Damian is seething. Before he even realizes what he’s doing, he’s on his feet, fists balled, every head turning suddenly in his direction.
“Damian, dear?” Linda asks, lowering her camera to give him a concerned look. “Everything alright?”
Damian draws in a breath as he scans the room, body rigid and muscles primed. Some of the boys won’t meet his gaze; others look downright terrified.
Jacob swallows hard, a half-unwrapped PS5 on his lap.
Damian’s vision is blurred with rage. “Bathroom,” he grits out, and then blows past them all out of the room.
“Dami?”
Startled out of his thoughts, Damian whirls around on the sofa to see Timothy standing behind him, Damian’s blue sleeping bag tucked under one arm. The expression he wears is both very determined and very out of place.
“Drake.” Damian’s throat feels strangely tight all of a sudden. “You came.”
Timothy shrugs, a little awkwardly. “You called.”
Linda is waiting for them by the front door with his backpack and a plastic goodie bag of Fortnite-themed party favors. “Here you go sweetie,” she says, her lips twisted into a sympathetic sort of smile. “I’m so sorry you’re not feeling well. I’m sure the boys will miss having you.”
Damian’s cheeks burn. He can’t bring himself to speak, just accepts the items with a curt little nod.
Timothy clears his throat. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Crandall,” he says with practiced formality. “We really appreciate your hospitality.”
“Of course dear, anytime. Excuse me–” Linda turns her head and calls down the hall, “Jake! Come say goodbye to your friend!”
“But I’m watching the movie, Mom!” the boy hollers back.
Damian couldn’t care less; in fact, he’d be perfectly content never seeing Jacob Crandall’s stupid face again. But before he can express any of that, his brother has a hand firmly on his shoulder.
“Oh no need to bother him, Mrs. Crandall,” Timothy assures the woman with a tightlipped smile, ignoring the withering glare that Damian has turned on him now. “I think we’ll just be heading home now. Thank you again so much.”
And with that, Damian is steered out the door.
They drive in silence for a good five minutes, Tim quietly drumming his thumbs against the steering wheel as his younger brother stares fixedly out the window. The air between them hangs thick with words that need to be said—questions Tim knows he should really ask—but all of it feels so far above his pay grade.
Finally, when the tension grows utterly suffocating, he clears his throat. “So, about before...”
“We aren’t discussing it,” Damian says flatly, not turning his head. “I appreciate you coming to retrieve me from such a tiresome event, but it was unnecessary. I could have stayed the night.”
“But what you said on the phone–”
“Was a mistake.”
“Which part?” Tim challenges. “What you told me, or that you told me?”
He’s met with a scowl, followed by more, oppressive silence.
Tim flips on his blinker and changes lanes. “You said the others were refusing to pick you up.”
“They were.”
“What exactly did you tell them?”
“That I wished to leave,” Damian says simply.
“But not why you wished to leave?” Tim clarifies.
Still facing the window, Damian lowers his gaze to pick at a piece of fuzz on his jacket. “The reason shouldn’t matter,” he mutters.
Tim huffs out in exasperation. “Of course it fucking matters! Do you really think they would have made you stay if they knew you’re being bull–”
“I’m NOT!” Damian roars, turning on Tim so suddenly and viciously that the latter instinctively throws an elbow up to block a strike that doesn’t come.
After a few tense seconds, Damian sighs deeply and leans back against the seat, eyes closed, and only then does Tim drop his arm.
“I’m not,” Damian repeats calmly. “I was simply annoyed by their foolish and immature behavior, and I overreacted. That is all. It will not happen again.”
“Okay,” Tim says quietly. He doesn’t believe his brother, but he’s not about to push it any further at the moment—certainly not in a moving vehicle. “That’s good.”
The traffic light at the upcoming intersection turns yellow. Tim slows the car to a stop, and neither one says anything for the whole light cycle. It’s not until the light turns green and they’re moving again that Damian adds in a hollow tone, “But even if I was, I wouldn’t need anyone else getting involved. I don’t require protection from a pack of twelve-year-old idiots. I’m not scared of them—I could kill them if I wished.”
It’s not spoken like a threat, just a fact. And it’s a true fact, so Tim doesn’t bother arguing it.
Instead, he just points out, “It’s not all about being afraid, though.”
Damian turns his head back towards the window. “Tt.”
The silence after that stretches so long that Tim turns on the radio. Damian makes it all of thirty seconds into the pop song before reaching over to change the station to something he deems ‘less moronic’. Tim pretends to be annoyed, but it’s just for show. The return to normalcy is a welcome relief.
Ten minutes later, they pull into a spot in the underground garage attached to Tim’s building. He parks the car and is just about to turn off the engine when Damian looks over at him, and quietly asks:
“Are you going to tell Father?”
And all at once, Tim’s struck with just how undeniably young his brother truly is.
Tim hesitates. “I really should,” he admits. “He’ll want to know you’re safe. Besides, if I don’t, we’ll probably have an amber alert by breakfast.”
“No, not–” Damian cuts himself off, blowing out a frustrated breath. He tries again. “I mean,” he says, slower, “are you going to tell him?”
Tim can’t help himself. He gives an innocent shrug. “What’s there to tell? According to you, nothing’s even going on.”
At that, the corners of Damian’s lips twitch minutely upwards. “Precisely.”
Tim shuts off the engine and removes the key, but neither one makes any move to get out of the car.
“But, in the hypothetical event that there was something going on,” Tim adds after a moment, “you should really talk to someone about it. And it doesn’t even have to be Bruce—it could be Dick, or Alfie, or, hell, even Jason.”
“Tt,” Damian says, but there’s a hint of amusement to it now. “But not you?”
Tim shrugs, keeping his expression perfectly neutral. “You said you already knew what to do if you wanted them dead.”
Damian lets out a short, breathy puff of air—almost a laugh.
They both unclip their seatbelts. Tim reaches behind them to grab the sleeping bag from the backseat while Damian leans forward to gather his backpack from the floor.
“Drake?” he asks.
“Hm?”
“This was a suitable extraction.”
Tim’s lips part into a grin. “Anytime, Dami.”