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Jason’s favorite place is the curve of Dick’s neck, his face tucked into it — Tim notices, because he has a lot of experience as a voyeur.
His mind hoards moments he’s not even supposed to see, let alone lay claim to. Dick stitching up a gash on Jason’s forearm, ducking to kiss the crease of his elbow while he thinks no one else is looking — Jason’s eyes shaded and hungry in the cave’s harsh fluorescents. Dick’s kitchen, steamy and warm and fragrant, Jason’s hand checking in with Dick’s body while he steps behind him to get to the fridge, his thumb pressing down in the dip of Dick’s waist under his threadbare t-shirt. Bedsprings creaking softly in the next room. Jason muttering something to Dick while they’re on patrol, too quiet for the rest of them to hear, and the private white flash of Dick’s answering smile in the dark. Dick peeling out of his shirt, sweaty and stinking after a few hours on the mat, a livid bite mark in the shape of Jason’s mouth on his left pec. The two of them finding each other outside burning warehouses, after nightmares, limping and covered in blood, the same unerring way they find each other — always each other — at family dinners and fundraising galas and any crowded room they’re ever in.
Tim watches even though it hurts, because he can’t stand feeling like he’s not a part of it. It’s the same yearning that made him spend his childhood on Gotham’s rooftops, the lens of his camera like a hand reaching out to touch his heroes. He racked up literal years on the outside of his own family before he bargained his way in; it makes sense that he should be nothing more than a dedicated observer in the great love story of his life.
***
It’s going on six in the morning, and Tim’s alone in the cave wrapping up his reports for the night when he realizes someone is still on comms.
He puts the earpiece in just to make sure no one’s trying to fly solo, turns the volume up because it sounds like someone is dying, then stays because he realizes that the dying is sexual in nature. All the blood in his body rushes to his face, and suddenly there’s no space in his lungs for air. The cave is dark, the blue light from the Batcomputer’s screens making an island, the only sound the echoing drip of water and Dick’s blustery voice in Tim’s ear saying, “oh fuck, baby, your mouth, let me have your mouth — ”
c’mere, Jaybird, gimme that mouth, Tim heard Dick murmur once, barefoot and easy, drippy spatula in one hand and his other thumb tucked in the corner of Jason’s mouth. Jason jerked his head out of Dick’s grip, grumbling, but he turned and accepted Dick’s kiss all the same — Tim sitting frozen at the counter, hunched over a cup of coffee, transfixed by the shape of their mouths tucked together. His brothers. His older brothers.
He couldn’t look away then, and he can’t bring himself to mute comms now.
One of them still has their earpiece in. Tim can hear it like he’s in the room with them, lying in bed with them. The wet, eating noises of their kissing — not that chaste press that Tim saw in the kitchen, but redder, baser. It feels like something is alive in Tim’s throat, some sort of animal trying to press and make room for itself, its tiny, rapid heart beating next to his. Tim’s mouth is open, but when he closes it that tiny heart just beats faster. He feels like his face is going to explode. He realizes he’s not breathing — he sticks two knuckles in his mouth, bites down hard and hisses air through his teeth.
“nuh-uh,” Jason says, voice low and teasing. Dick whines. “don’t make me tie you up, dickie.”
Dick makes a noise like a horse exhaling — hard, frustrated, nasal — then breaks into a low, strung-out moan, tension releasing. Tim would give anything to know what Jason is doing to him. What Jason looks like hunched over him in the dark. Where his hands are. Where Dick’s are. How they’re holding each other.
“jay,” Dick begs, pleading — and the way he’s breathing, tight, contained, it’s the same way he breathes when he’s wounded. Tim tastes blood in his mouth. He licks over the bite, over his own fingers. His knees fall open. There’s a tent in the front of his sweatpants.
“I’ve got you.” Jason’s voice is rough, like he’s fighting through something. Trying to keep control. Trying not to come. “fuck, dick, you’re tight. so fucking tense. need me to fuck you till you can relax enough to sleep, don’t you babe?”
Dick makes a hurt sound, which Tim is sympathetic to, then gasps out, “move, you asshole — ” to which Jason responds by setting the bedsprings squeaking.
Tim sits with his legs spread, listening to the drip of moisture from the stalactites and the shallow internal tide of his own breathing and the obscene slap of skin in his ear. He just got out of the shower but he’s sweating again, his skin humid. The back of his neck prickles like someone’s watching him, but he’s the one watching. Not watching exactly. He wishes he were watching. Dick starts moaning and doesn’t stop, Jason’s thrusts punching a rhythm out of his throat. They sound like they’re running a marathon, like they’re going to break the bed. They talk to each other, Dick’s sleepy sated voice murmuring fuck jaybird you feel so good and Jason smothering the words with his mouth, gonna make you feel even better, dickie, c’mere, and the bedsprings slow down and their mouths are together again, nonverbal, and Tim sucks on his bloody bitten fingers and takes deep breaths, getting way too much oxygen. He feels like he might cry, the same way he always does when he wants desperately to sleep but can’t, exhaustion driving him to the edge of despair. He can’t really remember the last time someone touched him.
“dick,” Jason’s voice cracks, wrecked. “dickie, fuck.”
“come on, jay.” Tim imagines Dick’s fingernails in Jason’s hair, sweaty, too wet for him to hear the scrape. His knees hitching higher on Jason’s sides, holding him. “come on, baby, I wanna feel it, give it to me, love feeling how deep you are, love you so fucking much — ”
Those are the words that pull Jason over the edge. Dick telling him he loves him.
The sound of his orgasm splits Tim open like he’s been impaled. He’s sure his vitals are all over the place — he feels like he’s undergone a massive cardiac event, struggling to breathe, his heart a molten rock in his chest. Jason’s fighting to get quiet again, crying out muffled against Dick’s skin.
jason, Dick murmurs, over and over — like hands roving over Jason’s taxed body, soothing him. jay, jay, jay, jay, jay. Mindless and adoring. Someone hums into a kiss. Both of them, maybe.
They shift; the bed shifts under them.
“you too, dickie,” Jason orders. His voice is pulled back together, even though he sounds like he swallowed glass. “wanna feel you too. let me see it.”
“fuck,” Dick says, emphatic.
There’s a fast, wet slapping. Jason’s hand on Dick, Tim thinks. Getting him the rest of the way there. The soft creak of those springs again. Jason softening inside him, maybe, but still hard enough that he can rock into him, hips sealed together, fucking into the wet hot mess of his own come. “I need — ” Dick bites out, and he doesn’t get to finish saying what he needs, but Jason must know, must give it to him, because Dick grunts unh like a branch breaking, breathes hard for a minute, gulping, swallowing, then starts to calm down.
“still with me, baby?” Jason checks.
Tim shoves his free hand down his pants, sucking spitty blood from his knuckles. He jerks himself viciously, wrist yanking against the elastic waistband of his sweatpants — on comms Jason laughs and says, “really sexed you stupid this time, huh dickie?” and Dick groans back, “god, you really know how to ruin an afterglow, don’t you? come here” — and it builds in Tim’s body like pressure, like someone filling him up with cement until he bursts, and he comes to the soft, easy sound of their lips. Guilt hits, icy and nauseating; Tim smashes the button to hang up comms, rips the earpiece out of his ear, and flees to his bike before his legs even stop shaking, grabbing his boots and his helmet and his jacket on the way.
