And Then This Happened
Dec. 14th, 2008 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillSo, I have been (for reasons that are not entirely sure to me) rewatching some old episodes of Batman: When He Had Good Writers. And you may remember that some time back a creepy little post-Joker Tim showed up in my head. Well, he came back.
Title: A Kind of Ever After
Fandom: DCAU
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: The number of creepy boys just keeps going up. At least this one is frighteningly sane.
Jeremy is walking down the street. He's not looking for trouble so much as trying to stay out of it; Dad is drunk again, and Mom practically lives at the Clinic these days-not that he objects, because she's the one supporting the three of them-but it means he's on his own when Dad gets drunk. That happens more these days, since the accident. And he knows, somewhere in his mind, that it's probably not safe to be outside, on these streets, at this time of night. Especially with those rumors of something that isn't the Bat, but. The only thing worse than his Dad the violent drunk is his Dad the weeping drunk. And he just. Can't. Cope.
So he's walking, and avoiding the shadows and alleys, but mostly looking at his feet. This is why (or at least one of the reasons) he fails to notice the people who are following him.
At least until he walks into one.
"Hey," said the teenager, looking down at him. "Watch it!"
"Sorry," said Jeremy honestly, and moved to walk around. The teen moved to block him.
"Hear that, boys? He says he's sorry!"
It is at this point that Jeremy realizes that he's surrounded. Also that he's in trouble.
He swallows, nervously. "I-"
"Shut up!"
He shuts up.
"Now, since you bumped into me, I think you ought to pay. Just a little, so I can wash your dirt off my jacket."
Jeremy stands rooted to the spot.
"Well?" And the larger boy leans in.
"I-don't have any money," says Jeremy, and quickly follows this by, "Search me if you want, I'm telling the truth."
"You don't?" asks the other in mock sympathy, as his gang snickers. "That's too bad. I guess we'll have to teach you some respect."
Jeremy swallows again. He's about to get beat up, he knows it, and they're closing in on him, forcing him to back into an alley where the police-who never patrol enough on these streets anyway-won't see. If he believed in that kind of thing anymore, he'd start hoping for Batman to show, but he knows that doesn't happen.
And then . . . there's this kid. He standing there calmly at the corner of the alley, and if Jeremy's brain were working he'd think that's odd. As it is, he doesn't even really notice until the kid says, "Hey," and suddenly the predatory circle is focused on him instead.
The leader-the one he'd bumped into-stalks forward. "Hey, look. It's another shrimp for the cocktail party!" The bullies laugh appreciatively. The kid says nothing, but there's something off about him. There's something-
"Hey are you listening to me?"
"No," says the kid, still standing there as if he owns the place.
Jeremy sees the teen's face twist, sees the punch, and then the kid is standing next to him and their tormentor is kneeling on the ground, clutching his fist and howling in pain. And then he doesn't think; he just grabs the kid's wrist and runs, while the gang is too surprised to do anything like react, and so they're halfway down the block by the time he hears the shouted order, "Get them!"
His feet know where they are even if he doesn't, and so they turn them down an alley, and then another, while the sounds of pursuit die out behind them. They come to a stop, panting, only a couple of blocks from his apartment. Then he turns to the kid. "They would've beat us to a pulp! Are you insane?"
He's not expecting the answer he gets, which is: "Yes." He's not expecting the eyes like knives and the flat blankness and a shiver goes down his back because he knows that the kid is telling the truth and he just saved an insane person. In Gotham, this is either a good thing or a very bad one. He's not pushing his luck by asking which.
He sighs instead, and asks, "Do you-would you like to come home with me? It's kind of late for you to be out by yourself . . . " He'd absolutely been about to ask if the kid even had a home, but he's really not quite sure that he wants to know. And he doesn't look older than twelve. (His Dad ought to be passed out by now.)
"I-yes," says the kid, looking at him in a way that made Jeremy think he was looking through him.
"Okay," says Jeremy, and leads him toward home.
The door opens with a slight creak, but he hears his Dad's snores so it's okay to go in. The kid looks around the apartment with wide-wide eyes, until Jeremy pushes him over to the wobbly table and sits him down. "Do you want some milk?" They have tap water, which he wouldn't drink if they paid him, and milk, and beer.
The kid doesn't say anything, so Jeremy pours him a glass. It's going to go bad in another day or so, but the kid drinks it right down once it is set in front of him. He sits down with his own glass.
"So, do you have a name?"
"Yes," says the kid, and goes back to drinking his milk.
Jeremy doesn't press him. He waits until the kid finishes the glass, and then says into the very deep silence, "I-do you need a place to stay? Because my mom works at this clinic, and I'm sure she'll drive you to the shelter. If you need it."
The kid says nothing.
"I'd take you myself, but it's kind of late."
"It's early," says the kid. Jeremy looks at the microwave clock, which reads 10:26.
"Um-" says Jeremy.
The kid stands up, and walks over toward the main room. Jeremy follows, expecting to see him opening the front door.
The kid is halfway out the fire escape.
"What-" are you doing, he doesn't ask, because it's obvious. The kid is leaving the same way he does, when he wants to leave without being seen.
And then the kid turns, and, "Thank you."
Jeremy blinks.
"For the milk," expands the kid.
"Oh. You're welcome." There isn't anything else to say. After a moment, the kid ducks outside. When Jeremy goes to close the window a moment later, there's no trace of him.
The next morning, Jeremy wakes up and thinks he must have dreamed the whole thing. This lasts until he opens the fridge and sees that they are nearly out of milk, even though there was plenty last night. He feels the hair on the back of his neck go up, only. Only the kid hadn't made any move against him-like that meant he was safe-and had thanked him for the milk.
Instead of going out again that night, he goes up to the roof. It's something he used to do, a lot, back before-before. And he spends a few hours up there while the sun goes down, and then he climbs back down the fire escape and thinks about cleaning up a bit of the roof.
