(no subject)
Title: Skin
Characters: Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne
Word Count: ~3k words
Notes: I inferred quite a bit with the reboot. Red Robin still basically happened including Red Robin #26.
- Tim has been de-aged to about 16.
- Jack Drake was still murdered; Bludhaven still was destroyed along
with his stepmother, Dana. Janet Drake was murdered in Haiti when Tim
was about 14. - Steph “died”, came back from Africa and conspired with Bruce to help Tim become a better Robin.
- Bruce died and Tim found him.
- Tim’s Titans haven’t formed, thus no Young Justice.
---
Tim's legs are barely holding him up anymore, but he's going to stand in the shower stall for as long as he can.
The water that had been scalding hot just twenty minutes ago has already left room temperature and is now dipping low into bone-chilling-cold.
An arm reaches for the slippery plastic shampoo bottle resting in the shiny metal caddy hanging from the tile, but-- He's already rinsed and repeated twice now.
He reaches for the soap and rag instead. Once more; he'll scrub himself clean one more time.
"Tim."
He's lost count of how many times he's heard his name. No more than four, he thinks, but. It could be more and it could be less.
The rag is rough on his skin, scratching and sleuthing away any dead skin Tim might have missed the last time around. After a lather is worked up, numb fingers map the rag methodically in small, firm circles, from the bottom of his feet and up to his chest and the back of his neck.
Snakes shed their skin all in one piece.
And Tim thinks absurdly, that he envies them.
It starts with a small self-inflicted cut that the serpent creates by its eye, or near its mouth usually. And then it just works the tear, the rip, until the entire skin can be removed.
"Tim."
At the corner of his eye, that would be a good place for him to start. And then he would be new and maybe his skin wouldn't feel so tight and itchy-- like he has outgrown himself. Dead cells and parasites that have held him down would be torn away in one fell swoop.
He could shed his skin like taking off a winter jacket. Like peeling off the suit of his uniform.
He presses the rag harder into his skin.
By the time Tim finishes scrubbing his face, behind his neck and ears-- hard over his eyes-- his skin is pink and raw looking. Whether it's from the cold, the water pressure, or the abrasive treatment he is giving himself, he's not going to guess.
"Tim."
There's something-- some noise coming in over the sound of the water beating against the bottom of the claw-foot tub. Tim looks down at the white ceramic, looking for its source and not finding one.
But there's nothing but clear water swirling down a silver drain. And when Tim looks up there's nothing but the shower head pouring down, raining over him.
Tim barely even notices when a hand reached in to turn off the water -- he's searching for that sound, like something is rattling.
The large hand spins the cold nozzle first, and then the hot one. The water slows down, and a second later it's just dripping sporadically, down into the tub.
He hears the sound of the metal shower rings on the metal curtain rod. The sharp scratch as they slide and move the curtain to the left.
Looking up isn't an option. Looking up at him... it means--
Tim doesn't know what it means, but it feels like death. Like something is about to die.
And it's not like Tim doesn't know what this feeling is. It's not like this is new for him.
Bruce is standing there, dressed in sweats and an old Henley. The older man isn't wearing shoes or socks and Tim can make out the dark, sparse dust of hair on the tops of Bruce's feet.
It's easier to look at Bruce's feet then his face.
A large, fluffy towel engulfs his shoulders, is wraps around him and is tucked underneath his chin that points down towards his chest.
The strong hands that had shut the water off, that had wrapped him in cotton are petting his towel covered shoulders.
He realizes the noise he was hearing earlier, the one that he was listening hard for, is the chattering of his teeth.
After Bruce makes Tim’s right hand hold the towel to his body, the older man *lifts* him out of the tub, over the lip of the bleached, porcelain rim and sets him down so that he is sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. Tim isn’t sure, but he thinks his body his limp, like a ragdoll. His limbs, all of them, feel heavy and disjointed like the sand bags that hang on rusty chains in the cave. The ones that have stains up and down the body of the canvas. Sweat, blood, salt, spit.
The shock of cold tile on the bottoms of his feet and the cold porcelain behind his knees renews the chills that crawl up and down his limbs. He can see them crawl and break out across his flesh, but Tim barely feels them for some reason and he can’t bring himself to pull the towel tighter. He’s cold a lot; he barely feels it.
His mom had bad circulation. Tim has bad circulation too.
There is water dripping - he can hear. Small drops into the bottom of the tub dripping water from the shower head echo loudly in the quiet, white room. The hollow, almost wet sound of the bones popping cuts through the silence when he turns to look at the faucet. Tim needs to see the leak, the drops, so that he can be sure that it’s not in his head.
He needs to make sure that the madness that he feels - swimming in his heart, in his lungs, in his blood - isn’t setting in and making home, because he swears he is hearing Bruce sigh in relief. Tim swears he hears Bruce’s soft, even breaths as he walks about the bathroom to grab a second bath sheet from the linen closet.