It’s a long and sticky ride back to the penthouse.
***
Tim’s got no right to feel the way he does. He has no right to be as sad as he is.
All his needs are accounted for. He lives in the sort of disgustingly huge and minimalist apartment most people only ever see on TikTok, high enough over the Gotham skyline that most of the time his view is just clouds. Bruce has been back for more than a year now, but Tim’s still in charge of most of the day-to-day at Wayne Enterprises, which earns him things like the top spot on Forbes’ 30 under 30 (not as prestigious as the Times 100) and invitations to sit on panels at international finance summits with Lex Luthor and Oliver Queen (awkward as hell). He let the board scrap Drake Industries for parts after his parents died, but he still has enough money left over in his personal bank account that he has to pay a team of five people to manage it as their full-time jobs, on top of the staggering trust that Bruce set up for him when he officially became Timothy Drake-Wayne. He’s certainly lost enough sleep staying up all night crunching numbers, but not in the same way that he knows Jason and Dick grew up doing, before Bruce adopted them — that he knows they still do now, resolved not to take anything from the silver Wayne spoon, the stubborn fucking bastards. There is nothing Tim’s ever going to need that he won’t be able to buy. Food, water, shelter, medical care, cars, yachts, vacations. A college degree, if he decides he wants one.
Tim’s even got people now, which is more than he ever had growing up. He’s got someone to make him soup if he gets sick, to take his temperature and tut disapprovingly. Steph abuses her spare key to his place once every couple weeks to charge an absurd amount of pho to his black card and complain about her college classes, and he and Cass have a standing date Sunday at noon to wander through the flea market in Grant Park, where she collects faded old drawings of the sea and leather-bound books in Polish and Yiddish and Vietnamese, building out her life in Gotham like a magpie building out a nest. If Tim needs help in the field, he can ask for it, and someone will always come. When he goes radio silent for a few days, drowning in the riptide of spreadsheets and corporate doublespeak and starts to forget what a genuine smile feels like on his face, Bruce calls and says, Let me help. Give me something to do, bud. Even Damian hasn’t tried to stab him in ages. Tim has more people than he’s ever had in his life. He can’t be lonely.
And yet.
He thinks maybe there’s a difference, between having people you can talk to and having someone you don’t have to talk to. Someone who knows how to interpret your wordless noises in the dark.
***
Bruce has adopted five children with varying degrees of legality and urgency, so he has plenty of contacts at City Hall — it should be surprising to absolutely no one that it takes him less than five hours to find out that Dick and Jason have gotten married.
It takes everyone else five hours and thirty seconds, because they’re all in the cave getting briefed on the latest Arkham breakout when the email comes in, so they all get to watch Bruce — suited up, his head bare — turn white, then furious, then that rarest emotion of all: hurt. The three-way growling match that ensues makes it clear immediately to all present that the world’s greatest detective has missed a thing or two vis-à-vis his two eldest sons. YOU’RE BROTHERS! is his first complaint, which makes Jason laugh and Dick, hunted, shoot back, Not fucking really, B!! — but wisely none of the rest of them stick around to hear the second. Tim manages to hop on the back of his bike before Steph can finish stealing it, his arm hooked loosely around her waist while they speed for the hills, cold air in the cave tunnels combing through his hair.
“Did you know?” Steph shouts, while they rocket through the dark, single headlight vertiginous ahead of them. “You totally knew, didn’t you?”
“That they got married?” Tim shouts back. Strangely, he can say it without any pain — he doesn’t feel anything right now, like his heart’s in shock.
“I didn’t even know they were fucking!” Steph sounds wild, hysterical. “B’s gonna crucify them!”
“That part I knew,” Tim admits. “The fucking, not the crucifying.”
Steph cackles. “Of course you did! You probably have pictures, you gross little perv,” but her voice is affectionate, no judgement, so Tim just sinks against the warm convex slope of her back and lets her hair smack him in the face, his cape snapping behind them, and doesn’t tell her that he does.
Historically, the people in this family are terrible at remembering when they’re on comms, so Tim screws his earpiece in while they’re carving through Bristol, heading for Queen’s Bridge. He can already hear the sirens, old air raid klaxons warning the citizens of Gotham that their city is once again being overrun by the criminally insane, if they should care to lock their doors. And sure enough he can hear Dick, back in the cave.
“You can do whatever you want, B,” he’s saying. He sounds tired. They’ve probably been yelling for a while now, the sort of yelling Bruce does when he’s so mad he doesn’t give a shit what you have to say, he just wants you to give in to him. “I don’t give a shit. Jason’s the love of my life. Whatever you have to do to deal with that, it’s your problem, not ours.”
“Chum — ” Bruce tries.
Then Damian cuts in, blunt as ever, “There is currently no one covering the Bowery, and Oracle is getting reports of fear toxin in the vicinity. Will the three of you be joining us, or should we call for reinforcements from the League?”
There’s a long silence. When the answer comes, it’s from Jason.
“Hold your horses, ya little demon. We’re on our way.”
***
An Arkham breakout is basically like a block party for their rogues gallery — lots people who weren’t even invited always decide to show up anyways.
Tim’s chasing down a small-time crook called Vulture who’s high on something and fast as hell, vaulting across rooftops and actually starting to get a little winded, when a vine catches his ankle and yanks him dangling into the air.
“IVY!” he yells. “This is not the best time!”
But the good doctor herself is down in the street, laughing melodiously and dancing with Steph, so Tim’s left without an audience while he pulls his tac knife and starts hacking at the vines. They screech and writhe, tightening around his leg — his knife goes through pants and skin when he tries to use it to stop the constriction, and Tim feels hot blood spill over his ankle, but he just twists the knife blade-out and keeps jimmying it, gritting his teeth against the pain, until the vine splits and lets him go. Vulture’s still in sight — barely, a good three rooftops away — and Tim’s getting ready to burst to his feet and go after him when a flowerbud poofs in his face. He coughs and spits and floods his eyes with emergency eyewash, but the pollen is all over him. Grimy on the fronts of his teeth, his gums. Making his nose sting.
Protocol when dosed with Poison Ivy’s pollen is to get back to the cave and let Alfred run a bunch of blood tests to figure out what antidote to use. But the klaxons are still wailing, they’re still way outnumbered by Arkham escapees, and Vulture’s still getting away.
“Screw it,” Tim mutters, and lurches to his feet.
He tackles Vulture over the side of a roof into a dumpster, breaking their fall with a grappling hook at the last second, delivers him into the custody of Gotham PD, then radios in to tell Oracle he’s out for the night. She’s too busy fielding reports from the others to press him too much about why, so Tim goes back to the penthouse via the secret entrance in an abandoned subway station to stand under the blistering spray of his shower, sneezing and sneezing.
Married, he thinks. It doesn’t change anything, not substantively, but — married.
