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It hurt.
Not pain, not a broken bone or a stinging cut or the pulse of a burn, not any of the different types of discomfort Tim had catalogued in his two-and-a-half-year tenure as Robin, but something older. Something more insidious and oppressive.
His knees wobbled, and he leaned heavily against the wall as he fought to stay upright. He could feel coarse brick under his gloved fingers. He could smell sweet rose and honey and, under that, the rotting scent of a dumpster.
His knees wobbled again, and fingers dug into the exposed brick as he tried to keep from crumpling. He—he needed to get to safety. High ground. He needed to—to call someone.
Batman—no, he was out of town. JL business. And Tim wasn’t supposed to patrol alone—and certainly not in the East End, too close to the stomping grounds of the crime lord that Batman had faced off against last month. The fight that saw Batman returning, the closest thing to shaken that Tim had seen since he donned the red-green-yellow. The fight—and the villain—that Batman refused to talk about.
Whatever happened, it was bad, and in principle, Tim agreed with staying away from decapitation-crazy lunatics when he didn’t have backup. In practice—well, in practice, Ivy had thrown a hissy fit, and as the only vigilante in Gotham, Tim had to go and stop it.
He did stop it.
He thought.
It was getting hard to think. Hard to remember. Hard to do anything when there was a black hole in his heart, yawning wide, ready to devour him whole.
It hurt.
It hurt like a closed front door with the fading sound of suitcases. It hurt like the creaking of an empty house. It hurt like wearing a fixed smile while watching kids and parents excitedly babble at each other.
He needed it to stop.
He forced himself forward another step. Safety. The black hole was inside him, he had to feed it, he needed to give it something before it consumed him. He needed help, and there was no one near enough to call.
A raucous burst of laughter. Glass skidding along asphalt. Voices loud and obnoxious, overlapping in a slurred, sniggering cacophony.
Voices meant people. Voices meant warmth.
Tim pushed off the wall and tottered forward. No, screamed a part of his mind, the part that was very good at puzzles, that could predict drunk and gang and up to no good. Tim ignored that part of his mind. He was dying, inch by inch, and he’d do anything to get some warmth.
Anything is what he’d end up doing, if he staggered into a gang, in uniform, unable to defend himself.
A curl of fear sharpened down his spine, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. It wasn’t enough to force him back, to counteract the sheer longing coursing through him. The longing that didn’t care what it took, didn’t care what those men would do to him, didn’t care if he’d even be alive by the end.
Tim just wanted to be warm. He’d take the pain, the agony, the torture, as long as he got to be warm.
He was nearly at the street now, bright lights visible around the corner, and he stumbled forward another step before he heard the clattering sound of a kicked can.
Robin instincts spun him around. The drug—the pollen, Ivy was furious, Tim had tried to stop her, there had been a haze of glimmering gold settling all over him—caused him to nearly trip headfirst into a wall. Tim managed to catch himself, and breathed against the brick.
Another sound. A deliberate scuff of steel-toed boat on asphalt.
Tim straightened, and observed the new arrival. Tall—taller than him, almost as tall as Batman. Leather jacket, body armor, guns. Red helmet.
The rational part of his brain recognized the Red Hood. Remembered Batman’s warnings, the vicious rage evident in his killings, the duffel bag of heads. The startling speed with which he took control of Gotham’s underworld. The strong evidence that he had a vendetta against the Bats.
Unfortunately, the rational part of his brain was a small voice drowned out by the loud shrieks that this was a person in front of him, a real, live, breathing person, and Tim lunged at the Red Hood.
Hood jerked back, but it turned out that Tim’s coordination wasn’t completely shot, not when he sought warmth, and he managed to snag Hood’s collar and pull close.
That was a gun pressed against his stomach. Tim could feel the muzzle digging into his suit—at this range, all the kevlar in the world wouldn’t be able to stop the bullet from tearing through his gut. There was a gun, and the Red Hood was scarily still.
