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There was a restaurant in uptown Bludhaven that rivaled some of the fanciest dining clubs in Gotham City. It was open twenty-four seven and was a hotspot for businessmen coming in on red-eye flights and socialites stumbling from the clubs in search of rich, fancy food. It was also affordable enough to be the ending point of many drunken parties.
Dick had grown up in places like this, accompanying Bruce to various business dinners, private events, and social engagements. Today, he was in Bludhaven’s best steakhouse for a bachelor party of a fellow police officer after a full night of bar hopping. He didn’t entirely want to be there, but there he was.
And, for some unsightly reason, there was Tim as well. The thirteen-year-old was sitting alone at a table in the corner, scowling at his plate, and stabbing at his steak as if it had personally offended him. There was another plate across from him so Dick at least knew that he hadn’t come all this way by himself.
Dick excused himself for a second.
“Where are you going?” Amy asked. She was one of two women invited to this boys fest but these particular boys had always considered her to be one of them. Dick nodded to the kid left at the table in the corner.
“Just going to say hi to a friend,” he said.
“How do you know that kid?” she asked, curious. She had been asking a lot more questions lately, overly curious about who he was and the super-rich guardian he never talked about but everyone knew he had.
“That’s the neighbor kid,” he said with a smirk and sauntered over to where Tim was still stabbing at his plate. The kid looked up when Dick slid into the seat across from him. The boy smiled widely at him, clearly happy to see him.
“What are you doing here?” Tim asked, brightly.
“I’m at a bachelor party,” Dick responded, nodding at the raucous table over his shoulder. “What are you doing in Bludhaven? And who are you with?” He gestured to the empty plate.
“My dad,” Tim mumbled and resumed the stabbing of his food. Dick reached out and touched the kid’s wrist gently, stilling his movements before Tim stabbed straight through the restaurant’s fancy plates.
“Where is he?” Dick asked. “I’d love to finally meet him.”
“He left,” Tim said.
“He left you here?” Dick asked, surprised. “By yourself?”
Dick may have known that Tim was entirely capable of crisis crossing the country on his own without a problem, but, theoretically, Tim’s parents shouldn’t share that opinion of their son. Tim was barely thirteen years old and leaving him in Bludhaven, at a restaurant, by himself was not okay. Especially when it was past midnight.
“We’re staying across the street,” Tim said as if he could read Dick’s mind. And, honestly, sometimes Dick strongly suspected that was the case. "And he left his credit card so I could pay the bill."
"Where'd he go?" Dick asked.
"Back to Gotham," Tim replied, sliding his hand out from under Dick's hand and resumed the stabbing of his steak.
"And he didn't take you with him because?" Dick prodded.
"Because I was being too rude. He wants me to reconsider my attitude before I come home."
Tim looked him dead in the eye with an expression that just dared Dick to continue talking about this particular subject. Dick hadn't seen a look like that since he'd once asked Jason why he was so short. Jason had thrown his empty cigarette pack at him.
"Do you even have a way to get home?" Dick asked. He was not pleased with this turn of events. He had known that Jack and Janet were in and out of Gotham constantly, but he had never thought Jack would abandon his own son in a strange city because of a bad attitude. Teenagers had bad attitudes; that was what teenagers were for.
"I have a credit card with no limit," Tim said. "I'll be just fine."
Dick looked at him, examining every part of the boy he could see. His muscles were starting to fill out a little under Bruce's training regime and he looked a little healthier now that there was an adult in his life who made him eat something other than pizza rolls and Redbull. Not to mention the bedtime Alfred had started enforcing. It wasn't so much a time in which Tim had to be asleep so much as it was a hard and fast rule that he wasn't allowed to skip a night of sleep.
Tim had tried to insist his was an insomniac. Alfred had simply taken the phone and computer away and the kid had been passed out asleep in under ten minutes. Dick had been thoroughly impressed with that one. He'd actually believed the insomnia thing.
Now, the black circles were back. If he let Tim go back to the hotel alone, he knew Tim wouldn't sleep. Dick sighed, pulled out his phone, and made a call.