But that can’t be right because Bruce hasn’t said a word - not a *note* - to Tim since that night on the roof.
It’s been weeks and Harkness is still alive, in police custody. And his father is still a cold corpse six feet in the ground with a giant hole in his body where his heart was. Still dead and gone.
And Bruce hasn’t spoken to Tim in weeks.
The towel is the softest and the best that money can buy, but it’s still abrasive on his skin has Bruce runs another towel up and down his neck and arms. Rubs that towel through Tim’s dripping wet hair and around the shell of his ear.
Gently - gently over his face. Over his eyelids that had dropped shut. Over his forehead, past his parts lips. They are parted because… Oh. Tim is breathing heavily. Panting silently almost.
“Tim.” Bruce is talking to him now and that’s… that can’t be good.
Bruce is *touching* him and that’s never good. Bruce only touches him when people die. When there is another death. Another body. More blood.
“Tim.”
Bruce is saying his name and Tim is panting because this isn’t going to be good. And Tim isn’t stupid. He knows what Bruce is doing. He thinks he knows what Bruce is going to do.
He’s seen the uniforms. The new ones that have more red in them then usual. One clearly meant for someone of Dick’s build and light, but solid fluidity and grace. He’s seen the new Robin uniform, the hood, the yellow cape the modified combat boots that are too small for his feet.
Tim knows that Jason has been in contact and so he recognizes the uniform that was tailored for a much larger man than himself. Broader, more capable shoulders. A red Bat burned in red across the black material of the chest.
Tim can guess what Bruce is about to tell him. It’s going to feel like getting shot. It’s going to feel like getting stabbed. It’s going to feel. It’s going to feel worse than it did when Dick did it a few months ago.
Why can’t he figure out how to get the people he loves to want to keep him?
“It’s a new start, Tim. A new mission. And-“
Red. His vision starts to water and bleed red. And Tim gets an absurd thought as he feels like something heavy is sitting flat on his chest.
He thinks about how, in horror movies, a pretty girl always ends up murdered in the white bathroom. Where the fake blood looks bright bright red and the hand prints and arterial blood sprays are everywhere - along the curtains and the tub and sink. Splattered across the mirror. And the water runs pink.
There’s nothing but a bloody, gory body left. He feels like that girl. The one about to get slaughtered, but with less knives.
Less blood. More broken heart, he thinks. And he can’t really breathe and -
Bruce continues, “-And I think that it’s in your best interest if you aren’t apart of it. For right now.”
Something shifts out of place and his vision bends horizontally. He really can’t breathe and he might throw up and the tiles beneath his feet are swimming back and forth across the floor like absurd black and white crossword tiles. so he just squeezes his shut while his elbows jam on the tops of his naked thighs. His palms are jammed into eyes.
He knows he hyperventilating. He’s being fired. Again. He’s… not good enough. That’s how this works, right? Something or someone better comes along, death and life and a whole mess of other things, but one this is always clear and that is that you can’t be Robin forever.
You can’t be Robin forever.
You can’t be Robin forever.
But this isn’t Robin. He hasn’t been Robin in months. He graduated himself - He… He found Bruce.
“I *found* you!” Tim’s throat is raw from the acid that quickly builds up when you hold in emotions that need to be let out. ”*I* found you.” He whispers to the tops of his knees. To the scars there - the first one from the time he took a broken bottle to the joint and the second from the surgery he had when a ricocheted bullet hit him there.
The sharp edge of his fingernails bites into the edge of skin on his forehead.
It’s a sharp pain that narrows everything in, so narrow that he almost misses that Bruce’s hand has stilled on his the third notch of his spine. “I know, Tim. You found me. You’re very good at finding me.” The hand starts to rub again, brush against the thin skin over sharp bone. “You need to slow down now, though. You aren’t thinking clearly and -”
“You don’t have this *right*, Batman. I’m not-” He chokes, just like he always does, “-I’m not Robin anymore, so you don’t have
the right to do this.”
“I’m sorry, Tim, but you aren’t thinking rationally. You think you are, but you aren’t and you’re being benched until I see that you are fit for field again. I don’t need another Jason on my hands Tim, and I have Damian to train. I think you need some time for your world to steady and you-”
“So, I’m the loose cannon now, Bruce? Me?”
“*Yes.* And you’re more dangerous, because you’re a better liar then both of them.”
“How do you even know what I need, Bruce? How?”
Bruce sighs, the hand that has been on Tim’s shoulder slides off as he sits back on his heels in front of the teenager, “Your life, Tim. The people in it - it’s a carousel. People get on and off and you spin and spin and - aren’t you dizzy, Tim?”
*Yes*.
