Strays - Part 7
Summary: Batman is very happy with the way that Robin has picked up his training, his methods and his habits. Generally. But his protege showing up at the Batcave with two small children, Tim and Jason, clinging to him proves he's adopted one trait Batman would have rather he hadn't. It seems the batfamily has an incurable penchant for picking up strays, and Tim and Jason are only the beginning.
Fandom: DCU/YJ
Characters/Pairing: The Batfamily
Genre: Gen/Fluff/Angst
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Originally for this prompt from the yj-anon-meme, de-anoned and available on this comm with a lot of other fun art and fic by some really amazing people.
Side Stories: Tradition
Main Storyline: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
The next morning, or rather the next late afternoon found Bruce in the midst of a staring contest with his phone. He knew it would take only a single call to set Jason’s adoption in motion, but was unsure of whether or not he was moving too quickly. After all, he still hadn’t figured out how to deal with Tim’s parents and he had no desire to completely ruin his future plans by moving too quickly now.
He already felt that events were moving far too quickly and berated himself once again for putting his name down as an option in the list he had given the boys. He was in no way equipped to take care of either Jason or Tim. He could not anticipate their needs or deal with their respective traumas the way he could Dick’s. He knew, more or less, what Dick needed, but what insanity had come over him last night that he became convinced that he could help those children?
Bruce knew quite well that he’d probably only make them worse. Of course he would. He was barely managing to take care of Dick and Dick was the most resilient child he had ever met.
The billionaire sighed and rubbed tiredly at his forehead.
His investigation into the boys’ lives had…endeared them to him and he had let that endearment dictate his actions. He was being selfish and irrational and that was why he’d put together that dossier on himself. At the time, all he could think of was Catherine Todd’s haunted face and the Drake’s mausoleum of a home. His hands had begun typing without his permission. He was clearly sabotaging himself.
But he’d done it and he couldn’t go back on his decision now. He just hoped he wasn’t as terrible for these children as he was afraid he was going to be.
Bruce found himself pushing away from his desk and getting to his feet. He could not stay in this room worrying over actions already taken any longer. He let his feet carry him out of his office and down the hall. He didn’t know how long he walked aimlessly through the halls of his ancestral home, but he was just considering going out for a breath of fresh air when he heard the sound of muffled laughter.
Laughter had returned to the long silent Manor when Dick had first arrived, but the sound still caught Bruce a bit off guard, even two years later. A small smile crept onto Bruce’s face as he automatically changed his course and headed toward the sound.
It didn’t take him long to track the laughter to its source. Of course not. The children weren’t trying to hide.
Bruce leaned against the doorframe and gazed into the room. The boys had chosen another sitting room this time, but instead of practicing gymnastics, they were seated around the low coffee table with a sheaf of white legal paper and an array of crayons and colored pencils.
“Hey, hey, aren’t you going to draw me too?” Dick demanded, leaning over into Jason’s space, a huge grin on his face.
“Buzz off, Dickface,” Jason grumbled.
“Oh, come on, Jaybird. Don’t be like that,” Dick cajoled hopefully.
“Ugh, fine. Stop begging. It makes you look stupid,” Jason relented with scowl as he reached for the red crayon.
“Awesome!” Dick shouted with joy and side tackled the younger boy.
“Damn it, let go, you jerk!” Jason growled, struggling against Dick’s hold.
“Never, ever!” Dick replied cheerfully.
Bruce glanced away from the pair and saw with some concern that Tim had dropped his crayon. The boy was covering his mouth and shaking.
Before he had quite registered what he was seeing, Bruce was already halfway across the room. And then he was kneeling beside the smallest boy and was awkwardly wondering what he thought he was doing.
He tentatively placed a hand on the child’s shoulder, startling the boy into his dropping his hands and revealing the small openmouthed smile on the boy’s face. Bruce was confused. “Are you okay, Tim,” he asked quietly over the sound of Dick and Jason’s continued struggled.
Tim blinked up at him and nodded shyly after a moment. “They’re funny,” the child confided softly.