"Who are you calling?" Tim asked as Dick brought the phone to his ear. Dick didn't answer him.
"Hey, Bruce," Dick said when the man answered after the second ring. Tim immediately tried to stand up and Dick put a strong hand on his shoulder, forcing him to sit back down. He may have gotten stronger in the last few months of training but he was still a tiny little thing. "Can you get up to Bludhaven tonight?"
"Why?" Bruce asked, immediately on edge. Dick didn't like it when Bruce came to his city and he had never invited him there before.
"I found Tim here all by himself. He's got no ride back to Gotham and I have a shift that starts in six hours. Oh, and I've been drinking."
"Where's Jack?" Bruce asked.
"He left the city."
"Without Tim?"
"I had the same reaction."
"Text me an address. I'm on my way," Bruce said and hung up. Dick texted him the address of the hotel across the street, fished out his credit card, and gave it to a passing waiter.
"I need to pay for my meal and this table. And I need to get mine boxed up. We're leaving."
"Yes, sir. Right away."
"Dick," Tim practically whined. "My dad left me his card."
"You can't pay for alcohol, Timbo," Dick said, tapping the side of the wine glass still sitting on the table with his finger. "You're thirteen."
And really, what had Jack been thinking? The restaurant would have had to call the police on a thirteen-year-old boy abandoned at a restaurant by an adult who ran out on his check.
"What do I do about the minibar?" Tim asked.
Dick shot him a look.
"Did you drink the minibar?" he asked sternly. Tim shifted in his seat but shook his head.
"I dumped the whole thing last night. I was mad at my Dad and trying to run up the bill. I also ordered a ton of room service."
Dick almost laughed. If it had been Jason in front of him, the boy would have been slyly admitting to underage drinking. He thought it was absurdly adorable that Tim just poured the stuff out.
"We'll sort it out, okay?" he said softly just as the waiter returned with his check and boxed meal. The party behind him also got their food. Dick texted Amy that he was leaving for a family emergency and slipped out with Tim. It would have been far more distracting to return to the group and have to explain the whole thing. Most of them were drunk and would never notice anyway.
They went across the street and rode up to the penthouse suite together. Tim stood awkwardly in the living room as Dick wandered around, taking stock of the place.
"Thanks for the help," Tim finally mumbled, his cheeks flaming red and looking at the ground miserably. He was clearly embarrassed. "But you shouldn't have called Bruce."
"Why not?" he asked. Tim and Bruce were pretty much joined at the hip these days. The last time he and Bruce had been at lunch together, the man had spent most of it in a text conversation with Tim, even though the kid was supposed to be in class. When Dick had let the amusement and curiosity get the better of him and asked what they were so busy chatting about, he'd been forced to listen to the dullest explanation about 15th-century French architecture and had almost fallen asleep in his food. Bruce insisted it was for a case. Dick had just called them two little nerds in a pod and moved on.
"Bruce hates Dad," Tim mumbled. Dick was a little surprised at that. The only person Bruce had been known to truly hate outside of his usual criminals, was Guy Gardner. And Dick had never known him to hate a civilian.
"I doubt that's true," Dick tried to reassure him but Tim just rolled his eyes.
"It's true," Tim insisted. "He doesn't say anything but I can tell. He gets this look every time I talk about Dad. Like he's angry but doesn't want me to know."
Dick knew that look well. He was a little impressed that Tim had picked up on it. It had taken Dick well into his teens to consistently read that mood of Bruce's.
"He doesn't hate your dad," Dick continued. "And he'll tell you the exact same thing."
"Am I in trouble?" Tim asked. Sometimes, if Dick closed eyes, he could imagine that he was talking to a full-grown adult. Tim was smart and he sometimes used words Dick didn't know the meaning of. He could talk to Bruce and hold his known on a variety of subjects. He could even out stubborn Bruce, a miracle to witness. And then Dick would open his eyes and be vividly reminded that Tim was a thirteen-year-old boy.
