[Fic: DCU] The Care & Keeping of Your Knight in Non-reflective Nomex, (Tim/Tam hurtcomfort fic)
Title: The Care and Keeping of Your Knight in Non-reflective Nomex
Fandom: DCU (Red Robin, Future AU)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: approx. 1,990
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Tam just wants to give her fiancé his coffee... until she doesn't. Tim/Tam future realfiancé! AU. Done for the Tim Drake Het Commentfic-a-thon.
She's stirring the precise amount of creamer he will tolerate into the sugarless cup of joe when she realizes she's been hanging around his big brother too much because the worst joke pops into her head.
He likes his coffee the way he likes his women...
She shakes her head as she turn off the coffee pot, trying not to complete the thought... (hot, a dark creamy brown, and on the go, prepared to keep up with him), and realizes that she's always hated that joke, and it makes her feel annoyed as she finds herself standing behind his chair, poking his shoulder.
He's on the computer. He's been on the computer for the last twelve hours, and his eyes are red, his voice is hoarse from cursing at the stream of data floating in little numbers before his eyes, and he's constantly switching the com in his ear, since even the padding on the plastic is beginning to wear into an annoying pressure on both sides of his head.
Tam thinks that if it were anyone else, their eyeballs would have fallen out by now, they'd be so stare-dry. But Tim is constantly blinking, constantly thinking, and occasionally prying his gaze away to glance at hand-written scribble-notes in his lap.
Stupid ankle injury.
It makes her nervous, to think of him going out into the night. Fighting psychos with butcher knives for hands and razors for brains. But this is just worse somehow. Seeing him stuck--even temporarily--in this mode where he still needs to help but can't really go out and do it himself. He tells her this is what Oracle does. And that's great, but Tam's getting the impression that as good as Tim is at this, Oracle is better, and Tim's help--at least in this way--is a little superfluous.
And he's feeling it.
She pokes him again. She doesn't feel terribly useful either, but there's one thing she can do and that's pump him full of caffeine. She took a whole minute to contemplate cheating--giving him decaf so he would collapse and get sleep. But he'd be hurt in another way, and she never wants to lose his trust, even in the small things.
She pokes him again.
He's trying to take in the reports of everybody's activity for the night, match up the information, find the links in the cases. The creepy gangster people are acting up again--she does know they are called the Odessa mob, but her description's accurate, thankyouverymuch--and he's trying to figure out how many of the thugs that his family took down tonight were part of that rise in activity, or pure coincidence.
She pokes him again. His brain is so zeroed down that he's not even responding to physical stimuli anymore. She remembers the first time she saw him like this and felt a tiny thrill mixed with her irritation because it meant he trusted her that much. Now she just feels worried and exasperated because it tells her how far gone he really is.
She's ready to try verbal.
"Hey ninja-boy, your fiancée is poking you here."
"Just give me five minutes, Tam."
It's just your coffee, she doesn't say.
She's pretty sure by this point that she doesn't want to even do her job, because he needs to sleep. If not sleep, then just rest, just to close his eyes, just anything other than be this automaton he's turned himself into for the night. She's not feeling terribly perky herself, either.
She sets the coffee down next to him and stares at the cell phone she left on the table. It's her "Tim Family" cell, the one she's supposed to use for emergencies and for when she is absolutely sure no one is listening.
She could use it.
She has favors and she could call them in.
That reality show producer that was harassing Dick last month, the one she re-directed towards another rich playboy she knew from high-school.... Dick owes her for that. Or the late night paperwork that she hand-delivered to the GCPD when the computers were down... Steph said she'd be eternally grateful. The file-research for Cass, that kitten thing for Damian... All the little things she's done that make her part of this family, aside from the shiny engagement ring she's been wearing for a month now, the one the press thinks has been there for years. She could call any of Waynes-Graysons-Browns-Cains-Drapers right now and ask for somebody to cover for Tim tonight.
Technically, she could.
