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Dick doesn’t mean to fall back into old habits. He’s the worst hypocrite when it comes to preaching about healthy habits, because when Dick is alone—when he isn’t surrounded by people he cares about—he always falls back into the habit of not sleeping, eating easy meals, and working way too much.
It’s been over two weeks since he’s seen a member of his family, and he’s pretty sure this is the third night in a row that he’s had cereal for dinner. Alfred would have a conniption if he knew.
So would Jason, for that matter.
His bowl of frosted flakes has gone soggy in the time Dick has taken to contemplate all of this, and all Dick can do is sigh and set it on the coffee table in front of him.
He’s not finishing that. He should probably dump it out in the sink before he forgets about it.
Dick sighs again, slumping into his couch.
There’s a headache blooming behind his left eye that’ll turn into a migraine without intervention, but Dick can’t muster up the energy to deal with that, either.
He’s such a disaster.
Before he can dwell in his self-loathing for very long, his alarm system chirps, deactivating and unlocking the window, which slides up to reveal one Timothy Drake-Wayne, dressed in civvies of all things.
Dick doesn’t react to his little brother breaking into his apartment, just raises an eyebrow when Tim slides the window shut after climbing through, turning and catching Dick sitting in his own living room.
To Dick’s disappointment, Tim doesn’t look very caught out. Actually, there’s an annoyance in his expression that reminds Dick that he still has an unread message from early this morning after he got home from patrol. He’d meant to read it after he got some sleep, but after tossing and turning, and then a mad scramble to make it to work on time, Dick had forgotten to check it.
“Whoops,” Dick says, sitting up as he rubs his left eye. The pressure does nothing to abate the ache.
Tim huffs. “Yeah, whoops.”
“Hopefully, it wasn’t urgent.”
Tim drops onto the couch next to Dick. He sighs. “If it was, I would have called. You’re almost as bad as Cass when it comes to responding to anyone.”
“I respond,” Dick grumps.
Tim shoots Dick another annoyed look. “Whatever lets you sleep at night.”
Dick snorts. “Funny of you to assume that I’ve been sleeping.”
“You’re never allowed to get on my case about sleeping ever again.”
Dick sighs, rubbing at his eye again. “Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. I’m pretty sure Duke is the only one with an actual healthy sleep schedule, but I’m not usually this bad.”
“You’re worse than me,” Tim tells him, pulling out his phone.
“I am not,” Dick huffs. “I’m not the one who pulls multiple all nighters in a row.”
“The amount of times—will you stop that?” Tim smacks at Dick’s hand, which had been reaching for his eye again. “Did you injure your eye or something? Or, god, do you have pink eye or something? I swear Bludhaven’s water is worse than Gotham’s and I didn’t even think that was possible until last year when Bruce pulled you out of the harbor. Or was it the gym? Did someone in one of your classes have it? I swear, elementary school kids spread it around like—”
“I don’t have pink eye,” Dick interrupts. “Just—headache.”
Tim pauses, finally slowing down enough to seemingly take in the state of disarray Dick and his apartment have managed to fall into in the past few weeks. Dick can practically see the wheels spinning behind those eyes, so much like Bruce in a way none of Dick’s other siblings are, not even Damian.
Of course, because of Tim’s annoying Bruce-like observation skills, Dick sees the moment that Tim pieces things together.
“You actually aren’t sleeping,” Tim says, mouth pinched in displeasure. Dick watches him hesitate, eyes flitting to the soggy bow of half-eaten frosted flakes. “When’s the last time you ate actual food?”
Dick throws Tim a sharp look. He doesn’t usually let his temper run over onto his siblings, but he’s never been good at being fussed over, so when he speaks, it’s with a much colder voice than normal. “It’s not your job to take care of me, Tim.”
He hopes his tone is at least enough to deter further questioning—it would be with the Titans, except for maybe Donna or Wally—but just like Bruce, Tim can’t leave things alone.
Although, that’s a trait he and his siblings all share, if Dick is going to be honest with himself. It’s probably part of the reason they’re in the vigilante business to begin with.
“If you’re not taking care of yourself—”
“I’m an adult,” Dick says, not quite snapping, but really ready for Tim to drop the subject.
“Doesn’t stop you fussing over me,” Tim snarks.
“You don’t take care of yourself,” Dick tells him, genuine anger starting to breach through his composure. “You and Bruce both do this thing where you get obsessed with whatever you’re working on, and it’s like everything is secondary. Bruce has Alfred to bully him into self care, most of the time.”
“And I don’t have anyone?” Tim growls.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Dick says, gritting his teeth. “You tend to ignore your friends when you’re like that. Don’t tell me I’m wrong, because I’m not. Am I not allowed to be worried about you?”
“Am I not allowed to be worried about you?” Tim throws back.
It’s enough for Dick to push himself to his feet and take a deep breath.
This is a dumb argument. Dick knows it’s dumb, because Tim isn’t wrong. It’s the nature of caring about each other. The only difference is, Dick has always been the older one in their dynamic. The one who has looked out for Tim, in ways that Bruce couldn’t. In ways that Dick hadn’t been able to with Jason.
When it comes to being cared for, Dick is bad about it. Dick didn’t grow up with Bruce as a dad. In his eight year old eyes, Bruce had been his equal. They watched each other’s backs, but Bruce was emotionally stunted and tended to show his care by training and protecting.
As Dick’s and Bruce’s dynamic changed, when Bruce went from his crime-fighting partner to his dad, Dick was able to adapt there, too. He’d been in far too many situations with Bruce to not trust that Bruce would catch him when he fell.
