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Storms were a lot louder in the mountains. Maybe they were just closer to the sky, or maybe there was just more weather, but Tim didn’t remember the weather ever being so—
Thunder boomed, and Tim yelped and pulled his blankets over his head. He wasn’t scared. His parents were in and out of the house all the time when he was younger, and he’d never felt the nearly suffocating need to run to them for protection from the weather even when they were in town.
Between the rolling thunder, the pounding of rain on the room, and the voice in his head begging him to throw off the comforter and run to the nearest packmate, Tim couldn’t sleep.
Bruce had work in the morning, so Tim should just close his eyes and try to sleep or at least try to block it all out till the storm had blown past. It couldn’t last forever.
But maybe it could.
Tim’s throat tightened at the thought of lying in his bed for another hour, maybe even all night, sleepless as the storm crashed around the house on the mountain.
Jason didn’t have school tomorrow. Tim sniffled. He wasn’t scared of a storm, but maybe Jason was…
Tim was throwing off his blankets before his better judgement could assert itself. He’d check on Jason, just in case.
Tim hurried out the door, his socked feet nearly slipping on the hardwood. He regained his composure just enough to open the door quietly so he wouldn’t wake Bruce up.
Tim drew in a quick breath and tiptoed across the hall to Jason’s door.
Tim bit his lip. He should go back to his room and stop bothering—
Thunder cracked overhead, and Tim threw open the door, surging into Jason’s room. He didn’t wait for an invitation as he launched himself into Jason’s bed with a frightened cry.
Jason didn’t react, maybe too deeply asleep or just ignoring Tim. Tim bit back a frightened whine and felt around for Jason, finding nothing but empty sheets.
After a moment of shocked fear, relief flooded him. If Jason wasn’t here, he must’ve been scared too! Well—
Tim was scared of the storm. He could admit it in the quiet of his own head.
Dick liked to mess with Bruce even when he was working, but Jason always waited to mess with Bruce until after Bruce’s work was done for the day. Jason would have gone to Dick’s room if he wasn’t in his own.
Tim’s tail would’ve been wagging if he’d been in his fox form, but he was chipper as he rolled out of Jason’s bed and scampered off to Dick’s bedroom.
Tim wouldn’t have been brave enough to go to Dick, but the safety of an actually adult packmate would keep him even safer than just an older pup.
He paused. What if Dick didn’t want Tim in his room? Dick had been really nice to him at Thanksgiving, but then he’d gone back to New York to finish the semester. Dick didn’t really know Tim, so even if Bruce said that Tim was pack, Dick might not agree.
Dick was so nice though, and he didn’t have work or school tomorrow, so it wouldn’t matter too much if Tim bother Dick.
Tim would just try his best not to wake anyone up. Tim turned the knob very slowly and pushed the door in, peeking inside.
A flash of lightning revealed an empty bed and a room in total disarray. Clothes were strewn out of Dick’s suitcase, textbooks in a stack spilled across the desk, the blankets on the bed rumpled and tossed aside.
Thunder rolled, shaking Tim to his bones.
Bruce had warned him that hunters had tried to target them before, that they’d even managed to get an agent inside the house. The agent had been Jason and everything turned out okay that time, but that was then, and now Tim’s packmates were missing.
Abandoning stealth, Tim ran down the hall to Bruce’s room, throwing open the door with a cry of, “Bruce!”
Bruce, sitting on the floor by his bed with a lamp on, looked up with concern at Tim’s outburst.
“What’s wrong?” Bruce frowned, but he didn’t look alarmed. “Did the storm scare you too?”
Tim was about to shout that the storm didn’t even matter anymore before he caught the very important final word in the question: too.
A lump of blankets on the bed shifted, and Dick rolled over to look at Tim, mumbling something incoherent around a yawn.
A soft yip, and the familiar snout of Jason’s wolf form poked out from under the bed.
Relief and embarrassment flooded him in equal measure as Tim started to shuffle backwards to the door.