Bruce realized with some surprise that Tim hadn’t been upset. Rather the boy had been laughing silently. “Yes, they are,” Bruce said for lack of anything else to say.
His words finally seemed to catch the attention of the older boys who both sat abruptly.
“Bruce, when did you get here?” Dick asked, wide-eyed. Bruce made a mental note to up his ward’s awareness training. Regardless of how distracting his young charges were, Dick needed to be more aware of his surroundings.
“Long enough,” Bruce said, withdrawing his hand from Tim’s shoulder and seating himself on the floor beside the coffee table.
“Wow, you’re creepy Batdad,” Jason said before going back to his drawing in earnest.
“Here, you should draw with us,” Dick said helpfully, pushing a black crayon into Bruce’s hand before handing him his own piece of blank paper.
“I’m not exactly the artistic type, Dick,” Bruce said dryly. Which was true. He could draft and knew a thing or two about forensic artwork, but being handed a piece of paper and a colored implement and asked to produce something was a little beyond him.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dick informed him with surprising force. “Drawing is fun. Skill has absolutely nothing to do with it.”
Bruce glanced at Jason who was scribbling something in red in a corner of his paper and then at Tim who had gone back to drawing and was very carefully shielding his work with his arm. The billionaire sighed; clearly he wasn’t going to have a choice in this.
He glared down at the blank page in front of his though he could glare the paper into drawing itself. After a few minutes he gave up.
“What exactly should I be drawing?” Bruce asked.
“Anything you want,” Dick said. “That’s the idea. And if you don’t like it you can start over.”
Bruce resisted the urge to tell his ward that that was the most unhelpful advice he’d ever heard, and he’d heard plenty of useless advice. He stared down the page for a little longer before taking a peek at what the children were drawing, hoping they would give him some inspiration.
Tim’s work was well guarded, so instead he glances surreptitiously at the older boys’ drawings. Jason’s appeared to feature two figures with thick bodies, round heads without necks and long spindly limbs. The body of the larger figure was colored blue and the smaller one was colored green. A quick glance reconfirmed that Jason was wearing a blue shirt and Tim a green one. Jason had just finished adding in a small red-bodied figure that was hanging from what appeared to be a light fixture in the top corner of the page which he assumed was supposed to be Dick given his ward’s previous request.
As he watched Jason put down the red crayon and considered his drawing seriously.
“Oh, you should - ” Dick piped up only to be cut off with a shove by the younger boy.
“Don’t tell me what to do, backseat drawer,” Jason grumbled before grabbing a gray crayon and hunching back over his work.
Dick pouted before going to his drawing which was also in crayon. He had drawn a tree branch on which rested a nest containing three multicolor puffballs of varying size. Bruce realized with some amusement that the puffballs were meant to be birds and by extension were meant to represent Dick and the smaller boys. Bruce was about to turn back to his own paper when he spotted a black blot in the far corner of Dick’s drawing. It seemed to hover just below an empty circle that Bruce assumed had to be the moon. After a moment Bruce had to bite back a chuckle as he recognized that the blot was meant to be shaped like a bat and that it appeared to be carrying something in its claws. Probably food for those poor little birds, if Bruce had to guess.
Bruce had to give his ward credit. The boy was quite determined to make sure his plan came to fruition. He was probably even planning on having Alfred put it on the refrigerator.
Still, Bruce was inspired by the boys’ efforts. He set down the crayon Dick had given him and reached for a black colored pencil even as Jason snatched up the black crayon he had relinquished. Bruce set the tip of his pencil to the blank page and began to draw. He quickly lost track of time and only realized how much time had passed when the quiet chatter that had picked up again at some point swelled into a loud commotion.
Bruce looked up from his drawing in time to see Tim throw his body over his drawing.
“No, no, no,” the boy cried as though he was fighting for his life.
Dick and Jason, who had both abandoned their drawings, hovered over the smaller boy.
“Come on Babybird,” Dick was coaxing hopefully.
