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sleptwithinthesun · 10 months ago

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Tim anon here! Maybe he’s dealing with hayfever while he’s trying to patrol? Also very happy to read whatever you have already going !

HI SORRY I DUCKED OUT FOR TWO MONTHS I WAS. OCCUPIED

and yes ofc!! please forgive me if this is poor in quality; i haven't written any snz content in three months now sO im out of practice and i was falling asleep while i wrote this. here's 1.3K of sneezy t/im and annoyed but caring j/ason :D

(if you're still looking for whatever stories i have for d/c, you can look at my fic masterlist and check out the t/imber college au!!)

Tim always was a stubborn little son of a bitch, Jason'll give him that. And, out of every villain Red Robin had fought, he'd know that best; he'd tried to kill the Replacement enough times to say he's almost like a cockroach, refusing to die no matter what Jason did.

It shouldn't be surprising, then, for Jason to find Tim on patrol, crouching silently on a rooftop. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be an issue, except for the fact that the pollen's the highest it's been thus far, and Timmy has some of the worst pollen allergies Jason's ever seen.

"What're you doing out here, Red?"

His voice comes out low and distorted with fuzz, the warping effect of the modulator in his helmet. He alights next to Red Robin with little more than a soft crunch of his boots on the rooftop. It takes him a moment too long to react and look at him, and just by observing Tim's posture, Jason can tell he's not doing well. There's a slump to his shoulders, a slight tremor in his hands as he holds his bō out defensively. He relaxes the moment he clocks Jason, though, stumbling forward into the elder's arms.

"Woah, hey..." Jason trails off, catching the younger vigilante in a hug. Caught off-guard, he's unsure what to do, unsure what's going on. He'd expected to have to drag Tim back to his safehouse and then stuff him with antihistamines, but it seems like he's already giving up.

"Hood," Tim mumbles, his voice thick with congestion.

"Why're you out here?" Jason rephrases, and Tim clutches tighter to the sides of Jason's leather jacket.

Tim's breath hitches as his inhales, and it takes him a second to regain control. "Badtmband," he replies, nearly incomprehensibly.

"B sent you on patrol?" translates Jason.

He nods, wordless, then shudders with a quick series of sneezes. Tim's worryingly careful to avoid the leather, crushing a gloved fist against his nose and squeezing his eyes shut beneath the mask. "ngxt! n'xtt! h'ngt-tt! hih... hh'ngXxt!"

"Bless you, Red, jeez."

"Thaggs." Tim sniffles, blinking slowly, like he's barely staying awake. Jason casts a glance around the area, making sure there's no one near the two of them. Tim's in a dangerous position now, and while Jason's more than capable of knocking a couple of heads, he's not in the mood to deal with anyone tonight when Tim's already vulnerable. Moreover, how the hell could Bruce think it was a good idea to send Tim out on patrol tonight? Just look at him.

He makes an executive call. Tapping on the comm at his ear, Jason only halfway tunes into Dick's conversation with Damian, shamelessly interrupting to say, "You're going to want to cover the East end of the city, I'm taking the Replacement home for the night."

"Hood, wha—"

"I'll rip o—"

Turning off the comm amid Dick's confusion and the threat Damian was about to level, Jason then shifts his attention to Tim. He's small enough to carry, still, and Jason doesn't really see another way out of the situation they're currently in. Tim's simply too exhausted to move of his own accord, and if Jason weren't already so worried about exactly why that is, he'd be paying attention to the fact that B, despite having access to their medical files, chose to send Tim out tonight when Stephanie's in town as well as Cass.

Jason's gentle with Tim as he pulls him upright. "Red? Hey, c'mon, we're going home."

"Mm, ndo," Tim mutters. "Godda padtrol."

Jason scoffs. "You're barely functioning."

"I'mb fide."

"No, you're not. Look, Red," says Jason, hoisting Tim onto his back. He manages to grab on, helping Jason out the tiniest bit. "I dunno why the fuck B sent you out tonight, but that was a mistake."

Tim gives a wordless groan against Jason's back, one that could either be a protest or a resigned acceptance, before turning his neck to sneeze into his shoulder. "gk'tt! ng'xXt! h'kff!" He doesn't quite manage to stifle the last one, muffling it instead.

"Bless you."

"Nng."

"Hood?"

He startles. "Fuck, Oracle, don't just start talking in my ear."

"This is important. Red dropped off the comms ten minutes before you showed up. GPS was working, audio and camera were working, but Red just... stopped talking."

"Yeah, he's still not doing well. What's going on?"

He can hear the tapping of Barbara's keyboard over the line, underneath his breaths and the whirring of his grapple gun. "Red's working on a case."