Over the next week, he does. Of course, he goes out again too, but he's careful now to be back before sunset and once he has some room to sit-room free of bird shit and grit, that is-he starts taking his homework up there too. He doesn't really get polynomials and factoring and tends to doodle (the freaky blue-eyed kid) in the margins of his work, but whatever. It's peaceful on the roof and nobody bothers him.
It's Wednesday-eight days after he rescued the kid-that he returns from up there and turns on the light and finds the kid sitting on his bed. It nearly gives him a heart attack. "What are you doing here?"
Please don't be here to kill me.
"I." The kid looks at him, gives him the most pleading look he's ever seen, and Jeremy relents.
"Hey, it's okay. I'm not gonna toss you out."
This time, the look is something like, "Thank you."
"Do you want more milk?" asks Jeremy, because even though it's kind of a stupid question to ask the crazy probably-runaway sitting on your bed, it's the only one he can think of.
"No. Thank you," says the kid softly.
The silence stretches out for a while. The kid just sits there, and Jeremy, after a while, get tired of standing in the door to his room. And makes a decision, which is to walk inside and pull the door shut behind him and put his backpack down and then sit on the floor.
Some more silence.
"So . . . " says Jeremy, in an attempt to fill it. It doesn't work.
The minutes tick by slowly, and Jeremy can feel his heart rate drop and his body begin to relax, even with the kid there. The kid is . . . really quiet, actually. Frighteningly so. He turn to look, and, yeah, he's still being watched as though he were. Something.
"Are you okay?" he asks, before he can stop himself.
"No." Which is really no more or less than he ought to have expected, but.
"Can I help?"
"Stay?" It's another pleading look. Not kicked-puppy-dog, because a kicked puppy dog would have to work to match that level of. Of need. Jeremy's not quite sure what he has to offer, but.
He nods, and they don't speak again until ten twenty, which is when the kid gets up off the bed and walks toward the fire escape. And even then, the only thing he says is, "Thanks."
And that's kind of how it goes for the next month, as September winds down into October and the days get chillier and shorter. The kid is just there sometimes, and after that first time Jeremy gets that he really doesn't want to talk, but also that he really doesn't mind the fact that Jeremy does have homework to do. He just . . . watches, out of those too-clear blue eyes, and never, for example, kills him. Or apparently moves.
He's doing this homework for chemistry that's all about equations when, from just above his head, he hears the kid say, "Wrong."
He nearly jumps out of his skin. "What?"
"Your answer," says the kid, and reaches one arm out to tap where he had his worked-out answer. Then in a single elegant movement, the finger is tapping at a place six lines up, where he'd for no apparent reason turned a minus sign into a plus sign.
"Thanks," is what Jeremy says as he erases his answer, but after that he can't help look over his shoulder every so often to see if the kid has moved again. Maybe he hasn't, or maybe he has and he just didn't hear the movement. When he pays attention later that night, he notices that the kid never makes any sound, even when he's moving. Not so much as the soft scuff of fabric on fabric.
It's . . . it should be disturbing. It is disturbing, but against the bigger fact of the kid's continued presence, it's nothing at all.
He doesn't go out on Halloween. No one sane does, at least in this neighborhood. He goes to sleep early, and his dreams incorporate the wailing sirens until the fires die down later on toward morning. And then a shift in the particular quality of the silence wakes him.
And the kid is there, holding this bloody scrap of fabric to his arm-
Bleeding-
Bleeding through, he realizes, and is suddenly, instantly, awake. And panicking, but because it is the kid he does it quietly and mostly internally. "What do I do?"
The kid, for his part, is calm. He shakes his head, puts a finger to his lips.
Jeremy realizes that not only is the kid bleeding out of this huge gash on his arm, his clothes are all speckled with blood and little burns. He feels his eyes widen. "Oh my God," he whispers. "Your building burnt down."
The kid looks into his eyes, searching-nods his head once, sharply, and turns to go.
"Wait!" he hisses, and then to the questioning look, "Come back?"
The kid nods, and is gone.
Jeremy sleeps mostly restlessly until the silence changes again, and he looks up to see the kid, outlined in the faint false light of dawn. The kid holds out his arm; someone has bandaged it, expertly. Probably put stitches in underneath, and the few singes have gauze taped over them too. He's okay, and Jeremy breathes out a sigh and closes his eyes and isn't really astonished to find no one there when he opens them again.
After that, the kid is there every night. He usually shows up near seven, and leaves before ten thirty. Jeremy worries a lot, but the gauze comes off after two days to show shiny pink skin and the bandage comes off a short while later to reveal the perfect stitches he was half-expecting. Someone else out there is taking care of the kid, carefully. He tries not to think too much about who would let a kid this size wander the streets at night.
And then, right after New Years, his Dad dies.
It wasn't like it was unexpected, or anything. He's been drinking himself to death for months, and his liver just gave up. It is, of course, the kid who notices it first, and calls 911 while Jeremy is busy freaking out, then hands over the phone. The paramedics get him to the hospital, but the dialysis comes too late and he dies early the next morning. And all the doctors are saying that it's horrible that he should lose his father so early, but he lost his father-more than a year ago now. The man that died was . . . just this stranger that lived in his house.
When the kid arrives that night, he scuffs his shoes on the kitchen linoleum, which is his way of clearing his throat. Jeremy and his mother are both sitting at the table, and this is another new thing, because the kid is never around when his mother is. Jeremy looks up to find the kid brushing snow off his jacket.
The only reason his mother isn't screaming is because she's too exhausted, and the kid is, well, a kid.
Who walks over and-hugs him. Really hugs him, with all the emotion that Jeremy has learned to read in the tiniest of hints of expression. This one is new, but he can guess from how 'loud' it is that it means something like, "I know," and also "Please. Be okay."
"Jeremy," asks his mother. "Who is this?"
"I-" begins Jeremy, because what can he say? I'm an A student now because my best friend is a crazy who nearly never talks and sneaks in the window at night when you aren't here?
"Tim," says the kid, still hugging him.
"Tim," repeats his mother.