Tim couldn’t move. Couldn’t unlock his arms from around Hood’s neck, couldn’t stop himself from pressing his face into the body armor, couldn’t force himself to arch away from the gun because he was desperately clinging tight.
This was how he was going to die. Hugging a crime lord. At least it was an interesting way to go.
“What the fuck happened to you,” Hood demanded in a mechanized tone. Tim didn’t have the mental energy to form words.
The gun retreated, and Tim pressed himself closer, plastering himself to Hood’s front, even as dread coiled in his gut. Gloved hands harshly ripped him off, and Tim stumbled back, the yawning void seething underneath his skin.
No. No. He needed it, he needed it, he had a taste of warmth and now he was shivering cold but Hood blocked him as he tried to get closer, and a boot slammed into his ribs to force him back several stumbling feet as Hood watched silently.
Tim didn’t think anything was broken, but he couldn’t tell, he couldn’t feel anything other than the pulsing ache of empty empty empty. “Please,” he stuttered. “Please.”
“Begging, Replacement?” Hood drawled. “This was the best Batman could find?”
Something in his head pinged—personal, there was a story there, something between Hood and Batman—but Tim was close to tears. Before he could take another step towards Hood, a rattling sound alerted him to the gang standing on the street, out of sight, just a few yards away.
The void settled on the new target. Tim’s legs moved like puppets, one after the other, a shambling shuffle—he wanted warmth, he needed warmth, and anything was better than the emptiness inside of him, anything at all, even throwing himself headfirst into one of the gangs in the East End.
Before he could clear the mouth of the alley, a hand wrapped around his shoulder and yanked him back. Tim burrowed into the arms surrounding him, even as a gloved hand grabbed his chin and forced him to look him.
“Pollen,” Hood said flatly. “You’ve been hit with pollen.”
Tim tried to breathe slowly, tried to calm the racing of his heart, but it wasn’t quite working. He couldn’t let go of Hood, he couldn’t even unclench his arms, and he knew full well that people used Ivy’s pollen as an excuse to do whatever they wanted.
The pollen didn’t demand sex, didn’t even stir arousal, but it made people desperate for touch, so desperate that they would do anything for someone to hold them.
A burst of laughter echoed down the street, loud and malicious, and the arm around his shoulders tightened. Before Tim could react, he heard the whine of a grapple—he clutched Hood tighter as the world swerved around them, and exhaled in shaky relief when they were on solid ground again.
Hood withdrew slightly, studying him, brushing the hair out of his face and then staring at his glove. It was now coated in gold dust, same as him, and Tim didn’t know whether to be thankful or not that the pollen had to be inhaled.
“You’re covered in this stuff,” Hood said sharply, twisting further away and grabbing Tim’s shoulders when he tried to press closer. “What did you do, dive into it?”
“I-Ivy,” Tim stuttered, trying to get closer, straining against Hood’s grip. “P-please.”
Hood didn’t let go, though, and Tim pushed harder, looking up at the featureless red helmet in a silent plea. He needed to get closer, he had to, he was desperate for it—he needed to get away, this was the Red Hood and Tim was helpless, he would run into a knife just to feel some warmth, this was the villain that had managed to rattle Batman and here Tim was, offering up a vulnerable Robin on a platter.
“Fuck,” the distorted tone groaned. “And I had plans for you, Replacement.” A jolt of fear, skittering uselessly against the swell of warmth as Hood let go of his shoulders, allowing Tim to plaster himself to the body armor.
“Alright,” Hood sighed. “Hold tight, kid.”
No. No, Tim was supposed to let go, not clasp his hands tighter around Hood’s waist as he walked to the edge of the roof. For a moment, he thought Hood would just throw him off—it was an honest question whether he’d be able to use the grapple gun properly in the fog wrapped around him—but Hood moved to the fire escape instead.
Tim tried to dig his heels in, to keep from going wherever Hood was planning—he should’ve called Nightwing, he should’ve called someone, he couldn’t even lift his hand now—but Hood didn’t seem to notice. They made it down to ground level, and Hood easily led him through the alleys until they happened upon a gleaming red bike.