"He told me Batman sent him on patrol. Bless you, Red."

"I try to stay out of their personal business. All I know is that Red was trying to get evidence for a case when he went out."

Jason sighs. "Alright. Thank you, O."

"Anytime, Hood. Get him inside."

"Already on it." He lands on the roof to his safehouse the second Oracle clicks off the comm, using the door to get Tim somewhere that he can lie down. The second he pulls the Red Robin cowl off of Tim's face, it becomes obvious just how allergically miserable he is; his nose is red and there's a thin sheen of moisture on his upper lip. His eyes are bloodshot and puffy, his lips slightly parted to take in shallow breaths as his chest rises and falls with increasing rapidity.

Jason hurries over to the kitchen. "Hang on for eight seconds, Red," he calls over his shoulder, grabbing a fistful of Kleenex and then rushing back to the living room and thrusting them to Tim's face.

His reaction is immediate. Tim practically snatches the tissues from his hand, cupping his hands around his mouth and sneezing harshly into the tissues while still trying to remain as quiet as possible. "h'hH'hGXT! nGT! gxt-xxt-xtt!"

"Bless—"

"k'shtt! h'xt'shu!"

"Christ," Jason whispers. "Bruce let you out like this?"

Tim blows his nose softly, unproductively. "More like he ordered me oudt like this."

Well, Bruce always was a sadistic dick. "Elaborate."

Tim sighs, like the effort of telling Jason is too much for him. "I'm on like, seventeen Benadryl. Enough to see The Hat Man."

"That... is not what I wanted to hear."

Jason blinks at Tim. With the new information, Tim's current behavior makes a lot of sense. The exhaustion, the inability to focus, the lack of filter. Ordinarily, Tim wouldn't dare to call direct blame to Bruce, would smooth things over with his words to bring attention to his own poor decisions, because that's what Tim does.

But, apparently, Tim-on-seventeen-Benadryl doesn't.

He sighs. "I fucked up a case. I'm tired, I'm not thinking, I'm sneezing every six seconds. Obviously, I fucked up a case."

"How does that result in Bruce forcibly sending you on patrol?" demands Jason.

"He got mad that I fucked up the case, duh," Tim says. He lazily presses his elbow to his face and sneezes again. "h'Hhh! hk'sh! kshh! ng'tshh! ish! huhh..."

When he brings his arm down again, there's a small bit of mess running down his upper lip. Jason sighs inwardly at the thought of having to clean him up; Tim might not be close with him, but Jason does still consider him to be his brother. He feels a sense of responsibility toward him, especially when he's... fragile like this.

"And so, as punishment, he sent you out on patrol while you can't even see your own feet in front of you," summarizes Jason, using another tissue to wipe Tim's face. Tim nods, head lolling to rest against the back of the couch.

"Yep."

"Don't sneeze on me," Jason warns.

Tim just sighs.

"Alright. Fuck, the old man really is a prick." Tim only nods and sniffles again. "Just... sleep off the Benadryl, okay? We'll settle this in the morning."

"I'll say hi to The Hat Man for you," Tim slurs, already half asleep.

Jason closes his eyes for the solid four seconds he needs to regain his sanity. "Yeah, Tim. You do that."

#askbox #promptfic #d/c snzfic #snzfic #d/c #t/im d/rake #j/ason t/odd #swts fic

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sleptwithinthesun · 10 months ago

Text

a personal (and very extremely late) fill for the🤞and 🥰 prompts on the spring prompts list, written for t/im d/rake from d/c c/omics. yes, i'm aware it's summer. however, i started this fic over two years ago and it needs to be done.

2K words, next part of the t/imber college au. hope you like it!!

"Look at me for a second?" Bernard asks, tapping the eraser end of his pencil against his notebook a couple of times, just to ensure that he has Tim's attention. It lands just to the right of his half-finished sketch of his roommate, who's typing a lab report up on his laptop on the other side of the library table.

Tim complies, glancing up and making brief eye contact to show Bernard the slowly-emerging freckles scattered over his cheeks and the ever-present, bruise-like bags under his eyes. They've been getting worse lately, probably due to the arrival of the spring season and its various allergens, even though Tim started taking Benadryl towards the beginning of March. They're now a week into April, with allergy season in full swing.

Bernard's gaze sweeps over Tim's face, and then he squints down at his drawing. After a moment of deliberation, he goes back over Tim's lash line and carefully shades a touch lower and darker than he was previously. "Thanks."

"No problem," Tim replies, coughing quietly into a fist a second later. It sounds chesty, same as it has been for the past few weeks, and Tim just keeps going, like someone's scratching at his lungs. Which, to be fair, is probably how he feels about the whole thing. He's been getting worse at night recently, waking both himself and Bernard up at early hours in the morning with coughing fits.