Tim, thinks Jeremy, trying it out in his mind. Tim.
"And Tim came here because . . . ?"
Jeremy doesn't see the look Tim gives to her, only the result, which is that her chair shoots back several inches and her face pales. "Help," is what Tim says.
"You want-to help us?"
Jeremy feels the nod.
"I don't see how you can. I make enough money for me and Jeremy, but we don't have any way to cover the hospital bills-and the. The funeral." She's about to start crying again.
And there's a soft, papery thud. Jeremy looks down to the table to see a stack of-
Hundred dollar bills. Jeremy and his mother stare at it, and then both of their eyes gravitate back to the kid-Tim. Tim opens his hands and . . . the expression is not a smile, but it is a kind of open.
Slowly, his mom reaches for the money. "This-it's not illegal, is it?"
Tim shakes his head vigorously, vehemently.
"Oh. Well-thank you."
And that is a smile, the first time Jeremy has ever seen th-Tim smile. And then he turns and climbs back out the window. Jeremy's mother rushes to see where he's gone, but Jeremy doesn't bother.
"Jeremy . . . " she says, when she sits back down.
"I know," he says, and tells most of story, aside from the part where Tim once showed up with a bloody cut nearly the length of his arm. When he's finished, his mother sits back and looks at him.
"Months?"
"Yes."
"And he hasn't-done anything? Or-or taken anything?"
"He drank a glass of milk that one time. That's it."
"And now he shows up to give us a stack of hundreds . . . "
"I. Don't think about it," advises Jeremy. "I doubt he'll do it again."
She thinks about this. "Right. Well, any friend of yours is always welcome in this house."
The money is enough to pay for the ambulance and the dialysis machine and the funeral. And Jeremy's mom can stop working quite so much, with the extra and without them paying for a six-pack every day. Tim doesn't show up for a few days, and he comes early and makes noise again when he does. Hesitant, especially since Mom's off the night shift two days a week. But he goes over and opens the window (even though Tim could do it from outside). Tim gives him a look that's pure gratitude.
They sit on the couch now. Or, well. Jeremy sits on the couch while Tim sits on the floor and stretches his body-silently-into pretzels that make Jeremy wince. And taps the page gently whenever he makes a mistake, which he does a lot less now. And he doesn't leave so he won't be home when his mom arrives around five. "Oh," she says, when she realizes the shape on the floor is Tim. "Are you-okay, honey?"
Tim unfolds in a complicated motion that leaves him upright, and bows.
"He's fine, Mom," says Jeremy, not looking up from his homework.
"I just . . . worry," she says, as she goes off to change.
Jeremy worries too. He worries every time he sees Tim duck out the window, and he's not quite sure what to do about the fact that he has no friends at school because the world of this quiet apartment, and Tim, makes that place seem dreamlike. Unreal. There is nothing quite so intense as Tim, and it makes everything else pale.
And then there comes the day in late March when he arrives home and Tim is asleep on his bed. Curled up, curled around the covers and hugging the pillow. He's whimpering slightly, and Jeremy reaches out to touch the hair on his forehead.
The hand is so fast that he doesn't see it, only feels the pain blossom and grips his arm. There's nothing wrong with it, that he can see, but Tim is awake now and staring at him with wide eyes. "Sorry," whispers Tim. "Sorrysorrysorry. Not you. Never you. Don't want to hurt-"
It's the most words Jeremy has ever heard from Tim at once, and he reaches to pull Tim into a hug. The same kind of big, all-embracing hug Tim gave him when his father died. "Shh," he says, holding Tim. "It's okay."
"I-"
"It's okay. I'm okay. See?" He holds his arm in front of Tim's face for inspection.
Tim stares at it blankly for a moment, and then, between one moment and the next Tim returns, hands reaching up to check his arm for-if he understands his mother's training right-breaks. Once he's assured himself that there is no damage, he turns to face Jeremy. "I-"
"I forgive you," said Jeremy, preemptively.
"Thank you," says Tim, and doesn't let go for so long that Jeremy's legs and arms are falling asleep by the time he does. And, well, when he does he just falls back to the bed and-turns himself off. There's no other way to describe it. He was just conscious and then asleep. Jeremy's not quite sure what to do with this new trust, so he does his homework. It is apparently the right thing to do, because hours later (right around nine-fifty, and how had Tim trained himself to do that?) he wakes up, and gives him one of his rare smiles before slipping out into the night.
So now his apartment is not just this place for Tim to be, but also a place for him to sleep. Jeremy can't be sure how much time he spends there-he still leaves near ten, but the place in empty from nine in the morning until he gets home from school, and Tim never has any trouble getting in. He doubts it's quite so much, though, because-
Because Tim is better now, but he's nothing like sane, and 'paranoid' is still a good word to describe him.
Anyway. Jeremy still worries a lot; even more so when Tim does not show up on April first. Tim does not do this anymore, Tim is there every day and he can feel the different (wrong) quality the second he walks in and Tim isn't there. When his mom comes home, she make noises of concern and bakes cookies, which she only ever does when Tim has done something particularly freaky and she needs to see him eating cookies like a normal boy. Which Tim isn't.
The cookies are still there at two in the morning, when Tim slips in the window and wakes Jeremy up. Well, okay, Jeremy had slept on the couch because he wanted to make sure that if Tim came he wouldn't miss him, and that would absolutely send a message to the other boy. But still. Tim is just standing there, kind of looming over him, but the heart-stopping terror is kind of spoiled by the cookie in Tim's mouth.
"Hey," he says, while Tim bites through the cookie and chews.
Tim waves with his other hand.
"Are you okay?"
Tim shrugs, and Jeremy winces because that was absolutely the sound of Tim's shoulder popping in and out of place.
"You had us worried."
The look he gets is something like an apology, but not any kind of comfort. Tim is going to keep vanishing like that and if he doesn't come back it's entirely possible that it's because he's dead. And Tim is sorry for the fact that they would mourn, but not for whatever it is that he's doing.
