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One would think that being the former CEO and current director of Wayne Enterprises’ R&D department meant that Tim got to go home whenever he wanted.
Ha.
It was shortly after eight o’clock when Tim finally pulled his motocycle into the civilian garage at the back of the Nest. Patrol was supposed to start in two hours, which meant another long night of pretending Yes, Nightwing, I’m fine would start in two hours, which meant a stakeout of a Falcone warehouse with Red Hood would start in four hours, and which meant Tim would likely have only two hours of solid sleep before hightailing it into W.E. again for a stockholder meeting in the morning that both Bruce and Lucius wanted him to attend.
All Tim really wanted to do was throw his phone at the fucking wall and take a nap.
Turning off his bike’s purring engine, the omega let his head hang between his shoulders. He simply needed a moment to gather himself before beginning the herculean task of climbing the stairs.
The last twelve hours had sucked ass. Even driving his favorite motorcycle (custom-built by the speed-loving and red-paint-raving Drake & Harper Auto Co., with trigger-happy suggestions from one Mr. Todd) hadn’t made it better.
(Well. It helped a little bit. Maybe more than just a little bit. It was just the greatest motorcycle ever, OK? Even with the little rainbow flower-and-sunshine stickers that Lian had somehow snuck onto the instrument display, and which Tim didn’t have the heart to peel off.)
Swinging off his bike, Tim began the slow ascent to his apartment above the garage, pulling off his helmet, gloves, and the over-used, itchy scent blockers that he’d been trying to ignore for the last four hours. Exhausted-done-depressed followed in his wake, and the bundle of packbonds in his chest ached like a sullen bruise where he was keeping a deathgrip on them, stifling any kind of emotional feedback his packmates might be getting from him.
(He didn’t need the ever-vigilant Batdad instincts to rear up and send Dad Bruce Batman after him because he could feel his son’s depression like an incoming tide, thank you.)
(He also definitely didn’t need a certain omega-brother-packmate to sense his exhaustion and come with glowing-green-eyed protectiveness to beat back his brother’s depression with hot dinner and being cuddled like a teddy bear.)
(Tim almost believed himself on that one.)
Because, truth be told, Tim wasn’t just tired. He was exhausted, and had been exhausted all week—all month—and going in to work that day had made it all worse. Dealing with an endless procession of dumpster fires and Office Karens he couldn’t fairly fire had felt like someone stepping on his fingers while he hung from a proverbial cliff, and he was ready to just—
—let go.
Be done with it all.
Sleep for a thousand years (not that his fucked up circadian rhythm would ever let that happen).
Why was Tim still working at Wayne Enterprises again?
Oh yes.
Because, on the good days, Tim actually loved his job. And because, even though Bruce had become CEO half a year ago, and even though Lucius and Tam had both encouraged Tim to take a break, he just couldn’t. Take a break, that is.
Neither Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, former CEO and current R&D director, nor Red Robin, Gotham vigilante and part-time leader of the Teen Titans, had an off button, and Tim wanted to keep it that way. He had to prove himself worthy as R&D director, worthy as Robin, worthy as Red Robin.
Worthy of his family, worthy of being top-brass at W.E., worthy of his friends and all the good things everyone always had to say about him.
Worthy, worthy, worthy. Worthy?
Tim was coming to hate that word and everything it silently demanded of him.
It had been more than a little while since all Tim wanted to do was collapse in a nest of plush blankets on his memory-foam mattress and stay there indefinitely.
Sadly, there was simply too much riding on him being a Functional Human Being™ for him to disappear into a black hole of weighted blankets.
Opening the door to his apartment, Tim tiredly fell back against it to slam the door shut and reactivate the automatic security system.
Because summer was at its peak in Gotham, and the August sun was still hanging low over the horizon, sheets of orange-gold were slung across the apartment’s white walls and wood floors, highlighting the dust dancing in the air.
It looked like lonely places; an idyllic island cut off from the claustrophobic smells and heat of the city roaring outside the dusty windowpanes.
With a sigh, Tim heaved himself off the door and flicked on the lights, stepping into the main living room.
Softly glowing strands of LEDs flickered on above dozens of framed photos. Gotham’s midnight skyline, late night and early morning ice cream runs with Steph and Cass and Jason, movie nights at Wayne Manor, and even a few portraits of the Wayne pack….
Almost his entire life—his life with his family, in his city—was contained in those photos.
Tossing his matte-black helmet on the futon, Tim strode past the gallery wall without a second glance.
(He also ignored the convoluted, bittersweet longing-sorrow-wistful-happy-nostalgic–proud clinging to that wall).
