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Tim’s awareness comes back the way it always does. Sound, then scent, then pain, blah blah blah.
He’s not up to dissecting it. He’s in a hospital bed and everything fucking hurts, from the space behind his eyes to his fingers, but especially his ribs. They feel like they’re on fire.
‘What happened?’ is what he tries to say.
“Nghhgghh,” is what he manages.
“Be quiet, Timothy.”
Tim’s brow furrows, an action that hurts his skin.
Because Damian doesn’t talk to him like that anymore. Occasionally, Tim says something to him that earns him a biting reply, but he usually deserves the nip for whatever it is that he said.
Then he places the wrong note he’d heard in Damian’s voice. That tightness.
Shit. This is probably Tim’s fault, then.
He clears his throat to try again, not even bothering to open his eyes. It’s a routine at this point — he knows if he opens them he’ll be blinded by the lights.
“What happened?” he manages to squeeze out this time, but it sounds like he spent an entire day screaming, his voice is so hoarse.
“You fainted straight into my arms,” Damian lies. He means for it to come out sarcastic, but even he can hear the flatness to it, the way it lacks the dry humor that he usually parries with.
“Ha ha,” Tim says from the bed, his voice weak. Everything about him seems weak right now — the lack of color in his face, the lack of volume in his hair, the lack of strength in his posture.
And especially the bandages wrapping his torso.
Damian’s next comment is much more genuine. “You know, if you wanted my attention, you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”
Tim opens his mouth to answer, but Damian doesn’t let him.
“Stop talking,” he orders.
Tim is almost offended, until he feels cool plastic pressed to his lips, and he understands.
He lets Damian help him drink.
When he pulls away, he feels a gentle stroke along the side of his lip — Damian’s thumb brushing away a droplet of water.
“Can you dim the lights? I feel like someone took a sledgehammer to the side of my skull.”
“You deserve it,” Damian says, and Tim sighs, but a moment later, the back of his eyelids look less red-orange and more black.
Tim cracks his eyes open slowly. The light still makes his head throb, but it’s definitely better than it would have been before.
“What really happened?”
“You don’t recall?” Damian drawls.
“I’m pretty sure I have a concussion, Damian. Enlighten me,” Tim says as he finishes working his eyes open, the throbbing in his head receding slightly.
His eyes find Damian as soon as they start processing what he’s seeing.
Damian's slouched down in a seat at Tim’s bedside, his feet crossed at the ankles and resting at the edge of the mattress, a few inches from Tim’s. His arms are crossed over his chest, his mouth curled into a bored line, his eyebrows flattened into their usual unimpressed arc.
But a few things pop out in contrast to the casual pose — his hair is greasy, in disarray like he’s been pushing it away from his forehead, running his hands through it repeatedly. His lips are chapped, the lower lip bitten up on the right side the way it always is when he gnaws at it, which only ever happens when he’s concerned.
And he’s still in his suit. His gloves and mask are sitting on the table by his elbow, his cape draped over the arm of the chair like he was laying under it.
It’s his eyes that finish the story, though.
They’re bloodshot. Not like he’s been crying, but like he hasn’t been sleeping. Like he's been standing sentinel.
Damian hasn’t left his side.
“How long?” Tim asks.
“Long enough. Too long, maybe, but you have a sleep deficit, so Richard decided we should not interrupt you.”
Tim watches Damian closely, doesn’t see any tells, and knows he’s lying anyways.
He decides not to mention it.
“Damian,” Tim says. His tone is delicate, but unwavering. “What happened?”
It’s only for a millisecond that Damian’s eyes flash with emotion. So fast that Tim could have imagined it.
He knows he didn’t.
“The breakout,” Damian says, looking bored and irritated once more, but there's something in his voice that contrasts the look. “You and I were in Robinson Park. Firefly—”
And then Tim remembers. Damian is still talking, looking less and less bored with every word. Tim is hearing him, but he isn’t really processing what he says, because it’s all coming back to him now.
Ivy’s flourishing plants. The thick, orangey haze in the air. The sharp burn of accelerant in the back of his nose under the smell of burnt leaves and ash. The ignored instinct to run away as he and Damian followed the smoke to its source.
