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“I will personally gouge out your remaining intestines with that wretched spoon if you keep up that incessant tapping.”
“I have ADHD, you pretentious prick. If you’re bothered then just tell me, don’t threaten me, because if we’re doing threats, how about I shove this spoon down your—”
“Okay!” Dick claps, interrupting Tim and Damian’s twelfth argument of the night.
Galas always bring out the worst in Tim and Damian and the jabs are ruthless but hidden behind plastic smiles.
“How about you go get some fresh air out in the gardens? In very separate, distant areas of the gardens?” Dick says.
Tim and Damian shoot glares at each other across the table.
The ballroom is packed with mingling socialites and it’s not difficult for them to slip away.
With an exhausted sigh, Dick tries to enjoy what’s left of his meal, but his appetite has gone.
He doesn’t know what to do. He can recognize when he’s exacerbated a situation and his time as Batman did nothing good to Tim and Damian’s relationship.
It kills Dick not knowing how to fix it but he also knows it’s not his to fix. He’s done enough and he’ll only make it worse if he tries to force something that they don’t want.
He just doesn’t know if that’s something they ever will want.
Dick wasn’t a good brother to Jason and he tried to be better for Tim but all he’s done is hurt him and furthered the wedge between them even further.
Dick wants to believe that burning bridges can be mended, but has it decimated to ash?
Okay, maybe he’s being a little melodramatic but these are his little brothers!
Dick waits with bated breath for them to return, hoping that they actually took the time apart to cool down and didn’t go for each other’s throats without any looming eyes.
So, when Damian and Tim enter the gala after an hour of absence, their suits completely tattered covered in soot, blood and seeds(?), laughing with each other, Dick can only think that they’ve had some sort of mental break after brutal combat.
All eyes are on Damian and Tim and their eyes widen, as if they just realized where they are, and they dissolve into another fit of giggles as they jog out into the hall.
Dick hastily set down his drink and ran after them.
“—cannot believe that all it took was tomatoes.”
Damian laughs, a beautiful sound that Dick is going to treasure after he figures out what is going on.
“I can’t believe we hadn’t figured it out sooner,” he hears Damian say. “We got through all the flesh eating ones before we thought to try citric and malic acid!”
“Well, at least we know what to do if we ever have to face them again.”
“Do not manifest that.”
“I so regret teaching you what manifest means.”
Dick peered over the corner to see Tim and Damian stripping their wet jackets and dress shirts, revealing their blood spattered undershirts.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to forget how bad tomato juice in cuts stings,” Tim says, wincing as he prods at what Dick assumes are injuries beneath his shirt.
“Be grateful it isn’t citrus again.”
“We went through the entire citrus family before tomatoes.”
“In our defense, when one thinks of acidic foods, tomatoes are not the first that comes to mind.”
“They will for me now,” Tim says. “I don’t think I can ever eat a tomato ever again.”
“Do you really think you can part from Pennyworth’s lasagna?”
“...okay fine.”
They both break out into more laughter.
Dick can’t wrap his head around what’s going on. It says a lot about their lives that he considers bodysnatching before considering that Damian and Tim are just getting along.
“What are we going to tell them?” Damian asks, his voice sobering into something more serious.
“We had a change of heart after bonding over shared experience?”
“What shared experience? The only thing we have in common is our time in the League and being Robin, and even so, our experiences have varied drastically. Besides, they are not stupid. They will know that this ‘change of heart’ could not naturally occur in such a short time period.”
“We could have secretly been close and pretended not to be?”
Damian cocks a brow.
“Yeah. No.” Tim sighs, bonking his head against the wall they sit against. “Give me some slack, I just fought like a hundred aliens.”
“As did I and yet you don’t see me having an intellectual decline.”
Tim shoves Damian and he doesn’t fight back, just smiles cheekily.
”Damn, all those alien corpses. That’s gotta be some kind of explanation, right?”
”One that will require the truth to explain.” Damian pauses. “The truth is not that unbelievable I suppose. The Flashes do it all the time. Even Father has encountered a twist in time.”
“This wasn’t exactly a twist. More like a fucking circle.”
“We got out, though, haven’t we?”
Tim lets out a breath of disbelief. “Shit, yeah, you’re right. We’re out! This has been the worst fucking hour of my life.”
“I’m sure it didn’t help that it was with me.”
Tim bumps his shoulder against Damian. “Hey. You know that I couldn’t have survived this without you, physically and mentally.”
“What is it that Todd always says? Trauma bonding?”
Tim laughs. “Well, we’ve got plenty of trauma to bond over.”
“Who knew you could die in so many different ways?”
Tim snorts. “The grapefruit death was pretty funny.”
Damian groans. “Will you ever let that down?”
“No. Because after dying from flesh decaying acid and alien attacks, you dying from getting grapefruit juice in your eyes and getting stabbed by your own blade is still pretty funny.”
Damian goes on a rant of threats that feels so familiar that it pulls Dick out of his stupefied shock.
His baby brothers have been trapped in a time loop? How long have they been in it? How many times did they die?
Dick can’t stand to speculate, let alone know, but even as worst case scenarios run through his mind, he can see that it wasn’t all bad.
Because his baby brothers are happy. Not only that, they’re happy together.
Dick doesn’t know if they’ll ever tell him what happened in their time together, but if it means that they were able to push aside their differences and see the good in each other, then he’s content in not knowing.
(He will smother them in many many hugs, though.)