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To Tim it hadn’t been a big deal. That’s why he hadn’t told anyone.
In his early Robin days Tim had always made it a point to try and keep Tim Drake and Robin from bleeding into each other. One of Bruce’s first lessons and lectures had been about how separation of his caped and civilian identities was vital. That not only was it for the protection of their secret, it was for his own good.
Capes witnessed the worst humanity had to offer. Cruelties beyond what someone could imagine. The sort of things that kept you up at night, that made you isolate yourself, that made you sick and angry and bitter. That made you think that maybe sometimes…a permanent solution should be taken.
It’s why Bruce had instituted the tag team system between them. That as soon as Bruce decided Tim had been in the mask for too long he’d ‘tag’ him out. Tim would get out of uniform and leave the cave immediately, no questions asked.
It was something Tim hadn’t been happy about, up until he learned that he could tag Bruce out too.
Which made it more equal. Almost fun, like the two of them each had loaded guns pointed at the other’s head.
It would’ve felt more equal if Bruce didn’t abuse the system. If he didn’t constantly tag Tim out as a preemptive strike when he knew he was going to lock himself in the cave for 48 hours to focus on a case and needed Tim out of the way so he couldn’t stop him.
Bruce could be really annoying when he wanted to be.
It also meant that after months of sacrificing and cancelling plans with his friends, there were moments where Tim ended up with a lot of sudden free time.
Tim did feel bad about neglecting his civilian relationships. When he started out as Robin the whole 'work-life balance' hadn't exactly come easy. Even when he wasn’t Robin, he was still Robin. It was like a switch in his head he couldn’t turn off.
Tim just noticed things now, picked up on patterns, changes in speech, changes in behavior. He was suspicious of people now, looked at things twice, looked at things differently.
It felt…wrong. It made his stomach sit weird when the thinnest vein of suspicion would begin forming in the back of his head when a classmate, a stranger, or someone he considered a friend would do something slightly out of their usual routine. Tim didn’t like that his brain would examine their habits the same way he did a crime scene or ransom note or suspect.
But there was another bit that wouldn’t stop bothering Tim.
The fact that he’d mentally labelled the kids he’d loyally hung out with since the beginning of middle school as his “civilian” friends.
Like they were the secret mistress friends of his double life.
It had made Tim’s insides cramp with guilt when he realized it. It didn’t feel fair to call them that.
They were his friends. Period.
Tim liked hanging out with them because he liked how he felt around them. He liked that people enjoyed listening to him talk about the things he liked.
He liked that they wouldn’t shut him down and call him talking about his ‘Wizards and Warlocks’ campaign or ‘League’ tournament “lame nerdo shit” like how Steph and Kon did.
Steph and Kon were cool people and Tim did like them but…but if it weren’t for the capes, some quiet part of Tim couldn’t help but wonder… if they’d have ever hung out at all otherwise.
The same couldn’t be said about Ives. Or Hudson, or Kevin, or Callie.
Tim liked that he liked listening to them too. That there was a giddy sort of energy that always sparked under his skin when he was around them. Everything felt lighter with them, funnier, things didn’t feel as dark or as bad. Tim felt like he could be…a kid when he was with them.
He didn’t have to watch his behavior or measure his reaction so that he could keep their respect as their leader. He didn’t have to be careful to not get too attached because he may one day have to enact a contingency plan against them.
Tim was lucky to have them. Lucky that they didn’t allow his months of silence, months of unanswered texts and emails stop them from reaching out when he started popping back up at their old haunts.
He was lucky the friends he'd allowed to drift away started welcoming him back in again.
When Kevin threw a crumpled up note at the back of Tim’s head in Algebra while Mr. Sackenbacher’s back was turned- Tim was pleasantly surprised to find an invitation to ‘shoot sum hoops afterskool :P’ written down in black marker.
An invitation Tim eagerly accepted.
Especially since he was locked out of the cave for the next few days.
It was… nice being able to reconnect with his Middle School friends. Tim was almost surprised how easily he was able to slip back into place with them, matching their steps, and falling into the familiar jokes and playful shoves between them.
Tim had…missed it.Them.
And it turned out he’d missed a lot too. The Summer he’d spent prancing around Europe and training practically around the clock meant that he’d missed the little and major milestones his friends had.
He learned that Ives and Hudson now jointly ran the school radio station now.
That Kevin was editor of the school newsletter and that Callie had decided to give her poor conservative parents a heart attack by getting her GED behind their backs and dropping out of high school completely in order to start college early.
“It’s not that big a deal, I don’t know why they blew a gasket about it.” She muttered, shrugging, her fingers kept folding and unfolding the crumpled dollar bill she was trying to insert into one of the vending machines under the park gazebo.
Nervous fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, low forced monotone.
Tim ignored his Robin voice echoing in his head cataloging her reaction, and instead kept his eyes on the ice cream sandwich he was trying to carefully unwrap from its soggy, frostbitten packaging.
Hudson’s mouth was stained red from his rocketpop, his mouth stretched widely and into an eager grin while staring at Callie. He’d been the one most eager for details about what ‘College!’ was like.
“Community College,” she’d corrected them, freckled face turning red every time they audibly ooed over some tiny detail.
It was hard not to be impressed at someone testing out of high school. Tim’s grades were decent, they could be better if he spent a little less time following up on a case and a little more time reviewing the vocab words for the month or rereading his history notes. Tim was no scrub but it hadn’t gone without his notice that Dick and Jason had both pretty consistently made honor roll when they were his age.
Tim didn’t feel too weird about it though. His dad was happy with his grades and he wasn’t failing any classes.
So for Tim, that meant it was fascinating to hear Callie talk about what it was like even though she flushed with embarrassment at their fascination and questions. She argued that it wasn’t all that different from high school. Same played out drama, same delinquents that wanted to argue with the teacher every class.
The only difference was she now got to take classes she genuinely enjoyed like 'History of American Cinema' or 'Screenwriting for Professionals'.
It was easy to see how much more Callie lit up talking about camera techniques, the importance of lighting in a shot, and the framing of a scene. For the most part, Tim’s impression of Callie had been that she'd been one of the quieter parties in their crew. She and Ives had been neighbors for years which was how the two formed a friendship, something that kept going once her parents agreed to stop sending her to the All Girl’s Catholic School and instead let her attend the local public school.
Callie always seemed so passive and subdued, almost…sad. Though it had been a weird thing to think because she always smiled when she caught sight of one of them in the hall.
But it was hard not to notice. How the furrowed line of her brow was lighter, how her voice got higher, how she waved her arms when explaining something and shifted from foot to foot like she couldn’t contain herself to stay in one place. It was more expressive than she’d even been compared to the times Tim had asked to copy last night's algebra homework because he’d knocked out the second his head hit the pillow and forgot to do it.
