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Jason jolted awake to a body landing on him, as was tradition for every single Wayne Christmas they both were in the Manor.
He groaned at the weight of a full grown man on his chest, gently wrapping an arm around his brother’s back. Jason patted it a few times to show that he was indeed awake. He didn’t think about how it was easier to breathe now than it had been years past.
“It’s Christmas!” Dick joyously yelled in Jason’s ear, also as was tradition. Even used to the sound, Jason still cringed away from it. It was much too early to be this loud.
Dick always enjoyed going to bed early and getting up at unheard of hours Christmas morning. He was of the opinion that late present wrapping Christmas morning was more fun than doing it Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, that meant that he woke Jason up way too early to help him.
With patrol ending early last night, Jason was doomed to the earliest wake up call in a while. He turned his head to check the time, squinting as his mind woke up. The analog clock on his nightstand read that it was almost 4 am.
The smile on Jason’s lips betrayed him, though. He shouldn’t have liked this tradition as much as he did. There was something about having the early pre-dawn to himself and his brother, gearing up for Christmas morning. This year, they were able to expand their brotherly bonding plus one.
Jason’s smile grew even wider. Now that he himself was an older brother, it was his turn to flop down onto his younger brother to wake him up.
It had been one of the things Jason had most wanted all his life: to be an older brother. It hadn’t happened before Bruce, or before he died, but it was happening now with Tim. Jason was going to take every advantage of it.
“Merry Christmas, Dickie,” Jason muttered, voice very groggy for this early in the morning. He patted his brother’s back a few times again. “You gotta get off of me. I gotta wake up Timmy.”
Dick jolted upwards so quickly that it pushed the air out of Jason’s lungs again. Jason groaned again as he sat up in bed. He ran his hand down his face, fully awake now, as Dick started pratically vibrating.
“Its his first Christmas here! Oh, I’m so excited,” Dick literally bounced on the bed like the overgrown child he was. Jason playfully pushed him a bit, which lead to a small wrestling match. When Dick finally pinned Jason’s arm behind his back, he continued: “And the first time you get to be the waker!”
“I won’t get to be if you keep me pinned here.” Jason grumbled. Dick immediately let go of Jason’s arm, sheepish. Jason rubbed his wrist for dramatic affect, but it didn’t hurt at all. They knew how to pull their punches.
Dick got up off of Jason’s bed. Jason started to follow him, but Dick decided that Jason was going too slow. He grabbed Jason’s wrist again, this time to pull him up and off of the bed. Jason let his older brother pull him out the door and through the hall, memories of times past flickering in his mind.
The smile that had been on his face since awakening was starting to hurt Jason’s cheeks. He loved Christmas. The workload was much better than it was before he died, too, which just made the holiday all that much sweeter.
The pair made it over to Tim’s room quickly. Dick finally let go of Jason’s wrist, then moved off to the side. He put his finger over his mouth in a shushing motion, his smile too large for it. Jason shook his head, stifling his laughter. Jason knew to be quiet.
Dick opened Tim’s door for Jason. The well oiled hinges made no sound. Jason started creeping forward, leaving Dick behind in the doorway.
Tim’s room was as dark as Jason expected it to be. Jason enjoying bothering Tim whenever he was allowed to, so he knew the controlled messiness that Tim kept it at like the back of his hand. Walking into this room, Jason felt off immediately. He kept his gaze down at the floor for now, knowing that the kid liked to keep his things strewn about to show that he was present and taking up space.
The smile slipped off his face, replaced by a confused expression that was growing into concern.
The place was clean. There was nothing on the floor. Jason could have chocked that up to pre-Christmas cleaning so finding homes for his presents was easier, but this looked too clean. Tim cleaned by tiding things back into their proper groups when they strayed too far away. This was a clear out, crime scene clean up level of clean.
Jason’s gaze shifted wildly to the bed. He put away the pretense of stealth in favor of moving quicker. He flopped down onto the bed in record time, but not in an effort to wake his little brother.
It was an effort to make sure Tim was there. Jason landed on soft down, no body to be found.
“Dick!” Jason yelled. He started rifling around in the blankets, hoping that he just missed Tim somewhere. The yell would have woken the baby bird up, though.
Dick came barraging into the room, a large smile on his face. He must not have registered the anxiety in Jason’s tone. The expression slipped away into a similar one of confusion Jason first sported. He stopped in the middle of the room to watch Jason desperately searching.
“Jason?” Dick asked as Jason dropped to the floor to check under the bed. There was nothing there. Jason moved to the closet, finding that empty too. There were barely any clothes in it, sections of Tim’s wardrobe completely missing. There also was no Timmy, which was the important part.
Jason’s heart was going to beat out of his chest. He was not supposed to get this high of a heart rate on Christmas for anything other than excitement, yet here he was. Sweat leaked across his neck and palms, the panic presenting itself physically.
“Get my phone,” Jason ordered, rushed. He basically ran to the connected bathroom to search there. Jason flicked on the light, looked in the shower and near the toilet, but that was all empty too. “Tim’s not here.”
“Tim’s not here?” Dick echoed. Jason gritted his teeth.
“No.” Jason said shortly. He didn’t explain more than that.
Instead, he stopped trying to look for Tim in the room, going over to the one window’s sill instead. He ran his fingers along it to try to see if the wire had been tripped. Jason cursed. The window was clean, too. Either this wasn’t the point of entry, or the kidnappers had covered their tracks extremely well.