But such things are precious, and Tim's not in any danger. He's doing this because he needs to. He's saving people, and Tam reminds herself of that with a pinch on the wrist.
She checks the clock.
Two fifty-three AM.
Tim has a certain eccentricities to his media-persona that he cultivates very, very carefully. They think he's a stickler for certain traditions. The old-fashioned nine-to-five work week being one. It's because his crazy bat-efficiency lets him get up at exactly 8:30 and take no more than half an hour to be ready for the office. If he goes to sleep at three, that makes for five hours of sleep. The extra two that he needs to properly function are scattered throughout the naps that Tam has labeled "Meeting with the Morpheus Project executives" on his schedule sheet.
Occasionally some fresh-faced intern will question why the MP executives sometimes require more than one meeting in a single day. A fierce Fox-family glare and a not-so-accidental coffee-stain on their perfectly-ironed work shirts lets them know not to ask.
Two fifty-nine.
Tam takes her shoes off. It's sixteen minutes and counting until three fifteen. That magical time when Tim will shut off his computer and take fifteen very necessary minutes to somehow wind down to the point when he can actually sleep. Before they were together, he would do, well, alone things: play a video game, aromatherapy, yoga, meditation... but lately, they've been doing Ashiatsu. Massage via back-walking.
She started taking lessons seven months ago, and she's proud of her progress. She can practically unlock his back like clockwork now. She still feels an incredible warmth in her chest when she recalls the day he installed the balance bars for her above his bed. He'd blushed and shuffled his left foot like he was still seventeen. Completely adorable.
She catches his smile now, a tiny twitch at the right corner of his mouth as her left shoe flops onto the floor in his periphery. Anticipation is good for the soul. It helps him shake off some of that invisible weight from his shoulders as he types away into his spreadsheet.
She goes upstairs, out of his bunker and up to the real apartment and begins to turn down the bed, steep the decaffeinated tea that Alfred gave her, and work on that Neon Knights powerpoint that's been driving her up the wall for a week.
When the clock reads three, completely on the dot, Tim pushes that beautiful "off" button on his monitor and pivots his chair to see Tam holding a damp black cloth extended towards him.
"Blindfold?"
"Blindfold."
"Kinky."
"Seriously. You'll thank me in the morning."
He leans forward and lets her tie it around his eyes. It's drenched in Aqua-tears and a salve mixture from Tibet. Oracle emailed her the recipe. Seems that computer vision syndrome is a real concern among this rag-tag bunch. Tam's been assured that this ounce of prevention feels like a pound of cure with only ten minutes of exposure.
He moans when the salve hits his eyelids, and Tam smiles.
It's his apartment. He has the layout memorized and keeps it clean. But he lets her lead him to the bedroom anyway. Tim likes holding hands. He doesn't do it in public because he hates the way Vicky Vale can make anything suspicious and wrong-sounding, but he loves the little gestures. Pulling out chairs. Sharing drinks. Pecks on the cheek. Tim is a detail man. Intrinsically so.
They chat about silly stupid things as he drinks his tea. Tiffany's overly ambitious baby-shower. Dad's desire to strangle Tiff's well-meaning but moronic husband. The insane things Dick has been planning in the name of family bonding...
When the blindfold comes off, and he's on his stomach with his shirt removed in that king-sized bed, Tam allows herself just a moment to take in the sight before leaping up and grabbing the balance bars attached to the ceiling.
As she carefully digs her heel into his rotator cuff, that guttural breathless sound escapes his lips, the one that makes butterflies dance in her stomach and unclean thoughts prance around the edges of her brain. He seems to know it, and feel it too, despite all the exhaustion and aching as he glances up at her, his face half-hidden behind his shoulder.
"I love you."
It's the quiet grateful murmur of one very sleepy ninja-boy halfway to dreamland, but it's real, and it makes Tam feel like she's walking on air instead of her crazy fiancé's upper vertebrae.
"I love you too, you workaholic superhero."
