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The meth lab was near the docks, operating out of an abandoned warehouse that had once housed a cannery before the company was caught in an embezzlement scandal and went bankrupt. Relatively low level, as these things go, until they started using children as runners. Tim understood where Bruce’s pressure points lay and the things that would press neatly against them.
He knew about the reality of Gotham’s social services, too, and how far down runaway kids who don’t want help rank. It was obvious where their focus would shift, as soon as the first fifth grader in a ragged coat came darting out of the warehouse with a full backpack.
The plan was so totally standard that they barely talked about it all. Hit fast and hard and frightening, and let their own fears and likely addictions slide them neatly into panic. It had taken time for Tim to realize just how afraid of the bat Gotham’s underworld was, behind their posturing and threats. Not everyone’s heart started beating in their throat when they saw the silhouette of the cape.
Still, Tim knew they knew what they were doing. And meth labs and drug dealers aren’t that frightening, in Gotham.
They went in through soaped over skylight windows, in a hail of breaking glass and two smoke grenades Tim threw down. The explosion of chaos was well-choreographed to be what they needed. The dealers weren’t metas or supervillains or even impressive among the ranks of drug manufacturers. It was almost easy and that, perhaps, was Tim’s mistake. Thinking it was going to be predictable, and letting himself watch Bruce from the corner of his eye.
For all that the line between Bruce and Batman was far thinner than is strictly sane, the distinction between them was miles wide. Tim still can’t stop watching Batman and looking for Bruce. He understood that was a weakness, and couldn’t stop himself anyway.
Tim was slamming the end of his bo into the sternum of a half naked cook with stained teeth and watching Bruce throw another across the room, his mouth set into a flat line. He didn’t see what caused the explosion. It might have been bad luck or panic turned red-washed and desperate or maybe he’d underestimated the group and failed to expect a last resort.
He registered the roar of flame eating oxygen and heat and then he was flying past where the front wall of the warehouse had been. Noise became the high-pitched white whine of static, and he hit the side of a burned out Chrysolet sitting on its rims across the street.
In the drawn out moment that followed, Tim that’s not supposed to happen and then the impact registered and he was on his knees with an arm around his ribs, grunting for air. He could hear the fire and panicked screams and then, a heartbeat later, the solidly meaty thud of punches landing and he thought, oh, thank you.
He had a hand braced on the Chrysolet’s door to stand, then Bruce’s hand was on his elbow and the small of his back. “Are you all right?” growled in Tim’s ear, and only the total lack of emotion said that maybe he’d been worried. That was something Tim never figured out, he was taught that by those who came before.
“Yes,” Tim answered, gauging how much of a lie it was as he straightened. Not so much that he couldn’t will it to to be true for a little while.
Bruce was tattered standing next to him with the burning warehouse casting everything in overhot reds and oranges. Tim could see patches of skin through the singed holes and debris tears-- the places where he’d begun to blister and the places where he was trickling blood. There were so many minor miracles that went into them not dying on a regular basis. Tim wanted to touch those little places, and raised his hand an inch before he stopped himself.
“Yes,” he repeated. “I’m all right.”
Two minutes later -- five? fifteen? Tim couldn’t have said and that tasted like copper on the back of his tongue -- the fire and police departments arrived and belatedly Robin took his place next to Batman. Those dealers that weren’t going to be identified by dental records were laid out in a neatly ziptied line for the Commissioner, blackened around the edges and burned, and still spitting out empty threats about what they’d do.
Tim wanted to laugh at them, and that reaction was strange enough that he bit down on the inside of his cheek to make sure it was real. He wasn’t either of the Robins who laughed.
So he stood still through the exchange of information, listening mostly to the post-explosion whine recede, which probably meant his eardrums weren’t ruined, and the growled cadence of Bruce’s voice. Until the Commissioner said, “These things happen,” like he thought Batman needed the comfort.