“Leave him alone, you jerk,” Jason snapped, punching the older boy in the arm.
“I just want to see,” Dick said, shaking out his arm with a pout.
“No!” Tim insisted, his voice shrill with panic. “You can’t.”
“But why?” Dick asked. “It’s just a drawing.”
“It’s bad,” Tim said softly.
Dick faltered. “That’s definitely not true,” the ten year old said, squatting down beside the youngest boy.
Jason continued to hover over the others, seemingly unsure if he should be helping Dick or dragging the older boy away.
“It is,” Tim insisted. “Horrible. Awful.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Dick said seriously. “Do you, Jason? Bruce?”
“Nope,” Jason agreed, apparently having chosen a side.
Bruce wondered in bewilderment when this situation had gotten so out of hand and the fact that he was being dragged into this. “No, of course not,” he added in awkwardly.
“See?” Dick scooted close to the smaller boy who was still laying half on the table to protect his work from prying eyes.
“It’s childish,” Tim insisted. “I should be better.”
“You are a kid, Timbo,” Dick said gently, obviously very upset at the direction this conversation was heading in.
Tim closed his eyes and shook his head, pressing himself more firmly against the table.
Bruce grimaced and decided to put an end to this before it got out of hand. “Okay, that’s enough boys,” he said looking directly at his ward as he spoke.
“Bruce…” Dick began incredulously, but stopped at his guardian’s pointed batglare.
“I think that’s enough drawing for today,” Bruce continued. “Why don’t you three clean up and then go play outside.”
Dick cast a concerned glance at Tim before brightening. “Oh, I haven’t shown you guys the grounds yet!”
The ten year-old got up, returned to where he’d been sitting and began gathering the art supplies, chattering all the while about the various parts of the grounds he loved the best. After a moment Jason followed Dick’s lead, though he was clearly more focused on Tim than the half-hearted cleanup he was doing.
Tim waited for almost an entire minute before sitting back, his drawing clutched to his chest.
Bruce’s stomach clenched uncomfortably at the forlorn look on the small child’s face. Before he could change his mind, he picked up his own drawing and scooted closer to the boy.
“It’s not my best work,” Bruce said quietly, “In fact, it’s pretty bad. But I’d like you to have this.” He held out his drawing.
Tim cautiously took the drawing and looked intently down at the pencil sketch of what was clearly supposed to be a Dick carrying Tim, with Jason tagging along beside them. However the drawing only vaguely resembled the intended subjects and only their fairly well done faces saved the drawing from being an unintelligible mess of poorly proportioned body parts.
“I…like it,” Tim said.
“You don’t have to lie,” Bruce assured the boy. “I’m no artist.”
“No,” Tim disagreed with a frown. “I’m not lying. I. Thank you. I love it.”
Bruce smiled and ignored the burn of Jason and Dick’s furtive glances as he made to turn away and lend a hand with the last of the cleanup.
“I,” Tim began stopping Bruce in his tracks. “I. My, mine isn’t good. It’s, it doesn’t look right and, and it’s sloppy, but if you want, you, you could have it. Maybe? I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Bruce assured the child. “I’d love to have your drawing.”
Tim looked half hopeful and half terrified as he handed over his drawing. As he took the picture, Bruce felt as though he’d gone back in time and it was he himself offering the efforts of his labors up to his parents. He remembered their delight, their praise at his scribbles. He remembered feeling so proud of himself.
It was strange being on the other end of that exchange. Strange, but not bad.
Bruce looked over the drawing. Depicted with great care at the top of the paper were a rather bulky black crayon Batman and a thin red crayon Robin flying through the air on thin grey crayon lines. At the very bottom of the page, were two boxy little figures with their arms raised in the air. Bruce was very impressed. Tim had obviously worked very hard on the picture.
He wondered if his parents had felt this honored when it had been him in Tim’s place. He hoped so. “Excellent work, Tim,” Bruce said. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“Really?” Tim asked, his voice very small. And Bruce knew for sure then that no one had ever said something like that to the child before.