It was a nice few days of getting welcomed back into the fold. Into falling into step and joining the inside jokes again like he’d always been there. Tim even got invited back to join a Wizards and Warlocks campaign the following week because Kevin’s parents were going to visit his older brother and his family and they’d be leaving the house empty for them.
So that meant a weekend of pizza and junk food and enough soda to make Tim pop like a balloon.
Tim had really been looking forward to it.
Then Friday night Bruce told him they’d be staking out the docks for a shipment of weapons, that they’d be taking shifts and watching those docks for as long as it took. It took as long as Sunday and by the time Tim got home he had five missed calls and four IMs from Ives.
IveIveBaby: where r uuuu :((((
IveIveBaby: tim r u comin we ordered ur fav pizza and cal brought lactose-free ice cream lol
IveIveBaby: Tim are you alright
IveIveBaby: it’s cool tim see u in class monday
Tim’s guilt sat heavy in his gut reading every message and seeing every call.
‘Drake the Flake.’
It was what Hudson called him behind his back as a joke but it wasn’t something Tim disagreed with.
Sometimes…being Robin sucked.
On Monday, nobody mentioned Tim’s absence from the planned hangout. He still apologized. He’d wanted to give an excuse, a reason, but he couldn’t without lying.
And lying to his friends felt worse than letting them down.
If it were YJ they’d have grilled him until Tim got angry and left. If it had been Stephanie she’d have called him a liar and ignored him and his calls for weeks. If it had been Bruce he’d have just stared at Tim with narrowed eyes and grunted out an “don’t let it happen again.”
Ives just raised a brow and shrugged it off with a “It’s not a big deal Tim, seriously”.
Kevin just said it was more pizza for them.
Hudson just asked if he could cheat off Tim during the history test next period to which Tim replied that he’d been planning on cheating off Ives.
And just like that, the imaginary tension Tim had been imagining dissolved.
None of that quiet resentment, that suspicion, that exasperation at not keeping his word.
To them Tim just bailed on plans sometimes, something they’d learned to expect from him.
And they liked him anyway. They wanted to hang out with him anyway.
Because they kept inviting him out.
Sometimes Tim got to make it.
“Tim, Alfred and I are heading to Moscow for a few weeks to follow a lead. Don’t hesitate to call in case there’s an emergency.”
Sometimes he didn’t.
“Tim, there’s an undercover case in the suburbs that needs our full attention, I’ll write your teachers a note citing medical reasons for your absence"
When Bruce was out of Gotham and Tim’s dad was on an adults-only vacation with his girlfriend, Tim sometimes spent the night over at Ives’s because even though he was Robin, sleeping in an empty house by himself gave him the heebie jeebies.
Something that, when Ives and the others learned about it, meant that Tim’s house became the de-facto hangout spot for an adult-free weekend.
Something Tim hadn’t expected to enjoy so much.
He also hadn’t expected to start enjoying school more. Most of the time school felt like a hurdle, another burden he had to deal with as Robin.
Sure, the homework still sucked and the classwork was boring. But. He liked talking with his friends at lunch. Liked passing them in the halls and stopping to talk at the lockers between classes. He liked passing notes in class and biting back snorts at gross jokes.
Tim had weekend plans with friends now.
And it was…nice. He looked forward to it because he could relax in a way he couldn’t as Robin. That he couldn’t around YJ, or Steph, or even Bruce.
So it was only fair…if Tim put them first sometimes.
The first time Tim said the words-
“I can’t tonight. I have plans with friends.”
Bruce had just stared at him.
Not the sort of angry or vaguely irritated sort of look he got when Tim told him ‘no’. This one was more caught off guard like he genuinely didn’t understand what Tim had said.
“Friends?” He asked, brow raising slightly in skepticism.
Something that made Tim bristle slightly because yes! Friends. Tim had those, unlike him.
Tim didn’t say that though. It was mean and Alfred told him to not.
Especially since Bruce’s next words were-
“I was unaware Young Justice had any meetups planned this week.”
“We don’t,” Tim replied, “I mean my friends. From school.”
Bruce just stared at him. His eyes felt weirdly probing as he stared at Tim like he could crack Tim like an egg and make him admit that this was some lie or cover or way of rebelling like he’d been doing more and more as Robin.
Something Dick had said he’d done at his age. Though his form of rebelling had been sneaking away on weekends with the Titans to fight crime.
Tim’s rebellion was taking his friends to the skatepark so he could show them the tricks he learned from watching Callie beat his high score on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2.
For a second Tim thought Bruce was going to turn down his request and make him go out patrolling anyway. Instead-
“The streets have been quieter lately.” Bruce offered. His usual way of replying without really replying rolling off his tongue. A moment passed as Bruce turned back to where he was carefully reassembling a ripped up death threat that had been mailed to the Mayor. “I’ll expect you back on patrol tomorrow.”
It took everything Tim had not to beam and click his heels together in happiness.
Sometimes, despite all statements to the contrary, Bruce really could be reasonable.
It wasn’t a perfect system.
Most of the time Tim sacrificed more than he got back. Most of the time Ives and Callie and Hudson and Kevin got the short end of the stick. Got pushed to the wayside, got neglected, got final pickings of what little free time Tim had.
The moments Tim got to spend with them were rare. Just like how moments of peace in Gotham were.
All of them were enjoying a new campaign of Wizards and Warlocks (one Tim actually managed to show up to) when Callie popped the question.
Asking if they wanted to be in her student film.
Apparently, in the art program of Gotham Community College, specifically the film program- there was a graduation requirement.
It was a requirement that, before graduating, students were supposed to script, plan, film, and edit a student film at least 50 minutes long (including credits).
Callie explained the details with as much clarity and calm as she could. Tim still picked up on the stressed tremor of her voice.
She talked about how the entire process - the producing, editing, location scouting, auditioning, rehearsing, set designing, and everything involved would take at least 12 months.
Her voice got slightly rougher as a strained look flickered across her face when she began talking about the class where people had already separated into groups. That she hadn’t made the cut for any of them.
And Tim instantly knew what had happened without Callie having to explain because Tim had read between the lines every time Callie told them about her classes. Every time the five of them were on a video chat together or when Callie and him would talk on the phone because they all quickly figured out Tim was always up at ungodly hours of the night.
So Tim knew all about how the so called "film bros" at GCC had all ostracized her.
Because Callie was younger than them, because the professor liked Callie, because she was the only girl in class.
But mostly because Callie had more talent in her smallest fingernail than they did in their entire bodies. Something made more clear by the fact that all the other student films were going to be various adaptations of different plays or films that already existed.
But Callie wanted to do original work. She wanted to do one of her scripts.
The College’s film and sound equipment were all already signed and rented out by all the other film groups for their projects.