Tim’s head is pounding, still resounding from impact with that dumpster. It feels like metal. He should probably be undergoing concussion protocol. Lumpy saliva gathers in his mouth, like after a cold; he spits and sees green pollen circling the drain with the diluted orange of his blood and realizes only because he’s looking down that he’s hard. It doesn’t feel like anything — like he’s cold, gone numb — and then he brushes himself with his fingertips and it hurts so much he gasps. Tears spill out of his eyes. Shaking, he wraps himself in a fist, braced on the tile, eyes squeezed closed against the wet skin of his own arm. It hurts. He needs to come like nothing he’s ever felt, but when he tugs tentatively it feels like he’s pulling out his own guts. A noise comes out of his mouth, a caveman noise he’s never heard himself make before. One of his knees gives out.
love feeling how deep you are, he remembers Dick saying — the muddled haze of his thoughts like fever. He has the presence of mind to dribble on some shower gel, then shoves three fingers inside himself before he can think about what he’s doing, like an animal gnawing off its own leg to get free. It hurts, but it’s what he needs. The shower spray on his skin makes him feel sick, wrong, but he slips and comes down hard with a crack on his knees and braces himself on the faucet handle to shove back harder onto his own hand, and he can tell he’s doing damage, it’s too much too fast, but it feels so good he doesn’t fucking care.
Goddamn Poison Ivy.
Tim sobs and bites down on his arm. He can’t get deep enough. His fingers are too small. He feels like he’s hurting himself just by breathing — he’s getting too much air again, he needs someone heavy on top of him to hold him together. To make sure he doesn’t take too much too fast. He needs — Jason saying, I’ve got you, that favorite place tucked into the curve of Dick’s neck, to be naked in front of the two men who he has loved and been loved by the most, the longest. The very first people to ever make him feel that he wasn’t alone — who have now decided that they will, until death do us part, love each other much more than they could ever stand to love him.
***
The city is all pandemonium, so there’s no one to notice Timothy Drake-Wayne, hair damp and moving on foot, hard-on belted painfully under the waistband of his jeans, as he hurries three blocks south to the closest gay club. He’s still technically under 21 for about two months, but some well-placed C-notes get him in the front door, and once that’s handled it only takes five minutes or so sweating in the pulsing strobes, head splitting open, to find a guy who’s big and dull-eyed and willing to fuck him in the alley.
Tim’s never actually had sex, but he knows it’s not supposed to feel like this. It hurts when the guy tries to jerk him off, so Tim has to shove his hand away and bite out just fuck me — hurts when the guy shoves in with nothing but spit and a condom, holding Tim’s face down hard against the wall, pinprick scrapes and brick-grit tearing up his cheek. He’s so big it feels like being stabbed, like getting impaled on a length of rebar. Tim’s legs turn to jelly, knees folding, but the guy holds him up and gets deep enough that Tim makes a low animal sound and doesn’t stop the whole time he’s being fucked, chest and throat and face all on fire, his vision whiting out, whatever Ivy’s pollen did to him finally remedied.
He digs into the wall until his fingernails are bloody, trying to claw away at the same time he wants to get closer, the guy grunting behind him, and shoots off completely untouched. It’s awful — more like puking than coming, like his body is purging something that needs to be purged — but as much as it sucks, it’s its own sort of relief. Tim’s sobbing, mouth wide open; he barely feels it as the guy grabs his hair and forces his neck back, sucking messy on the hinge of his jaw while he pumps a few more times, too rough, and fills the condom.
Eventually Tim’s alone, pulling his pants back up, shaking so bad he can barely button his fly.
He stops and leans a shoulder against the wall, breathing the mildewy alley air, stomach twisting, and wants very badly to cry. He doesn’t, though, because he knows there’s no point in crying when no one’s around to hear him fall apart, and when the only two people who ever figured out how to put him back together will be taking care of each other exclusively from now on.
***
Tim bleeds for two days and then gets over it. The only lasting damage is an embarrassing Google search, which he deletes from his history — there are probably worse ways to lose your virginity.
“Sorry we didn’t tell you, baby bird,” Dick says, the next time Tim takes a knife to the shoulder on patrol and ends up crashing at one of Jason’s safehouses. “We should’ve. It was shitty of us.”
“I kinda knew,” Tim admits, mouth full of kung pao chicken. They’re on the floor in front of the coffee table because Jason’s kitchen table is covered in Tim’s blood. Dick’s fresh out of the shower, his damp hair tucked behind his ears, left ring finger tattooed. Tim wants to straddle his crossed legs and eat his mouth until he can’t feel the burn in his bad arm anymore, until they’re both soft and pink and content and heavy. “Not the marriage part, I mean, obviously. But I knew you guys were together. You weren’t exactly subtle.”
“Hey, we were plenty subtle,” Dick protests. “B didn’t even notice.”
“B didn’t want to notice,” Tim tells him. Dick smiles ruefully, conceding the point, and it’s painful to see this hurt him, Bruce’s reaction to him and Jason, so Tim asks, “Did you propose, or did he?”
Dick laughs and says, “Neither, really,” and Jason would’ve left it at that, smug at keeping Tim in the dark, but Jason’s taking forever in the shower and Dick likes to talk, so Tim gets to hoard this too, like he’s storing up how Jason’s hands felt, palms pressing him down onto the kitchen table while Dick stitched him up. “Someone on the street asked us how long we’d been married,” Dick says, mouth still smiling. “Jay was giving me shit for the scarf I was wearing, we ended up kissing, I don’t remember how — and this little old lady waiting for the bus told us how adorable we were, and Jay was making that face — you know, the pissy one he makes whenever someone has the gall to act like he isn’t the big scary Red Hood. And then the old lady asked, how long have you two been married, and his whole expression just changed.” A smile that’s not for Tim, eyes downcast, nostalgic, chopsticks stabbing into rice. “We looked at each other, and — I guess we knew we both wanted it. Neither of us even said it out loud. We just went right down to the courthouse.”
It’s not even that romantic a story. An argument on the street, PDA, some woman accosting them at the bus stop, a courthouse wedding. But Tim wonders what it would be like to have that sort of bright happy moment to live inside forever, a moment that’s only for you and your husband. Dick glances up over Tim’s shoulder, eyes racking focus, and Tim turns to find Jason leaning in the doorway, damp and clean from the shower, smiling softly — his eyes on Dick. Only ever on Dick.
Tim sleeps in their guest room and hears nothing.
It’s torture, lying flat on his back with painkillers dulling his senses, staring at the white void of the ceiling and willing himself to sleep like trying to wriggle up a mountain on his belly, stuck in place. He strains his ears for sounds from the other room, but it’s quiet. Tim gets out of bed and makes it to the door before he realizes what he’s planning to do — that he’s planning to walk across the hall and knock on Dick and Jason’s door like a kid who wants to climb in bed with his parents after a nightmare. The thought of them in there asleep is a siren song. The peace of their nighttime bedroom, the thick womblike quiet, the warm stupid weight of sleeping bodies taking comfort from each other while the minds are gone. It’s a sexless hunger Tim feels, wanting to lie between them. Wanting them to recognize him by his weight, without waking.
Tim wants to know how they twitch when they’re dreaming. He wants to watch it happen.
Idiot, he thinks to himself, greedy, greedy idiot, then gathers his things and leaves.
***
Pain and pleasure are twins, Tim knows.