Jason turned to look at other points in the room. With how clean it was, there was no telling what kind of struggle may have happened. No clothes anywhere to be seen was a problem in of itself. But there also were no objects clattered on the desk—not even a spare shoe in the wrong place. Did Jason check how many shoes were in the closest?
Dick placed a gentle hand on Jason’s shoulder. Jason flinched. He opened his mouth to yell at him again, but then Dick was pressing Jason’s phone into his hand.
Jason took it quickly. He didn’t think about how he didn’t notice that Dick had left the room. Instead, he dialed Tim’s phone number.
It rang and rang and rang. Jason paced around the room. He didn’t pay attention to his own heavy breathing. He only listened as his phone continued to ring unit Jason was sent to voicemail. Jason shoved the phone into his pajama pockets with a shaking hand.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Dick tried. He got a bit closer, but Jason didn’t let him. He knew what the next words out of his brother’s mouth were going to be, so he was already moving out of the room. “Yeah, let’s check the rest of the house, okay? Maybe he’s already awake.”
But Jason knew that wasn’t going to be the case. Tim’s room was too clean. The kid loved to make a little bit of a mess in the spaces that were his. It was a consequence of growing up with his strict, rich, and absent parents. Tim’s room was the only room he was really allowed to exist in. He never would have let it become as hollow as the rest of the Drake’s house.
Jason couldn’t breathe, he suddenly realized as they searched through the Manor’s empty halls. Jason placed his stuttering hand on his chest to make sure his heart was still beating. It was. Maybe Tim’s wasn’t.
He tried Tim’s phone again. Jason’s thoughts were so tangled that he wasn’t really aware of it until he was pressing his phone to his cheek. They couldn’t find him, which meant Jason needed to contact him.
The call went straight to voicemail this time, meaning that Tim’s phone was dead or someone declined Jason’s call. Neither option was good.
“I’ll try him, okay Jayce?” Dick asked. He pulled out his own phone and pressed call on Tim’s contact. Jason didn’t know when Dick had grabbed his own phone. He was too busy trying to breathe to care. “I’m calling him. He’ll know it’s serious, okay?”
Jason didn’t know if he abhorred or adored how Dick kept saying okay. This was not okay. Tim could be taken, alone and scared, or he could be dead already. Tim was supposed to be in his bed so Jason could wake him up too early on Christmas morning.
It was still nice that Dick was trying to reassure him.
Dick’s phone call didn’t connect, but it did ring out like Jason’s first one. That was good, right? It meant that Tim’s phone wasn’t dead. That meant that they could track him.
Jason ignored how shaky his hands were as he got his phone back out. Dick, however, took note of it and grabbed Jason’s phone out of his hand. Jason immediately tried to reach for it back, but Dick stopped him with a steady hand on his chest. Dick’s concerned expression only grew with worry as he felt Jason’s heart beat wildly under his hand.
Dick took one of Jason’s hands and put it own his own chest. Dick started breathing deeply, moving Jason’s hand visibly up and down. He didn’t pay attention to what Dick was now doing on his own phone. Instead, he tried his best to level out his erratic breathing, using the rise and fall of his older brother’s chest as a guideline.
It was difficult, and Jason didn’t quiet succeed.
“He’s at Drake Manor.” Dick eventually said. Jason was glad the energy running through him had calmed down enough to let him listen to the words.
“Next door?” Jason managed. Dick didn’t mention how weak his voice was, nor how stuttered the words came out as.
“Next door.” Dick repeated. This time, Jason was glad for it.
He wasted no time. Jason pushed away from Dick and headed straight for the front door. Dick was saying something behind him, running to keep up, but Jason didn’t care. Tim’s phone was next door, which meant that someone was also next door. It could have been Tim, but it more easily could have been someone who wanted to hurt him.
Jason barely registered the cold, crisp air of the very early morning. He didn’t even care about the snow underneath his bare feet as he started running across the driveway. dick yelled more, but Jason wasn’t listening. He picked up the pace instead, the thoughts of finding Tim bloody and broken on repeat in his head.
There could have been no other reason that Tim would have left the Manor, let alone left the his room looking that clean.
The pain from the cold didn’t matter. By the time that Jason was at the only window showing light in Drake Manor, his feet were numb anyway. Jason peered into the room, finding the usual clean chaos that Tim preferred.
This was Tim’s old room. The lights were on, as was the TV. Jason scanned the room until he found a short, black haired figure sitting on the bed. He looked completely content—if a bit sleepy—with pajamas on and computer nearby. How he held himself did not look injured in the slightest.
Some of the tension leaked out of Jason’s shoulders.
If Tim hadn’t been able to sleep and decided to go here instead of anywhere else in the Manor for some insane reason, Jason was going to kill him. It didn’t explain why Tim’s room was so clean, but that was a problem for later.
Right now, there was a Christmas tradition that Jason needed to enact immediately.
Jason slid open the window, then jumped it with little fanfare. He didn’t give Tim any time to react, launching himself onto the bed and straight over his little brother. Tim groaned at the contact, but it was just the tell-tale sound that Jason had slightly knocked the wind out of him.
The beat beat beat of Tim’s heart underneath Jason’s ear immediately made all the panic rush out of him. He wrapped his arms completely around his little brother, pinning him surely to the bed. He doesn’t even care that he’s probably pressing too hard onto Tim’s diaphragm, too wracked with relief to bother.
Besides. Jason had the full weight of an older brother bothering him on Christmas morning since he was smaller than Tim. Tim was strong. He could take a little pressure after all that he had put Jason though.
This was his right—the Christmas tradition—of an older brother, anyway. It was time enough that Tim got to experience it too.