Callie had only managed to snag a few sound mics along with various lighting equipment before it was all gone.
Callie was working with barebones equipment and a barebones crew.
The only other person working with Callie on her final project was a student from the performing arts department.
They’d been the only one that had shown up to audition for her student film.
Tim could see the stress lines on her brow the longer she talked. Could sense the unease hovering around her. Could feel her tension as she nervously tapped her foot on the carpet and kept folding her character sheet like it was a piece of origami.
Tim felt indignation on her behalf. At the injustice, because Callie was a talented director. A talented writer. A talented filmmaker.
He knew it. Everyone at their gaming table knew it. Everyone in her and Ive’s neighborhood knew it. Everyone from their school knew it.
Tim because he’d been to her house before. And he’d seen the proof. The little plaques and rows of 1st Place ribbons that lined the hall leading to her bedroom, all sitting on shelves alongside her basketball trophies from middle school.
The performing arts were the one branch of the arts where talent couldn’t be faked. People instantly spotted a bad singer, a shitty dancer, or a mediocre actor.
Callie was good at what she did. Sure, Tim didn’t understand all the moving parts behind it, he didn’t see how point A got to point B or how a completed script turned into a full production.
But Callie did and she was good at it.
And other people saw it too.
A dry cleaner in the East End and a pizzeria from the garment district had both hired her to make commercials for them that played on the local Gotham channels.
Commercials that Tim had helped out with by playing ‘paying customer #7’ in the background of one of them as a favor.
Tim also knew the reason behind how Callie was able to film those commercials and why she hadn’t rented a camera for her project.
Because when they were in middle school together, Callie had submitted a found-footage style murder mystery to some big Junior Filmmaker contest in New York.
One where she’d ended up placing First Prize.
Which Tim remembered because she'd been out of school for a few days because she’d needed to travel with her parents to claim her prize-
A very expensive, very professional quality camera that she'd been using ever since.
Tim had seen it once. Callie had shown it to him and the others like she’d been showing them a great treasure.
Which to her it had been because Tim had seen the tender care and love in her eyes when she’d dragged her fingers along its black metallic coating.
Callie was his friend.
She had been for a long time, for longer than he’d been Robin, and she and the others had still reached out to Tim, even when he'd been a pretty lousy friend to them.
So of course Tim agreed to help. To lend aid, to assist in whatever way Callie needed.
It was the least he could do.
Ives and Hudson both had experience working with sound equipment so they became Callie's ‘film crew’.
Kevin helped put some ads in the school paper and pulled some strings with the newspaper editors of other neighboring and local schools. All to put the word out on Callie needing help with costuming, set design, and additional actors.
Something the stage crew clubs and theater kids of nearby schools had been very excited about.
At first Tim thought he was going to help out with managing the production, with color coding schedules, and driving them around since he was the only one with a car and a license.
Instead, Callie sent him the script of her film. A simple PDF file attached to an email in the middle of the day.
Once Tim had opened it and began reading, he hadn’t been able to stop. Tim was nearly late to patrol because of it. Because he got too engrossed in it.
Bruce hadn’t lifted his head up to Tim’s hurried apologies, just grunted something about keeping better track of time.
Callie was making a horror movie. Her preferred medium.
Now Tim liked movies. He liked detective movies and who-dunnits most of all because he liked challenging himself to see if he could figure it out first before the big reveal.
Horror movies were alright to him, they were fun if you wanted a nice scare and cheap thrill. Or if you wanted to watch raunchy sex scenes and see tits behind your parent’s backs.
Tim used to go to the movies a lot. With friends or even alone. Robin had changed that though because Robin had changed a lot of things and Tim really couldn’t justify sitting still for 2 hours of runtime on a Saturday night.
So the latest movies were usually watched on the bus ride to school on his phone or at the lunch table or by just reading its Wikipedia page and calling it a day.
For Callie, movies were her life. All three walls of her bedroom were lined with DVD after DVD after DVD. Callie probably had the most impressive movie collection over anyone Tim knew, aside from Bruce who owned just about every obscure movie known to man.
Callie spent just about every weekend at the movies, every time a new movie dropped she was the first in line to see it. She followed about 100 different directors online and every year her birthday present from her parents were tickets to some local film festival.
So Tim knew Callie lived and breathed movies and theatre like how he lived and breathed for Robin and the cape.
Maybe Tim wasn’t the biggest fan of movies and films because he didn’t understand them, because to him it was just mindless entertainment, something to do when he was bored, or something to play in the background while he cleaned his room.
There was a reason Tim had a ‘C’ in English Literature. There was a reason his teacher had left numerous notes on his essays and homework about ‘expanding his mind’, about not trying to be so literal in his understanding of the poems and short stories they did in class, about understanding what was being implied without it being explicitly said.
Callie’s writing just made something in Tim’s brain…click.
Like the ‘eureka’ moment where everything finally aligned and made sense.
Callie’s movie had that. It had those onion-layers of symbolism all his English teachers used to talk about. All those layers once pulled back just had another one underneath that when pulled back had another one-
It was the kind of symbolism, metaphor, allegory stuff that had cinema experts and English teachers jizzing in their pants.
Tim read the script over once. Then again. Then again.
It was the first time anything outside a Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot novel ever grabbed his attention so thoroughly.
Callie’s movie was about a group of "troubled" teens being sent to work on an animal farm for the summer. Though it was more akin to a slaughterhouse and meat processing facility.
Nearly all of the main characters got picked off and killed in the excruciatingly cruel and heartless way you'd expect animals raised for slaughter were.
Tim's detective brain latched onto the small slips of detail that came through while reading.
Details about how the so-called troubled teens were all little "lambs" sheltered to the point of being unable to cope in their new environment.
Tim picked up on strange tells. How the dialogue said by the antagonist in reference to the teens was… objectifying. The way he talked about them, described them, stared at them it was like…like he was treating them more like meat and prime cuts of beef. The way the killer…salivated over them. The way he’d touch them, the way he’d talk about their bodies-
In the script, the killer had a habit. He made it a point to never refer to any of the teens by name, instead only referring to them as livestock: calf, chickie, piggy, duckie, or lamb.
He’d nicknamed the teens in his care after baby farm animals.
‘Stripping a person of their name is one of the first steps to dehumanize them prior to victimizing them’ Tim’s Robin brain helpfully supplied.
Baby farm animals. The most helpless of all the livestock....the most senseless to kill.
Baby animals didn’t contain enough meat to justify slaughtering them. They couldn’t produce milk like the adults. They didn’t have high quantities of wool to shear. They couldn’t lay eggs. Couldn’t be bred. Weren't strong enough to pull farming equipment and work the land.
Tim felt genuine gut squirming devastation at each death. At each brutal, horrible death because they all got so close to figuring out they were in a big mousetrap designed to toy with them.