Once in his bedroom, Tim started to strip out of his stiff work clothes, carefully keeping his eyes from straying towards even more framed photos he had crammed onto floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the far side of the room. Even so, he couldn’t avoid seeing flickers of yellow—Robin’s cape—and flashes of blue-yellow-red–Superboy and Wonder Girl and Impulse.
Looking at those photographs would just quicken the tide that was pulling Tim under, too full of smiling faces and wide-eyed wonder and Good job, Robin echoing through the vivid colors and crystal-sharp definition.
It would be far better to ignore that side of the room altogether.
So, pulling on his favorite pair of sweats and an old t-shirt, the omega flopped carelessly onto his bed, currently covered in rumpled laundry, and turned towards the opposite window, hoping to pass out for a couple hours before patrol.
What happened instead was that Tim stayed stubbornly awake. He watched the smoggy blue sky slowly fade to black; lights slowly came on in apartment buildings across the street outside his window, and battered streetlamps flickered in and out as the evening wore on.
Tim couldn’t find it in himself to move, even when his shoulder and hip demanded that he roll over, sore from being pressed into an unyielding stack of graphic t-shirts, just waiting to be put away.
What had been a comfortable nest—saturated in the warm scent of safe-quiet-content-warm-brother-mine from Books and Gaming Night with Jason and late night movie marathons with Dick—was now a sad, bare mattress, having been stripped of its blankets and covered in folded clothes on some sunny day of deceptively cheerful productivity.
Almost three weeks had gone by since then, and Tim still had no energy to put the clothes away and remake his nest.
(Not that it mattered, really. Jason had been off with the Outlaws for a few months, and Dick caught up in some Titans mission in space, and Cass was still in Hong Kong and Steph was busy with med school applications, and Bruce and Damian never visited Tim’s Nest hideout, so really it didn’t matter, surely, since there was no one else to care about Tim’s sad not-nest.)
So, a pile of clean laundry it was. Who needed a nest with plush blankets and familiar pillows and warm-safe-mine? Certainly not Tim.
(He did his best to block out the tired-lonely-omega-sad that filled his nose instead).
See, Tim had had every intention of going out on patrol on time; on pulling himself to his feet, stuffing his sore knees and sore shoulders into his uniform, slapping on Bat-grade scent patches, and swinging through the city to meet up with the Red Hood on their stakeout by the docks.
But now, Tim was in his not-nest, and his will to get up had faded with the last of Gotham’s hazy pink-orange-blue twilight.
It was like Tim was falling into the city’s yawning maw, tumbling between the stretching skyscrapers that rose black against the smoggy stars, and the further he fell the taller they grew, until they were dark dark dark, pushing up against his feet and crashing down upon his shoulders, shoving in all around him with their own imploding weight until he couldn’t breathe and—
and it was just too much.
It was better to stay here, in his not-nest, safe, where those looming towers and lurking shadows and life in general couldn’t find him.
A distant ambulance siren cut gently through the thick silence of the apartment, and Tim sighed into the folds of fabric cushioning his cheek.
He could almost ignore the clamor of the packbonds vibrating in his chest, full of anticipation for the night’s patrol. The headache pulsing behind his eyes (a result of his stranglehold on the bonds) would go away, as soon as unconsciousness rose up to greet him softly.
It was almost peaceful; the external quiet lulling his anxiety to sleep. The night folded itself around him, hiding him away in its safe darkness like a robin under the cape of a bat.
If Tim just closed his eyes, finally, maybe he could sleep the whole night and tomorrow away….
BANG. The sound of a door slamming open jolted Tim awake. He blinked blearily, caught on the hazy lavender train tracks between sleep and wakefulness.
“Red?”
Tim came fully awake at the voice calling through the Nest. He glanced at the alarm clock and groaned in muted dismay.
Patrol should’ve started four hours ago. He was supposed to have met up with Jason at midnight; it was now two o’clock in the morning. Crap.
“Red, where you at?”
Jason. That was Jason’s voice, sans helmet voice modulator, colored with irritation; Jason’s footsteps, pacing closer to Tim’s bedroom. The omega in question pulled a pillow over his head to hide, as if it would keep his brother from finding him.
Dammit. Why did Jason feel the need to air his grievances in person, instead of leaving Tim disappointed voicemails, like Dick? Tim could’ve been asleep right now, blissfully dead to the world, and instead he was being forced to rejoin reality by his packmate.
Hidden under his pillow, Tim could pinpoint exactly when the older omega halted at the open doorway, the deliberate, thumping footsteps of steel-toed boots coming to a sudden stop.
“Tim.” Oh, Jason was definitely pissed, if he was using that tone of voice.
Tim whined softly with dismay, both at being found (not that he was really hiding, except he totally was) and at facing the ire of the older omega.