Hood made a sharp, displeased sound. “And right when the Bat’s out of town, too,” Hood grumbled. “Why do I always have to clean up his mistakes?”
That was a shard straight through Tim’s heart, neatly slicing underneath the growing dread.
Hood knew that Batman wasn’t here.
You’re nothing but a mistake.
“Well, whatever,” Hood huffed. “Come on, Replacement. Don’t let go.” Hood forced himself free of Tim’s grasp to clamber onto the bike, and Tim couldn’t stop himself from jumping up behind him and holding tight.
Run, a part of his mind shrieked—a part that was growing larger. The touch wasn’t quite filling the pit of yawning hunger inside of him, too much armor blocking the way, but clarity was appearing to Tim in snapshots the longer he held on.
Red Hood. Vicious crime lord. Vendetta against Batman. Tim couldn’t help himself from imagining all the horrible things he could do to a Robin in his grasp, and Batman was too far away to help.
His stomach twisted painfully. Bad things happened to Robins that strayed too far from Batman.
They were driving into Bristol. Tim managed to drag his face up from Hood’s shoulder to register exactly where they were headed, and dread solidified into pure terror when they neared a familiar stretch of rock.
Hood stopped the motorcycle near the concealed keypad, and Tim listened to the beeps in growing horror. “Oh,” Hood chuckled, “you thought that was going to keep me out, old man?”
The door slid open.
Hood knew about the Batcave. Hood knew about the Batcave. Tim almost stopped breathing.
The motorcycle screeched to a stop in the garage, echoing through an empty Cave. Alfred was with Bruce on his ‘business trip’. Dick was in Bludhaven. The Manor was empty, the Cave was empty, and Tim was all alone with a ruthless murderer.
Eight heads in that duffel bag.
And Tim still couldn’t let go.
They managed an awkward shuffle forward, Tim still clinging to Hood’s back, before Hood got fed up and scooped him up. Tim was forced to clutch Hood’s shoulders instead, legs automatically wrapping around his waist, and his heart rate spiked.
He didn’t know why Hood had brought him to the Batcave, but he could imagine several possibilities, each worse than the last.
Please no. Please. Please.
Hood moved unerringly through the Batcave, like it was familiar, like he’d done it a hundred times before, and he was heading straight for the decontamination showers.
In theory—in theory, that was the exact procedure for a pollen attack. In practice…
Tim squeezed his eyes shut behind the mask and tried not to scream.
“Alright,” Hood said, putting Tim down on the shower tiles. “Okay, this is going to be tricky, but first I need to know if we need a sample for an antidote.” He tapped Tim’s cheek. “Are you lucid?”
Tim was focusing very hard on lifting his fingers, trying each one, anything to let go of Hood.
“Replacement,” Hood snapped, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look up. “Can. You. Understand. Me.”
“Yes,” Tim said quietly.
“Do you know who I am?”
Tim was being forced to stare at the red helmet, how could he not. “Red Hood.”
“Okay,” Hood exhaled. “Anything different about Ivy’s pollen? Strange new side effects?”
One part of Tim’s mind registered that Hood knew enough to know what their normal pollen response was. That part of Tim’s mind quietly slotted that into yet another reason to be scared.
Tim shook his head no. Even if he had, he certainly wouldn’t tell Hood.
“Okay,” Hood said. “That’s good. One less thing to worry about. Okay, I’m going to help you get the pollen off of you—and me too, I guess, now that I’m covered in it.”
Tim kept breathing shallowly. He wanted to let go. He wanted Hood to leave. He wanted—he wanted to wrap himself closer and be able to hear Hood’s heartbeat and feel the empty void inside of him finally fill up.
“I—okay. You need to get your suit off.”
Every muscle in his body immediately tensed. Hood clearly noticed, because he gently patted his back. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just me.”