Tim gripped his screen at the tiny reveals, the piles of implications about how all the teens were sheltered and raised to not question authority or speak up and it being the reason for more than one death. It crushed Tim.
But it was two characters in particular that caught Tim's attention over all the others. Two of the innocent "lambs" who’d develop an attraction to one another. Who resisted the indoctrination from their captor/future butcher (whose weapon of choice was apparently a meat cleaver and Tim couldn’t push down the anger and hatred he felt at that because of the sheer disrespect. The monster never saw them as people, he never saw them as people-).
Something about the two little lambs just…tugged at something in Tim. Two sweet, precious little things who, in one of the most symbolic scenes, lost their virginity to each other in an abandoned sheep shed. The same shed one of their fellow innocents was killed. The shed where they’d let virgin blood spill and stain the floor again, but for something other than violence.
To Tim’s great sadness only one of the two lived and survived the horror.
A brave little lamb who’d sensed the turning of the winds, who had been growing with suspicion the entire time and questioning the other teens about why their captors said and did certain things.
Tim ignored his phone ringing with messages from Bruce when he got to the climax of the lamb getting the butcher to chase them through the farm, slowing them down with the help of the various farm animals that appeared to have gained sentience and were assisting in taking revenge on the cruel owner in order to help one of their own.
It ended with the little lamb startling their exhausted pursuer into one of the animals pens, the fall knocking them unconscious and letting them get a taste of their own medicine by allowing them to be eaten by one of the animals on the farm named after the first victim. The pigs.
It was only in the end that the surviving teen got a name.
Dandelion. A flower capable of thriving in any conditions, even between the cracks in sidewalks. A lamb with a predator inside them. DandeLION.
Tim patrolled distracted. Something Bruce picked up on because he’d kept glancing over at him with a frown and a scolding, “focus, Robin”.
Tim didn’t even wait until their next planned hangout. As soon as he got in from patrol, he called Callie. Even though his muscles were sore and there was exhaustion pulling down his eyelids.
Callie picked up because it turned out she also didn’t sleep much. It was how the two of them had stayed close. Tim couldn’t stop the babble from flowing out of his mouth, a mishmash of words, some scrambled lines of admiration of awe because he got it, he got it. Is this what movies were like for her all the time?
The next time Tim saw Callie he didn’t hold back. Didn’t even try to preserve some image of impartial dignity like he always did as Robin. He gushed to her about the script, about the characters, about the monster, about all of it.
And he's pleasantly surprised to find out a new detail regarding Callie’s project. That Callie had planned for Tim to be one of the actors.
But not just any actor. Not just ‘paying customer #7’.
No. Callie wanted Tim to be the "final girl" as she called it.
And Tim…even though he’d never acted outside of undercover operations. Even though the most training he’d ever received was from Alfred who’d had him recite Shakespeare soliloquies until his throat was sore. Even though he wasn’t even sure he had the acting chops to pull it off- agreed without hesitation.
Tim got scolded that first night he’d been given the full script for the first time. Bruce had obviously been upset with Tim for not answering his messages and being nearly late to patrol but Tim had made sure to apologize.
Something Tim had to quickly get used to considering he ended up doing a lot of apologizing when he needed to rush to the cave after filming wrapped up for the day once Callie started production on her film.
Tim wasn’t sure how she did it but she managed to get permission from one of the few farm owners just outside Gotham city limits to allow her to film several of the scenes. Tim’s experience as Robin with the few farm land owners in Gotham was that they were a… hard-headed people. Not a very easy people to convince either.
The farm that granted Callie permission to film the bulk of her shots was an apiary that allowed their neighbor’s goats and chickens to freely roam the land.
Tim wasn’t sure what about Callie convinced the elderly couple who owned the farm to allow her and a band of ragtag teenagers and young adults to film on their land, but apparently word spread through the tight-knit rural part of Gotham quickly. Before long neighbors all around them were inviting Callie and her crew to their land, offering to let them poke around the horse stables, the chicken coops, the pig pens. To let them film their gory scenes take after take until Callie got it just the way she wanted it.
Tim did not take to acting as…easily as he thought it would. It was hard enough performing on command with only Bruce and Alfred watching but now…everyone he knew was gathered around waiting for him with bated breath like he was a talking dog.
So acting was challenging…in the beginning.
At least before Tim thought to treat it exactly like one of his undercover roles. The ones he’d trained extensively for, the ones he’d had to perfect because Bruce had wanted to make sure there were no cracks in his facade or holes in his story when he was up against someone dangerous. Where something as simple as mispronouncing a place or name ended with a bullet in his head.
Bruce’s training for undercover work was…thorough. Maybe even excessive. When Tim went undercover it was like someone else was ‘dropping into’ him and using his body as some kind of meat puppet. It was the closest thing Tim could imagine to getting possessed.
It was hard to just…break out of the character. Hard to remember that he was in a horror movie when every 'cut' was interspersed with jokes and laughs from the other actors and crew. But Tim got used to it, he got better because he wanted to do a good job. He wanted it to come out the way Callie wanted, the way she’d envisioned it.
Even the sex scene wasn't as awkward as Tim thought it would be because Ives kept making faces off to the side to try and get Tim to crack up. Which only made Tim more determined to do it right.
Tim had spent days trying to figure out how to make fucking look appealing and deep meaningful. Which was hard considering Tim didn’t really have any firsthand experience to reference. Asking Bruce and Dick wouldn’t help either; they'd just bury Tim in an interrogation. Hudson just choked on his carton of milk at lunch when Tim tried asking him for advice. Kevin just pretended like he hadn’t heard him. Ives sent him a bunch of porn links (which were nice but not what Tim was looking for).
Callie was the only one with a real answer. Which was unexpected because Tim had half expecting to get sent porn from her too because her and Ives could be unnervingly similar sometimes in their sense of humor.
Which was how Tim spent an afternoon experiencing his favorite thing about tasks. Clear, detailed instructions. Bruce’s greatest flaw was the fact that he’d put out a broad statement of what he desired Tim do and then expected Tim to fill in the gaps with his imagination.
Callie was different. Callie described what would happen, how it would happen, how fast it would happen. She gave Tim the number of the boy that was Dandelion's love interest. Aside from some videochats where they rehearsed lines together, Tim hadn’t really interacted with the other boy much. Callie insisted it was important though, that they be familiar, that Tim had some faith in him, and felt comfortable with him. So that they’d both feel okay doing it.
But it wasn’t as hard as Tim thought it would be. Nobody acted weird because they’d all been together long enough to realize it was just work and the most difficult part was all the takes needed to get it right.
So the sex scene wasn't as hard as Tim thought it would be. Acting wasn’t hard as Tim thought it would be.
The hard part for Tim was trying to act scared of the actor playing the killer.
