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The tower always feels empty when there’s no one else around. It reminds Tim of home a little bit.
There are pros and cons to it. When no one else is here it’s cold, and quiet, and intimidating. The long steel corridors are hauntingly empty and endless like this.
But, in full honesty, Tim doesn’t mind the emptiness right now. He likes the quiet, likes knowing that no one’s going to disturb him or tell him to stop doing whatever it is he’s doing at any given moment.
Tim can play his music out loud and dance and sing and twirl as much as he likes, thank you very much. He doesn’t have to worry about anybody walking in and judging him.
It’s not that he thinks anyone on the Titans would do that, he loves his team, he loves them so much, but the contrast of moving from the Drake Estate to Wayne Manor carries with it the fact that Tim feels like he never truly gets any alone time anymore.
So, yeah, Tim doesn’t mind the alone time. His phone is playing his favorite playlist out loud, no headphones needed, and Tim is dancing and singing around like a loon, mixing flour and eggs and sugar and only eating a little bit of the batter as he goes (only to make sure it isn’t poisoned, of course).
The sunset outside is beautiful and Tim is wearing mismatched socks and roomy sweatpants, his shirt is either Kon’s or Bernard’s, and his hair is messy and all in all, it’s nice.
Tim feels good, content, better than he has in a long time. It’s the little moments like this when it’s enjoyable, when he can see the light across San Francisco Bay and feels the warmth through the paneled glass of Titans Tower.
Tim’s pouring the batter into a pan when his phone buzzes on the table. He grabs a tea towel and wipes his hands off before grabbing his phone.
He’s assuming it’s a text from Bruce or Dick, confirming that everything’s still safe at the tower, that no one with an eccentric gun collection and ruby helmet has come to rip his head off quite yet. Tim’s already planning his quippy response when he reads the notification.
Tim throws his phone with so much force it dents the wall of the kitchen and lands with a dull thud 7 feet away from the kitchen island he’s standing at.
The music is still playing and Tim wants to rip his hair out and scream.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” he screams to no one in particular. “This is a joke. This is a fucking joke.”
Tim’s blood is pumping and his hands are shaking and he wants nothing more than to destroy everything in sight.
He takes the tea towel and tears it clean in half from how far he twists it, he spikes the wooden spoon he’s been using into the sink so hard that the sound reverberates throughout the rest of the living space for a good couple of seconds.
There’s a vase on the counter that he smashes and he throws a cup at the wall too, just for good measure.
He only spares the pan filled with cake batter because he actually wants the fucking cake.
The toaster, on the other hand, he swipes onto the floor. Right after that he takes a glass candle holder and sends it flying into the living room.
Tim’s breath is ragged and his fingernails are biting into his hand, the sharp pain feeding back into the endless loop telling him to take out his anger on something.
He’s looking for his next victim (maybe the napkin holder) when he hears it.
There’s a low whistle behind him and Tim launches into a fighting position at the intrusion, only narrowly avoiding the various arrays of broken glass on the floor.
The music is still playing.
“You wanna break anything else or are you done throwing your little temper tantrum?”
Perfect.
Red Hood is bulkier than Bruce and nearly as tall as Dick and standing in the middle of the kitchen interrupting Tim’s very well-deserved mental breakdown.
Tim’s in his civvies and he knows he’s not ready for this fight. Tim doesn’t want to fight. Tim is tired. Tim is 17 and carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and some masked weirdo is standing here watching him throw kitchenware at the wall like he’s in some shitty MTV music video.
Tim wants blood and he doesn’t care whose it is.
He stares at Red Hood like he’s imagining him because at this point Tim isn’t entirely convinced that he isn’t. Some contrived mirage of bloodlust and torment.
But then he speaks again.
“Fucking finally. I’ve been standing here for ten minutes while you’ve been attacking this kitchen like it spat on your mother.”
Tim might burst a blood vessel.
He drags a deep breath in and slowly exhales, the momentum from his earlier rampage fading due to the unwelcome interruption.
“What do you want Hood?” Tim asks, his fear melting into indifference as it intermingles with exhaustion.
“What I want is for Batman and his boy wonder to stay off my turf.” Jason takes a step towards Tim. “For people to stop pedaling drugs to kids,” another step, “to treat working women with the respect they deserve.”
Hood takes a knife out of its holster and starts picking at the dirt under his fingernails. “I want people to shut the fuck up and listen, to learn from their mistakes,” He’s in Tim’s face now, the whirring of the helmet audible from this distance, mechanical and cold.
“I want to ground you.” Hood’s holding the tip of the knife to Tim’s throat now, Tim can just feel the edge of it biting into his skin.