He’ll never go to bed with the loves of his life, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what it’s like to fall apart under their hands, to be wrung out, sweaty, weak and exhausted. Jason’s fingers have been inside his body, putting pressure on a wound until Tim couldn’t breathe, dark and furious and gritting out fuck you, baby bird, you fucking stay with me. He’s come back to life drowsing and mumbling with his head in Dick’s lap; come back panicked and feverish with Dick’s flat palm trapping his pulse, pressed to his chest, coaxing him breathe, timmy, you’ve gotta breathe for me.
“You okay, Timbo?” Jason asks, after the fourth time Tim lets him put him on the mat. He’s back on his feet already, hands on his hips, staring Tim down. Tim’s whole body throbs; he wants it to throb worse, hurt different. He wants to roll over and bite the bone of Jason’s ankle.
Instead he takes Jason’s proffered hand up, and says, “I’m fine, mom.”
Jason snorts and shoves him away. Tim rolls his shoulders, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and they square up — and then they’re at it again, kicking the shit out of each other.
Tim’s a second too late dodging a kick, and Jason’s heel smacks his jaw hard enough to loosen his back teeth. The rituals are fucking intricate, he thinks bitterly, spitting blood. Maybe too intricate.
***
“Hey, uh, Red,” Oracle says over comms, “that building’s rigged to explode.”
Tim puts down the last of Black Mask’s goons, breathing hard. “You’re kidding.”
“You know I don’t kid about explosives. Sionis must’ve been willing to sacrifice some of his people to make sure whichever Bats responded went out with a bang. You better move, Red, you’ve got about thirty seconds to get out.”
“Shit,” Tim says, mind kicking into overdrive. He bolts down the hall, trying every door he comes across. They’re all locked tight. “I’m on the tenth floor, Oracle, I need an exterior window.”
Oracle types rapidly. “No joy, Red, your only shot is the stairs.”
The last door in the hall opens under Tim’s hand — it’s a break room, but there are no windows, so Tim swears and throws himself around the corner towards the stairs. There are a lot of fucking stairs. “Ten seconds,” Oracle cautions in Tim’s ear, tense. “Nine, eight — ”
“What’s with the countdown, guys?” Jason’s voice cuts in, blundering blindly into Tim’s impending death. “We got a bomb about to go off?”
“Shut up, Hood,” Oracle snaps. “Red, you’ve got five seconds. Four, three — ”
Tim reaches for his grappling hook and finds it gone, dropped in the fight. There’s not a chance in hell he’s going to make it to ground level in time. He’s going to die on the tenth floor of Roman Sionis’ windowless fucking office building. “Fuck,” he blurts, numb. “I’m toast.”
“Red,” Oracle says, her voice shaking, “you’re out of time.”
“Tim,” Jason bites, extra mean like he gets when he’s really scared, “listen to me — ”
The comms cut out.
Tim squeezes his eyes shut and prays that the old fifties refrigerator he’s huddled inside doesn’t block his tracker as well as his comms, because chances are good that when the dust settles he’s going to be buried under several hundred tons of rubble, and he doesn’t think the air in here will last him very long. He doesn’t have time to think anything else before the bombs go off — his head cracks against the inside of the fridge, his stomach goes out from under him, for a second he’s in free-fall, and then everything goes dark.
Some time later he opens his eyes. It’s so black he can’t tell whether he’s unconscious or awake, his eyes straining for any speck of light and finding absolutely nothing. His ears are ringing, tinny and piercing. He thinks he hears static over comms, but the ringing is so loud he can’t be sure if the voice is real or in his head. “…imbo,” someone’s saying, too garbled to make out who. “…alk to me…aby bird…” Tim finds the flashlight on his belt and clicks it on, wincing in the blanking light before he remembers to aim it at his feet. The fridge is barely large enough for him to fit with his knees pulled up to his chin, head jammed against the freezer section above, and when he tries to shift to a less painful position there’s a nervy stab up his spine that warns him to hold still.
He tries his radio. “Hello? Does anybody read?” Nothing. Typical. “This is Red Robin in the blind. Sionis’ building exploded, but I’m in a fridge. A mint-colored fridge, if you dig up more than one.”
Then there’s nothing to do but sit tight and wait. Trying to open the fridge would be suicide, since there’s not a chance in hell he’s not buried, so Tim just turns off the flashlight and closes his eyes and hallucinates voices in the dark. Your most important tool is your breath, Bruce telling him, a million years ago. You deprive your body of the breath, it’s like fighting to survive with one hand behind your back, and Tim ocean-breathes with his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, calm and even, vast tracts of time stretching open inside of him.
He remembers being young enough that the world felt huge, remembers being all alone in it. Bruce Wayne at a gala crouching down to shake his hand and say Pleased to meet you, Timothy, and how Tim had thought his hand felt how a father’s hand was supposed to feel, warm and safe. He remembers being newly ten and crying because his parents couldn’t get home for his birthday and seeing Robin’s cape through the lens of his camera and forgetting it all, the sight of his hero an instant panacea. He remembers the first time he put on the suit, so sick with guilt and nerves that he was sure he would vomit, how it felt cold and foreign on his skin and how he thought that must be some sort of sign. Alfred had been the one to disabuse him of the notion in the end, hands folded behind his back in a cozy scottish knit, telling him, You look quite fetching, Master Tim. I dare say your predecessor would have been proud.
What Jason had been, eventually, was homicidal, but Tim had always been fucked in the head when it came to love, so it hadn’t changed anything. Jason’s hard hating hands forcing his chin back while he slits his throat; Jason scrambling for him in the grip of fear toxin, palm fitted to the thin scar on his neck, ugly sobbing sorry sorry fuck timmy I’m so sorry. Tim remembers trying to talk him down and not being able to, trying to comfort him and Jason just sobbing and sobbing, red-faced and snotty and utterly silent, until at last Dick had skidded in and Jason broke with a sound like a man at a gravestone, grieved and helpless and too crippled by the enormity of loss to hold himself together. I killed him, dickie, shaking so bad that Dick had to press his face into his shoulder to keep it there, his own eyelashes speared with tears under his domino, promising that he hadn’t, that Tim was unhurt, that no one was dead.
And he’d reached out for Tim with one arm, Tim going as if magnetized to be pulled into the hug with them, his nose pressed to Jason’s jaw in the crush of it. Someone’s hand was on the curve of his skull — Dick’s, he thought — and he could still feel Jason shaking, but standing there wrapped up with the two of them in a seamy alley, for a few minutes he felt safer and more loved than he ever had before.
So yeah, it might’ve gotten off to a rocky start, but overall Tim thinks he’s lived a pretty good life. There’s not much he would do different, if he could go back — it’s okay if this is how it ends, here, vacuum-sealed in this fridge. It’s okay if today is the day he dies.
“You are not fucking dying today, Timothy Jackson Drake.” The words are small and far away, and Tim can’t remember who said them. “Tim. Tim, I know you can hear me. Lemme hear your voice, baby.”
“Jay,” Tim slurs. Everything is fuzzy and ringing. “Jay, ’m running out of air.”
“No you’re not,” Jason says, still faint. Comms, Tim realizes. It must be their comms, working now for some reason. “We’re so close to you, Tim, you just have to hang on for a few more minutes.”