“You’ve lost a lot of people in a really short period of time. No one expected you to handle it as well as you appeared to.” Bruce pulls Tim up with a single hand, pulls him against his large, warm side, “We should have seen through it and - I’m going to take this - take your actions as a cry for help. I should have done it before it got to this and for that I apologize.”
And Tim wants to resist, he wants to struggle and kick and scream, but he’s tired and cold and digging his bare, damp heels into the tile floor isn’t very efficient.
A second later, a blink and nothing more, he’s led to the soft downy sheets of his turned-down bed.
It’s warmer in this room, but his skin is still wrecked with chills. He can’t seem to get them to go away no matter how hard he wraps his arms around himself. No matter how hard he rubs his palms over them. Bruce’s skin, every stretch of skin he can see, reflects the moon that hangs outside his window and he looks like a ghost but that’s not right because *Tim* found him.
But he looks far away even though he’s unwrapping Tim out of the towel, unfurled like a butterfly out of a cocoon.
Tim’s being pulled bare and naked again and he thinks about his skin and the layers of it and how Bruce is the cut. The cutter.
The cut at his eye. The cut near his mouth. The one that might not be so self-inflicted now.
And maybe… he’s not ready - this skin he’s in - it’s still new and he’s not ready to be ripped out of his yet. He’ll be to raw and sore to be of any use to anyone.
But Bruce just strips him out of the towels and Tim just sits there - passive like he can be at just the worst times for his own well being.
Tim can feel Bruce’s fingertips, the hard pads of them over his skin, still soft from standing in the shower. Fingers like spiders down his arms and around thin wrists, like handcuffs.
“Please, Bruce. Don’t do this to me. I can’t do this again.” Tim watches as Bruce threads one of his boneless arms through the soft material of Tim’s favorite sweatshirt he stole from Dick.
“We’ll figure something out, Tim.” Is the only thing Bruce has to say as he slides Tim’s other arm through the next sleeve and then pulls the collar over Tim’s head.
It hurts to say - hurts to think about it on even a shallow level, but it’s the only thing that he’s got, “You can’t do this to me. You… You have no right anymore.” His voice only wavers once, despite the fact that it’s raw in his throat. “I’m not your Robin. I’m not your s-son. I’m not -”
“Stop it, Tim.”
“I’m *not*. I’m an emancipated minor. Any right that you had over me doesn’t *mean* anything.” Tim’s voice cracks again, his voice sounds wet. His cheeks definitely are. “That’s what you wanted, right? That’s what you wanted to happen and now you don’t have any right to tell me what -”
He’s pulled down roughly, a large dangerous and powerful hand on the back of his neck nearly cradling the back of his skull. His half-clothed body is pressed securely down to Bruce’s front. He can feel the strong arm wrapped around his back, just under his rib cage. He can feel the texture of the henley Bruce is wearing, can smell the traces of the cologne Bruce Wayne wore that day. The rough surface of the older man’s jeans scratches at the tops of of Tim’s scarred, naked thighs as he gets tightly, nearly painfully pinned against Bruce and the sheets of the mattress.
“I could leave. I’ll leave -.”
"You can’t. You have social workers to check in with. You have school. You have this family.” And Bruce doesn’t pull any punches, he never has. “You have no where else to go.”
And that’s another non-physical blow that knocks wind from him. His vision blurs and then blackens as he pants through his teeth, his warm breath hits Bruce’s chest. He’s hysterical now, tears coming faster and his eyes burn just like his throat, his heart is pounding painfully against his sternum. And everything is being taken away and he knows that this is how it starts.
Tim doesn’t know if he has another new start in him - he really doesn’t know. It doesn’t feel like he does. But he does feel Bruce freeze, tighten his hold on Tim’s useless limbs He hears him breath deeply and feel the air move Bruce’s heart and chest. “Sorry, Tim. Sorry, I’m - Shh. You - You’re right, Tim. You’re right.” Bruce rolls them both so that Tim is on top of the older man and his big arms are still wrapped tight around him - almost a hug now, with the way one of Bruce’s hands finds and pets the notches in his spine.
It’s still a pin though, one that feels familiar - more so than the hands, the hold. The way Bruce’s legs are wrapped around the backs of Tim’s knees, holding him rigid and paralyzed and defenseless.
Not that it matters, because Bruce is right. He’s always right except when he’s gone and Tim has to go and find him. And -
Tim has no where to go. There is no use to try and struggle to get out of Bruce’s hold.
“You’re right. You might not be Robin anymore. You might not be my son by law anymore, and you aren’t mine by blood.” Something is kicked loose in his mind and he hears the high-pitched keen that is muffled into the from of Bruce’s shirt. “But none of that; none of that means that you aren’t still *mine*. You can’t be Robin again - and you can’t be Red Robin right now - you can’t continue as you have. But you can just be here. Just be *here*.”
But what is he supposed to *do*?
“Just be here, Tim. With me.”
-Fin