The first person Callie had ever cast had been the only GCC Performing Arts major that showed up to her open casting call audition. The guy was tall, he was buff, and he had a deep voice, and strong facial features that if used right could be scary.
But despite his clearly intimidating, tall stature and broad shoulders… he had a cute smile. He had dimples and he brought peanut butter cookies that his little sister made to share with all of them.
The guy could be a little intimidating if you met him for the first time. The sort of person you’d feel keenly aware of if you stepped into an elevator with him, alone. He just had that sort of…look to him. It was probably why Callie had wanted him to play the monster.
But. When you faced murderers and gangsters and saw the sick and twisted and depraved things they did on a nightly basis it was…hard for Tim to feel afraid.
So...for the sake of Callie's film... Tim pulled him to the side and offered some tips to look scarier. But not just look it, to show it, to be it.
Tim told him how to relax the muscles of his face but let the veins of his neck stick out to show the mask hiding rage underneath. Tim coached him on how to get that unnerving blank stare that killers he'd faced off against had. Taught him how to adjust the tone of his voice, how to form words with his lips so there was a delay in the sound so there was something slightly…off when he talked. He asked one of the stagecrew girls Kevin successfully recruited for costuming and makeup to adjust how she did the shadows on his face. To use powders that removed the shine from the skin so he looked matte, plastic. Like there was something that wasn’t…a person standing in front of them.
There was a reason the Joker freaked people out. The clown makeup should’ve made him look stupid, ridiculous. But that white face paint hid the microexpressions, hid the lines of his face and the twitch of his facial muscles that made it easier for people to tell what another person was feeling. But with the paint, that only left his eyes and his eyes always just looked…crazy. The other rogues were like that too.
The main ones, the outliers.
Because Batman was one of the most successful heroes with one of the biggest rehabilitation rates. 81.233% of the criminals he and Bruce took down didn’t reoffend.
The ones that did were usually career criminals, people involved in organized crime, the mentally unwell, and…people like Joker. Like Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Riddler, Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Catwoman, Two-face, Madhatter.
People who were serial reoffenders. Who had a failure to respond to psychiatric help, to drug interventions, to medicated rehabilitation, to monitored and supervised release programs. Things other people would normally respond to. Things that would normally help. They were outliers. Tim had read their files, had read the documentation given by the numerous doctors and nurses and psychiatrists and wardens and social workers, and police officers and lawyers who’d dealt with them.
They couldn’t get better. Or maybe they just didn’t want to. Sometimes Tim wondered if Bruce was as scared of the possibility of being like that as he was.
So…Tim offered the only thing he could about what it felt like to stand in front of people like that. The posture, the look in their eyes, the way they just felt different.
Everyone knew Tim was a huge ‘true crime’ fan. At least that was the cover Tim had given to explain why he knew so much about forensic science, the criminal trial process, police investigations, and criminal tendencies. So no one blinked at Tim's suggestions, at Tim’s instruction to his fellow victims and their murderer.
Callie had made it a point to never call the killer a psychopath. Because he wasn’t and Tim could see that with his eyes closed.
Tim had handled a lot of them, had tied them up all neat and pretty and left them in front of police stations with the evidence of their crime stapled to them.
The psychopaths were the easiest criminals to handle. Because the part of their brains that exercised caution, that told them something was a bad idea was just a huge fucking hole like their brain was swiss cheese. Poor impulse control often meant crimes committed in an act of passion, done without thought or regard for witnesses or evidence left behind. Some psychopaths were murderers but most were just everyday carjackers and department store thieves.
People who did meticulous planning, who hid evidence, who took forensic countermeasures, who isolated their victims weren’t psychopaths.
Callie’s murderer wasn’t a psycho.
He was just a guy given unsupervised access to kids he wanted to hurt.
“He’s like a rapist who prefers kids.” Tim offered quietly to ‘Piggie’ who was nervous about her death scene coming first. “He does this because we can’t fight back. Because we’re smaller and we’re weaker and easy to overpower and scare into staying quiet.”
Tim had seen a lot of the overlap with Callie’s carefully crafted murderer (the one Tim had taken to calling The Butcher) and the criminals he faced as Robin.
Tim helped Piggie practice her screams and the throaty gurgling whistle sounds dying made. He only stopped when his stomach wouldn’t stop shifting uncomfortably because it just sounded too…real. Tim helped the others too. He taught Duckie proper running form, a way to run faster so that it made his scene of nearly getting away all the more devastating.
He wasn’t the only one Tim taught to sprint. Tim instructed the Butcher too.
He taught him how to run in the same way Batman did when he was angry.
A way that had half the crew peeing their pants when he charged at the camera in one scene. A scene which had to be filmed on multiple takes because Callie kept shaking the camera with her trembling and destabilizing the shot.
When the night scenes had to be filmed the entire crew was dead silent from the tension. The heavy atmosphere made it easier for Tim and the other actors to be able to get into the terrified headspace horror movie actors need.
Tim did his best to balance filming and being Robin. He thought he did a pretty good job even though it was a brutal few months. He was getting less sleep overall. Lunch and study hall became his catch-up time for his sleep debt. Ives and the others grew used to Tim using them as a pillow. Tim’s report card didn’t tank though and that was because Ives let him and Hudson cheat off him.
Bruce clearly knew something was up. He had a look on his face when Tim would show up for patrol yawning or apologizing for being late. He even once offered to let Tim have the night off which Tim immediately declined.
It was hard but Tim toughed it out. For Callie.
Still, Tim had to admit he was a little relieved when the final scene got wrapped up and Callie officially declared all that was left was editing which would fall on her, Ives, and Hudson.
Tim went home and slept in celebration.
The entire crew, including Tim, had been planning on attending the screening with Callie at GCC together.
Tim had even managed to get the night off from Bruce even though he hadn't told him anything about the little side project he'd been helping a friend with.
Not because he’d been ashamed or embarrassed but because...he and Bruce didn't really talk about personal matters like that.
It was the same reason Tim never told Dick or Alfred about it, because he knew it would get back to Bruce and he'd get all awkward and feel obligated to inquire about Tim's life even though he wasn’t really interested. So Tim stayed silent.
In the end it didn't even seem to matter because Gotham Community College was one of the many places a rogue planted bombs that successfully detonated. Bombs that had been poorly wired but which ended up being a saving grace because they went off in the middle of the night so no civilians got killed.
Which was the only upside.
The downside was Callie's classes got canceled for the rest of the school year. So did her assignments. So did her odds of graduating on time.
So Tim ended up giving up on seeing the finished product. Especially when a thoroughly upset Callie, on the verge of tears, told them about how she needed to change schools now. That she had to take her GCC credits to a University. A new one that would accept her as a transfer, but the only one that would accept her so late in the year was all the way in Chicago where her grandparents lived.