“Really,” Bruce confirmed and before he could think better of it, he awkwardly pulled the boy into a hug. “It’s perfect.”
Tim stiffened at the unexpected contact before very slowly relaxing in his hold.
“Thank you,” Bruce said again, unsure of what else he was meant to say in this scenario. He meant to let the boy go after that, but the child was clinging to the front of his shirt. The prospect of pulling away before Tim was ready made Bruce feel like a monster, so he clumsily hugged the child tighter.
As he held Tim in his arms Bruce wondered how this scene would look to an outsider. How would the world view Brucie Wayne’s closeness to a small child? The media would have a field day about him no longer being able to contain himself to unwanted children. The Drakes would barely need to work to keep their huge advantage regardless of their clear criminal neglect of the boy…
And the Drakes. What would they think of this? Their only son disappearing only to reappear at Brucie Wayne’s side. They would be thankful, publicly, at least. They’d have to be. But what would they make of Brucie’s continued interest in their son? They would be disturbed. Of course they would. They’d want to take Tim as far away from him as possible. That’s what Bruce would -
Bruce’s eyes widened and it took a great amount of willpower to not jump to his feet immediately. Instead he gently pulled away from Tim and offered the boy what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “I’m going to go hang this in my study,” Bruce explained. “You don’t mind if I hang this up, do you?”
Tim clearly didn’t understand why Bruce would hang up his picture, but the boy didn’t argue and just nodded, his eyes wide.
Bruce got to his feet and left the room, Tim’s drawing held carefully in his hands. As he walked away from the sitting room he listened to the sounds of the three young voices fade into the distance.
“Wow, Bruce only puts the best stuff up in his office,” Dick said loudly.
“Really?” Tim asked softly.
“Yup. Looks like Jaybird and I are gonna have to settle for the fridge today.”
“‘S cool with me,” Jason said. “Hey, come here, kiddo.”
“Jason…” Tim whined.
“Oh, make room, I want a hug too!” Dick exclaimed.
“Get off, Dickface.”
“Never!”
Bruce chuckled quietly to himself. The day suddenly seemed a lot brighter than it had before.
Part 8
Fandom: DCU/YJ
Characters/Pairing: The Batfamily
Genre: Gen/Fluff/Angst
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Originally for this prompt from the yj-anon-meme, de-anoned and available on this comm with a lot of other fun art and fic by some really amazing people.
Side Stories: Tradition
Main Storyline: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
The next morning, or rather the next late afternoon found Bruce in the midst of a staring contest with his phone. He knew it would take only a single call to set Jason’s adoption in motion, but was unsure of whether or not he was moving too quickly. After all, he still hadn’t figured out how to deal with Tim’s parents and he had no desire to completely ruin his future plans by moving too quickly now.
He already felt that events were moving far too quickly and berated himself once again for putting his name down as an option in the list he had given the boys. He was in no way equipped to take care of either Jason or Tim. He could not anticipate their needs or deal with their respective traumas the way he could Dick’s. He knew, more or less, what Dick needed, but what insanity had come over him last night that he became convinced that he could help those children?
Bruce knew quite well that he’d probably only make them worse. Of course he would. He was barely managing to take care of Dick and Dick was the most resilient child he had ever met.
The billionaire sighed and rubbed tiredly at his forehead.
His investigation into the boys’ lives had…endeared them to him and he had let that endearment dictate his actions. He was being selfish and irrational and that was why he’d put together that dossier on himself. At the time, all he could think of was Catherine Todd’s haunted face and the Drake’s mausoleum of a home. His hands had begun typing without his permission. He was clearly sabotaging himself.
But he’d done it and he couldn’t go back on his decision now. He just hoped he wasn’t as terrible for these children as he was afraid he was going to be.
Bruce found himself pushing away from his desk and getting to his feet. He could not stay in this room worrying over actions already taken any longer. He let his feet carry him out of his office and down the hall. He didn’t know how long he walked aimlessly through the halls of his ancestral home, but he was just considering going out for a breath of fresh air when he heard the sound of muffled laughter.