There's not much either of them can do about it, though, and Bernard's not been sleeping well, anyway. Not to any fault of Tim; he's just been… wondering. About some things. Regarding Tim, sure, but not because of him. Nevertheless, he's been staying up with him until his roommate manages to fall back asleep congested snores emanating from his side of the dorm.

Not for the first time since they'd arrived at the library, Tim suddenly drops his chin towards his chest, eyes pinching shut tightly before his shoulders give a minuscule jerk forwards. He barely manages a shallow inhale before the motion repeats twice more, and then blinks a few times, sniffling quietly into his sweatshirt sleeve. Also not for the first time, Bernard murmurs, "Bless you."

"Ugh, sorry, I don't think I'm dohh—" He cuts himself off with another silent double, and then a third pair for good measure. "Oh, fuck me," Tim mutters, a bit breathless.

"Christ, bless you times... how many even was that, seven total? They're so quiet; it's hard to tell." Tim nods to confirm the number, his eyes bleary from sneezing as he rubs a knuckle against the side of his nose to quell the remaining itch instead of responding verbally. "Bless you times seven. Why do you sneeze like that, anyway?"

Tim blinks at him, clearly confused. "Like what?"

"Like… you're completely stifling to the point where they're silent." Bernard fumbles to explain, trying to find the right words without sounding insane. "I don't know anyone who can do that without using their hands or something. It's kind of... uh, impressive, to be honest, but can I ask, why do you sneeze that way? Is there a reason, or is it just...?"

"I don't know," Tim says, then shrugs. "I never really thought about it. It's polite, I guess, to make them quieter. Doesn't bother anyone else."

And Bernard-of-several-months-ago would have simply been content to have even gotten an answer out of Tim in the first place, would have accepted his word without a second thought. But Bernard-of-now can see the little flicker in Tim's eye, the one that means he's lying to him, which makes no sense, because what does Tim have to lie about?

It's a sneeze. There's no backstory to it, as far as Bernard is aware of. It's simple, it's thoughtless, it's inherent. Sure, he knows that people can hold back their sneezes if needed, but at it's base, it's a reaction, and one that's hard to control. The level to which Tim can manipulate his own, though, speaks to something far more complicated than Bernard can even begin to form connotations to.

For now, he has to let it go. Everything about Tim is a mystery, and the code to deciphering him is written between the lines of Dick's offering of his and Jason's phone numbers. So, unless Bernard texts one of them to ask why Tim sneezes weirdly, which is quite possibly the most bizarre question he could even raise, he's on his own.

Don't let it be said that Bernard Dowd doesn't love a challenge.

Over the remainder of the week, Bernard keeps an eye on Tim as if he's a sentry assigned to stand guard over him. He does feel weird about it—almost stalkerish, which, honestly and a bit embarrassingly, isn't exactly new to him—but it's not like Bernard's trying to learn anything he didn't already know about Tim's personal life. He lives in the same room as Tim, for crying out loud. Objectively, he's not doing anything wrong. At least, that's how Bernard justifies it to himself.

He's aware that he's being all Bernard about it, looking too deeply into it when, in reality, it's probably nothing more than Tim preferring not to draw attention to himself. At the same time, Bernard can't help but feel as if there's something more to it. After all, Tim decided to hide the fact that he was missing a whole-ass organ for a semester; he truly wouldn't put it past Tim to somehow have a buried trauma about sneezing. It would only make sense for him.

To be perfectly honest, though, Tim is boring.

Bernard didn't notice it in their fall semester, when Tim was being avoidant for the most part and didn't trust Bernard enough to reveal anything about his personal life. Apparently, he wasn't missing out. Tim studies more than anything, and even when he's not studying, he's doing homework or reading or something equally uninteresting. It makes his observation of his roommate very dry.

Until the moment where he invites Tim to sit outside.

They're moving through the quad together, Tim having just attended his linguistics class and heading into a free period while Bernard's done with classes for the day. The April weather is gorgeous, with a nice breeze cutting through the heat of the day. It's so nice, in fact, that Bernard asks—

"Want to stay outside for a bit?"

Tim's steps pause for a moment, hesitating. "Why?"

Bernard can barely stop himself from staring in shock at him. Sure, he grew up in the city, but he spent every moment that he could in the park. "it's... nice?" he ventures. "Plus, you could use more sun."

"First, rude. Second, if you insist." Tim sighs, glancing around for a place to sit. "As long as we're not directly in the sunlight."

Bernard rolls his eyes. "Sure, whatever. Vampire."