Tim felt like it was too insensitive to ask, so he never inquired about the film. There had been more to worry about after all. Callie’s departure from Gotham completely, all the other areas around the city where undetonated bombs were buried, the increasing violence in Crime Alley that could be attributed to a new mask breaking out on the scene.
It was a lot. Robin started demanding more of his time, more of his attention. He started seeing less and less of Ives, of Hudson, of Kevin. Callie in a new city and the slight time difference meant their schedules lined up less and less. But Tim still saw photos of her on social media, still liked her tweets reviewing the new movies she’d watched and which ones she was anticipating.
As more time passed, as being Tim Drake and Robin grew more complicated, it never felt like the right time to ask and whenever all of them got together over video chat; they all either focused on their Wizards and Warlocks campaign or inquired about how the Chicago weather was treating Callie.
But even those calls grew less frequent.
He and Ives still shared occasional short calls. He and Kevin exchanged greetings and caught up while playing League together. He and Hudson both started taking nightclasses at the same technical school for their GEDs.
But Robin kept him busy. He saw less and less of his friends. Suddenly he started missing more calls from Ives than he answered. Tim stopped finding the time to log into League to unwind. Tim stopped attending his nightclasses and contented himself with just being a highschool dropout.
Then after a few months, he forgot about the film that had taken so much of his time.
It didn't occur to him that Callie, when she arrived in Chicago, ended up finding out about a local indie film festival still accepting submissions and deciding to take a chance.
Tim didn't know about how her film positively blew up in the small-time filmmakers scene, how it gained an underground following.
The only hint Tim got was waking up one day a few months later and suddenly having a few dozen oddly dedicated followers who lovingly commented on every picture of him and called him “so talented ❤ ️” even though Tim only occasionally posted on his personal account.
Later, when Tim went back over it, he realized that many of them had been praising him for his role in Callie's film. That their little compliments and words about calling him their favorite actor had been sincere and not just bots.
Unfortunately, many of those comments got lost and buried under the spam likes and interaction he got when Bruce announced he was adopting Tim to the papers.
It was a few years after the initial filming that finally Tim found out what Callie did with her film.
He found out in the form of an indie film reviewer who ended up posting a lengthy video on WeTube talking about their favorite film of all time.
When Tim finally sat down and watched it, he was pleasantly surprised to find they went to a deeper depth in their analysis than Tim had even considered.
He was a solid ‘C+’ English Literature student, at best, for a reason so it was a genuine revelation to Tim to watch them talk about how the film connected to conservative upbringing, to sexual exploitation, and the deeply queer themes that radiated throughout it.
Tim listened to the reviewer talk about how the farm was representative of a conversion camp and the teens were killed for the fact that they were queer and not "troubled", seen in the fact that they were stripped of their names and identity from the beginning.
Tim listened about how the killer was a bigot and hypocrite who was taking advantage of the teens and their faith to do unspeakable things to them and how in the end the way he was portrayed as being killed and eaten by a pig, a "dirty" animal in many religions, was not just Dandelion beating them, it was divine punishment.
The review spread across the internet like wildfire. It especially went viral for her mention of the film's “final girl”.
Dandelion: portrayed by Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. The adopted son of billionaire socialite Bruce Wayne and the CEO of Wayne Enterprises.
Tim's family didn't find out about the movie by Tim telling them. They didn't find out about it by scrolling through social media and seeing one of the many clips being posted about it. No. They learned about it from Vicki Vale who decided to publish an article titled 'Nepotism Strikes Again!'.
Apparently, Tim being friends with a director and using it to score the lead role in a film project was a perfect example of nepotism and established a "worrying" pattern with him and the Waynes that had been on people's minds ever since Tim was made CEO of WE at only 17.
It was such a ludicrous claim Tim almost laughed because Tim was pretty sure that Bruce had never even MET Callie, let alone ever had enough sway with her to influence her into giving Tim the lead in her student film for College.
Nevertheless, Vicki's article got her in more shit than Tim ever thought possible because, apparently, the indie film scene was ruthless and multiple other filmmakers and actors Callie had since worked with vehemently defended her online.
The original reviewer even returned to do a part 2 and pointedly read verbatim from interviews Callie did a few weeks after the film premiered in Chicago.
Her talking about how the film was inspired by her own suffocating upbringing under her parents, how her first acts of rebellion were chopping off half her hair and dying it orange at 14.
How her only emotional outlets had been sports and going to the movies and then eventually filmmaking and while her parents weren't as bad as they could've been; she'd received unbearably heavy criticism her entire life from other family members who used religion to weigh her and everyone else down.
How she hadn't found much acceptance outside of her small friend group from middle school who went on to help her make her best work yet.
The interview detailed the long drives to set, how much of it was crowdfunded by a little bookshop Callie worked at part-time to help pay for her projects. How the film's initial release had been a bit of a bittersweet moment for her because the rest of the cast hadn't been present and she’d been in a new city far from home.
So Viki got her ass served to her on a platter by film nerds and Tim arrived home to the manor, greeted at the door by Dick who was grinning ear to ear and telling Tim to guess what Barbara managed to find on the internet.
Tim wasn't sure what exactly his family had been expecting when they decided to hold a movie night for the film Tim was in 2 years ago.
Apparently Callie's film was picked up on a few small streaming websites. Something Tim knew because he’d received an email from them informing him that they'd be mailing his residuals check based on the information Callie gave them and if he'd like to change the address or if he preferred a direct deposit to submit the appropriate form to their accounting department.
Tim was pretty sure his family had been expecting him to be embarrassed and go red in that way he knew they loved.
Barbara and the others shepherded him into the manor’s home-theatre because of course they were going all out. Damian was already seated comfortably in one of the reclining chairs, holding a soda in a cup that was as big as his head and Alfred the cat napping on his lap. There was a look in his eye that told Tim all too well about how pleased he was to witness Tim’s coming public humiliation.
A bunch of movie snacks and freshly ordered pizzas were sitting on a low table. Dick was practically giggling as Barbara hooked her computer up to a projector.
Jason killed the lights and Tim was squished between Bruce and Alfred on the couch right in front of the projector screen.
Tim wasn’t sure what they were looking for in terms of his reaction because this was his first time seeing the finished product as well.
Even though he already knew what happened and how it ended, the entire thing had been filmed out of order based on who had been available on what days. Tim had also only been present for filming when he was in the shot, so when a few of the tension-filled scenes starring the other characters started he was just as attentive as the rest of the family.
Tim had expected to feel some kind of way. Maybe a little embarrassed like his brothers had clearly been expecting. But honestly…Tim’s caped and civilian life had both been so busy and rough and piled with work that had to be done.
Mostly Tim was just happy he was watching a movie with his family. And that it was a movie Tim was proud of having been a part of.