She silences any forthcoming apologies by carefully working his shoulder blades with her big toe. It's a tricky yet affectionate thing, and she only does it when she wants him to know she's not the least bit mad anymore.
His breathing is even, and everything about the room, everything about the night feels rhythmic and peaceful. When Tam lays down beside him and glances over her handiwork, she lets her fingertips glide over his spine. Nothing short of a bomb on the edge of the block is going to wake him now.
Tam has slept through the first two hours of his "night work" as usual, and it takes a little longer for her own sleep to come. She likes to think that some part of him hears her when she talks herself into slumber, that the things she says to him when he can't hear her, still reach him at the core of that overly-observant mind. So when she whispers against the slope of his back, the questions she asks are both rhetorical and... not.
"Oh, baby... you think I don't know why you're doing this?"
She means the extra work. All the times in the last three months that he's been offered time off and said "No." Even with his busted ankle.
It's because of the honeymoon. The wedding is soon, and wedding means honeymoon, means vacation, and time off is something that Tim feels he has to earn. Even though everyone who knows him at all knows he's worth it a thousand times over.
She knows Tim's not trying to please the whole world. Just his family (and that now includes her), but he wants to do it so badly that she sometimes wonders how the hell a heart that big fits into his compact body.
Patience is half the key. Knowing when he really needs to be allowed to be the obsessive and long-suffering brother, son, and citizen savior he strives to be. The other half is knowing when he's being an over-dramatic ass, and smack him upside the head accordingly. Or to intervene through everyone else.
This is the last night Tim's going to be allowed to pull his crap for a while. Yes, Tam thinks to herself, tomorrow he will have lots of sleep, they will cancel and reschedule that tech division meeting for the third time in a row, and he will find himself temporarily without access to the creys. With lots and lots of time to spend with her. With lots and lots of time for tea, and talk, and Ashiatsu, and other things. Lots of lovely, sexy, other things.
Tam's lips curl into a wide smile and she kisses his shoulder, illuminated by moonlight. She settles down into a curl of warmth and dreams blissful dreams.
Anticipation is good for the soul.
f.i.n.
[ *] [ *]
Fandom: DCU (Red Robin, Future AU)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: approx. 1,990
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Tam just wants to give her fiancé his coffee... until she doesn't. Tim/Tam future realfiancé! AU. Done for the Tim Drake Het Commentfic-a-thon.
She's stirring the precise amount of creamer he will tolerate into the sugarless cup of joe when she realizes she's been hanging around his big brother too much because the worst joke pops into her head.
He likes his coffee the way he likes his women...
She shakes her head as she turn off the coffee pot, trying not to complete the thought... (hot, a dark creamy brown, and on the go, prepared to keep up with him), and realizes that she's always hated that joke, and it makes her feel annoyed as she finds herself standing behind his chair, poking his shoulder.
He's on the computer. He's been on the computer for the last twelve hours, and his eyes are red, his voice is hoarse from cursing at the stream of data floating in little numbers before his eyes, and he's constantly switching the com in his ear, since even the padding on the plastic is beginning to wear into an annoying pressure on both sides of his head.
Tam thinks that if it were anyone else, their eyeballs would have fallen out by now, they'd be so stare-dry. But Tim is constantly blinking, constantly thinking, and occasionally prying his gaze away to glance at hand-written scribble-notes in his lap.
Stupid ankle injury.
It makes her nervous, to think of him going out into the night. Fighting psychos with butcher knives for hands and razors for brains. But this is just worse somehow. Seeing him stuck--even temporarily--in this mode where he still needs to help but can't really go out and do it himself. He tells her this is what Oracle does. And that's great, but Tam's getting the impression that as good as Tim is at this, Oracle is better, and Tim's help--at least in this way--is a little superfluous.
And he's feeling it.
She pokes him again. She doesn't feel terribly useful either, but there's one thing she can do and that's pump him full of caffeine. She took a whole minute to contemplate cheating--giving him decaf so he would collapse and get sleep. But he'd be hurt in another way, and she never wants to lose his trust, even in the small things.