Tim scoffs at him, following Bernard as they move to take a seat in the shade underneath a tree. He only seems vaguely annoyed, meaning that he does actually care, at least a little bit. They're not at the point yet where Tim's comfortable being jokingly annoyed or mad with Bernard, since Bernard did it to Tim once and ended up sending Tim into a spiral for the next day over whether he was actually upset.

So. His annoyance here is at least vaguely interesting.

"hn'x! ngt! hnk'tt!"

"Bless you," Bernard murmurs. Tim shakes his head and immediately goes to sneeze again, sitting up with his head tipped back slightly, eyes half-shut, mouth partly open as his breath hitches quietly.

"hh...hi'h? hHhh—" He's trying to hold it back and is failing miserably. "—hk't! hxxt! hn'gt! h'hHn'gt-sh!"

"Bless you."

"Why'd you want to be out here?" Tim asks, voice nasal. His head immediately bobs down toward his chest again, nose pressed into the crook between his thumb and pointer finger to at least give himself a semblance of modesty. This set is even more numerous than the first, each sneeze coming in rapid succession.

Bernard sits up straighter in alarm. "Uh... exactly how allergic are you to pollen?"

Tim's response is another rapid set of sneezes.

"You need to get better at putting your foot down," exclaims Bernard, grabbing Tim by his free wrist and hauling him upward as Tim sneezes again and again, each perfectly stifled and barely making any sound. The only reason, Bernard reflects, that he can hear them is because Tim's sneezing too much to fully have control.

"You're—gxt'sh!—telling me," Tim gasps out. Mockingly, he attempts to add, "You could use more su'h'nxt! hxt'ch!"

"Okay, Sneezy, let's get back to the very climate-controlled indoors," says Bernard, hastily dragging him toward the building.

Tim's lying down on his bed when Bernard walks into their dorm, three days after the incident, absently staring up at the ceiling. There's nothing taped up there—Bernard checked.

"You okay?"

"Fine," replies Tim. "Just... thinking."

Bernard sets his backpack down next to his bed, placing the binder in his hands down on top of his comforter to ensure he doesn't forget about the homework in it. "Anything in particular?"

Tim shrugs, which is his way of saying Yes, but I don't want to talk about it. Bernard had given up on trying to interpret all of Tim's nonverbal signals on his own and reached out to Dick the day after Tim's allergy attack; Dick had informed him that reading Tim was like learning a new language. He wasn't very communicative at best, even with members of his own family, and it took Dick years to figure everything out. Jason is still struggling, apparently, which Dick attributes to Jason being in college while Tim was adjusting to living with the Waynes. He's gradually been passing tips onto Bernard, trying to make his living experience a tad easier.

Uncertainly, he walks over to Tim's side of the room, stopping just short of sitting on the bed with his roommate. Looming over him feels like an equally terrible option, and Bernard just stands there for an awkward moment.

"This is a little creepy."

"You're one to talk," Bernard says before having the chance to properly filter himself. He's trying to get Tim to open up, here.

Tim huffs out a laugh, then sniffles quietly. "Just sit down."

Bernard does. Neither of them say anything for a long minute, with the silence frequently broken by Tim's soft sniffles as he continues fighting off the pollen in the air.

"You know you can sneeze, right?" he blurts out. Tim doesn't blink. "Like, around me. I don't mind, I promise."

When Tim doesn't respond, Bernard keeps rambling. "It's just that, every single time I've seen you sneeze you're stifling. No matter what. Even if you're alone in the room, you don't make any noise, and, like, it's worrying me. It's not, um, normal. Not that you're not normal, obviously, but—"

"Bernard."

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

Bernard rolls his head to look at Tim. His roommate is still looking at the ceiling instead of at him, but he's talking.

"I was..." He pauses, starts over. "My parents very much believed in the adage of children being seen and not heard. To them, my silence wasn't an expectation, it was a strict necessity for me."

"Tim..."

"For whatever reason, they included normal bodily functions in that." Tim scoffs, but it's devoid of any feeling, as if he's making the noise only because he's expected to show disapproval toward his parents. "Coughing, sneezing, anything like that was taboo. So, I learned to keep quiet."

"You know that's not okay, right?"

"I've heard that nearly a thousand times from Dick and Jason." Now, he turns to face Bernard. "I'm aware."

Bernard sighs. "Do you believe it?"

A moment of silence. Three different emotions pass over Tim's face, too quickly for Bernard to parse through them all, but something sad is certainly there. "I'm working on that," he says eventually.

"That's good," replies Bernard, and they fall back into silence before Tim sneezes adorably, much like a baby kitten.

"hk'sh'iew!"

"Oh my God."

"Shut up!"

#d/c snzfic #snzfic #d/c #t/im d/rake #b/ernard d/owd #t/imber college au #swts fic

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