“Jay.” Tim’s mouth is full of cotton. He’s not sure what he means to say except that voicing Jason’s name makes it feel like he’s not dying alone, like Jason’s here with him. “’s not the worst way to go. Not so bad. Suffocating.”
“You’re not fucking suffocating,” Jason snaps. He sounds like he’s coming apart, like he’s going to beat someone to death. Tim hopes it’s not him. “Here, here, someone wants to talk to you — ”
“Timmy?” Dick says.
And Tim’s not sure what it is, why this is what breaks him when he could talk to Jason and keep it together, but as soon as he hears Dick’s voice he melts into tears. “Dick,” he gasps, mucusy. His emotions are suddenly too big and awful for him to get a handle on, like he’s a little kid again who just wants someone to hold him and tell him everything’s going to be okay; the fridge is hard and cold and turning into a coffin around him. “Dick, I think — I think I’m gonna die down here.”
“You’re not gonna die.” It’s hard to tell, but it sounds like Dick is crying too. “We’re winching the building off you now, we’re gonna get you out, you just have to hold on a minute longer. Just one minute longer, Timmy, for me.”
Tim’s lungs are going through the motions, but nothing’s happening. His heart is drumming in every corner of his body, furiously pumping blood with no oxygen. He tries to take a deep breath and it’s like lifting a boulder with his diaphragm.
“Dick,” he says. “Hey, Dick.”
“I’m here,” Dick promises. “I’m here, baby bird, we’re gonna get you out.”
“Probably not,” Tim rasps. His voice sounds weird. “Hey, it’s not your fault, okay? Tell Jason it’s not his fault either. I shouldn’t have gone in without scanning the place, that’s on me.”
“Timmy — ”
“I love you guys.” Tim feels every bump of his tongue in his mouth and his lips against his teeth, forming the letters. It feels like a good last sentiment. Everything else he’s ever done has paled in comparison to loving Dick and Jason. “’m really glad you and Jay are so happy, Dick. you’re gonna have a good life together.”
Then he’s out.
***
The second Alfred discharges him from the cave, Dick insists on taking him home. Tim tries to brush him off and escape back to the penthouse — this is hardly the first encounter he’s had with eternal oblivion, but reminding Dick as much only makes him look gutted, so instead Tim finds himself in the passenger seat of Dick’s painfully stereotypical crown vic, heading towards Bludhaven. Dick won’t even hear of swinging by the penthouse to get some of Tim’s things — he’s both convinced that Tim will parlay it into crashing there for the night and derail this operation and concerned for some mystifying reason that Tim doesn’t have anything hanging on his walls. Recovering from suffocation is an arduous, painful process, and Tim doesn’t think it will be made any easier by being forced to stay in a two-bedroom apartment with two men he’s in excruciating unrequited love with, but he’s too tired to argue.
He sinks in the passenger seat, swimming in the hoodie Dick gave him in the cave, and watches Dick’s hands on the steering wheel as they slalom down I-95 away from Gotham. Dick has tiny scars on the backs of his hands, in between his fingers, like they all do. The black tattooed line of his wedding ring is stark against tan skin. His knuckles are shaded with scar tissue, just a bit wider than his fingers. Tim thinks about Dick handling him, putting him to bed and soaping him up and guiding him to lean back against a strong familiar body, not because he thinks Tim can’t do it himself but because he loves him enough to do it for him. He thinks about those knuckles notching past his teeth, stretching the tight rim of his —
“You okay, Tim?” Dick asks, frowning.
“Fine,” Tim says. There’s no caught reaction, no guilty jolt. He’s used to sectioning his mind away from his body. “Just tired, is all.”
It’s barely sunset outside, the last traces of daylight still lingering on the horizon, but Dick squeezes his shoulder and promises, “We’ll feed you and put you right to bed, no worries.”
“I’m not actually a child,” Tim grumbles automatically.
Dick shoots him a weird look. “I know, Tim.”
Before Tim can figure out what the fuck that’s all about, they’re pulling up in front of Dick’s building. Dick does that thing in the elevator where he talks just to talk, nothing that Tim has to reply to, which means he has time to work himself into a little bit of a panic over the fact that he’s about to see Jason again. He hasn’t seen him since he came back to life with Jason’s mouth sealed over his, giving him rescue breaths — Jason has been jostled out of the way by Bruce and Steph, the look on his face incandescently furious, and Tim had been too flattened under the force of the worst headache of his fucking life to try and say anything to him. That was four days ago.
Now, Dick unlocks the door and lets Tim shuffle around him inside before he closes it behind him. There are winter coats on the hooks, boots piled underneath, enough clutter that Dick has to press against Tim to get past him in the narrow entryway. Keys clatter in the bowl, joining a BPD badge; Dick calls out, “Jay?” and gets a response from the kitchen.
Tim’s always loved Wayne Manor — it was the first place he really belonged, the first place he ever felt like he had a right to exist. But growing up in his parents’ sterile museum of a house, this is what he imagined when he imagined a home. Books overflowing the bookshelf in the living room, stacked on the floor. Cereal boxes lined up half-empty on the counter, dirty dishes in the sink, the washing machine chum-chum-chuming down the hall. An apartment like a warm hug.
It always hurts being here, because he knows he can never stay.
After a minute he follows Dick into the kitchen.
Dick’s wrapped around Jason’s back at the stove, teasing him and getting shoved away, words murmured too low for Tim to hear. Tim stops on the threshold, pinned by that same awful feeling that defined his entire childhood — that he shouldn’t be here, that he’s intruding.
Then Jason elbows his clingy husband away and turns to see Tim in the doorway. His face is the same as it was at that collapse site, hard and closed off, and Tim’s stomach drops. But Jason’s eyes catch on something — Tim’s hoodie? his hands buried in the pockets, swamped in it — and all at once his anger is gone. In its place is something a lot more vulnerable, something Tim can’t figure out how to interpret, because he’s never seen it before.
Jason puts down the wooden spoon and comes across the room, muttering, “c’mere,” and the next thing Tim knows he’s sitting on the counter next to the stove, installed there by Jason.
There’s a thumb in the corner of his lips — c’mere, gimme that mouth, he remembers — and then Jason kisses him once, a slow nourishing press, and steps away.
“Gave me a fucking heart attack,” he mutters.
Tim can relate.
***
Nothing else weird happens at dinner, or during the three episodes of Grey’s Anatomy they use to anesthetize themselves, slumped in front of the TV, so Tim figures it was just one of those friendly brotherly kisses European people are always giving each other and tries to forget about it. It’s not that easy, though, with Jason’s weight dipping the couch next to him like a gravity well. Looking at his broad shoulders and curly hair and the bony shape of his knees under his joggers. Tim never thought he’d know what the tip of Jason’s pointy nose felt like tucked against his cheek, and now that he does he’s not sure how he’s ever going to go back.
Dick makes it worse — when Tim shuffles out of the bathroom and starts to head for the guest bed, Dick steers him towards their room instead, saying, “Nuh-uh, baby bird. Nice try. In here.”