She pokes him again.
He's trying to take in the reports of everybody's activity for the night, match up the information, find the links in the cases. The creepy gangster people are acting up again--she does know they are called the Odessa mob, but her description's accurate, thankyouverymuch--and he's trying to figure out how many of the thugs that his family took down tonight were part of that rise in activity, or pure coincidence.
She pokes him again. His brain is so zeroed down that he's not even responding to physical stimuli anymore. She remembers the first time she saw him like this and felt a tiny thrill mixed with her irritation because it meant he trusted her that much. Now she just feels worried and exasperated because it tells her how far gone he really is.
She's ready to try verbal.
"Hey ninja-boy, your fiancée is poking you here."
"Just give me five minutes, Tam."
It's just your coffee, she doesn't say.
She's pretty sure by this point that she doesn't want to even do her job, because he needs to sleep. If not sleep, then just rest, just to close his eyes, just anything other than be this automaton he's turned himself into for the night. She's not feeling terribly perky herself, either.
She sets the coffee down next to him and stares at the cell phone she left on the table. It's her "Tim Family" cell, the one she's supposed to use for emergencies and for when she is absolutely sure no one is listening.
She could use it.
She has favors and she could call them in.
That reality show producer that was harassing Dick last month, the one she re-directed towards another rich playboy she knew from high-school.... Dick owes her for that. Or the late night paperwork that she hand-delivered to the GCPD when the computers were down... Steph said she'd be eternally grateful. The file-research for Cass, that kitten thing for Damian... All the little things she's done that make her part of this family, aside from the shiny engagement ring she's been wearing for a month now, the one the press thinks has been there for years. She could call any of Waynes-Graysons-Browns-Cains-Drapers right now and ask for somebody to cover for Tim tonight.
Technically, she could.
But such things are precious, and Tim's not in any danger. He's doing this because he needs to. He's saving people, and Tam reminds herself of that with a pinch on the wrist.
She checks the clock.
Two fifty-three AM.
Tim has a certain eccentricities to his media-persona that he cultivates very, very carefully. They think he's a stickler for certain traditions. The old-fashioned nine-to-five work week being one. It's because his crazy bat-efficiency lets him get up at exactly 8:30 and take no more than half an hour to be ready for the office. If he goes to sleep at three, that makes for five hours of sleep. The extra two that he needs to properly function are scattered throughout the naps that Tam has labeled "Meeting with the Morpheus Project executives" on his schedule sheet.
Occasionally some fresh-faced intern will question why the MP executives sometimes require more than one meeting in a single day. A fierce Fox-family glare and a not-so-accidental coffee-stain on their perfectly-ironed work shirts lets them know not to ask.
Two fifty-nine.
Tam takes her shoes off. It's sixteen minutes and counting until three fifteen. That magical time when Tim will shut off his computer and take fifteen very necessary minutes to somehow wind down to the point when he can actually sleep. Before they were together, he would do, well, alone things: play a video game, aromatherapy, yoga, meditation... but lately, they've been doing Ashiatsu. Massage via back-walking.
She started taking lessons seven months ago, and she's proud of her progress. She can practically unlock his back like clockwork now. She still feels an incredible warmth in her chest when she recalls the day he installed the balance bars for her above his bed. He'd blushed and shuffled his left foot like he was still seventeen. Completely adorable.
She catches his smile now, a tiny twitch at the right corner of his mouth as her left shoe flops onto the floor in his periphery. Anticipation is good for the soul. It helps him shake off some of that invisible weight from his shoulders as he types away into his spreadsheet.
She goes upstairs, out of his bunker and up to the real apartment and begins to turn down the bed, steep the decaffeinated tea that Alfred gave her, and work on that Neon Knights powerpoint that's been driving her up the wall for a week.
When the clock reads three, completely on the dot, Tim pushes that beautiful "off" button on his monitor and pivots his chair to see Tam holding a damp black cloth extended towards him.