“That can’t be sanitary,” Tim grumbles, annoyed that he had to stop his breakdown for this. He needed that; it was cathartic, but now he feels cagey and pent-up and frustrated.
His bo staff is in the training room and his belt is in his bedroom, hell, even his mask is on the couch. Not that Tim’s surprised that Hood knows who he is. He’d be more surprised if the Red Hood didn’t know who he is.
“Does it look like I give a shit how sanitary it is? The infection won’t make much of a difference when I slit your fucking throat now will it?” He presses the knife into Tim’s throat just a little deeper, and Tim feels the blood pearl and bead down his neck.
He looks Hood up and down, takes in the 7 different guns, 4 knives, leather harness and jacket, the holsters, and the steel-toed boots, and realizes that this isn’t a fight he’s winning. Not in his civilian clothes with nothing but the rubber band in his hair and the carton of milk sitting on the counter next to him.
“I thought you didn’t hurt kids.”
“True. But you’re not a kid. You’re a martyr. I may not hurt kids but I have a certain propensity for breaking little birdies wings.”
Red Hood pulls the knife from Tim’s neck and gestures to the training room.
“I came here for a fight though, not just to kick your ass. So now’s your chance. Go grab your shit and let me beat your ass fair and square, prove that you’re nothing more than a shoddy rip off of the last model, and then I can get to snapping your wings.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you quite right. What the fuck did you just say to me?”
Tim pushes his face a little closer to Hood's helmet.
“I said: no. Maybe the coffee maker on your head is messing with your hearing.”
Red Hood pistol whips him so hard Tim goes sprawling onto the floor. He turns over to see one of Hood’s guns pointed right in between his eyes.
“Do you think this is a fucking game?”
He doesn’t know why but Tim throws his head back and starts laughing. Guttural and crazy, manic laughter that bubbles out of his mouth like gurgling blood from a stab wound. He’s crying, he can’t tell whether it’s from the laughter or genuine tears, and he’s still laughing and he thinks he may stop breathing in a second.
He’s still smiling when he finally turns back to Hood, tilts his head, and says “Do it.”
Hood wrenches his gun back and takes a huge step away from Tim. “What the fuck?”
“Do it. C’mon. I don’t have all day. Don’t be a pussy. You said you were gonna ground me, so do it.”
Tim stands up and grabs Hood's gun, still in his hand, and points it at his chest.
“Be the big bad Hood and fucking shoot me already.”
Hood freezes for a second, almost as if he’s rebooting, then rips his helmet off and reholsters the gun he was just pointing at Tim.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He pants, hunched over like he’s out of breath, choking on Tims attempt to get himself killed.
“What’s wrong with me?” Tim starts laughing again. “What’s wrong with me? You’re the one who’s trying to kill a fucking 17-year-old.”
“You’re not 17, your birthday was yesterday.”
Tim finally fights back.
The rage from before is back tenfold and he starts punching and kicking and screaming until his knuckles are raw and his throat is hoarse. He catches Hood off guard as he starts swinging at his chest, his arms, his legs, hell even Hood's head, anywhere that’s accessible Tim swings for.
He’s hitting nothing but Kevlar and padding but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care anymore. He’s so fucking tired and he’s so fucking over it and he needs to destroy something. Someone is walking out of this bloody, and he doesn’t care whether it’s him or the Red Hood.
“You don’t know fucking shit do you. So much for recon. You’re shit at you’re job. You wanna come in here and tell me how I’m the fuck up? How I’m the replacement? You couldn’t even get my birthday right, Jason. You and my own fucking dad, typical.”
Jason grabs his fists and holds them in place.
“What did you just say?”
“That you and my dad are both pieces of shit who suck at their job.”
Jason massages the bridge of his nose with his free hand like he’s trying to expel a particularly annoying headache.
“Before that.”
“I know it’s you, Jason. As if I fucking wouldn’t. I followed you around in the mask for years. I photographed you from the minute you put those pixie boots on. It’s not my fault Bruce doesn’t listen. It was so obvious it was you, you’ve always had a flare for the dramatic. I’m surprised you didn’t bring up Jane Eyre and monologue about your evil plan.”
“Jesus Christ. And so you were just gonna, what? Sit here and let me beat the shit out of you? You wanted me to shoot you. You held my gun to your sternum!”
Tim shrugs. “It’s been a rough week.”
Jason lets go of Tim’s fists and rubs both hands over his face.
“‘It’s been a rough week,’ he says. I threaten to maim you and your response to escalating it to me full-on nearly blowing your brains out is ‘It’s been a rough week’?!”
Tim rolls his eyes as if this is some sort of teenage melodrama and pushes himself up against the cabinets to perch on the counter.
