Work Text:
“Can you call Mr. Danvers again?” Dana flicks on her blinker, easing to a stop, turning into the cul-de-sac smoothly. Her secretary, Alex, makes an affirming hum. “Tell him I’m able to reschedule for Monday. I’ve already emailed him twice now.”
“I’ve gotta go,” She adds, putting her car in park. Technically she should have left the office at the, well, office, but it’s not a breach of work/home balance if she isn’t home yet, right?
Right.
She finishes up her farewells, parking her car, and by the time she’s walking up to her suburban town home in modest heels, her work phone is firmly shut down, shoved deep into the pockets of her purse.
Dana stops at the mailbox, half distracted by flipping through bills and business flyers, but she draws up short when she sees the skateboard, frowning a bit, nudging it out of her way.
Tim really needs to get better about not leaving his things around for people to trip over.
She unlocks the house, setting her keys and bag on the foyer table. The alarm goes off, a clear sign that no one else is home.
She anticipates a good few hours to herself. Jack will be at the office at least until six, and Tim has practice after school today, and won’t need a ride until five.
Maybe they can get take-out. Lord knows Dana doesn’t really feel like cooking.
Dana yanks off her heels one at a time, teasing her hair out of the tight bun and unlatching her bra, exhaling all at once in relief.
Three hours until she has to go out and get the kid, four until Jack is home, all to herself. Needless to say, Dana’s looking forward to a little alone time.
She climbs the stairs, picking up three of Tim’s socks on the way up, and one of the teen’s sneakers. Honestly, it’s like he’s trying to leave a trail or something.
She pops into his bedroom for just long enough to return his clothing, fully intending on turning and shutting the door behind her. Boundaries are important, especially for kids like Tim, and no one would benefit from her invading his privacy.
But.
But there’s his pads and helmet, propped up against his headboard like wall art and not the expensive equipment that it is. That he needs for practice.
Dana purses her lips, trying to ignore the flare of irritation that bites at her at the sight of it.
She told Jack that Tim wasn’t interested in football, pleaded with the man to let the kid sign up for theater, or art, or photography. Something he was actually interested in. But of course, it was Jack’s way or the highway, and Tim never did seem to advocate for himself.
And now the gear is collecting dust while Tim runs around doing who knows what.
She should have put her foot down. Jack shouldn’t have pushed so hard, but the man’s trying to bond with his son, and doesn’t seem to know how to do it.
Dana’s not quite sure where the distance between Tim and Jack comes from, neither are too forthcoming about it, but she’s pretty sure it has something to do with Tim’s foster placement while Jack was in his coma. Dana still gets calls to the house phone asking after Tim, asking to leave messages for him, and she knows Tim got attached to the Waynes while he was there.
She thinks it’s a little sad that he was taken away from what is clearly family to him, but…
She also loves Tim. A whole lot. And she’d much rather have him with her than a strange family of billionaires, even if Jack can’t always get his head out of his ass and make an effort with the boy.
Dana sighs, shutting the door to Tim’s bedroom. At some point, she’s going to have to confront him about this. If the kid’s not playing football, then someone needs to be accountable for him after school. Maybe he can come to the office with her for a while, help Alex out at the front desk.
She changes out of her work clothes, throwing on a pair of sweats and a tank top, tying her hair back with a bandana.
Some popcorn sounds good right now. Popcorn and an action flick, and maybe a nap.
Dana makes her way to the kitchen, setting her alarm for a quarter to five. Hopefully, Tim will be at the school despite his decision to boycott football. She doesn’t know how else he’ll get home.
Well. She does know, because he did it once. Skipped school and then trekked all over Gotham, and then caught a city bus to the nearest stop and walked the rest of the way, apparently not anticipating that Dana would get a call from the school and lose her damn mind trying to find him.
She called the cops. She was crying. It was kind of embarrassing, and by the end of the day she couldn’t even yell at Tim the way she wanted to, too overwhelmed with relief to do anything other than wrap him in a hug.
Tim, at least, was plenty repentant for scaring her.
The kid worries her sometimes. He’s so independent, so resistant to any of her or Jack’s attempts at parenting, she doesn’t know how he hasn’t gotten himself hurt yet.
Dana frowns down at a package of microwave popcorn, ripping off the plastic with a little more force than strictly necessary. Teenagers are supposed to be hard, she knows that, but Tim isn’t even defiant. He’s just absent, passive in a way she hadn’t known to account for.
God. Just barely thirty and she’s already turning into some sort of helicopter parent.
She stalks back to the TV room with a full bowl, grabbing the remote off the mantle and turning on the cable.
She’s elbow-deep in buttery popcorn, leaned forward unattractively, brow furrowed as she flicks through the guide when she hears it.
“Dad?”
She almost screams, dropping the popcorn all over the couch, whirling around. There’s no one there, no one in the hall leading to the laundry room, but she could have sworn she heard the kid.
Dana leaps off the couch, shutting off the television and squinting.
“Tim?” She calls. Maybe he came in through the back door.
She pads into the hall, flicking on the light, but there’s no one there. Just the dusty mudroom, the linen closet. The back door is latched shut from the inside.
She looks around, bewildered, trying to figure out if she imagined the whole thing. Just as she’s about to go back and pick up her mess, feeling like a complete idiot, she hears something move.
Dana startles again, eyes going wide as she turns to the linen closet.