Jason was the first to break the tentative blanket of silence that had fallen by making a quiet comment praising the makeup effects in the death scenes. Something Tim tried not to preen too much at because he'd added a few notes into that. The human body had a lot more blood in it than people expected and the oddest injuries could look so much worse than they were.
Callie’s film had the kind of death that made you want to look away. Carefully chosen shots, lighting, and post production editing carefully curated the experience.
“Not everything has to be shown.” Callie once offered while she’d been focused on adjusting some setting on a piece of sound equipment. “Sometimes the scariest thing in a movie is what you imagine is happening.”
Not everything was shown. Shadows and sounds, banging, whimpers, cries and grunts echoed around the theatre. The sound of deep panicked breathing filled Tim’s ears and it sounded so close it was like he was crouched down beside the person making the noises. There was a cacophony of noise that mashed together that made Tim feel disoriented. The breaking of glass and fists hitting flesh, nails against stone like someone was being dragged, the creaking of bedsprings, and then silence.
Eerie silence so sudden and sharp that when it hit, Tim could hear only the vague breathing of everyone in the theatre. Breathing that was steady and sharp. The kind of breathing Bruce taught them all to do when things got tense.
Callie, Ives, and Hudson did a really good job.
This was what Callie had done on a shoestring budget, limited equipment, and a small cast. Tim couldn’t even imagine what she could do with a professional crew at her disposal.
In terms of his memory regarding the filming, Tim hadn’t thought too much about the impending sex scenes.
Most of the time he’d forgotten there’d even been one because despite the significance of it for the movie, it had been 1 day of filming out several much more physically demanding ones.
Which included the final chase sequence. A scene that Tim still recalled vividly and with startling clarity because it took place in a horrendous downpour that Callie had specifically carefully monitored the weather for in order to get it just right.
So when the beginnings of that scene started playing with Dandelion slowly pressing lamb against the wall of the abandoned shed with a sloppy kiss- Tim was suddenly reminded of the fact that he was seated between his father AND grandfather figure.
If Tim thought watching a movie with Bruce and having there be a sex scene was awkward- this was a whole other level. At the sound of two gasps breaking from a kiss followed by the fumbling for clothing, Tim felt the way Bruce suddenly went taut beside him.
A glance around the room and Tim quickly learned Bruce was not the only one suddenly straightening in attention at the screen.
Tim, despite himself, felt the heat rush to his cheeks as Bruce uncomfortably shifted beside him. Probably because the two sweet lambs on the screen began vigorously grabbing at each other's clothes and hair. As they began pressing together every part of their bodies until they were falling back onto the straw-covered floor and writhing around each other.
Tim suddenly felt like that time his Third Grade class went to the zoo. When they walked up to the Zebra enclosure only to be greeted by the sight of a male Zebra fucking a female Zebra. Tim still remembered the sound one of the parent chaperones had made as they frantically tried to use their two hands to cover the eyes of all fifteen children watching.
The manor's home theatre had surround sound so Tim could hear his soft, whiny moans mixed with the frantic grunts of the other boy.
Tim swore Callie or Ives must've added the wet slapping noises of flesh against flesh in post-production because when they started up Dick gave the most high-pitched horrified gasp Tim has ever heard.
Barbara took that as her cue to press 'pause'.
Someone got the lights and Tim was greeted by several sights at once.
The widened eyes and raised brows of a frozen Jason.
An open-mouthed Dick that looked like he was on the verge of tears.
Cass digging through the glass bowl of trail mix for more chocolate raisins.
Bruce looked lightheaded as he took several quiet breaths and pressed a palm to his forehead.
Damian, who’d shifted down to the carpet, lying down alongside Titus and hogging one of the popcorn bowls. Tim could see how the initial smug expression he’d had in the beginning had transformed into a scowl of displeasure.
Oddly enough though, his eyes were locked onto Tim's co-star who was currently pinning Tim down on the screen.
His fellow lamb who’d invited Tim to dinner at his house one time after filming had finished for the day. His mom had made them spaghetti and cheesy garlic bread.
After a moment, Bruce's body turned to face him and his face had such clear disapproval written all over it Tim couldn’t help the defence that was already loaded onto his tongue.
"Tim-" Bruce began, tone severe.
"It's not real!" Tim immediately defended himself, already knowing where Bruce was going to take this. He was going to act like one sex scene Tim did in a student-film two years ago was the same as something like a sex tape.
It took a while for everyone to settle down. Of course it did because Tim's family was full of drama queens like Dick who started crying about Tim being “deflowered”.
Barbara re-started the movie probably as an attempt to drown out Dick’s sobbing. This time the rest of the film was played with the lights on as the scene continued.
Jason looked like he was slowly biting down on a lemon the more it dragged out.
Tim's co-star bit the side of Tim's throat and the camera panned down to focus on how his lips kissed at the skin as Tim arched his neck back for more.
"Hey, what's this guy's name anyway?" Jason asked far too casually.
"Jason leave him alone, he didn't do anything." Tim shot back because knowing Jason he was probably going to try to find the other boy. Tim had kept contact with the guy, he'd clearly had a crush on Tim. A crush that had intensified right after that scene had been filmed but ultimately it hadn't worked out.
As far as Tim was aware, his old co-star had a girlfriend now. One with short dark hair, blue eyes, and who looked constantly sleep deprived because they were a grad student majoring in Anthropology at Gotham University.
Damian scoffed from his place on the carpet and continued glaring at the screen like it had personally offended him.
The orgasm scene where the two of them gasped into each other's mouths and shivered at the sensation while sweat misted both their bodies had Dick letting out a soft whimper of distress.
Bruce looked ghost white when the two rolled over, Tim's character leaving behind a small, light pink stain on the hay. Bruce looked about ready to pass out the next time an intimate scene occurred.
Tim didn’t get fucked again but he did get roughly fingerbanged as the two characters messily kissed in the long grass of the farm that hid them from view.
The two had gotten braver and took their intimacy out in public instead of shamefully hidden in the shadows and Tim could feel the pieces of understanding clicking in his brain about what that one indie movie reviewer had been talking about.
Tim would like to believe the sex scene wasn't the only take away his family had. But at some point he stopped focusing too closely on their reactions.
He got too busy focusing on the tension of the final chase scene to notice.
Tim watched the back of his shirt slowly get soaked through with heavy rain as he was pursued, as he was hunted. He watched himself as he ran, as he slipped around on the muddy ground. As he tried to get his bearings and avoid the hands stretching for him.
The camera hunted him like it was being viewed from the perspective of the killer. Tim’s desperate bid to escape. How he was so small. So slow. How it was almost more of a…game to The Butcher. All the way up until an earlier set-up plot point of a rabbit’s den near the top of a hill.
A hole Dandelion knew about, that he’d been purposefully baiting The Butcher toward.