"I-thanks for coming by," he says.
The smile makes the fact that Jeremy has not and will not mention Tim's cuts and bruises entirely worth it.
Later that month, he's walking in the door to the apartments when he overhears this conversation. It's mostly the manager telling someone that he doesn't have any money to give them, and someone else telling him that it's really too bad, seeing as protection is a valuable commodity. And Jeremy absolutely knows what that means, but he spends the time until Tim arrives worrying about whether or not he should tell him and then Tim arrives and the point is moot anyway because Tim takes one look at him and asks, "What?"
So he tells Tim. Everything he heard, or could remember, and Tim sits there motionless and listening and then once he's finished Tim asks him these pointy questions in a low growl that some part of him says is Tim's working voice. It's pretty much the most he's heard Tim say ever, even though the questions are all things like, "Did you see him?"
Which he hadn't, because he'd been busy trying to not get noticed and therefore killed. Tim hums almost, and then says, "Okay," and then he's gone, swinging out the window.
He doesn't come back for two days. Jeremy worries the first, and his mom calls him in sick on the second because he'd be useless like that anyway and on the third the morning newspaper arrives and the headline is the fact that overnight, someone (not Batman) working entirely outside the law had taken down one of the biggest protection rackets in the city and provided evidence so that they'd be spending a long, long time locked up.
Jeremy feels like he's been sucker punched, because it was one thing to know but it's something entirely different to know.
Tim, when he returns later that night, makes noise. Jeremy looks up at him, squeezing the newspaper in his hands, and says, "You're the Grey."
"Yes," says Tim, and even though he's not moving and barely breathing there's an air of nervous fidget around him. That, Jeremy understands, means Tim is afraid and waiting for him to make a decision and afraid.
He makes his decision. "Hey," he says, gently. "C'mere."
And Tim walks over woodenly until he hugs him and then Tim kind of shudders all over and it's a few moments before Jeremy registers the wetness and realizes Tim is crying. Which does exactly the opposite of prompt him to let go; he squeezes tighter and holds on while Tim rocks and cries himself out. Eventually, Tim makes a movement to pull back, and even knowing that Tim could get out of the hold easily, Jeremy doesn't let go immediately and asks, "Okay?"
"Yes," whispers Tim hoarsely and Jeremy believes him because Tim has never told him a lie.
"So," he says, after he lets Tim go and Tim does not go far, remains close enough to touch, "I think the thing I really want to know is 'why me'? But it's okay if you don't want to tell."
"No, I-" says Tim, and then takes a deep breath. "You tried to save me."
"I-" Jeremy is confused, because of course he tried to save Tim, it's practically the only thing he's been doing since school started.
"When we met," adds Tim, and there's this kind of shift and things click into place. "I didn't mean to come back. I just-you didn't have any friends, and neither did I."
Which. Yeah, okay, and absolutely scary that Tim-the Grey, some tiny voice that he's sitting on him keeps repeating-had followed him around enough in that first week to know that he hadn't any friends. He hears himself say, "You really needed a friend."
"I-yes. I did." Tim stares at something that's probably only in his eyes and says, "And you gave me. More."
Jeremy knows, of course he knows, that this wasn't a game for Tim ever because Tim doesn't play that kind of game, but he still has to ask, "What am I? To you."
"Friend. Brother. Home," and he'd be willing to bet that Tim didn't mean to say that last one, no matter how true it is.
"Of course," he says, over the beating of his own heart. "You are my little brother." And aren't brothers supposed to have the same home?
"Can't be," says Tim, and smiles at his confusion. "I'm sixteen."
And that's just-really? Because Tim still doesn't look like he ought to be thirteen, nevermind someone older than him, but . . . "Okay. You are my big brother. And I will still wake you up when you have nightmares."
"I will protect you," says Tim solemnly, and Jeremy can't doubt it because aside from everything else-Tim had taken down a mob for him.
As an answer, Jeremy reaches over and hugs Tim.
Tim-smiles. Really smiles. It's huge and open and infectious and it's exactly the right smile for Tim's face, and also something he's never seen before. He keeps on hugging Tim. He's never had a brother before.
Coda:
Tim doesn't come around every night anymore, but he comes around most nights; Jeremy knows the kind of city Gotham is, and gets worried whenever he goes too long without seeing his big brother. But just right now, Tim isn't coming, because Jeremy just walked in to his apartment to find an entirely new kind of silence.
Also, Batman is sitting at the kitchen table.
This fails to frighten him because, really, after the sheer intensity of the Grey-and Tim has come home in suit a few times, at Jeremy's request-there is nothing left to be scary. So he completely ignores Batman while he goes to soak his swim trunks, and pours himself a glass of milk to go with the ever-present cookies.
"So," he says, sitting down, "talk. But don't warn me that he's dangerous or unstable, because I already know that."
"I was going to thank you."
"Thank me."
"You have been-very good for him."
Jeremy snorts. "Are you supposed to be his dad? Because I have to say, you do a crap job of it."
"I know," says Batman, but it doesn't escape Jeremy's notice that he's completely failed to answer the question.
"And I thought you hated each other."
"I really couldn't blame him for hating me, if I knew for sure that he did. I spend more time worrying."
"It's a start," says Jeremy judiciously. "Now maybe you should spend some time getting to know him."
"I-"
"Outside the job. I'm sure you know the Grey well enough. Get to know Tim."
Batman starts-maybe it's because he knows Tim's name, or maybe because he's telling Batman what to do.
"And now," he adds for good measure, "I think you should go."
Batman goes.
When Tim slips in later, Jeremy gives him a little-brother hug and says, "I really hope Batman isn't your real dad."
"He's not," says Tim, hugging him back.
Which is really all the assurance he needs.
That's Jeremy. He is mostly responsible for Tim's continued sanity. He showed up in my head because the Grey!Tim deserves at least one normal person in his life and the Bats, while his family, are very much not normal. Or sane. Jeremy is possibly the single most self-actualized person in my head right now, which when you think about it, is kind of creepy.