Laughter had returned to the long silent Manor when Dick had first arrived, but the sound still caught Bruce a bit off guard, even two years later. A small smile crept onto Bruce’s face as he automatically changed his course and headed toward the sound.
It didn’t take him long to track the laughter to its source. Of course not. The children weren’t trying to hide.
Bruce leaned against the doorframe and gazed into the room. The boys had chosen another sitting room this time, but instead of practicing gymnastics, they were seated around the low coffee table with a sheaf of white legal paper and an array of crayons and colored pencils.
“Hey, hey, aren’t you going to draw me too?” Dick demanded, leaning over into Jason’s space, a huge grin on his face.
“Buzz off, Dickface,” Jason grumbled.
“Oh, come on, Jaybird. Don’t be like that,” Dick cajoled hopefully.
“Ugh, fine. Stop begging. It makes you look stupid,” Jason relented with scowl as he reached for the red crayon.
“Awesome!” Dick shouted with joy and side tackled the younger boy.
“Damn it, let go, you jerk!” Jason growled, struggling against Dick’s hold.
“Never, ever!” Dick replied cheerfully.
Bruce glanced away from the pair and saw with some concern that Tim had dropped his crayon. The boy was covering his mouth and shaking.
Before he had quite registered what he was seeing, Bruce was already halfway across the room. And then he was kneeling beside the smallest boy and was awkwardly wondering what he thought he was doing.
He tentatively placed a hand on the child’s shoulder, startling the boy into his dropping his hands and revealing the small openmouthed smile on the boy’s face. Bruce was confused. “Are you okay, Tim,” he asked quietly over the sound of Dick and Jason’s continued struggled.
Tim blinked up at him and nodded shyly after a moment. “They’re funny,” the child confided softly.
Bruce realized with some surprise that Tim hadn’t been upset. Rather the boy had been laughing silently. “Yes, they are,” Bruce said for lack of anything else to say.
His words finally seemed to catch the attention of the older boys who both sat abruptly.
“Bruce, when did you get here?” Dick asked, wide-eyed. Bruce made a mental note to up his ward’s awareness training. Regardless of how distracting his young charges were, Dick needed to be more aware of his surroundings.
“Long enough,” Bruce said, withdrawing his hand from Tim’s shoulder and seating himself on the floor beside the coffee table.
“Wow, you’re creepy Batdad,” Jason said before going back to his drawing in earnest.
“Here, you should draw with us,” Dick said helpfully, pushing a black crayon into Bruce’s hand before handing him his own piece of blank paper.
“I’m not exactly the artistic type, Dick,” Bruce said dryly. Which was true. He could draft and knew a thing or two about forensic artwork, but being handed a piece of paper and a colored implement and asked to produce something was a little beyond him.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dick informed him with surprising force. “Drawing is fun. Skill has absolutely nothing to do with it.”
Bruce glanced at Jason who was scribbling something in red in a corner of his paper and then at Tim who had gone back to drawing and was very carefully shielding his work with his arm. The billionaire sighed; clearly he wasn’t going to have a choice in this.
He glared down at the blank page in front of his though he could glare the paper into drawing itself. After a few minutes he gave up.
“What exactly should I be drawing?” Bruce asked.
“Anything you want,” Dick said. “That’s the idea. And if you don’t like it you can start over.”
Bruce resisted the urge to tell his ward that that was the most unhelpful advice he’d ever heard, and he’d heard plenty of useless advice. He stared down the page for a little longer before taking a peek at what the children were drawing, hoping they would give him some inspiration.
Tim’s work was well guarded, so instead he glances surreptitiously at the older boys’ drawings. Jason’s appeared to feature two figures with thick bodies, round heads without necks and long spindly limbs. The body of the larger figure was colored blue and the smaller one was colored green. A quick glance reconfirmed that Jason was wearing a blue shirt and Tim a green one. Jason had just finished adding in a small red-bodied figure that was hanging from what appeared to be a light fixture in the top corner of the page which he assumed was supposed to be Dick given his ward’s previous request.