Baiting him because he knew The Butcher wasn’t able to resist the thrill of the chase.
Until that led to him taking a wrong step and painfully tripping with an audible 'crack' of their leg before painfully tumbling down to the bottom where they roughly smacked into the rocks.
Where they laid.
Motionless.
Until several large sows curiously poked their heads out and began approaching with a collective heart-pounding 'oink oink oink'.
Tim loved it. When the credits began rolling he was grinning ear to ear, somehow smiling wider when he saw his name appear on screen.
Cast
Dandelion……………Timothy Drake
His family still seemed caught up on that one scene which made him huff in annoyance because: hadn't they been paying attention to anything else!!!??
Tim called Callie that night for the first time in years to gush and he could practically hear as she flushed over the phone.
She started babbling over how sudden the resurgence of the film's popularity was. That her phone had been ringing nearly nonstop, that emails had been flooding her inbox, overflowing with offers from more professional studios offering her a budget for a potential sequel. That some streaming services were looking for exclusive rights to her filmography and catalogue of work. That doors she’d never imagined were being opened for her.
It wasn’t long before Callie got another call, then another, then another and it wasn’t long before Tim was hearing the familiar voices and laughs of high school friends he hadn’t seen or heard from in…a long time.
It was like they’d all never lost contact with how easily they all slipped back into chatting and catching up. There was a lot to catch up on. By the end Tim has an eager invitation to catch up again over lunch.
Tim was brimming with so much happiness the next day that he hardly noticed his assistant sending him messages to tell him there had been inquiries for interviews from the press about “his movie”.
It turned out interest hadn’t been dying down. Not even close. Tim had been singled out mostly for being well known and tied to Bruce but everyone else involved quickly got snatched up in the public interest.
During his lunchbreak Tim found out people had been making thirst traps of The Butcher using clips from the movie. A lot of people had even dug up the former GCC performing art student’s public account where he performed for one of Gotham’s local theatre troupes. A little bit of digging and Tim found that their shows were now sold out for the coming few months.
Well. Tim would never underestimate the people’s devotion to an attractive unhinged man. A little more digging and Tim was greeted with the revelation that more than a few people shipped The Butcher with his victims, they especially shipped him with Dandelion.
Tim had been a cape long enough for it to not affect him. Kon used to send fanart of the two of them fucking all the time so Tim was basically immune to the absurdity of it all.
Tim still decided to send a message to all of his old co-stars, wishing the well and checking up on them. Being suddenly shot from anonymity and obscurity couldn’t be easy. Tim was at least used to it.
Responses flowed in, mixed reactions along with it. Some cautious about the popularity, some excited about all their new followers, some happy having something to add to their list of acting credits, some embarrassed about being recognized in the street and asked for autographs, some sad because their mother had watched it without telling them and cried at their death scene.
From what Tim could tell the movie was a boost for many of them. Some were still pursuing acting professionally, others had enjoyed the process but weren’t looking to do more but that they still appreciated the extra cash from the royalty checks they were now receiving.
Some, like Tim, were unsure of what they wanted to do now. About this opportunity that was being presented.
Tim was already receiving swarm of DMs and tweets from people begging him to do more work like this. That this was his calling.
More than a few people were locked onto that one sex scene, just like his family, and it appeared to have caught the eye of people who are interested in seeing more of that work from him too.
Barely a week passed since Viki published that article before Tim was getting offers from talent agents, representatives from movie studios who want to have a "chat" about his future, and a handful of porn studios (which Tim carefully told no one about).
Tim had never really considered what he wanted to do with his future.
If he ever had to retire he always assumed he'd just be running operations in the background alongside Barbara and Alfred. Tim had never really sat down to consider career options aside from WE until he had people asking if working in an office was really what he wanted.
That Tim had potential, that he had talent. Talent in something aside from breaking open cases and chasing the next lead to some crime.
Tim's family, once they got over themselves, did say they enjoyed the movie.
A few of the more intense scenes had them tensing up because Tim's screams were not something they enjoyed hearing. However, it seemed Tim had a talent for horror.
When he thought about it, Tim had enjoyed it- there had been something freeing in condensing all those emotions for a brief moment and gaining catharsis through them in the form of a scream or a scuffle or the fight to survive.
And...it had been a while since Tim really tried to think about what he wanted to do with his life.
He'd been lightening his load on patrol already.
Tim's blood had been showing concerning amounts of white blood cells and worry had been raised about his lack of spleen and what that could mean with the fact that he still had a dormant form of ‘ The Clench' still in his blood.
Tim got fatigued easier, lost his breath faster. Grew dizzy, grew nauseous, and disordered when he went too long without food.
He couldn't perform the same maneuvers as he usually could on patrol and recently had to start going out as part of a pair. With Jason, or Dick, or Damian, or Bruce, or Cass- with anyone who was free. Tim knew it was because they wanted someone to watch Tim’s back and he knew it was done out of care and concern but Tim couldn’t ignore the guilt that came with it. He was splitting his family’s focus when he went out on patrol with them. They had to watch their own back’s and Tim’s which increased their risk of getting hurt.
Tim had been feeling a little lost for a while. The possibility of not being able to be Red Robin anymore distressing him and leaving him feeling blindsided and…at a loss.
Tim wasn’t sure what life outside the cape could look like. Wasn’t sure if it was something that would drive him stir-crazy after a while.
An actor. Acting in horror movies specifically.
People online hadn’t been quiet about their interest, about their desire to see more. It was something Tim could do. With more training, with more practice maybe it could be…an option.
...It could be a fun distraction if nothing else.
The next week, a script about a classic 70s-inspired lake-side summer camp slasher movie hit Tim's desk. It was from a young and new screenwriter. Someone Callie had met and befriended in Chicago whose script she’d passed along to Tim as a favor by email.
She’s a big fan. Think about it.
-Callie Evans
And as Tim thumbed through it while on his lunchbreak he felt himself growing interested at the possibilities and opportunity. Felt that old excitement flaring up in his gut the same way it had all those years ago when he stayed up to read Callie’s script.
No one in Tim’s family had been very good at hiding their concern for Tim when he’d made the possibility of his impending, likely permanent retirement, known.
This. They’d probably be ecstatic if Tim found something aside from caped life to dedicate himself to. Something safer but something that still…
Tim remembered the heart in his throat moments, the fear and anguish that had ripped through him during the intense scenes. The adrenaline that had pumped through his body doing the few stunts in the movie because Tim insisted on them knowing he could do them using his training as Robin. The fear and the thrill that had coursed through him. That-
…reminded him so much of what he felt when he was Robin.
When Tim broached the topic there probably wouldn’t be many objections about Tim potentially starting a new career path.
However, Bruce and the rest of the family may have heart attacks once they learned about the topless skinny dipping scene in this movie.