"Not with us," he said honestly. He couldn't speak for the state of Jack's mind though he certainly hoped that Jack would consider abandoning the kid in Bludhaven to find his own way home as punishment enough.
"Where's your mom?" Dick asked.
"Fashion week in Paris."
"Why were you guys even in Bludhaven?" he asked, trying to draw the boy into a conversation. Tim just looked so miserable.
"That's Dad's favorite restaurant. I got an internship with the Wayne Enterprise's Young Professionals program and Dad said he wanted to celebrate but he wasn't really interested."
"What do you mean?"
Dick sat on the couch, mostly so he could stop feeling like he was towering over the boy.
"At the last minute, he wanted me to take a friend here instead since the room was already paid for and stuff. He wanted to go to a business meeting. But I made him come with me anyway. We've been fighting a lot."
"I'm sorry, Timbo," Dick said, not really knowing what he wanted to say at all. He couldn't tell the kid what he really thought of his dad. That would be cruel. The boy just looked at his shoes until Dick finally reached out and held his hand.
Timmy wasn't overly comfortable with hugs yet, but they were getting there. He let Dick at least offer this much comfort.
"Can we watch a show?" Tim asked after another beat of silence. "It'll be a while before Bruce is here."
"Whatever you'd like to watch is good with me," Dick said, which he sorely regretted fifteen minutes into some crappy true crime show Tim found on cable and insisted was awesome. It was not awesome.
"Wasn't this case solved?" Dick asked, recognizing names and faces from the recent news. "Someone sent in an anonymous tip."
"That was me," Tim said, proudly. "I solved it after watching this episode."
"Huh," was all Dick could muster the energy for. He would circle back to that one when he was sober again.
Finally, halfway through the second episode, Bruce knocked on the door. Tim made no move to open it or even gave a sign that he'd heard it, so Dick groaned his way to his feet and went to open the door.
Bruce looked as if he'd come straight from the cave. He'd thrown on black track pants and a hoodie with the Wayne Enterprises logo.
"Come on in," Dick said. "We're watching true crime shows. Did you know there's a whole channel just for that?"
"Yes," Bruce replied. "Tim's obsessed."
"Thanks for coming," Dick said. "I had to ditch a bachelor party. I found him at the restaurant across the street. Jack had just left him there with his credit card. I ended up paying the bill because of the wine Jack had ordered. We have a similar problem with the empty minibar."
Bruce didn't even blink at that. Didn't even ask if Tim had drunk any of it.
"I'll take care of it," he said. "You should go home, get some sleep."
It was pushing two in the morning and Dick had to be awake and ready to go to work by seven. He nodded.
"I'm headed out, Timbo," he called across the living room. Tim slightly turned his head, eyes still glued to the show about some housewife who'd disappeared ten years ago.
"Bye!" he said distractedly. Dick rolled his eyes.
"Good luck with that one," he told Bruce, grabbing his uneaten meal in its fancy go to box from the counter.
"Thanks," Bruce replied and Dick was deeply amused to find that Bruce sounded sincere as if he really did need all the luck in the world at that moment.
And maybe he did.
00000
Bruce didn't much appreciate the Drake's and how they dealt with Tim. He sat next to the boy on the couch and Tim drew his knees to his chest as if he needed comfort.
"You okay?" Bruce asked, curious. Tim shrugged his shoulders.
"Did you fight with your dad again?" he probed. Tim kept his eyes on the TV so Bruce reached over and pressed the power button on the remote. Tim glared at him. "Answer me."
"We fight all the time," Tim admitted. "That's not news."
Bruce ignored the very sassy tone. He had not expected to once again be thrust into a fatherly role after what had happened to Jason. His relationship with Tim was supposed to be professional, clinical even. That had been the deal they’d struck. But it had quickly come apparent that even though Tim had parents who were alive and well, they weren't around.