But that’s when he fell. He’s never been good at letting people pull him up when he’s hanging on the edge.
Alfred is the only one Dick has ever been comfortable with when it comes to taking care of his physical health, and it’s only because he’s spent years coming to terms with the fact that that’s the way Alfred shows he cares.
On top of all of that, Dick knows that something broke in him with Jason’s death, and that Tim and Cass and Damian and Jason don’t really get why Dick fusses over the four of them like a mother hen sometimes. There’s a twist to his thinking. He’s the oldest sibling and in his head, that’s what older siblings do. But if any of them, anyone but Bruce—and even Bruce, sometimes—try to fuss over Dick, he can’t help but shrug it off. He can’t handle the vulnerability of his younger siblings seeing him in the light he sees them. It seems wrong, and Dick can’t even pinpoint the reason why.
“I’m gonna make some coffee,” Dick says, breathing out, like that’s enough to shove away both his troubling thoughts and the headache. He can’t deal with this right now. He’s going to end up in a screaming match he’ll regret later if he lets Tim keep pressing.
Tim stands up, too. There’s a defensive curl to Tim’s shoulders that Dick hates, because he knows he put it there.
“I’ll do it,” Tim mumbles, sliding past Dick towards the kitchen.
Dick lets him go. It’s not worth the fight. He slumps back onto his couch, gritting his teeth as he lays the back of his hand over his eyes. He may need to take something tonight if the headache persists. There’s no way he’s going to be able to go on patrol like this.
“Here,” Tim says after a nebulous amount of time. Dick blinks his eyes open to see Tim holding a mug of coffee in front of him. It’s drowning in milk and sugar, the way Dick likes it, but rarely indulges in. “Careful, it’s hot.”
“Thanks,” Dick murmurs, accepting the offer.
Tim shrugs. He still looks a little upset, and Dick tries not to wince as guilt surges up in his throat.
“Sorry,” Dick says, the few minutes on his own enough to cool his temper and settle his thoughts into some semblance of order again. “You’re right, I haven’t done a great job of taking care of myself today. I didn’t need to snap at you for caring.”
Tim’s shoulders lose their defensive hunch, and he sags a little more into the couch. “It’s okay,” Tim says. He hesitates a little longer, and then with a small, upward curl of the corner of his mouth, he continues, “Steph and Cass say you have ‘dumb big brother brain.’”
Dick snorts. Somehow, he’s not surprised that either one of the girls would tell Tim that. The two were opinionated, and Tim tended to go to those two whenever he was uncertain about something and he couldn’t talk to Kon or Bart.
There was a time that he’d come to Dick, but Dick has accepted that that time has come and gone.
The silence after that is much more peaceful, and Dick manages to finish his coffee pretty quickly, grimacing at the bitter taste still not completely hidden by all of the sugar.
It’s only when he catches Tim guiltily side-eyeing him that Dick realizes he’s missed something, gaze flashing away and towards the coffee table before Dick can catch it.
“What did you do?” Dick asks slowly, lowering his mug to his lap to squint at his brother in suspicion.
Tim flinches, eyes wide as he meets Dick’s eyes. “What?”
“You’re doing your squirming thing.”
Tim forces himself still. Dick knows Tim knows what he’s talking about. “I’m not.”
“You were.”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“Tim,” Dick presses. He catches Tim’s quick glance towards Dick’s mug, and Dick goes cold. He brings his mug closer to his face and sticks his finger into it, feeling for—there. Powder. He snaps his eyes over to Tim again, temper flaring once more. But this isn’t from vulnerability, this is genuine indignation at his little brother’s actions. “Tim!”
Tim hunches back in on himself.
“You drugged my coffee?!”
“It’s just tylenol,” Tim mutters. “The dissolvable packets. For your headache.”
Dick stares. “That’s so not the point, Tim.”
“You weren’t going to take any,” Tim says, petulantly. “That, with the caffeine, it’s what you usually take before your migraines get bad, right?”
“I—yes, but you can’t just drug me,” Dick grits out.
“Sorry,” Tim says. He sounds small.
Dick sets the mug on the coffee table, next to the soggy cereal. He presses his face into his palms for a moment, counting forwards to ten in French and backwards in Russian. This night has been a rollercoaster he hadn’t been expecting to ride, and he’s kind of wishing he can get off. When he manages to calm himself enough, he looks up at his little brother, still curled up on the other side of the couch.
“Okay,” Dick says, feeling centered enough to tackle whatever Tim’s issues are. If he’s on the rollercoaster, he might as well ride it out until the end. “What’s wrong?”
Tim startles. He stares at Dick incredulously. “What?”
“What’s wrong?” Dick repeats, twisting against the couch cushion so that his back is to the arm and he’s facing Tim. “I don’t know why you’ve decided you have to aggressively take care of me, but something’s got you out of sorts. Enough that you decided that instead of just asking if I wanted some tylenol, you needed to secretly drug my coffee with it. Out with it.”
Tim is silent for a moment. He looks caught out and wholly unprepared to be questioned like this.
But too bad, because Tim broke into Dick’s apartment, and Tim drugged him. With tylenol, sure, but still. Like hell is going to let this go just because Tim isn’t prepared to tackle it.
“It’s—I’ve—” Tim stutters to a stop, biting a lip. Dick stays quiet as Tim tries again. Eventually, Tim says, “I had a fight with Steph. A bad one.”
“Okay,” Dick says, settling into the role of big brother with ease. He gives Tim a small smile. “I’ll help you figure it out, okay?”