Title: A Kind of Ever After
Fandom: DCAU
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: The number of creepy boys just keeps going up. At least this one is frighteningly sane.
Jeremy is walking down the street. He's not looking for trouble so much as trying to stay out of it; Dad is drunk again, and Mom practically lives at the Clinic these days-not that he objects, because she's the one supporting the three of them-but it means he's on his own when Dad gets drunk. That happens more these days, since the accident. And he knows, somewhere in his mind, that it's probably not safe to be outside, on these streets, at this time of night. Especially with those rumors of something that isn't the Bat, but. The only thing worse than his Dad the violent drunk is his Dad the weeping drunk. And he just. Can't. Cope.
So he's walking, and avoiding the shadows and alleys, but mostly looking at his feet. This is why (or at least one of the reasons) he fails to notice the people who are following him.
At least until he walks into one.
"Hey," said the teenager, looking down at him. "Watch it!"
"Sorry," said Jeremy honestly, and moved to walk around. The teen moved to block him.
"Hear that, boys? He says he's sorry!"
It is at this point that Jeremy realizes that he's surrounded. Also that he's in trouble.
He swallows, nervously. "I-"
"Shut up!"
He shuts up.
"Now, since you bumped into me, I think you ought to pay. Just a little, so I can wash your dirt off my jacket."
Jeremy stands rooted to the spot.
"Well?" And the larger boy leans in.
"I-don't have any money," says Jeremy, and quickly follows this by, "Search me if you want, I'm telling the truth."
"You don't?" asks the other in mock sympathy, as his gang snickers. "That's too bad. I guess we'll have to teach you some respect."
Jeremy swallows again. He's about to get beat up, he knows it, and they're closing in on him, forcing him to back into an alley where the police-who never patrol enough on these streets anyway-won't see. If he believed in that kind of thing anymore, he'd start hoping for Batman to show, but he knows that doesn't happen.
And then . . . there's this kid. He standing there calmly at the corner of the alley, and if Jeremy's brain were working he'd think that's odd. As it is, he doesn't even really notice until the kid says, "Hey," and suddenly the predatory circle is focused on him instead.
The leader-the one he'd bumped into-stalks forward. "Hey, look. It's another shrimp for the cocktail party!" The bullies laugh appreciatively. The kid says nothing, but there's something off about him. There's something-
"Hey are you listening to me?"
"No," says the kid, still standing there as if he owns the place.
Jeremy sees the teen's face twist, sees the punch, and then the kid is standing next to him and their tormentor is kneeling on the ground, clutching his fist and howling in pain. And then he doesn't think; he just grabs the kid's wrist and runs, while the gang is too surprised to do anything like react, and so they're halfway down the block by the time he hears the shouted order, "Get them!"
His feet know where they are even if he doesn't, and so they turn them down an alley, and then another, while the sounds of pursuit die out behind them. They come to a stop, panting, only a couple of blocks from his apartment. Then he turns to the kid. "They would've beat us to a pulp! Are you insane?"
He's not expecting the answer he gets, which is: "Yes." He's not expecting the eyes like knives and the flat blankness and a shiver goes down his back because he knows that the kid is telling the truth and he just saved an insane person. In Gotham, this is either a good thing or a very bad one. He's not pushing his luck by asking which.
He sighs instead, and asks, "Do you-would you like to come home with me? It's kind of late for you to be out by yourself . . . " He'd absolutely been about to ask if the kid even had a home, but he's really not quite sure that he wants to know. And he doesn't look older than twelve. (His Dad ought to be passed out by now.)
"I-yes," says the kid, looking at him in a way that made Jeremy think he was looking through him.
"Okay," says Jeremy, and leads him toward home.
The door opens with a slight creak, but he hears his Dad's snores so it's okay to go in. The kid looks around the apartment with wide-wide eyes, until Jeremy pushes him over to the wobbly table and sits him down. "Do you want some milk?" They have tap water, which he wouldn't drink if they paid him, and milk, and beer.
The kid doesn't say anything, so Jeremy pours him a glass. It's going to go bad in another day or so, but the kid drinks it right down once it is set in front of him. He sits down with his own glass.
"So, do you have a name?"
"Yes," says the kid, and goes back to drinking his milk.
Jeremy doesn't press him. He waits until the kid finishes the glass, and then says into the very deep silence, "I-do you need a place to stay? Because my mom works at this clinic, and I'm sure she'll drive you to the shelter. If you need it."
The kid says nothing.
"I'd take you myself, but it's kind of late."
"It's early," says the kid. Jeremy looks at the microwave clock, which reads 10:26.
"Um-" says Jeremy.
The kid stands up, and walks over toward the main room. Jeremy follows, expecting to see him opening the front door.
The kid is halfway out the fire escape.
"What-" are you doing, he doesn't ask, because it's obvious. The kid is leaving the same way he does, when he wants to leave without being seen.
And then the kid turns, and, "Thank you."
Jeremy blinks.
"For the milk," expands the kid.
"Oh. You're welcome." There isn't anything else to say. After a moment, the kid ducks outside. When Jeremy goes to close the window a moment later, there's no trace of him.
The next morning, Jeremy wakes up and thinks he must have dreamed the whole thing. This lasts until he opens the fridge and sees that they are nearly out of milk, even though there was plenty last night. He feels the hair on the back of his neck go up, only. Only the kid hadn't made any move against him-like that meant he was safe-and had thanked him for the milk.
Instead of going out again that night, he goes up to the roof. It's something he used to do, a lot, back before-before. And he spends a few hours up there while the sun goes down, and then he climbs back down the fire escape and thinks about cleaning up a bit of the roof.
Over the next week, he does. Of course, he goes out again too, but he's careful now to be back before sunset and once he has some room to sit-room free of bird shit and grit, that is-he starts taking his homework up there too. He doesn't really get polynomials and factoring and tends to doodle (the freaky blue-eyed kid) in the margins of his work, but whatever. It's peaceful on the roof and nobody bothers him.