"Blindfold?"
"Blindfold."
"Kinky."
"Seriously. You'll thank me in the morning."
He leans forward and lets her tie it around his eyes. It's drenched in Aqua-tears and a salve mixture from Tibet. Oracle emailed her the recipe. Seems that computer vision syndrome is a real concern among this rag-tag bunch. Tam's been assured that this ounce of prevention feels like a pound of cure with only ten minutes of exposure.
He moans when the salve hits his eyelids, and Tam smiles.
It's his apartment. He has the layout memorized and keeps it clean. But he lets her lead him to the bedroom anyway. Tim likes holding hands. He doesn't do it in public because he hates the way Vicky Vale can make anything suspicious and wrong-sounding, but he loves the little gestures. Pulling out chairs. Sharing drinks. Pecks on the cheek. Tim is a detail man. Intrinsically so.
They chat about silly stupid things as he drinks his tea. Tiffany's overly ambitious baby-shower. Dad's desire to strangle Tiff's well-meaning but moronic husband. The insane things Dick has been planning in the name of family bonding...
When the blindfold comes off, and he's on his stomach with his shirt removed in that king-sized bed, Tam allows herself just a moment to take in the sight before leaping up and grabbing the balance bars attached to the ceiling.
As she carefully digs her heel into his rotator cuff, that guttural breathless sound escapes his lips, the one that makes butterflies dance in her stomach and unclean thoughts prance around the edges of her brain. He seems to know it, and feel it too, despite all the exhaustion and aching as he glances up at her, his face half-hidden behind his shoulder.
"I love you."
It's the quiet grateful murmur of one very sleepy ninja-boy halfway to dreamland, but it's real, and it makes Tam feel like she's walking on air instead of her crazy fiancé's upper vertebrae.
"I love you too, you workaholic superhero."
She silences any forthcoming apologies by carefully working his shoulder blades with her big toe. It's a tricky yet affectionate thing, and she only does it when she wants him to know she's not the least bit mad anymore.
His breathing is even, and everything about the room, everything about the night feels rhythmic and peaceful. When Tam lays down beside him and glances over her handiwork, she lets her fingertips glide over his spine. Nothing short of a bomb on the edge of the block is going to wake him now.
Tam has slept through the first two hours of his "night work" as usual, and it takes a little longer for her own sleep to come. She likes to think that some part of him hears her when she talks herself into slumber, that the things she says to him when he can't hear her, still reach him at the core of that overly-observant mind. So when she whispers against the slope of his back, the questions she asks are both rhetorical and... not.
"Oh, baby... you think I don't know why you're doing this?"
She means the extra work. All the times in the last three months that he's been offered time off and said "No." Even with his busted ankle.
It's because of the honeymoon. The wedding is soon, and wedding means honeymoon, means vacation, and time off is something that Tim feels he has to earn. Even though everyone who knows him at all knows he's worth it a thousand times over.
She knows Tim's not trying to please the whole world. Just his family (and that now includes her), but he wants to do it so badly that she sometimes wonders how the hell a heart that big fits into his compact body.
Patience is half the key. Knowing when he really needs to be allowed to be the obsessive and long-suffering brother, son, and citizen savior he strives to be. The other half is knowing when he's being an over-dramatic ass, and smack him upside the head accordingly. Or to intervene through everyone else.
This is the last night Tim's going to be allowed to pull his crap for a while. Yes, Tam thinks to herself, tomorrow he will have lots of sleep, they will cancel and reschedule that tech division meeting for the third time in a row, and he will find himself temporarily without access to the creys. With lots and lots of time to spend with her. With lots and lots of time for tea, and talk, and Ashiatsu, and other things. Lots of lovely, sexy, other things.
Tam's lips curl into a wide smile and she kisses his shoulder, illuminated by moonlight. She settles down into a curl of warmth and dreams blissful dreams.
Anticipation is good for the soul.
f.i.n.
[ *] [ *]