As he watched Jason put down the red crayon and considered his drawing seriously.
“Oh, you should - ” Dick piped up only to be cut off with a shove by the younger boy.
“Don’t tell me what to do, backseat drawer,” Jason grumbled before grabbing a gray crayon and hunching back over his work.
Dick pouted before going to his drawing which was also in crayon. He had drawn a tree branch on which rested a nest containing three multicolor puffballs of varying size. Bruce realized with some amusement that the puffballs were meant to be birds and by extension were meant to represent Dick and the smaller boys. Bruce was about to turn back to his own paper when he spotted a black blot in the far corner of Dick’s drawing. It seemed to hover just below an empty circle that Bruce assumed had to be the moon. After a moment Bruce had to bite back a chuckle as he recognized that the blot was meant to be shaped like a bat and that it appeared to be carrying something in its claws. Probably food for those poor little birds, if Bruce had to guess.
Bruce had to give his ward credit. The boy was quite determined to make sure his plan came to fruition. He was probably even planning on having Alfred put it on the refrigerator.
Still, Bruce was inspired by the boys’ efforts. He set down the crayon Dick had given him and reached for a black colored pencil even as Jason snatched up the black crayon he had relinquished. Bruce set the tip of his pencil to the blank page and began to draw. He quickly lost track of time and only realized how much time had passed when the quiet chatter that had picked up again at some point swelled into a loud commotion.
Bruce looked up from his drawing in time to see Tim throw his body over his drawing.
“No, no, no,” the boy cried as though he was fighting for his life.
Dick and Jason, who had both abandoned their drawings, hovered over the smaller boy.
“Come on Babybird,” Dick was coaxing hopefully.
“Leave him alone, you jerk,” Jason snapped, punching the older boy in the arm.
“I just want to see,” Dick said, shaking out his arm with a pout.
“No!” Tim insisted, his voice shrill with panic. “You can’t.”
“But why?” Dick asked. “It’s just a drawing.”
“It’s bad,” Tim said softly.
Dick faltered. “That’s definitely not true,” the ten year old said, squatting down beside the youngest boy.
Jason continued to hover over the others, seemingly unsure if he should be helping Dick or dragging the older boy away.
“It is,” Tim insisted. “Horrible. Awful.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Dick said seriously. “Do you, Jason? Bruce?”
“Nope,” Jason agreed, apparently having chosen a side.
Bruce wondered in bewilderment when this situation had gotten so out of hand and the fact that he was being dragged into this. “No, of course not,” he added in awkwardly.
“See?” Dick scooted close to the smaller boy who was still laying half on the table to protect his work from prying eyes.
“It’s childish,” Tim insisted. “I should be better.”
“You are a kid, Timbo,” Dick said gently, obviously very upset at the direction this conversation was heading in.
Tim closed his eyes and shook his head, pressing himself more firmly against the table.
Bruce grimaced and decided to put an end to this before it got out of hand. “Okay, that’s enough boys,” he said looking directly at his ward as he spoke.
“Bruce…” Dick began incredulously, but stopped at his guardian’s pointed batglare.
“I think that’s enough drawing for today,” Bruce continued. “Why don’t you three clean up and then go play outside.”
Dick cast a concerned glance at Tim before brightening. “Oh, I haven’t shown you guys the grounds yet!”
The ten year-old got up, returned to where he’d been sitting and began gathering the art supplies, chattering all the while about the various parts of the grounds he loved the best. After a moment Jason followed Dick’s lead, though he was clearly more focused on Tim than the half-hearted cleanup he was doing.
Tim waited for almost an entire minute before sitting back, his drawing clutched to his chest.
Bruce’s stomach clenched uncomfortably at the forlorn look on the small child’s face. Before he could change his mind, he picked up his own drawing and scooted closer to the boy.