It's Wednesday-eight days after he rescued the kid-that he returns from up there and turns on the light and finds the kid sitting on his bed. It nearly gives him a heart attack. "What are you doing here?"
Please don't be here to kill me.
"I." The kid looks at him, gives him the most pleading look he's ever seen, and Jeremy relents.
"Hey, it's okay. I'm not gonna toss you out."
This time, the look is something like, "Thank you."
"Do you want more milk?" asks Jeremy, because even though it's kind of a stupid question to ask the crazy probably-runaway sitting on your bed, it's the only one he can think of.
"No. Thank you," says the kid softly.
The silence stretches out for a while. The kid just sits there, and Jeremy, after a while, get tired of standing in the door to his room. And makes a decision, which is to walk inside and pull the door shut behind him and put his backpack down and then sit on the floor.
Some more silence.
"So . . . " says Jeremy, in an attempt to fill it. It doesn't work.
The minutes tick by slowly, and Jeremy can feel his heart rate drop and his body begin to relax, even with the kid there. The kid is . . . really quiet, actually. Frighteningly so. He turn to look, and, yeah, he's still being watched as though he were. Something.
"Are you okay?" he asks, before he can stop himself.
"No." Which is really no more or less than he ought to have expected, but.
"Can I help?"
"Stay?" It's another pleading look. Not kicked-puppy-dog, because a kicked puppy dog would have to work to match that level of. Of need. Jeremy's not quite sure what he has to offer, but.
He nods, and they don't speak again until ten twenty, which is when the kid gets up off the bed and walks toward the fire escape. And even then, the only thing he says is, "Thanks."
And that's kind of how it goes for the next month, as September winds down into October and the days get chillier and shorter. The kid is just there sometimes, and after that first time Jeremy gets that he really doesn't want to talk, but also that he really doesn't mind the fact that Jeremy does have homework to do. He just . . . watches, out of those too-clear blue eyes, and never, for example, kills him. Or apparently moves.
He's doing this homework for chemistry that's all about equations when, from just above his head, he hears the kid say, "Wrong."
He nearly jumps out of his skin. "What?"
"Your answer," says the kid, and reaches one arm out to tap where he had his worked-out answer. Then in a single elegant movement, the finger is tapping at a place six lines up, where he'd for no apparent reason turned a minus sign into a plus sign.
"Thanks," is what Jeremy says as he erases his answer, but after that he can't help look over his shoulder every so often to see if the kid has moved again. Maybe he hasn't, or maybe he has and he just didn't hear the movement. When he pays attention later that night, he notices that the kid never makes any sound, even when he's moving. Not so much as the soft scuff of fabric on fabric.
It's . . . it should be disturbing. It is disturbing, but against the bigger fact of the kid's continued presence, it's nothing at all.
He doesn't go out on Halloween. No one sane does, at least in this neighborhood. He goes to sleep early, and his dreams incorporate the wailing sirens until the fires die down later on toward morning. And then a shift in the particular quality of the silence wakes him.
And the kid is there, holding this bloody scrap of fabric to his arm-
Bleeding-
Bleeding through, he realizes, and is suddenly, instantly, awake. And panicking, but because it is the kid he does it quietly and mostly internally. "What do I do?"
The kid, for his part, is calm. He shakes his head, puts a finger to his lips.
Jeremy realizes that not only is the kid bleeding out of this huge gash on his arm, his clothes are all speckled with blood and little burns. He feels his eyes widen. "Oh my God," he whispers. "Your building burnt down."
The kid looks into his eyes, searching-nods his head once, sharply, and turns to go.
"Wait!" he hisses, and then to the questioning look, "Come back?"
The kid nods, and is gone.
Jeremy sleeps mostly restlessly until the silence changes again, and he looks up to see the kid, outlined in the faint false light of dawn. The kid holds out his arm; someone has bandaged it, expertly. Probably put stitches in underneath, and the few singes have gauze taped over them too. He's okay, and Jeremy breathes out a sigh and closes his eyes and isn't really astonished to find no one there when he opens them again.
After that, the kid is there every night. He usually shows up near seven, and leaves before ten thirty. Jeremy worries a lot, but the gauze comes off after two days to show shiny pink skin and the bandage comes off a short while later to reveal the perfect stitches he was half-expecting. Someone else out there is taking care of the kid, carefully. He tries not to think too much about who would let a kid this size wander the streets at night.
And then, right after New Years, his Dad dies.
It wasn't like it was unexpected, or anything. He's been drinking himself to death for months, and his liver just gave up. It is, of course, the kid who notices it first, and calls 911 while Jeremy is busy freaking out, then hands over the phone. The paramedics get him to the hospital, but the dialysis comes too late and he dies early the next morning. And all the doctors are saying that it's horrible that he should lose his father so early, but he lost his father-more than a year ago now. The man that died was . . . just this stranger that lived in his house.
When the kid arrives that night, he scuffs his shoes on the kitchen linoleum, which is his way of clearing his throat. Jeremy and his mother are both sitting at the table, and this is another new thing, because the kid is never around when his mother is. Jeremy looks up to find the kid brushing snow off his jacket.
The only reason his mother isn't screaming is because she's too exhausted, and the kid is, well, a kid.
Who walks over and-hugs him. Really hugs him, with all the emotion that Jeremy has learned to read in the tiniest of hints of expression. This one is new, but he can guess from how 'loud' it is that it means something like, "I know," and also "Please. Be okay."
"Jeremy," asks his mother. "Who is this?"
"I-" begins Jeremy, because what can he say? I'm an A student now because my best friend is a crazy who nearly never talks and sneaks in the window at night when you aren't here?
"Tim," says the kid, still hugging him.
"Tim," repeats his mother.
Tim, thinks Jeremy, trying it out in his mind. Tim.
"And Tim came here because . . . ?"
Jeremy doesn't see the look Tim gives to her, only the result, which is that her chair shoots back several inches and her face pales. "Help," is what Tim says.