“I—I’m sorry,” Tim whispered in horror, but the wolves all had such sharp hearing. They probably would’ve heard him sneaking around if it wasn’t for the storm. “I couldn’t—no one was in their beds. I was just…worried. I’m sorry, I’ll go back to bed now.”
Gently petting between Jason’s ears, Bruce nodded sympathetically. “Did the storm bother you?”
“No,” Tim lied, but it was the stupid kind of lie that didn’t actually cover up the truth and only made Tim look dishonest. After all, how would Tim had known Dick and Jason weren’t in their rooms in the middle of the night—Bruce’s bedside table read 3:27—if the storm hadn’t been bothering him?
Bruce looked at Tim for a long moment. Tim wanted to run, but he couldn’t flinch under the piercing gaze of the pack leader. Tim might not be a wolf, but even a fox kit’s instincts told him not to provoke the wrath of someone who could eat him for breakfast and still be hungry.
Instead of calling Tim on the lie, Bruce raised his arm invitingly, a frequent gesture he used to call Tim to his side.
Tim hesitated. This was pack time, and sure Bruce sometimes said that Tim was part of the pack and he’d gotten the legal paperwork to say Tim could stay with him, but that didn’t mean that he actually wanted—
CRACK!!!
Thunder roared deafeningly above them, shaking the windows and making the lights flicker. Tim yelped in fright and scurried across the room, throwing himself into Bruce’s arms.
“You’re okay,” Bruce chuckled kindly and tucked Tim against his side. “It’s safe here. The house is strong, the windows could withstand a hurricane, and nothing is close enough to fall on us. We’re all safe in here.”
In here, but Tim had been out there just a little while ago, and it would be so easy to be stuck out there again. If he made one mistake too many and annoyed Bruce the way Dick did or sassed back like Jason, Bruce could’ve decided that he didn’t want Tim anymore, and he could’ve thrown Tim out the door and locked it behind him. Even the puppy door could be blocked just by putting something heavy in front of it, and then Tim would be out in the cold and the rain and the storm again. It didn’t matter that he was safe now, because what if he wasn’t safe later.
Tim was crying into Bruce’s shirt, he realized too late. He only noticed when Dick made a soft sad sound and reached over to pet down Tim’s bed head.
“What’s a’matter with Tim?” Dick yawned. “T’m, wass wrong?”
“Storm,” Bruce said simply. “And it’s late.”
It was late. Tim was being such a bother when Bruce had work the next day, and now he was waking up Dick, and even Jason was laying his head against Tim’s leg to comfort him.
“You should shift,” Bruce said softly. “You’ll feel safer under the bed.”
Tim should leave, but Bruce had told him to shift, and not doing what the pack leader said was just disobedient.
Tim shuddered, but he forced himself to shift into a small, much more vulnerable fox kit, shrinking down into his own clothes like being swallowed by a tent. Tim shook, trying to get free of the fabric, but he was all caught up in it.
“Much better,” Bruce said, pulling Tim’s pajama shirt off him and setting Tim down on the floor in front of the bed.
Jason yipped softly in greeting and shifted to make room for Tim on a fluffy dog bed that had been shoved under Bruce’s normal human bed.
Tim climbed in and laid down on the edge of the dog bed till Jason gave him a look and used his paw to nudge Tim closer. Jason curled over Tim and laid his head down beside Tim’s.
Even with the fear of rejection and the outside and the cold all swirling around together in his head, Jason’s acceptance and presence made him feel instantly safer.
Thunder rolled again, but it was quieter under the bed. One of his ears was squished against Jason, and the bed itself blocked the noise a bit, at least enough that it wasn’t deafening anymore.
Tim let out a long, slow breath. The fear slowly seeped out of him even as the storm raged on, exhaustion sapping his energy till he was just a puddle of ruddy fur and contentment as Bruce’s hand came down to oh so gently scratch between Tim’s ears.
He couldn’t be sure that Bruce would never get sick of him and toss him out like Tim’s dad had—like Jack Drake had, because he wasn’t actually Tim’s dad, apparently—but for tonight, Bruce was gentle, Dick was kind, and Jason was standing guard.
For tonight, Tim was safe. Pretty soon, he was also asleep.