“I was kind of in the middle of something before you interrupted me. I probably wouldn’t have shoved your gun at my chest if you had gotten here like 20 minutes earlier. You just picked a really bad time for my schedule, that’s not on me,” Tim huffs, pulling his legs up onto the counter as well.
“Okay first of all get your fucking feet off the counter that's nasty.” Tim lands on the ground again with a soft thump and a grumble. “Second of all, what could’ve been so bad that you started treating the toaster like a piñata?”
Tim glances down at the floor and sniffles for a second before looking back up at Jason. “Well, now it sounds stupid. Can you go back to beating the shit out of me, it was less awkward.”
“Nope. Too late baby bird I’m invested now.”
“My parents forgot my birthday. They’ve been gone for 3 months, and they haven't texted or called me for 5 weeks, and like okay I get it they’re busy and their work is important and this is how they support our family or whatever but I’m so sick of it.
“They’re never here, physically or emotionally. They just swoop in for a couple of days, complain about how bad the house staff they don’t even realize we don’t have anymore is, then jet off to wherever the fuck they’re going next.
“And it’s not that I expected them to come home for my birthday, I stopped expecting that a while ago, but my dad texted me today and all it says is ‘Happy 17th birthday champ’.”
Tim starts walking towards Jason, his eyes a bit manic and his breath coming out heavier.
“And you wanna know the funny thing, Jason? You wanna know what’s so funny? Today’s not even my birthday. My birthday’s tomorrow. I turn 18 tomorrow and my own fucking parents got it wrong.”
He turns and starts pacing, gesticulating wildly and angrily ranting, all while avoiding the piles of glass on the floor.
“How do you forget that? I’m their only fucking kid! How did they forget my birthday? How did they forget how old I am? How do you do that to you’re only fucking child.” By now, Tim’s frustration is running out. The hot-seated rage that possessed him before giving way to a weird form of grief he can’t quite place.
He’s crying by the time he turns, pounds his fists into Jason’s chest, and asks “What did I do?”
Jason immediately hugs him, squeezing Tim tight and lacing his fingers through Tim’s hair, trying to comfort his little brother.
God dammit this was supposed to be an attack, a break-in, this was supposed to be vengeance.
But now Jason is holding this kid, because he’s still a kid, because Jason got his little brother's birthday wrong and there’s still a whole couple of hours before he turns 18.
This kid is crying and thinks it’s his fault that his rich parents don’t care enough about him to show up and remember how old he is and remember his goddamn birthday.
“You didn’t do anything little bird. Parents suck sometimes,” he holds Tim tighter, remembering every time his mom was too drunk to remember to take him to school or every time Willis got thrown in Jail (twice on Jason’s birthday).
“I know it sucks but you can’t make them show up. You can’t make them better people. They should want to be better people for you, because they love you, because they want to be the best for their kid.
“This isn’t your fault. This is in no way your fault. Just because your parents don’t recognize how amazing you are doesn’t mean other people don’t. Bruce and Dick and Alfred love you. You have the Titans and,” Jason doesn’t know what's worse, what he’s about to say or the fact that it’s true, “you have me.” He feels Tim sink into him a little more.
“Screw your parents. Parents are overrated. All the cool kids don’t have parents. Look at me, I don’t have parents and I’m perfectly well adjusted” Jason thinks about that for a moment, and realizes how lame Bruce and Dick are, and immediately regrets the sentiment.
“You broke in here to beat up a 17-year-old who was baking a birthday cake.” Tim deadpans.
Jason grimaces at that but pats Tim on the back nonetheless. It still seems to work though, the way Tim nods and sniffles and wipes at his tears.
“This is so stupid. I’m literally an adult in a couple of hours and I’m crying about my birthday like some sort of baby.”
“We’ve all been there kid. One time I saw Dick crying over one of those sad puppy dog commercials. He spent the next 3 weeks trying to convince Bruce to buy the entire Gotham animal shelter.”
That draws a snotty laugh out of the kid.
The chuckle gets mucus all over Jason’s chest plate but he can’t really find it in himself to care. It’s fine, he knows someone who does good dry cleaning.
“I don’t even want the stupid cake anymore.” The kid says, wiping his snot and walking over to the pan of birthday cake batter.
“Bullshit.” Jason huffs, grabbing the pan and holding it out of Tim’s reach. “Tell me what to set the oven to. I’ll check you over in med bay while this baby cooks and then we can celebrate come midnight. If you’re asshole parents wanna miss out on your birthday, fine, but I’m staying right here.”
Tim sniffles one last time, mumbles something about Jason and his stupid pit height, and preheats the oven to 350 degrees with a smile.
It’s the best birthday cake either of them has ever had.