Tim almost laughed again. These things happen, they are allowed to happen and Batman and Robin are allowed to deal with it. Bruce wasn’t really bleeding then, but pieces of his skin were still burned. Tim doubted sincerely he would have been the first person to say something about what a poetic irony it would be for a fucking accidental explosion to be the thing that killed them, so he didn’t say it at all.
And then they were in the Batmobile and Bruce didn’t need to be looking at Tim to be studying him.
Tim watched Gotham pass by. “We’re not finishing patrol,” he said, not managing to make it a question.
“No.”
Tim closed his eyes. He knew how long it took to get from Gotham back to the manor and the plastic quality time had taken on as he’d stood next to the Chrysolet bothered him enough to need proof positive of his regained equilibrium. He listened to the engine and soft creak of Bruce’s suit. Everything smelled of ash and kevlar and Tim was okay, really okay, with those scents being more comforting than frightening.
He opened his eyes thirty seconds out from the recessed entrance to the cave and yes, there was the familiar shape of the manor. Tim exhaled.
His unseen and inevitable bruises ached as he climbed out of the Batmobile. Even Bruce seemed to move with a certain tightness canting his gait almost imperceptibly. But Tim had been watching Bruce for a very long time, and he knew. Unreality flared in his chest again, and he had to shake his head to make it clear. He could still taste a little blood against his tongue from biting his cheek.
They weren’t dead, not every explosion ended that way.
Bruce was already nearly to the bank of computers, pushing his cowl off. The protocol, Tim knew the protocol. Tim’s injuries to be addressed, the same done to Bruce less willingly, showers, food, reports. Tim knew that in his brain and bones, and that was how he walked across the cave and started stripping off his cape and mask.
Passing behind Bruce, Tim could suddenly smell the sweat in his hair and see the line of cleanliness between skin covered and not by the cowl. Bruce was typing leaning over the chair, forehead creased in concentration. Tim guessed he was already looking at Gotham PDs files to see who had survived the explosion and who hadn’t. He did say that it didn’t matter or that the world was better off, because he knew Bruce better than that.
Tim didn’t necessarily realize he was just standing there until Bruce looked at him over his shoulder. He a very small cut next to his lip, long since crusted over with a little raised line of dark brown blood. “Tim?” Bruce asked, and what they did wasn’t something done in cave or in costume or like that in any sense of the word, but.
Tim reached and touched his fingers to the cut, so close to Bruce’s mouth.
“Tim,” Bruce repeated, and the cadence was so totally different.
“Please,” Tim said. “Let me just--”
Tim followed where Bruce went, and it didn’t work the other way around. Bruce straightened and faced Tim, and he let Tim push him back until he was standing against the wall outside the showers. Bruce kept his hands loose at his side and his mouth flat, but there was a certain understanding in his eyes that wasn’t at all like sympathy. It was as close to acquiescence as he got. It was permission, if you must.
“Tim.”
“I know you’re fine,” Tim told him. “I know.”
For a moment, Bruce looked at him, then nodded so slightly Tim barely saw it. Bruce wasn’t cruel or as hard as Batman had to be. Tim thought that it wasn’t the costume that made the difference, it was the cowl, and pressed his face to the insignia in the center of Bruce’s chest.
He could feel the raised edges of it against his skin. Neither promising nor accusatory, because Tim was perhaps the only one who ever understood what was waiting for him once he put the costume on. Even if he really had no idea until the mask was in place.
It was never difficult for Tim to get on his knees for Bruce, not the first time or any of the times between then and now. It was harder for Bruce to accept it and Tim understood why that was in the same way that it made something acidic and impatient burn in the back of his throat. He wasn’t any of Bruce’s ghosts or demons. There was an obvious reason Batman had Robin, and there was never any way Tim saw for Bruce to avoid having-- needing -- his boys.
The catches on Bruce’s costume were familiar and easy and anchoring. So was Bruce’s sigh, low and quiet.
If asked, Tim would have wanted more. Bed and skin, but he expected and understood their compromises. Bruce’s bared skin smelled like leather and kevlar, like armor and sweat and soap and ash. Tim pressed his face to the crease between Bruce’s hip and thigh and inhaled, fingers hooked on the suit.