A plume of flames roiling towards them. Seeing Damian in the line of fire, literally —
And slamming into his side, wrapping his arms around him, and sending them rolling to the ground, not quite fast enough to avoid the flames.
No wonder his side feels like it’s on fire. It probably was.
He doesn’t remember much after that, which means he must have hit his head going down. Just a few flashes: Damian stabbing the nozzle of firefly’s gun, Damian grabbing the side of the rogue’s head and knocking it against a tree until his body went limp—
And Damian over him, his hand on the side of Tim’s face, a frantic look in his eyes as his lips moved and Tim heard nothing.
Ah. That’s why Damian is so pissed at him.
Tim tunes back into the sound of his voice, hearing the way it isn’t just tense, it’s a little hoarse.
“—took you back here, where your burns were treated. But you look like you’ve been tuning me out for the last thirty seconds anyways, so I assume that means you’ve remembered the details of your idiocy.”
Oh, good. Damian's fingers are tightening around his biceps, his mouth carving into a scowl.
“Damian…”
Damian pushes his chair back with a screech and rises to his feet, and god, every time he does that it just reminds Tim how much taller he’s getting. He’s already passed Tim in height, and he’s a half-inch from passing Dick, and soon he’ll probably be passing Jason, too—
“I am going to let Alfred know you are awake.”
Damian turns and strides towards the door, and Tim knows that if he doesn’t say anything, he’ll walk all the way out and not come back. Give Tim the cold shoulder for a week or two, walk out of rooms when he walks in, avoid him on patrols.
But things will thaw eventually. They’ll get back to snarking at each other and bickering, then back to annoying each other on purpose, then back to quietly spending time in the same room just for an excuse to be together.
Maybe they’ll even get back to where they were before tonight — hands and thighs brushing while they sat next to each other, Damian flaunting his height over Tim by standing a little closer to him than he needs to, each of them bringing a cup of a coffee with a cup of tea down to the cave on nights they’re both up far too late—
But maybe they wouldn’t. Tim hasn’t seen Damian this closed off with him since they first came to a silent agreement that hating each other wasn’t worth their time.
And that hurts more than any of his injuries.
So before Damian’s foot can make it through the doorway, Tim says, “Wait.”
Damian stops.
“Come back.”
Tim isn’t sure if it’s a plea or a command. He doesn’t care, actually.
Because Damian listens.
He pauses in the doorway like he’s considering stepping through it anyways. Tim traces his gaze over the line of his shoulders, the curve of his back, the dip of his waist, his breath held—
And then Damian turns on his heel and starts walking back towards the bed.
“I do not think you want to discuss the events of this evening with me,” Damian says. His tone is like a brick wall, solid and resolute and designed to keep people out. To keep Tim out.
“You’re right,” Tim agrees. “I don’t want to.”
“Then why can’t I leave?” Damian asks, the flatness starting to bleed out of his tone, replaced with something frustrated, something raw.
“You can. I’m not making you stay.”
Damian stops at the side of his bed and says, “You asked me to.”
Tim swallows, his throat dry.
“But I won’t force you to. Honestly, right now I probably couldn’t — sorry,” Tim adds as he watches Damian’s eyes flash with anger.
“Just tell me whatever it is that you want to tell me. Quickly.”
And if Tim didn’t know why Damian was so upset, he would be pissed at him for snapping, for being so abrasive. He saved his life, for fuck’s sake.
But he gets it. He doesn’t like being in Damian’s position either.
So he takes a deep breath in, steeling himself, and tries to sit up.
His teeth clench so hard from the pain that he feels them squeak, and distantly he hears Damian angrily scoff, “What are you doing—”
And then one of his hands is on the base of Tim’s left hip, the other on the curve of his right bicep, just above his elbow.
Two spots the fire missed.
But when Damian lowers him back to the bed, Tim has managed to shift over enough to make space beside him. Before Damian can pull away, Tim catches his wrist. He tugs lightly , not sure exactly how to voice what he wants.
Damian’s jaw clenches, and Tim watches his lashes sweep down with each blink, eyes locked on the bandages on Tim’s right side. He watches the muscle in Damian’s cheek pulse, watches the way his chest rises and falls with quick breaths—
And then an irritated noise pushes out of Damian’s throat, and he pulls his wrist out of Tim’s hold.