“What happened to meeting up for our stakeout?”
Tim shrugged. Speaking would require unburying his head from his protective pillow and lifting his head from his sad nest of depressed-smelling laundry, and that was simply too big a task.
“Timmers.” Jason’s footsteps moved closer to the bed; Tim heard his brother’s weight shift as he crouched down. Despite Jason’s nearness, Tim couldn’t smell the other omega’s typical cinnamon-paper-vanilla scent beneath the overtones of gunpowder and leather.
He had come in straight from patrol then, meaning, the Red Hood had barged into Tim’s apartment and was now crouched beside his bed. Great.
“Babybird,” Jason murmured softly, a gentle purr rolling through his voice. But wait. That was Robin’s voice. But hadn’t Jason been angry at him? Why was he being so nice all of a sudden? “Why are you heaped in a sad pile of Tim on this mountain of laundry?”
Tim hummed. He shifted, just enough to peek one blue eye out from under his protective pillow. “Tired,” he rasped into the laundry, suddenly aware of his dry throat. His last cup of coffee—his last fluids, period—had been eight hours ago.
(He’d also skipped dinner entirely, now that he thought about it. Oops.)
Jason’s gentle teal eyes met Tim’s cautious blue. The man breathed in deeply, and let it all go in one big rush. (He looked tired all of a sudden. Had Tim done that? How? This was why Tim didn’t share his problems with his packmates. Why bother them with his tiny problems that he should be able to deal with on his own?) “Tired how?”
Tim wasn’t sure why such a tiny question would bring tears to his eyes, except—
—except Tim wasn’t tired in an ‘I-didn’t-sleep-last-night’ kind of way, but in a ‘I-was-feeling-fine-but-now-I’m-decidedly-not kind of way; in a ‘life-is-pressing-me-into-the-floor-and-I-can’t-stand-up’ kind of way.
And Jason realized that? Recognized it? And he cared? Enough to ask? Enough to stay?
Tim was quiet for a moment, struggling to suppress his tears and think around a rapidly forming headache. Then: “It’s all too heavy.”
Jason hummed softly. “OK. So, no patrol?”
Tim blinked in confirmation.
“I take it you had no dinner?”
Tim nodded minutely.
“For fuck’s sake, Timmers,” Jason muttered under his breath, dragging a hand across his face.
If someone had told Tim four years ago that the Red Hood—Jason Todd, former Robin, back-from-the-dead-with-vengeance, that Red Hood—would be swearing in dismay at Tim’s failure to eat dinner, he’d have laughed his ass off and then gone home and cried for want of it.
Now he just whined softly and hugged the pillow to his chest, scent overflowing with sorry-regret-tired-numb-sorry.
“OK,” Jason finally said, standing up once more. “Alright. This is why your bond is closed up so tight, yeah?” The older omega sighed again, before looking Tim straight in the eye. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Timberlina. I’m gonna shower, change, and reheat one of those cans of pre-cooked ravioli I know you hoard at risk of death-by-Alfred. You’re going to eat your ravioli and then we’re goin’ the fuck to sleep. Capiche?”
“‘Kay,” Tim breathed, voice muffled against the pillow.
Keen eyes still flickering over Tim’s face like he was searching for something, Jason nodded decisively and finally strode towards the ensuite bathroom, peeling off his scent blockers as he went. Notes of worried-brother-protect-omega-mine blossomed in his wake, intoxicating simply by their presence (and wasn’t that sad, some distant part of Tim’s brain registered) and Tim pressed down on the instinctive keen that threatened to tear out of him.
Jason was coming back; he wasn’t leaving, he was just getting a shower, for pete’s sake.
Tim wasn’t sure how on God’s green earth Jason was going to get him to sit up, let alone eat a whole bowl of pasta pockets, but whatever. So long as he didn’t have to move (and Jason didn’t put on any new scent blockers), Tim would be game.
Alas, it was not to be.
Put at ease by the presence of his packmate, Tim was soon lost back into a sleepy haze. He had no sooner registered the scent of warm tomato sauce than Jason was marching back into the room—having gotten out of the shower and into the kitchen without Tim noticing—and hauling Tim over his shoulder.
Tim whined in complaint, upset to have lost his warm not-nest, but the whine promptly stuttered off when Jason dumped him on the futon in the living room and shoved a bowl of steaming ravioli into his hands. Tim hissed at the feeling of hot ceramic pressing into his palms, and Jason smacked him on the shoulder as he sat down.
“It’s not that hot.” The man shoved a spoon into the bowl with a sharp clink. “Shut up and eat, Timmers.”
