Fic: Disguised As A Blessing (I'm Sure)
Title: Disguised As A Blessing (I’m Sure)
Characters: Dick Grayson, Guy Gardner, Tim Drake
Words: 1070
Notes: This has been niggling at the back of my mind for a while now. I’m gonna keep it short though. This is also my first time writing Guy Gardner. Which is strange because he has to be probably my third favorite character in the DCU. I love that he most likely has a Baltimore accent. I love that he’s… Ugh. I just love him, okay?
Also, I’ve been wanting to write a sort-of universe where Tim is autistic. I just… I see it. And autism affects a big part of my life, and my family's life. I just wanted to write it.
--
“I like the new Robin, Nightwing.” Guy Gardner announces as he leans over the bar and grab another cold, glass-green bottle, “Where’d you find this one?”
Dick looks over his shoulder and glances at the teenager sitting at one of the vacant tables in the bar. All of the nights occupants are in uniforms and so is Tim. The kid is in his new uniform - the one with pants and modified combat boots and more body armor than Dick would know what to do with. The one both Batman and the boy insisted on.
The kid who can’t weigh even close to a buck twenty soaking wet. With the new impressive body armor.
The same kid who had determined Batman and Robin’s identities at the ripe old age of seven.
The same kid that kind of freaks Dick out with the way his eyes analyze and calculate - the way he talks a little too loud. The way he does and doesn’t express normal emotions. He think that he should be used to it, growing up with Bruce and all, but the difference is the way that Tim looks away when Dick catches him studying. The challenge Tim seems to have internally to hold, to keep eye contact like a secret.
“He… He sort of found us, actually.” Dick admits to the Lantern.
Guy chokes a little bit, “We-hell! Don’t tell me he has a lurk. Does the little bird have a lurk? Already?” Gay flashes a toothy grin.
“Yeah, you could say that. Robin just got back from a stint overseas - training. I thought I’d bring him tonight because honestly the kid is borderline *obsessed* with vigilantes and I thought this would… I don’t know what I thought.” Dick frowns into his glass, “I honestly *thought* he would do more than just sit there and read a book.”
“He’s not reading that book.” The sound of the metal cap that Guy easily twists off hits the waxed and wooden bar with a metallic ping as he tosses it down. “He only *looks* like he’s readin’ it. But really, the kids eyes don’t stay on a page for more than ten seconds and they fly around the room.” Guy smirks, “Heh. Like a Robin. Well; there ya go.”
Dick watches Tim’s eyes, and Guy is right, they don’t even swim across the page like they should. “How’d you figure that one out, Gardner?”
“I *watched* him, dumb-ass.” Guy sets his bottle down on the pulp-paper coaster and gestures with big, square hand towards Tim, “Besides - I also *talked* to him and he told me about what he was reading. He’s already read the book - probably has it memorized if the way he was talking about it is anything to go by.”
“Never said the boy wasn’t smart. Probably *too* smart. *Creepy* smart.”
“You don’t - Hm.” Guy narrows his eye at the new Robin before shaking his head. “Never-mind.”
“What?”
“I think the kid might have some sort of - condition, ‘Wing.”
“What? That’s not -” Something jolts inside of Nightwing’s stomach, “That’s not even funny, Guy.”
“Do ya *see* me laughin’?”
“Why would you even say something like that?”
“I’m just-”
“You don’t know anything about him!”
“Woah - calm the hell down, Grayson and stop acting like I fuckin’ insulted your mother.”
“You just said that-”
“I said, after one conversation with the kid, that I noticed something’s off. I can make opinions about this kind of thing because of the five years I spent teaching special education. To children.“
“Five-“
“Yeah. Five.”
Tim is quiet. Except when he isn’t. He’s smart as anything ever, except when he’s not, when he’s slightly over-stimulated, when he can’t reign in normal scales of emotion - doesn’t react normally to them.
“What do you think is wrong with him?” Does Bruce know?
“Jesus Christ - now, did you hear the words, ‘something’s wrong’ with the kid ever leave my mouth? I never said the kid was wrong - you never heard me say that.” Guy growls into another long swig from his bottle. “I said he might a condition, but that doesn’t make Robin wrong or sick or nothin’. So don’t go thinking that.”
Dick can’t take his eyes off of Tim. Can’t stop thinking about every thing Tim has done in his presence, in Bruce’s presence
“Ya know, my full name isn’t M.D. Green Lantern Guy Gardner, as awesome as that sounds, so you got to take anything that I sat with a grain a salt, ‘kay? If I had to play diagnose the birdie, I’d say… God. Autism, Dick. Talking to him? Maybe Savant Autism. But I’m not sure. And if he is autistic, he probably went to some sort of hospital for a while, because the range of emotion he can emit are taught well. He’s a good learner, yeah?”
Dick’s mind. It’s spinning. Not because Tim might be autistic. But because he didn’t notice. He thought the kid was just… odd. He didn’t think. He didn’t ask. “Yeah.”
“Look - you’re freakin’ out on me, and that’s no good, cause the Birdie will probably pick up on that and that does no one any good, so. You gotta breathe and know that there is nothing wrong with him and there’s nothing wrong with you and I might be pullin’ this shit out of my ass, okay?” Guy puts a hand on Dick’s shoulder, the nomex-spandex blend is soft under his fingers, “Look man, you’re upset. I don’t know the kid, I had two conversations with him and I’m probably wrong, okay? Forget I said a thing.”
Guy squeezes his shoulder, drops it and then drains the rest of his beer and turns away. “Yeah - I mean, yeah.”
But his eyes catch on the slope of Tim’s shoulders, the way the boy’s eyes flicker from the text of his novel to the occupants of the low-lit bar. His eyes drift from the people to the pool table.
It’s a click.
He can see it in Tim’s head, how he calculates the angles on the felt. The people in the room.
And then eyes back to the text.
Like he’s trying to figure out the people like he does equations. Like he’s preparing for a test or a quiz. That’s it.
“Seriously, ‘Wing - forget I said anything.”
But now he can’t.
-fin