"You want-to help us?"
Jeremy feels the nod.
"I don't see how you can. I make enough money for me and Jeremy, but we don't have any way to cover the hospital bills-and the. The funeral." She's about to start crying again.
And there's a soft, papery thud. Jeremy looks down to the table to see a stack of-
Hundred dollar bills. Jeremy and his mother stare at it, and then both of their eyes gravitate back to the kid-Tim. Tim opens his hands and . . . the expression is not a smile, but it is a kind of open.
Slowly, his mom reaches for the money. "This-it's not illegal, is it?"
Tim shakes his head vigorously, vehemently.
"Oh. Well-thank you."
And that is a smile, the first time Jeremy has ever seen th-Tim smile. And then he turns and climbs back out the window. Jeremy's mother rushes to see where he's gone, but Jeremy doesn't bother.
"Jeremy . . . " she says, when she sits back down.
"I know," he says, and tells most of story, aside from the part where Tim once showed up with a bloody cut nearly the length of his arm. When he's finished, his mother sits back and looks at him.
"Months?"
"Yes."
"And he hasn't-done anything? Or-or taken anything?"
"He drank a glass of milk that one time. That's it."
"And now he shows up to give us a stack of hundreds . . . "
"I. Don't think about it," advises Jeremy. "I doubt he'll do it again."
She thinks about this. "Right. Well, any friend of yours is always welcome in this house."
The money is enough to pay for the ambulance and the dialysis machine and the funeral. And Jeremy's mom can stop working quite so much, with the extra and without them paying for a six-pack every day. Tim doesn't show up for a few days, and he comes early and makes noise again when he does. Hesitant, especially since Mom's off the night shift two days a week. But he goes over and opens the window (even though Tim could do it from outside). Tim gives him a look that's pure gratitude.
They sit on the couch now. Or, well. Jeremy sits on the couch while Tim sits on the floor and stretches his body-silently-into pretzels that make Jeremy wince. And taps the page gently whenever he makes a mistake, which he does a lot less now. And he doesn't leave so he won't be home when his mom arrives around five. "Oh," she says, when she realizes the shape on the floor is Tim. "Are you-okay, honey?"
Tim unfolds in a complicated motion that leaves him upright, and bows.
"He's fine, Mom," says Jeremy, not looking up from his homework.
"I just . . . worry," she says, as she goes off to change.
Jeremy worries too. He worries every time he sees Tim duck out the window, and he's not quite sure what to do about the fact that he has no friends at school because the world of this quiet apartment, and Tim, makes that place seem dreamlike. Unreal. There is nothing quite so intense as Tim, and it makes everything else pale.
And then there comes the day in late March when he arrives home and Tim is asleep on his bed. Curled up, curled around the covers and hugging the pillow. He's whimpering slightly, and Jeremy reaches out to touch the hair on his forehead.
The hand is so fast that he doesn't see it, only feels the pain blossom and grips his arm. There's nothing wrong with it, that he can see, but Tim is awake now and staring at him with wide eyes. "Sorry," whispers Tim. "Sorrysorrysorry. Not you. Never you. Don't want to hurt-"
It's the most words Jeremy has ever heard from Tim at once, and he reaches to pull Tim into a hug. The same kind of big, all-embracing hug Tim gave him when his father died. "Shh," he says, holding Tim. "It's okay."
"I-"
"It's okay. I'm okay. See?" He holds his arm in front of Tim's face for inspection.
Tim stares at it blankly for a moment, and then, between one moment and the next Tim returns, hands reaching up to check his arm for-if he understands his mother's training right-breaks. Once he's assured himself that there is no damage, he turns to face Jeremy. "I-"
"I forgive you," said Jeremy, preemptively.
"Thank you," says Tim, and doesn't let go for so long that Jeremy's legs and arms are falling asleep by the time he does. And, well, when he does he just falls back to the bed and-turns himself off. There's no other way to describe it. He was just conscious and then asleep. Jeremy's not quite sure what to do with this new trust, so he does his homework. It is apparently the right thing to do, because hours later (right around nine-fifty, and how had Tim trained himself to do that?) he wakes up, and gives him one of his rare smiles before slipping out into the night.
So now his apartment is not just this place for Tim to be, but also a place for him to sleep. Jeremy can't be sure how much time he spends there-he still leaves near ten, but the place in empty from nine in the morning until he gets home from school, and Tim never has any trouble getting in. He doubts it's quite so much, though, because-
Because Tim is better now, but he's nothing like sane, and 'paranoid' is still a good word to describe him.
Anyway. Jeremy still worries a lot; even more so when Tim does not show up on April first. Tim does not do this anymore, Tim is there every day and he can feel the different (wrong) quality the second he walks in and Tim isn't there. When his mom comes home, she make noises of concern and bakes cookies, which she only ever does when Tim has done something particularly freaky and she needs to see him eating cookies like a normal boy. Which Tim isn't.
The cookies are still there at two in the morning, when Tim slips in the window and wakes Jeremy up. Well, okay, Jeremy had slept on the couch because he wanted to make sure that if Tim came he wouldn't miss him, and that would absolutely send a message to the other boy. But still. Tim is just standing there, kind of looming over him, but the heart-stopping terror is kind of spoiled by the cookie in Tim's mouth.
"Hey," he says, while Tim bites through the cookie and chews.
Tim waves with his other hand.
"Are you okay?"
Tim shrugs, and Jeremy winces because that was absolutely the sound of Tim's shoulder popping in and out of place.
"You had us worried."
The look he gets is something like an apology, but not any kind of comfort. Tim is going to keep vanishing like that and if he doesn't come back it's entirely possible that it's because he's dead. And Tim is sorry for the fact that they would mourn, but not for whatever it is that he's doing.
"I-thanks for coming by," he says.
The smile makes the fact that Jeremy has not and will not mention Tim's cuts and bruises entirely worth it.