Tim couldn’t breathe.
“Hey. Hey. Replacement.” Hood tapped his cheek again. “Robin. Tim.”
Tim sucked in a startled gasp as Hood unlatched his helmet. “Kid,” a low voice rasped, “it’s just me. I’m not going to hurt you—well, uh, not anym—not now. Call it a truce for the night.”
Tim’s legs were trembling, knees wavering, and only his desperate grip on Hood was keeping him upright.
“Tim, I’m not going to hurt you,” the voice said gently. “But I need you to take the uniform off.”
It would’ve been better if he’d just torn it off. The gentleness was a poisoned knife, and it burned almost worse than the pollen.
Tim tried to shake his head, but Hood just dragged him close, wrapping his arms around Tim’s back. “There,” he said, “I’m holding you. Now you can take off your stuff.”
Tim shook his head more violently, but he was unable to move. Hood’s embrace eased a little more of the void inside of him, and a traitorous part of his brain pointed that it felt nice.
“Replacement,” Hood drawled, an impatient edge to his tone, “we can’t stand here all night. The pollen’s not going to wear off if you keep breathing it in.”
He—he was right. If Tim wanted to let go, he’d have to outlast the pollen’s effects. And—and Hood knew who he was. Knew where the Batcave was. He could do anything he wanted, and Tim couldn’t stop him. Pissing him off wasn’t worth it.
The embrace allowed him to pull his hands back and try to unclasp his cape with trembling fingers. It didn’t work—the clasps were too far, and no amount of mental willpower could force his fingers away from Hood’s armor with the void creeping back in.
Hood noticed his difficulty. “Need some help?” he asked. Tim buried his face against Hood’s armor, arms returning to their previous position.
Hood sighed, loud and put-upon, and unclasped the cape easily. Tim’s eyes prickled, and he squeezed them shut, pretending he couldn’t feel Hood finding the concealed zipper and pulling it down.
Hood got him out of the suit one arm at a time, grasping firmly and not allowing Tim to pull his hand free. Tim was wearing a tank top under the suit, and the showers weren’t that cold, but he started shaking when Hood pulled the suit down to his waist, and he couldn’t stop.
The utility belt joined the cape in the corner of the shower. “Boots,” Hood reminded him, moving Tim’s grip to around his neck as he bent to pull the suit all the way down.
Tim kicked off his boots. And then kicked off his suit. And waited for Hood to pull down the thermal leggings too, to tear off the tank top, to—to—
Hood straightened, a blurry figure with dark hair in Tim’s waterlogged vision, and Tim felt the leather jacket slide free. “I liked that one,” Hood said mournfully, working on the straps of the body armor.
The armor, the guns, the boots, and the cargo pants all joined the pile of gear in the corner. Hood had on a tight black top, and similar leggings—with the armor out of the way, Tim could press closer, the void urging him on as he plastered himself to Hood.
His stomach was a roiling mix of emotions, dread sitting low, terror and panic barely constrained by the empty-cold-must-feel-warm coursing through him from the pollen.
“Sorry,” Hood muttered, tilting his face up and—and getting a nail under the edge of his mask. Another pang of fear, but Hood knew his identity anyway.
The mask wasn’t supposed to be removed without the solvent, but Hood moved slowly, unsticking the thing with only mild irritation. Tim blinked, and water spilled down his cheeks.
Hood frowned—he wasn’t all that much older than Tim, now that he could properly see his features. Green eyes, curious strip of white hair in the front, and—and there was something familiar about those features, but Tim couldn’t quite put his finger on what.
“Please,” Tim tried, his voice thready, “please don’t—”
“I won’t hurt you,” Hood said gently, “I promise.”
Tim snapped his mouth shut. That was as good as he was going to get. And Hood was being gentle.
Be grateful, a voice snapped in his head, and he burrowed his head against Hood’s chest, squeezed tightly, and let the shirt soak up the tears.