Tim doesn’t get it — not until Jason wriggles down under the covers and lays his head ear-down right at the bottom of Tim’s ribcage, where he can hear his heartbeat and feel the rise and fall of his breathing at the same time. Tim has seen the corpses of people he loves before. He knows how traumatizing it is to watch that shift as the spirit leaves the body, from person to thing, and if this is what Jason needs to process a shift in the other direction, then far be it from Tim to begrudge him that. It’s not like it’s a hardship, either. Jason’s head is a calming weight on his stomach, his hand splayed over Tim’s side, and the lamp goes out, and Dick sprawls out on his side of the bed, arms and legs akimbo, asleep with his mouth open within seconds.
Right before he falls asleep himself — dragged into the sort of drugging, blissful oblivion that feels almost obscene — Tim imagines he feels Jason turn and kiss to his stomach, through his shirt. But he’s probably already dreaming.
He wakes once in the night, chest on fire, convinced he’s suffocating again before he comes out of the nightmare and remembers where he is.
There are arms around him, voices he knows. He’s grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes, shoving back frustrated tears; someone pulls his hands away from his face, mops his cheeks with the cuff of a soft sleeve. “fuck,” he grits out, “fuck, fuck.”
“hey.” There’s an arm around his middle — pulling him close against a body that he’d know blind deaf and drunk, like an animal knows its family. “hey,” Dick says, still half-asleep, “you’re okay, tim. you’re okay, we’re here, you’re safe.”
And it’s dangerous, Tim knows, letting Dick soothe him. But the part of his brain that knows that — that knows sometime soon, maybe tomorrow, he’s going to be shoved unceremoniously back out into the big cold world and left to fend for himself, while Dick and Jason stay here in this big bed kissing each other’s tattooed fingers — is quiet under the heavy, sleepy hypnotism of absolute rest, and Jason tucks his mouth against Tim’s brow and murmurs, “go back to sleep, baby,” thinking he’s Dick, and the thing that’s alive and terrified in Tim’s throat snuffles softly and circles once and beds back down, content and leaden, to the warm orange kaleidoscope of sleep.
***
He leaves the next morning and avoids Dick and Jason like the plague for as long as he can manage, using all of the considerable resources at his disposal.
Nothing they did was wrong — Tim’s the one who’s fucked in the head, they were just being good brothers, taking care of him after his latest near-death experience — but Tim doesn’t think he can be around them without letting on how he feels, how he wants them like a yawning, bloody cavern in his chest, so instead he hides. He trades patrols with Steph and hacks the Batcomputer’s video camera so he can make sure the cave is empty before he uses it and positions Damian between him and them at any family meetings he can’t avoid. For three days he sleeps on the cot in his WE office, because Jason came pounding on the penthouse door and he barely made it out in time to stop him hearing his phone ringing on the other side.
Tim’s aware that hiding is childish, but he’s a Wayne — he’d be an outlier if he knew how to deal with his feelings maturely. This raw, tender nerve will go numb eventually, like it did after the first time he watched them kiss, after he found out they’d gotten married. And once it does, everything will go back to normal. He just has to give it time, and space.
And then he runs into Poison Ivy on patrol.
“You know,” he tells her, dangling by his ankle from one of her vines, cape swinging, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as someone who wanted to manufacture a new date rape drug.”
Ivy makes a face, regretful but not that regretful. “It wasn’t supposed to do that,” she admits. “I’m working on it. You try cross-breeding plants instead of just mixing chemicals in a lab — it’s not an exact science. Luckily…” A flower twists up in front of Tim’s face, petals opening menacingly. “I’ve got the same test subject for round two. The scientific method is important, you know.”
“Oh come on,” Tim whines — but the doctor just smiles sweetly and squeezes the flower, puffing pink pollen in his face.
He sneezes so hard he blacks out a little, blood rushing to his upside-down head, and when he comes back around Poison Ivy is gone — as is, he discovers with a sigh, his knife. He turns on his comms, and asks, “Hey, anybody got a minute? I’m kind of in a bind.”
“I’m five blocks away,” Jason answers at once. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m good.” Tim writhes and bucks, trying to loosen the vine’s grip on his ankle, but he can’t get any leverage hanging like he is. “Ivy just left me a little tied up, took my knife.”
Jason snorts. “See, this is why you gotta carry more knives, Red.”
“One is plenty,” Tim returns. Something in his chest loosens at how easy it is to fall back into their normal banter, no stiltedness, no pain. He was worried. “Not everyone needs eight knives, Hood.”
“Eight? You better count again, baby bird.”
“As long as you’ve got something you can cut me down with, I don’t give a shit,” Tim says.
Then Jason is there, vaulting over the side of the roof, grappling hook going back on his belt. He swaggers over, hands on his hips, clearly grinning at his predicament, even though Tim can’t see his face under the helmet. “Got yourself in a bind, huh Red?”
Tim can feel it starting to happen again — that strange, alien heat building in his stomach, at the base of his throat. Staring at Jason from this angle isn’t helping much, like being upside-down has made every part of him new. Holsters on his thighs, heavy tac belt tight around his waist. Span of his chest under his leather jacket, black t-shirt too loose to show the shape of him underneath, but Tim wants — like a kick, sudden and violent — to get on his knees, to rub his cheek over the lap of Jason’s dark jeans, to feel the hard buttons of his nipples under his tongue.
It doesn’t hurt as much as last time, but this version of the pollen doesn’t seem any less potent. He swallows — hard work, when you’re upside-down, and Tim wonders how much harder it would be if he were swallowing around Jason’s —
“Hang on,” Jason says, frowning. “What did she dose you with, Red?” He crouches in front of Tim so they’re face-to-face, shining a penlight in his eyes. “Your pupils are crazy dilated.”
“Nothing,” Tim manages to say. It’s a struggle, when Jason’s close enough that he could reach out and grab his head and haul him over to bite his mouth. “Just cut me down, will you?”
Jason cuts him down, but doesn’t let him go anywhere. “You know what she gave you, don’t you?”
Tim twists out of his grip. “I might’ve encountered it before,” he hedges. “I know how to deal with it, Hood, you can go back to whatever you’re doing. Thanks for the assist.”
“Hey.” Jason grabs him by the cape, which is just rude. “Tell me how to deal with it.”
Tim’s good at lying. He should lie, say anything get Jason off his back so he can go find someone to fuck him in an alley in peace, but he’s tired and cold and suddenly mad, that he should be the one to get dosed with this fucking sex pollen when Jason could just go home and get fucked by his husband, who loves him, so he snaps, “I need a cock up my ass, Hood, now let me fucking go.”
He rips his arm away and makes it halfway down the fire escape — not trusting himself to use his grappling hook when his hands are shaking this bad — before Jason catches up with him. His arm is a bar across Tim’s chest, slamming him back against the wall. His helmet is gone, his eyes wild behind his domino. “What are you fucking talking about?” he demands. “Tim — ”
“You heard me.” Tim lets his head thunk back against the wall. His whole body is alive under Jason’s hands, and it’s — mean, is what it is, for Jason to draw it out like this. “Let me go, Jay.”
“No,” Jason says, “no, who the fuck are you gonna go to, baby bird?”
“I don’t know,” Tim says, chest aching. Quit rubbing it in, he should add, but he doesn’t want to think about rubbing and also if he tries to say it he’s pretty sure he’s going to burst into tears. “I’ll find someone, like last time. Just let me go.”