Bruce might have said his name again, and Tim ignored that. Then Bruce’s fingers were, hesitantly, pushing through his hair and that wasn’t something Tim could ever ignore. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back a very little -- just enough to feel the pressure against his scalp. Bruce was always quiet when they were like that except for what he did with his hands.
Tim didn’t need the entirety of one hand to count the people he’d slept with, even without using his thumb. Trawling the internet at night with his bedroom door locked too often felt like an exercise in fruitlessly trying to find something useful in close up shots of manufactured desire. Bruce’s cock in Tim’s hand was unexpected every time, so was the heat coming off his skin and the scent of want.
He shifted up on his knees, cupped Bruce’s sac in his other hand, and jacked him in slow, steady strokes. Bruce never told Tim what he liked, but Tim has to read the expressions that spasm over his face and Bruce, at least, doesn’t close his eyes.
The first time, wound up and almost crying with from the tangle of want and frustration in his chest, Tim said, “I know I’m young --”
And Bruce cut him off with, “It’s not that.”
Tim dragged his tongue along the vein at the underside of Bruce’s cock and watched Bruce’s hand curl into fists against his thigh. Tim felt the prickle of his hair pulling against his scalp, hard and still somehow measured. Someday, he would know what it took to break Bruce’s control. But at least he knew that Bruce was alive. Not every explosion ended in death.
Bruce sighed, “Tim,” and Tim had to close his eyes to find his equilibrium.
Tim learned how to suck cock from practice and the things he got Dick to say when he was drunk enough to be loose and easy and talkative. He told Tim, once, with a sense of great wisdom that, “It’s hard, really, to fuck it up too bad, little brother. Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.”
Tim has never been satisfied with that. Perfectionism is his most often encouraged bad habit.
Tim pressed the flat of his tongue to the slit of Bruce’s cock for the mild flare of flavor and low grunt kicked out from the bottom of Bruce’s lungs. Heaviness and salt and the rub of Tim’s callused palms against Bruce’s skin. His chest felt expansive, and too heavy, like there was water in his lungs that wouldn’t come out. Tim rolled Bruce’s sac in his palm and from that he got another grunted sound and a purposeful tug at his hair.
Tim wasn’t an intentional tease, just prone to thoroughness.
“Okay,” he said, softly.
He opened his mouth and swallowed Bruce down and down and down, eyes open and looking up Bruce’s face above him.
Tim didn’t really believe there was a way to feel good at this as opposed to undone by it. It was spit and his mouth stretched open and raw, Bruce’s cock bumping against the back of his throat and the hot roil of need coiling in his chest until there was no room left. Tim hummed in the back of his throat, needing to communicate a need that he’d never successfully given words to.
Bruce’s throat contracted as he swallowed. Control, all control and precision. Not dead.
His hand pushed through Tim’s hair, unwillingly, until he was cradling the back of Tim’s skull.
Please, Tim though. Please
And then it was less a matter of his action as his acceptance.
That was what Tim lived for, because it was the closest Bruce ever came to letting himself go and because it was the most alive Tim ever felt. All he had to do was keep his mouth slack and work his hands, watch Bruce’s shoulders roll in and his chest rise and fall in short, controlled bursts. Bruce’s strength was something terrifying and all encompassing and all Tim could do was let it be.
Robin existed to be a tool, used.
Bruce didn’t last long and Tim didn’t need him too, he needed the moment when Bruce pushed in so deep it was like choking and drowning and Tim could only breathe in the hot, heavy smell of his need.
Bruce came with a groan, low and growled and down Tim’s throat and Tim swallowed and swallowed and didn’t stop until Bruce’s grip fractionally relaxed and he had to breathe. Tim sucked his way off Bruce’s cock, dragging his tongue over skin and head and slit. Still needing. Always needing something from Bruce.
It was Bruce who got him to his feet, really, letting Tim sway and lean against him.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Bruce said in his ear. “I was fine.”
Tim nodded. “It wasn’t--” for you. “I know.”