“It’s not my best work,” Bruce said quietly, “In fact, it’s pretty bad. But I’d like you to have this.” He held out his drawing.
Tim cautiously took the drawing and looked intently down at the pencil sketch of what was clearly supposed to be a Dick carrying Tim, with Jason tagging along beside them. However the drawing only vaguely resembled the intended subjects and only their fairly well done faces saved the drawing from being an unintelligible mess of poorly proportioned body parts.
“I…like it,” Tim said.
“You don’t have to lie,” Bruce assured the boy. “I’m no artist.”
“No,” Tim disagreed with a frown. “I’m not lying. I. Thank you. I love it.”
Bruce smiled and ignored the burn of Jason and Dick’s furtive glances as he made to turn away and lend a hand with the last of the cleanup.
“I,” Tim began stopping Bruce in his tracks. “I. My, mine isn’t good. It’s, it doesn’t look right and, and it’s sloppy, but if you want, you, you could have it. Maybe? I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Bruce assured the child. “I’d love to have your drawing.”
Tim looked half hopeful and half terrified as he handed over his drawing. As he took the picture, Bruce felt as though he’d gone back in time and it was he himself offering the efforts of his labors up to his parents. He remembered their delight, their praise at his scribbles. He remembered feeling so proud of himself.
It was strange being on the other end of that exchange. Strange, but not bad.
Bruce looked over the drawing. Depicted with great care at the top of the paper were a rather bulky black crayon Batman and a thin red crayon Robin flying through the air on thin grey crayon lines. At the very bottom of the page, were two boxy little figures with their arms raised in the air. Bruce was very impressed. Tim had obviously worked very hard on the picture.
He wondered if his parents had felt this honored when it had been him in Tim’s place. He hoped so. “Excellent work, Tim,” Bruce said. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“Really?” Tim asked, his voice very small. And Bruce knew for sure then that no one had ever said something like that to the child before.
“Really,” Bruce confirmed and before he could think better of it, he awkwardly pulled the boy into a hug. “It’s perfect.”
Tim stiffened at the unexpected contact before very slowly relaxing in his hold.
“Thank you,” Bruce said again, unsure of what else he was meant to say in this scenario. He meant to let the boy go after that, but the child was clinging to the front of his shirt. The prospect of pulling away before Tim was ready made Bruce feel like a monster, so he clumsily hugged the child tighter.
As he held Tim in his arms Bruce wondered how this scene would look to an outsider. How would the world view Brucie Wayne’s closeness to a small child? The media would have a field day about him no longer being able to contain himself to unwanted children. The Drakes would barely need to work to keep their huge advantage regardless of their clear criminal neglect of the boy…
And the Drakes. What would they think of this? Their only son disappearing only to reappear at Brucie Wayne’s side. They would be thankful, publicly, at least. They’d have to be. But what would they make of Brucie’s continued interest in their son? They would be disturbed. Of course they would. They’d want to take Tim as far away from him as possible. That’s what Bruce would -
Bruce’s eyes widened and it took a great amount of willpower to not jump to his feet immediately. Instead he gently pulled away from Tim and offered the boy what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “I’m going to go hang this in my study,” Bruce explained. “You don’t mind if I hang this up, do you?”
Tim clearly didn’t understand why Bruce would hang up his picture, but the boy didn’t argue and just nodded, his eyes wide.
Bruce got to his feet and left the room, Tim’s drawing held carefully in his hands. As he walked away from the sitting room he listened to the sounds of the three young voices fade into the distance.
“Wow, Bruce only puts the best stuff up in his office,” Dick said loudly.
“Really?” Tim asked softly.
“Yup. Looks like Jaybird and I are gonna have to settle for the fridge today.”
“‘S cool with me,” Jason said. “Hey, come here, kiddo.”
“Jason…” Tim whined.
“Oh, make room, I want a hug too!” Dick exclaimed.
“Get off, Dickface.”
“Never!”
Bruce chuckled quietly to himself. The day suddenly seemed a lot brighter than it had before.
Part 8