He tries to buck Jason off, but Jason just presses him tighter against the wall. “Fuck that,” Jason growls, “you really want to fuck a stranger like this?”
“No,” Tim snarls — crying now, eyes wet, but he can’t help it. Ivy’s pollen has turned his emotions into a river, and they’re all spilling out of their cage. “Of course I don’t want to fuck a stranger, but I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
“Yeah you do,” Jason says. His thumb is on Tim’s lower lip, and Tim has a second to taste cigarette smoke and gunpowder and coppery blood, and then Jason presses his whole body forward and kisses him. It’s brutal, bruising, claiming. Like Jason wants to eat him.
Tim shoves him away. This time Jason goes, not fighting.
“I can’t, Jay,” Tim tells him. He’s surprised at himself, surprised he’s strong enough not to just take whatever he can get from Jason, gratefully. “Thanks for the offer, but you’re married — ”
“You think Dickie won’t want in on this, you’re out of your mind.”
“ — and I can’t,” Tim finishes. He tries to sound firm, but he’s miserable and shivering and he thinks it probably comes across in his voice. Jason’s watching him very carefully. “I’m sorry, Jay, but I can’t just be with you guys for one night as like, medical care, and then go back to being your annoying little brother. I think it would literally tear me in half, I can’t…”
Tears leak out of his eyes, pooling on the lip of his domino. He blinks and feels them run over the mask, onto his cheeks. “At least when I fuck a stranger it only hurts for a second,” he says. “So just let me go, Jason, please.”
“Yeah,” Jason says, “yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
And then his hands are on the sides of Tim’s head, painfully gentle this time, holding him in place while he kisses and licks the tears away from Tim’s mask. Tim slumps in his grip, all the fight gone out of him. “You want a ring?” Jason murmurs, mouthing over his cheek, turning his head to suck on his throat, his scar, like he has to taste it. “I’ve got a tattoo gun, Timmy, we can get you a ring.”
Tim makes a hurt sound, clinging to his shoulders. “Don’t tease me.”
“I’m not teasing,” Jason tells him, “and it’s not just for one night, baby bird. Let me take you home so that me and Dickie can fuck you right. Every night for the rest of your life.”
Tim’s maybe sort of in shock, but he manages to say, “I don’t think I’m gonna make it all the way to Bludhaven. And if you put me on a motorcycle I’m gonna come in my pants.”
“Not actually a deterrent,” Jason grins.
“Jay,” Tim complains.
“Fine, fine.” Jason kisses him again, bracing. “Safehouse it is.”
***
Tim knows what love sounds like through a closed door, he knows what it looks like from a distance, knows how it feels in his chest, like a chronic illness keeping him up at night. He’d just resigned himself to never seeing it reflected back at him. Warm, familial love, yes — he has that in spades, more than he ever could’ve imagined as a lonely, neglected child — but not the sort of love that burns you up, that makes someone look at you like just the sight of you sets them on fire. He told himself that some people just weren’t meant for that, and that he was one of them. Convinced himself that was okay, that he could get along without it.
Except now here Dick is, staring at him like he never, ever wants to look away. His Nightwing suit is still on, but he’s taken the domino off, his skin pink and fresh from the adhesive, beautiful.
“Tim,” he says.
The pollen is doing lots of nonsense to Tim’s body. He feels overheated and cold at the same time, skin hungry and feverish, he’s sweating in weird places, he’s so empty he’s clenching convulsively, and also he needs to sneeze. “Hey, Dick,” he says awkwardly. “So I sort of got sex pollened.”
“Yeah,” Dick croaks. “Jay mentioned.” He puts a hand on the side of Tim’s neck, thumb moving behind his ear, heat of his body radiating through the glove — and before Tim even realizes what’s about to happen his hips jolt and he comes in his fucking pants, wimpering.
“Fuck,” he says, knees folding. Dick catches him, eases him to the floor. Jason’s still standing just inside the door to the safehouse, staring with an open mouth, and Tim says, “Sorry. Sorry, fuck, it must be making me — extra sensitive, or something.”
“Don’t apologize,” Jason says roughly. “Jesus fuck, baby bird, that was hot as hell.”
Tim just leans against Dick’s shoulder, trying to catch his breath. He’s ready to go again already, throbbing, so desperate it’s hard not to just rock forward against Dick’s kneeling thigh. Instead he makes himself sit up, move away a little, getting air between them. They haven’t even talked yet.
Dick seems to be thinking the same thing. “Are you sure about this, Tim?” he asks, still holding onto him. “If it’s just the pollen making you want us…”
“Dick,” Tim says flatly — there doesn’t seem to be any point in keeping secrets now — “I’ve been in love with both of you since I was fucking fourteen. Probably since before that. It’s not the pollen.”
There’s that look again, like Tim’s the most incredible thing in the world. “Okay,” Dick says, as much to himself as to Tim, deciding he’s going to do this, “okay, fuck,” then puts his hand back on Tim’s neck, in the same spot that just made him shoot off totally untouched, and draws him into a gentle, searching kiss. He’s more tentative than Jason, and Tim makes a hungry noise against his lips, moving closer into his lap, trying to lick into his mouth. Dick lets him, sucking on his tongue.
Tim hears the deadbolt on the door, heavy footsteps, Jason breathing like he’s getting a workout. It gets him even hotter, thinking of Jason standing there watching while he grinds in Dick’s lap, knees spread wide enough that he can feel the stretch on the insides of his thighs, too far gone for anything like shame. “Dickie,” Jason says darkly, “get him in the bedroom.”
It’s unequivocally an order, and Tim remembers Jason’s voice over comms, don’t make me tie you up, dickie. Dick stands and takes Tim with him, his legs around his waist, stumbling and catching himself on the wall. Tim doesn’t take his mouth off him for a second, the taste of sweat on his skin like a fucking drug, and has no way of knowing if that’s the pollen or if this is just what sex is like when you love the person you’re with, when every part of their body isn’t just a body but them, not just hands on him but Dick’s hands on him, not just a pulse under his lips and his teeth but Dick’s pulse, someone he loves who knees across the bed and guides him down in the pillows and comes with him murmuring, hey, hey, I’m here timmy, not going anywhere, and maybe, loves him back.
Jason’s shedding guns and knives across the room, unclipping holsters and sheaths, lining them up on the dresser, methodical and quick. “You gotta keep talking, Tim,” he says. “Let us hear you, baby. Tell us what you need.”
“I’m gonna,” Tim pants, squirming under Dick, who’s not even really doing anything but lying there petting his hair out of his face, “fuck, I’m gonna come again, I just need — ” he reaches for his fly, planning to shove the heel of his hand against himself as hard as he can, but Dick gets there first, popping the button and sliding the zip with the ease of long pants-opening practice. If Tim had any brain cells still operating he’d be embarrassed about the mess he’s made of himself already, but Dick doesn’t seem to mind — he makes a wrecked noise and watches as he slides his fingers through Tim’s come, still warm. Tim can’t hold himself back anymore — he claws at Dick’s hair and the slippery back of his suit and fucks into his gloved hand, then seals his open mouth on Dick’s shoulder and comes so hard it forces a rough grunt out of him, forces his legs to splay open.