“Um,” The closet says, sounding suspiciously like her step-son. “Dana?”
Her heart stops.
“Tim?” She cries. “What the hell are you doing in there?”
She yanks at the door handle, and it’s locked. She forgot that this closet even had a lock, and she sure as hell doesn’t know where the key is.
There’s a long, tense silence, and then, “I’m stuck.”
“Oh, honey.” she tugs a little more at the handle, trying to wrap her head around that. How in God’s name did he get himself stuck in a closet? “Give me one second, Tim, I’ll get you out of there.”
Rushing back to the kitchen, the urgency of the situation eases a bit, and Dana finds herself close to laughter, struck by the sheer absurdity.
Teenagers. She thought there’d be a lot more drugs and rebellion than getting stuck in weird places.
She grabs the master key out of the drawer, frowning down at it.
Tim really shouldn’t have been able to lock himself in. The linen closet only locks from the outside, and only with the key. She’s sure it used to be for wine or guns, something more illicit, but Dana keeps the alcohol in the cabinet above the refrigerator, and Tim is trustworthy enough that she doesn’t feel the need to lock him out of the dangerous spots in the house.
Besides, if someone breaks in, Tim needs to know where the pistol is.
But, from the inside of the closet, he couldn’t have locked the door. Which means…
Well, Dana’s not sure what that means, but she doesn’t delay by trying to find out. Who knows how long Tim has been in there, probably too embarrassed to call for help. God, he should have just called her.
“Alright, Tim, I’ve got the key,” Dana says, walking back into the laundry room. “Are you okay in there?”
“I’m fine.” His voice is even, almost aloof. “Thanks, Dana.”
She opens the door, swinging it wide, and comes face-to-face with her step-son.
Tim is in his school uniform, knees drawn up to his chest, shoved sideways beneath the shelves of the closet, far too large for such a small space.
Far too small, considering he’s managed to worm his way in.
Jack’s never said anything, and Dana can’t seem to find any medical records for Tim, probably lost when the man was in a coma, but sometimes she thinks Tim must have been born premature, or developmentally delayed or something. All of his friends are so much bigger than him.
He looks up at her, squinting slightly at the light, hair mussed like he’d fallen asleep at some point. Dana’s a little humbled when, after a second’s hesitation, he reaches for her.
She hauls him out of the closet, careful of his head of course, and into a long hug.
Tim plasters himself to her, the top of his head barely reaching her collar bone, gripping her shirt with an intensity that’s a little startling.
Maybe not as unphased as she thought then.
“Tim, honey,” She says, not letting go. She tries not to sound too exasperated when she asks, “What on Earth were you doing in there?”
She sees the tips of his ears go red at the same time he buries his face into her chest, hiding. Unease slips down her spine.
How… How did he get in there?
Dana pulls away just enough to crouch in front of him, looking up into his eyes, the miserable grimace on his face.
“It’s nothing,” Tim says, weakly enough that both of them know he’ll cave soon.
“Did something happen?” Dana asks, quietly, holding onto his elbows so he can’t run. “Tim?”
Tim shifts, gaze straying above her head, looking off into space. Dana doesn’t force him to meet her eyes, trying to keep him comfortable. “I got in trouble.”
“What?”
“Dad got mad, it was so stupid,” Tim says, and there’s just the slightest edge of frustration in his voice. “I should have just kept my mouth shut.”
The words feel like a smack in the face. Dana rears back, eyes going wide as she tries to understand what he’s saying. It’s a few seconds of shock and confusion, and then,
“Jack put you in there?”
Tim winces at the low, incredulous snarl, eyeing her like she might explode.
Who knows? At this point, Dana’s feeling a little erratic.
She left for work fifteen minutes before Jack. That was six o’clock this morning. Tim has been in that fucking closet since…
“Tim, how long—”
“It doesn’t even matter,” Tim says quickly, likely reading the unadulterated rage on her face. “I’ll apologize when he gets home. I know better. I— I’m sorry, for, um.”
He doesn’t even finish, like he can’t quite pinpoint what he did wrong, and Dana feels her blood boil.
“You will not,” She snaps, just a tad too harshly. Nine hours in a goddamn closet, what the hell? “Tim, that’s… You didn’t do anything wrong, honey. Jack shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have put you in there.”
“I slept for most of it,” Tim says weakly, and Dana can’t even respond. She drags the boy into another long hug.
What is she supposed to do about this? How can she let her husband back into her house, back into Tim’s space after something like this. The kid isn’t even worked up about it, like this is to be expected, like this isn’t the worst kind of betrayal.
Dana clutches at the kid, her kid, and thinks about the anxious phone calls from well-meaning billionaires. About Richard Grayson, who’d showed up on their doorstep one day because Tim wasn’t answering his texts, who practically put the kid into a strangle-hold with his hug, and Bruce Wayne, who picked the kid up from school the week Jack had his surgery and Dana couldn’t get off work.
She knows what has to happen next, knows that the next few nights with Jack are going to be ugly. The sort of yelling, screaming ugly that Tim doesn’t need to see.
This cannot be allowed to happen again, and there’s one place she knows Tim will be comfortable and safe, and welcome while she sorts out her husband.
“Tim, sweetheart,” She cups his face, rubbing at the flushed skin, tilting his head up so she can read his micro expressions. “I need you to pack a bag while I make a phone call.”