He drops his palm on the bed and lifts himself into it. Tim’s uninjured shoulder brushes Damian’s bicep as he sits, the fabric of his suit rough against his bare skin.
Once they’re settled against each other in the space — one just barely big enough for the broad width of Damian’s shoulders to fit next to his — Tim asks, “Are you alright?”
The muscle in his jaw tightens again, pulsing once, twice.
“Well, you made certain that any injuries that I would have received were instead inflicted on you.”
“Damian—”
“No, Timothy. I am not alright.”
Tim’s stomach sinks, tugging down on something in his chest.
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
Tim sighs and thinks through a few ways he could say no, but there aren’t any that wouldn’t upset him.
So instead, Tim leans his head on Damian’s shoulder.
He feels Damian stiffen in surprise. The touches between them always seem like they could be brushed off as accidental, unintentional.
This doesn’t.
Tim doesn’t care.
“I’m glad you didn’t get hurt,” he says instead.
Damian scoffs, a tight noise that Tim can live with.
Tim can live with him being irritated. He can live with Damian being irritated.
He can’t live without Damian, though.
“Do not ever do that again,” Damian orders, harsh and sincere. He locks his eyes on the wall because he can’t look down at Tim, can’t see the injuries that should be on him, the results of his own recklessness, his own idiocy.
“It was worth it,” Tim says quietly, and a flare of anger shoots up in Damian’s chest.
It isn’t.
He isn’t.
“It wasn’t.”
Damian doesn’t realize that his hands are clenched into fists on his thighs until Tim’s hand gently falls onto one of them. He stares down at it and tastes blood on his lip, realizes that he has reopened one of the injuries he gnawed open while he stared at Tim on the bed.
He continues to bite down anyways.
“I’m okay, Damian.”
Tim’s voice is gentle and sympathetic and Damian would be angry if there was pity in it, he would, but there isn’t.
So instead, he keeps being angry that Tim would do something so reckless with himself just to save Damian’s life.
The anger floods his chest as he takes a deep breath in. It fills his throat as he lets the air out. It pricks at his eyes as he uncurls his fingers, allowing them to fall out of a clenched fist.
He twists his palm around and laces their fingers together, thinking of all the times he has resisted the urge, all of the times he’s been too stupid, to scared to try.
Tim’s weight falls against his side like he’s been waiting for permission, like all Damian had to do was say okay.
“It is a good thing that you’re okay," Damian murmurs. "I do not think my father would have appreciated another one of his sons being brought to a Lazarus Pit for revival.”
Damian strokes his thumb across the back of his hand as Tim stiffens against his side.
“You wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t you?” Damian cuts him off. “If I died for you. Wouldn’t you?”
Tim doesn’t answer.
He does not need to.
They sit in silence for a while, Damian’s anger draining out of him. He’s been stewing in it all night, staring at the bandages on Tim’s torso, thinking of the wounded noises he hadn’t even known he was letting out, the way he clung to Damian through his pain, his face pale, jaw clenched, sweat beading on his forehead—
“I’m glad you’re alright,” Damian mutters.
Tim’s reply is somewhere between defensive and condescending.
“I wasn’t going to die.”
“I don’t care. You are not going to throw yourself in front of danger for me ever again,” Damian commands, his hand squeezing tighter around Tim’s.
Tim squeezes back, enough strength in his grip that something in Damian’s chest settles.
“Wouldn’t you?” he asks.
Damian loosens his grip, and Tim’s hand tightens around his for the briefest moment, a quiet noise of protest catching in the back of his throat. Something like a laugh huffs out of Damian’s chest as he pulls his hand free.
Instead of leaving, he wraps his arm gently around Tim, being careful to lay his hand across the patch of his shoulder that doesn’t have bandages on it.
Tim sinks back into him, his eyes falling shut as Damian pulls him into his side. He presses the softest of kisses to the crown of Tim’s head, his lips lingering against his soft, fine hair.
“Perhaps we should try not to find out how far we would go for each other.”
Tim’s laugh vibrates against Damian’s chest, a quick, genuine noise that makes every tense thing in his body loosen.
“I think that would probably be for the best,” Tim agrees.