Hood didn’t try to pull him off. Or remove the last layer of clothes, as weak a defense as they were. He merely wrapped an arm around Tim’s shoulders—Tim shivered, another part of the void curling up in happy satiation—and pulled them to stand underneath the decon shower.
The shower switched on immediately, the spray turned to the special mix of solvent and water used for an Ivy attack. The water wasn’t hot or cold, but the spray was fierce and Tim half-hid underneath Hood’s bulk.
He was trembling. He noted that distantly, the quiet shudders in tune to his hitched breaths. The tears were lost to the spray, and Tim gave up, letting his mind drift.
He couldn’t do anything. Not like this. He was trapped, and while he’d learned how to talk his way out of a dangerous situation, words weren’t coming. The pollen might’ve actually been laced with something else, or maybe that was just him deciding to take on a Rogue by himself, but he was exhausted. And the adrenaline of Hood kidnapping had dissipated to soft jolts, sparking whenever Hood touched him and leaving him more fatigued than before.
He let Hood maneuver him however he wanted. The increased touch was helping—Tim wasn’t clinging to Hood anymore, and after Hood pushed him back a couple inches to let the water spray down his face and front, Tim resettled his hands on Hood’s shoulders, letting his head drop to Hood’s collarbone as silent tears seeped out.
Hood hummed, the sound vibrating through Tim’s skin, as slow, gentle fingers combed through his hair, careful to let the water wash away every last spore of pollen. It felt…nice. Tim took the part of him that was screaming that this was a violent murderer, that Tim was going to end up broken one way or the other, and packed it up into a nice box before shoving it aside.
Right now, it felt nice, and lethargy coiled around his limbs.
Hood washed himself off too—Tim distantly wondered if he’d gotten hit too, if he was going to be as desperate for touch as Tim was. On one hand, that meant that Hood couldn’t leave and go. On the other, it wasn’t just the bystanders that used the pollen as an excuse.
Hood pulled them out once he was finished, and Tim swayed as he tried to follow, knees like jelly and mind too fuzzy to get them to work. Hood made a huffing sound, and suddenly Tim was being carried again. He wrapped his arms around Hood’s neck and dropped his head against his shoulder, too drained to protest.
They weren’t leaving the Cave. Hood headed to the cupboards—he knew exactly where the towels were, and the clothes, and Tim regarded the small pile of clothes next to him as Hood set him down on a table and smothered him in a towel.
Hood was brisk and efficient, and he soon dropped the towel in Tim’s lap and grabbed the edge of his tank top. Tim bit back the whimper—both at the movement and at the sudden ache of the void as Hood forced him to break his grasp—but all Hood did was pull off the sodden top and ease his limbs through a new, dry shirt.
He repeated the same with the leggings, exchanging them for dry, warm sweatpants, and a distant, confused part of Tim’s mind sounded a bemused warning that this was not what he’d expected would happen. He clutched Hood’s waist as the man pulled off his own wet clothes, replacing them with a shirt and sweatpants too big to be anyone’s but Bruce’s, and tried to force his foggy mind to think.
It was difficult—the part of his mind that had retreated from the situation didn’t want to come back, and the exhaustion was making it difficult to separate reality from his imagination, especially when he kept checking out.
Hood picked him back up when they were more moderately dry, heading to the cots in the medbay as Tim struggled to parse through his actions.
Immediate decon. Quarantining affected gear. Getting comfortable to ride out the rest of the pollen. All of that was textbook protocol for the Bats. Even the cot that Hood eventually hopped up on, pulling Tim with him, large enough for three people pressed close together and softer than the others.
“See, Replacement?” Hood said, his voice lowering to a rasp as he yawned. He flopped back against the bed and tugged Tim close—Tim was happy to curl up in the warm embrace, tucking his head under Hood’s chin as strong arms wrapped around him.
The void shivered, and finally retreated.