He wasn't the kind of person to leave a child to their own devices for months on end, especially when that child was a Robin. And Alfred had been outright scandalized when Tim had admitted how much Redbull he drank. Bruce had been too scared to tell Alfred about the time he'd caught Tim brewing coffee with the energy drink instead of water.
"I've never had to drive to another city at midnight before because you'd been left there after a fight," Bruce told him. "It's escalating."
"He says I have a shitty attitude," Tim replied. "Is that true? Am I rude?"
Bruce raised an eyebrow. He was used to Dick and Jason, both of whom had been rebels in their own ways. Other than the few times Tim would tell him to act like an adult, the boy never even approached acting rude.
"Not that I'm aware of," Bruce told him.
"Am I annoying?" Tim asked. Bruce didn't very much like the direction this conversation was headed in.
"Why do you ask, Tim?" he asked.
"Why else would he not want to be around?" Tim asked. "He says I have a bad attitude but he won't tell me what to fix. I've tried to adjust different things. I've started cleaning my room more and I stopped ditching school so much and I even stopped wearing the clothes he doesn't like. But he still says my attitude is bad. You're an adult; what's so bad about it?"
It sort of hurt Bruce's heart that Tim had been experimenting with changing different things about himself to get his father to be more interested. But that did explain why Tim had become so focused on his undercover skills lately. He was trying to learn how to pretend to be someone else.
"There's nothing wrong with your attitude, Tim," Bruce said. "Some people are just difficult to get along with. I suspect your dad is one of those people."
"You think it's him?" Tim asked, surprised. He'd clearly been expecting Bruce to identify something wrong with his personality for him to work on like this was just another training exercise down in the cave. Bruce gave him homework all the time and he was clearly trusting Bruce to adjust him as he saw fit. Bruce didn't want the kid to adjust at all.
"I do," Bruce replied simply. Tim had an almost blind trust in him when it came to his teachings. Unlike the other two, Tim had never pushed back on anything. Rather, he'd taken everything Bruce had said to heart, swallowing everything that came out of his mouth as if it was some sort of gospel.
Dick had expressed plenty of trust but had always asked why, wanting a deeper explanation even when Bruce just needed him to follow orders. Jason had been skeptical about everything. If Bruce said the sky was blue, Jason would argue for days that it was green even though he knew it was wrong. Tim just listened and absorbed, like a short, skinny, stalker sponge.
It had creeped Bruce out the first time he explained how the patrol routes were configured and Tim had said, "I know. I figured that out years ago. That's how I find you guys to get my photos."
Alfred had tried and failed not to laugh at the look on his face.
"Okay," Tim replied after thinking long and hard about it. Bruce couldn't tell by the look on his face what conclusion he'd drawn. "Can I watch my show now?"
He should have said no, Alfred's rule said no skipping nights of sleep. But instead Bruce simply turned the TV back on.
Besides, Tim fell asleep on the couch about thirty minutes later, using Bruce's leg like a pillow, and wrapped in a blanket so tightly he looked like a burrito. Bruce answered emails on his phone until eight the next morning when he woke Tim up for breakfast and checked them out of the hotel.
The room had already been paid for and the front desk didn't give him too much of a hassle about the emptied minibar. The penthouse suite's minibar was technically a full-sized wet bar and Tim had spitefully emptied several thousand dollars worth of alcohol in one night.
The manager had asked, subtly, if the boy had sold it. Bruce had, subtly, responded that it had been dumped in a fit of teenage tantrum.
The look of pure understanding on the manager's face was much appreciated.
Bruce let Tim listen to one of his true crime podcasts on the way back to Gotham and spent most of the drive contemplating Tim's utter fascination with the genre. He dropped Tim off at his home and was unsurprised but still disappointed to get a call from the boy a half-hour later asking to spend the next week at the Manor.
Jack Drake had left a note that he'd gone to meet his wife in Paris and then they were headed to the Caribbean. He didn't know when they'd be back.
Bruce asked Alfred if they should just give Tim a room. This was quickly becoming a pattern.
"What took you so long, Master Bruce?" was the butler's only response as if it was the conclusion he should have made weeks ago.