“budge up, dickie,” he hears Jason saying, from very far away. The bed rocks. Tim’s taking his sweet time swimming back to himself through the molasses of contentment. “go strip down, I’ll look after him for a minute.”
It should rankle, them talking about him like he’s not here — and normally it would, but right now all Tim feels is a massive relief, so grateful he could cry, that he doesn’t have to decide what to do, that he can just lie here and trust them to take care of him. Jason settles back against the headboard and pulls Tim up to rest against his chest — he has adhesive solvent in his hands, and he works Tim’s mask off slowly, gently, Tim leaning in the cage of his bent legs. When the domino is off, he rubs moisturizer between his palms to warm it up and massages it into Tim’s cheeks, his forehead, carefully around his eyes. “thanks,” Tim says, while Jason takes off his boots and his tac belt and his cape, shoving it all onto the floor. “you don’t have to do all that. I can do it myself.”
Jason fits a thumb in Tim’s mouth, pressing down on his tongue. “I know,” he rasps. “I want to.”
Tim sucks on his thumb, teeth scraping the fingernail, already ready to go again. Some deeply buried part of his mind is still analyzing the pollen, cataloguing the effects away for analysis at a later date. It’s different than the first batch, softer, less urgent, the pain less acute, but as a tradeoff it seems to be making him come over and over like a fucking hose.
Eventually they’re all naked, the bed a wreck around them, covers shoved to the sides and the floor and sheets brutalized. There’s something about being naked with Dick and Jason that thrills him, not sexually but like they’re doing something they shouldn’t, something that could get them in trouble, like they’ve been left home alone unsupervised.
Tim lays back and the air on his bare skin makes him want to hide, goosebumps rising. A hand drags up the outside of his thigh, to the pale hinge of his hip — Jason, easing his legs open, putting him on display. “you sure?” he asks, and Tim isn’t sure until he turns and presses a kiss to the inside of his knee, the knob of bone, and then he is. He’s sure. He clenches around nothing, hard enough that it moves his cock, drooling a line of precome over his stomach. “fuck me,” he says, breathless suddenly with want — with a desire to be held down and made a mess of, by Jason — “jay, fuck me, please, please,” and Dick presses a kiss to the side of Jason’s head and hands him a tube and Jason’s hiding his face in Tim’s thigh, biting stinging kisses, and there’s a finger pressing inside him and all the air punches out of Tim’s lungs and he’s coming again, striping Jason’s surprised face. “shit,” he says, “shit, shit, sorry — ” but Jason just licks some come off his lips and wipes his face on Tim’s stomach like a dog and keeps at it, come in his hair, scissoring him open on two fingers until Tim is sobbing and cursing him and begging for, “more, jay, more, I’m ready.”
Jason makes him get on his knees because he’s a worrywart, but that means that Tim gets to sit in Dick’s lap, braced on Dick’s shoulders while Jason holds his hips and fucks into him. There are a lot of logistics, fucking with three people, and it starts to feel kind of athletic getting the angle right, but then Jason hits his prostate and Tim can’t do anything but drool into the crook of Dick’s neck, that favorite spot, sobbing and moaning while Dick kisses his brow and murmurs, so good, timmy, you’re doing so good. Coming feels like there’s a hand inside his body squeezing his balls, wringing them hard, and there’s barely a dribble this time, Tim’s abdomen clenching and bringing nothing up. “fuck,” Jason bites, his chest flush to Tim’s back, hips sealed against his ass, rocking shallowly, “fuck, timmy, you still with me?”
“yeah,” Tim gulps, arching his spine to take him deeper, bracing himself on the headboard, “yeah, jay, come in me. want to feel it, feel you filling me up.”
Jason makes a dying sound, and Dick kisses him over Tim’s shoulder, hard, and reaches around the both of them to shove a dry finger up Jason’s ass. Jason’s hips drive forward into Tim so hard that he gets even deeper, his weight collapsing against Tim’s back while he comes and comes, his hips twitching, coating his insides. There’s so much that Tim feels it squelch out of him, pressing around Jason’s softening cock, and the sensation is so obscene that his body makes a valiant but useless effort to come again immediately, jumping against Dick’s chest. Jason moves away, and Dick squirms back up to sitting, kissing under Tim’s arm, the side of his neck, his snotty upper lip.
“you need more, baby bird?” he asks, and when Tim nods wordlessly he guides his shaking body down onto his cock, spearing him open where he’s still supple and pink and soaked with Jason’s come. The pleasure builds slower this time, no burn, no edge of pain, slow and steady instead of overwhelming, Dick breathing and sweating and helping Tim ride until his thighs give out and he has to flip them instead, face to face with Tim spread-eagled and boneless on the bed, Dick’s hair hanging into his face, absolutely no friction. The bedsprings creak, and Tim wonders distantly if this is where they were when he heard them, that night in the cave. “dick,” he realizes he’s saying, over and over, begging for something he can’t name, dick dick dick dick, but Jason’s the one who gets it, who slips two knuckles in his mouth, blocking his air, and tells him, “bite down.” Tim does, and tastes blood, and Jason kisses the top of his head tenderly and tweaks his nipple hard enough it feels like he might tear it off, and Tim whites out, coming like smacking into water from a great height, clenching once and just staying there, so that he holds Dick in place even when he tries to move, his eyeballs rolling back in his head while his mind goes blank.
***
It takes ten orgasms to put out the fire, so when morning comes and Tim lifts his head groaning from the ruined pillows, he sort of feels like he’s been hit by a bullet train.
He’s also maybe stickier than he’s ever been, which is disgusting, so he shoves down the lurch of hurt at the fact that he’s in bed alone and stumbles into the bathroom, where he slaps on the light and stands under the boiling hot spray until he starts to feel alive again. Jason’s got the place stocked with five-in-one soap and nothing else, which is about typical, so Tim scrubs down and resigns himself to looking like a dog who just went to the groomer’s, then shuffles back out to the bedroom and rummages around until he finds some joggers and a hoodie.
It is, he realizes, the same hoodie that Dick brought him home in, after the refrigerator.
There’s noise in the kitchen, faint easy music on the radio and low voices, what smells like bacon sizzling on the stove. Tim stares at the bedroom window. There’s a fire escape, and he saw a duffel bag while he was looking for clothes. He could stuff his patrol gear inside and be gone before one or the other of the two married husbands down the hall decides to come in here and let him down easy. But — we can get you a ring, Jason said, last night. If there’s even the slightest chance that he actually meant it…Tim’s never been a coward. He has to at least try.
“Tim?” Dick says, behind him.
Tim turns. He hasn’t even worked up the nerve to step into the hall yet, though he’s resolved to do so. Dick has a livid hickey on his throat that Tim vaguely remembers giving him, and it’s heady.
“Hey, Dick,” he says, swallowing. “Morning.”
Dick gives him a funny look. “Yeah, it is morning.” He comes across the room and takes Tim’s head in his hands — deliberate and caring, in a way that reminds Tim of a sculptor handling clay — then kisses him once, greeting, nourishing. “Good morning.”
Tim holds onto him when he starts to move away, smiling against his mouth. “Good morning,” he mumbles, feeling the shape of Dick’s lips under the motion of his own — and without even asking, from the way Dick wraps him up and pulls him in close, he has his answer.