Tim glared at his brother, scent gone bitter with tired-annoyed-why-pleasehelpme-why. He wasn’t hungry, he didn’t need to eat, and he didn’t want to eat. Why was Jason making him eat now? Eating heavy pasta at two in the morning was certainly not a healthy lifestyle choice.
Jason merely raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the bowl in Tim’s hands.
Fine. If Jason was going to be that way, all overprotective omega guardian and shit, then fine. Tim picked up the spoon and started shoving ravioli in his mouth.
“Don’t you dare tell Alfred that I keep canned ravioli here,” he said through stuffed cheeks.
Jason’s side of the packbond merely rang with satisfaction and amusement.
Grouchy and sullen, Tim did his best to ignore it, even after Jason stood up and headed back towards the bedroom without a word.
The older omega was probably throwing together a nest in the guest bedroom to stay the night. Jason was well-acquainted with both Tim’s futon and guest bedroom from the early days of their partnership solving cases spread across their adjacent territories in north Gotham.
Therefore, when Jason swept back into the living room, plucked the now-empty bowl from Tim’s hands, and bodily heaved Tim up into a fireman’s carry without any explanation besides a brief “Bedtime, Timmers,” the younger omega was not expecting the older omega to walk back into Tim’s own bedroom, nor to be thrown into the middle of a deep, plush nest on his own bed, devoid of crushed laundry and everything.
Tim’s instincts purred just looking at it, let alone sitting in it, even as he tried and failed to scowl in annoyance at his brother, standing with a smug smirk beside the bed.
All the blankets and hoodies and assorted t-shirts that Tim had acquired (i.e. stolen) from his packmates were there, smelling like father-fond-defend and brother-happy-warm, sister-content-focused and brother-hopeful-makeyouproud.
(Damian had not asked for his green hoodie back. Tim knew that Damian knew where it was, and could have asked for it to be returned at any time, but hadn’t. It had been so conveniently left in Tim’s room at the Manor after Damian came to ask him some question about complicated computer coding for an extracurricular Damian was taking that year, and Tim didn’t need evidence to know that the feisty beta had done it on purpose. Not that he was going to confront the gremlin about that, though.)
Tim purred with abandon, sinking into the soft blankets and the scents of his family all around him. This nest—the nest made by Jason, his at-times-standoffish brother and packmate, that Jason—far and away trumped his laundry not-nest.
This was too heavenly for Tim to even protest against Jason making a nest for him. He had already given in to reheated pasta sandwiches; what was a nest thrown in the mix?
Head gone hazy with the blissful lavender of sleep and contentment and the scents of his pack all around him, Tim’s purring stuttered when the mattress dipped beside him, and then redoubled when Jason—all warm and safe and brother-soothe-provide-omega-mine—tugged Tim against his side and tucked him under his chin. The steady vibrations of Jason’s low purr poured through him, setting all of his latent embarrassment and anxiety at ease.
Because this. This was bliss.
Tim sighed happily and snuggled against Jason’s collar bone.
Clearly, Tim’s lizard brain was in the front seat while the part that shrieked with Janet Drake’s voice to have some dignity, Timothy, and Drakes don’t succumb to their lesser instincts, Timothy, was taking a nap.
Which was great, because it meant Tim got to cuddle with his omega packmate without feeling bad about it. Score.
Tim’s lizard brain was very pleased as Tim slowly turned to fondue, hugged tightly under Jason’s chin with his nose shoved against the older omega’s scent gland.
Jason was wrapped tightly around Tim, like a shield against those looming towers and the too-big-world outside the windows. Jason wouldn’t let Tim be dragged under. Tim was safe.
It was only when Tim was almost asleep, unaware of the seconds dripping by, that Jason murmured, “Hey Timbo?”
Tim hummed.
Jason combed his fingers through Tim’s hair, smoothing down some of the lingering bedhead. “You know you can always cry on my shoulder, right? Doesn’t matter what your parents told you ‘bout being independent or shit, yeah? Me, or even Dickie or B. We’re your family, Babybird, your pack.”
A small kernel of warmth bloomed in Tim’s chest, somewhere beneath the packbonds and the frozen lake where he always tried to shove his instincts into dormancy.
It was like a star, or a sparkler, or maybe even a firefly, lighting up the dead of Gotham’s night that had descended over Tim’s shoulders.
“Myeah,” he sighed, letting Jason’s low purr rumble through him. Tentatively, he opened up a sliver of his side of the packbonds, letting through a hesitant ribbon of sleepy contentment. “Now I do. Th’nks Jay.”
Brother-fond-sleepy-pleased-warm-safe-mine curled out into the room. Jason’s thumb rubbed soothingly against Tim’s scruff, lulling him into a deeper sleep.
“G’night, babybird. I got you.”
“‘Night, Jay. Love you.”
“Love you too, Timbo.”