“No maiming,” Hood muttered. “Not even a little.” A hand was stroking Tim’s hair, slow and easy, pulling on a lock with the slightest amount of pressure, tugging at the ends, letting go, and repeating again. The motion was soothing, and Tim couldn’t muster any sense of alarm at the casual mention of maiming, or how Hood knew so much about the Cave, or that he was cuddling a murderer that knew his identity.
Hood mumbled something else, but Tim was already drifting, the emptiness inside of him replaced by crackling, warm fire. He felt content and sleepy, like he’d just had a full meal, and all he wanted to do was curl up and sleep.
“Get away from him.” Low and furious, a crackling tension, and the sharp sense of warning yanked him back to consciousness.
A rumbling rasp, “Well, this is one hell of a wake-up call.”
“I’m not playing around, Hood. What the hell are you doing here?”
Tim forced his bleary eyes open—he could recognize Bruce’s shirt, it smelled like Alfred’s laundry detergent, but that wasn’t Bruce’s voice.
“Thought I’d try being a good big brother, Dickhead,” the shirt moved away from him as the figure uncurled and the tension racketed so high so fast that Tim was almost breathless.
He remembered…Ivy. Pollen. …Red Hood? The Batcave? He twisted to face up—yup, this was the Batcave. That was Dick standing above him, face pale and eyes wide, fine tremors wracking his frame as he lowered the escrima stick in his hand.
“Jason?” Dick breathed out, a curious mix of hopeful and horrified, and Tim snapped his gaze back the other direction. Now that he had a name, the familiar features all clicked into place, and Tim could see traces of Robin all over the heavy, sleepy scowl.
“Jason?” Tim wheezed, his mind frantically reconfiguring the hazy memories of the past night. “You’re the Red Hood?”
“Yes?” Jason raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t Batman already run all the tests to satisfy his over-paranoid mind?”
Dick half-collapsed on the side of the bed, escrima clattered to the floor. “Bruce knows you’re alive?” he asked, strangled.
“He’s known for a couple weeks now,” Jason said, watching Dick with narrowed eyes. “But judging by your expression, he didn’t think that was need-to-know.”
Dick’s expression looked like someone had fractured him into small little pieces.
“And what about you, Replacement?” Jason turned the sneer on him. “Kept your partner’s secrets like a good little Robin?”
Tim was still gaping. So it hadn’t been a vengeful crime lord that had found him in that alley—it had been Jason. Jason who’d taken him to the Batcave and gotten him cleaned up—and of course he knew what the decontamination protocol was, of course he’d promised not to hurt him. Of course he’d helped.
Jason’s sneer faltered. “You—you didn’t know who I was,” he said, sounding bewildered. “Wait, why did you think that the Red Hood knew who you were and took you to the Cave?”
Tim swallowed, half-imagined nightmares drifting up before he ruthlessly suppressed them. Jason’s eyes went wide before his whole face shut down. “Oh shit. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to scare you—”
“Little Wing,” Dick’s voice cracked, and he pulled himself onto the cot, sliding over Tim to grab Jason and squeeze him into a hug. “Jason, you’re alive.”
Jason’s arms hovered in midair, like they were unsure of what they were supposed to be doing, before slowly wrapping around Dick.
“You’re alive,” Dick murmured, his voice breaking into a sob. “Jaybird, you’re alive.”
“Come on, Dickie, you don’t have to weep all over me,” Jason grumbled. “Jeez, you’ve turned into an even bigger octopus while I was gone.”
Dick didn’t respond, shaking with silent sobs. Tim stared at Jason, the previous night recalibrating in his head.
“How are you clingier than the kid who was hit with pollen, huh?”
Dick only tightened his grip. Tim made sure to clasp a hand around Jason’s wrist, so he was thoroughly trapped.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Jason sighed, loud and put-upon—though Tim noticed he made no actual effort to extricate himself. In fact, he adjusted position so that Dick was curled on top of him, head resting on Jason’s chest, leaving enough space for Tim to tuck himself against the two of them.
The hand returned to card through his hair, soft and steady, and Tim sunk into its grasp.