Later that month, he's walking in the door to the apartments when he overhears this conversation. It's mostly the manager telling someone that he doesn't have any money to give them, and someone else telling him that it's really too bad, seeing as protection is a valuable commodity. And Jeremy absolutely knows what that means, but he spends the time until Tim arrives worrying about whether or not he should tell him and then Tim arrives and the point is moot anyway because Tim takes one look at him and asks, "What?"
So he tells Tim. Everything he heard, or could remember, and Tim sits there motionless and listening and then once he's finished Tim asks him these pointy questions in a low growl that some part of him says is Tim's working voice. It's pretty much the most he's heard Tim say ever, even though the questions are all things like, "Did you see him?"
Which he hadn't, because he'd been busy trying to not get noticed and therefore killed. Tim hums almost, and then says, "Okay," and then he's gone, swinging out the window.
He doesn't come back for two days. Jeremy worries the first, and his mom calls him in sick on the second because he'd be useless like that anyway and on the third the morning newspaper arrives and the headline is the fact that overnight, someone (not Batman) working entirely outside the law had taken down one of the biggest protection rackets in the city and provided evidence so that they'd be spending a long, long time locked up.
Jeremy feels like he's been sucker punched, because it was one thing to know but it's something entirely different to know.
Tim, when he returns later that night, makes noise. Jeremy looks up at him, squeezing the newspaper in his hands, and says, "You're the Grey."
"Yes," says Tim, and even though he's not moving and barely breathing there's an air of nervous fidget around him. That, Jeremy understands, means Tim is afraid and waiting for him to make a decision and afraid.
He makes his decision. "Hey," he says, gently. "C'mere."
And Tim walks over woodenly until he hugs him and then Tim kind of shudders all over and it's a few moments before Jeremy registers the wetness and realizes Tim is crying. Which does exactly the opposite of prompt him to let go; he squeezes tighter and holds on while Tim rocks and cries himself out. Eventually, Tim makes a movement to pull back, and even knowing that Tim could get out of the hold easily, Jeremy doesn't let go immediately and asks, "Okay?"
"Yes," whispers Tim hoarsely and Jeremy believes him because Tim has never told him a lie.
"So," he says, after he lets Tim go and Tim does not go far, remains close enough to touch, "I think the thing I really want to know is 'why me'? But it's okay if you don't want to tell."
"No, I-" says Tim, and then takes a deep breath. "You tried to save me."
"I-" Jeremy is confused, because of course he tried to save Tim, it's practically the only thing he's been doing since school started.
"When we met," adds Tim, and there's this kind of shift and things click into place. "I didn't mean to come back. I just-you didn't have any friends, and neither did I."
Which. Yeah, okay, and absolutely scary that Tim-the Grey, some tiny voice that he's sitting on him keeps repeating-had followed him around enough in that first week to know that he hadn't any friends. He hears himself say, "You really needed a friend."
"I-yes. I did." Tim stares at something that's probably only in his eyes and says, "And you gave me. More."
Jeremy knows, of course he knows, that this wasn't a game for Tim ever because Tim doesn't play that kind of game, but he still has to ask, "What am I? To you."
"Friend. Brother. Home," and he'd be willing to bet that Tim didn't mean to say that last one, no matter how true it is.
"Of course," he says, over the beating of his own heart. "You are my little brother." And aren't brothers supposed to have the same home?
"Can't be," says Tim, and smiles at his confusion. "I'm sixteen."
And that's just-really? Because Tim still doesn't look like he ought to be thirteen, nevermind someone older than him, but . . . "Okay. You are my big brother. And I will still wake you up when you have nightmares."
"I will protect you," says Tim solemnly, and Jeremy can't doubt it because aside from everything else-Tim had taken down a mob for him.
As an answer, Jeremy reaches over and hugs Tim.
Tim-smiles. Really smiles. It's huge and open and infectious and it's exactly the right smile for Tim's face, and also something he's never seen before. He keeps on hugging Tim. He's never had a brother before.
Coda:
Tim doesn't come around every night anymore, but he comes around most nights; Jeremy knows the kind of city Gotham is, and gets worried whenever he goes too long without seeing his big brother. But just right now, Tim isn't coming, because Jeremy just walked in to his apartment to find an entirely new kind of silence.
Also, Batman is sitting at the kitchen table.
This fails to frighten him because, really, after the sheer intensity of the Grey-and Tim has come home in suit a few times, at Jeremy's request-there is nothing left to be scary. So he completely ignores Batman while he goes to soak his swim trunks, and pours himself a glass of milk to go with the ever-present cookies.
"So," he says, sitting down, "talk. But don't warn me that he's dangerous or unstable, because I already know that."
"I was going to thank you."
"Thank me."
"You have been-very good for him."
Jeremy snorts. "Are you supposed to be his dad? Because I have to say, you do a crap job of it."
"I know," says Batman, but it doesn't escape Jeremy's notice that he's completely failed to answer the question.
"And I thought you hated each other."
"I really couldn't blame him for hating me, if I knew for sure that he did. I spend more time worrying."
"It's a start," says Jeremy judiciously. "Now maybe you should spend some time getting to know him."
"I-"
"Outside the job. I'm sure you know the Grey well enough. Get to know Tim."
Batman starts-maybe it's because he knows Tim's name, or maybe because he's telling Batman what to do.
"And now," he adds for good measure, "I think you should go."
Batman goes.
When Tim slips in later, Jeremy gives him a little-brother hug and says, "I really hope Batman isn't your real dad."
"He's not," says Tim, hugging him back.
Which is really all the assurance he needs.
That's Jeremy. He is mostly responsible for Tim's continued sanity. He showed up in my head because the Grey!Tim deserves at least one normal person in his life and the Bats, while his family, are very much not normal. Or sane. Jeremy is possibly the single most self-actualized person in my head right now, which when you think about it, is kind of creepy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-15 03:54 am (UTC)Ooooh Tim you crazy cake intense teenager. I'm glad he gets Jeremy hugs.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-15 10:58 am (UTC)