---- From chapter 29 ----

D: Jason keeps looking at Tim when he's not looking, and Tim keeps looking at Jason when he's not looking, and I can't tell if they're planning to confess to or kill the other

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Dick took a large gulp from the coffee mug to his side and grimaced when he found that the liquid had turned cold over the hours he'd spent sitting at the kitchen table. With his focus now broken and a bad taste in his mouth, he was painfully aware of the burning in his eyes and tenseness of his muscles. He sighed, glaring at the papers sewn around him and found that he could no longer make sense of them. He straightened up, his back cracking loudly, and set the mug of cold coffee back down at his side, where it wouldn't leave rings on his papers.

For the first time since the early hours of the night, he looked around the kitchen where he had been working. The glow of his laptop was lost in the natural light that was filtering through the windows, where dark gray clouds blocked the sun from view. Faintly, he recalled being unable to sleep that night and wondering to the kitchen in search of food, only to end up with the once-hot liquid now staining the inside of his mug. He'd gotten caught up in working, he realized, standing up and stretching his legs, when he'd only meant to check up on the news. Now that his trance had been broken for good, the discomfort of sitting in a stool at the island for so many hours set in.

He closed the lid of his laptop with a satisfying click, but didn't touch the papers, and rubbed his eyes, digging in the heels of his palms until he saw phosphenes. He padded around the kitchen, an apple finding its way between his teeth as he pulled out his phone and flipped through his messages. He had one from Bruce, an inquiry about whether or not he had finished the report for the team's last mission, hundreds of Twitter notifiers, and one text from Roy, something along the lines of "how much fire does there have to be for it to be considered arson?" He ignored them all, typing out a new message to Wally and setting his phone aside to eat his apple. Green, like Wally's eyes.

He read over his papers one last time, trying to decipher them, and Tim's grades and most recent tests shone back at him. Nearly lazily, he picked up the top paper, his own notes, and scanned them over, squinting to distinguish the letters of his sleep-deprived handwriting. Tim really didn't need tutoring, but anything that kept Tim out of his house was a good thing. And it was working, Tim was quickly becoming a familiar face in Wayne Manor. Jason was a big part of that, although they would both kill him if Dick ever said it out loud. The two had fallen in hate at first sight, after all, and Tim had never opened up faster than he did while insulting Jason.

Dick smiled, a bit smugly, as he took another bite of his apple, and read over the notes of how Tim had improved even more since Dick had started tutoring him. He was nearly finished reading over his notes when he heard footsteps, twitching as he recognized them as Tim's and, more familiarly, Alfred's.

By the time they entered the kitchen, Dick had finished his apple and set to the task of brewing another pot of coffee, smiling to himself when the young teen entered the room. Alfred took one look at him and Dick immediately felt the urge to flee the kitchen, but Alfred was guarding the door and jumping out the window didn't seem to be the most foolproof plan.

"Master Dick," Alfred said, his tux free of wrinkles or imperfections as he looked down on Dick, "I trust you have not been loitering in my kitchen all night?" Dick glared at Tim as the younger shuffled to the side, avoiding becoming the center of Alfred's scolding, and struggled to come up with an answer for the stern butler.

He ended up responding with an intelligent "Uhh" and was pointedly banished to the couch, barely given the time to collect his laptop and papers before Alfred was insisting he sleep for at least a few hours.

He considered going back to work, finishing up drafting a schedule for Tim or typing out that report for Bruce but in the end, his eyelids grew heavy and sleep consumed him.

His short but blissful nap was interrupted by shouting, and instantly he was fully awake, fueled by adrenaline, and stalking towards the sound of the shouting. About halfway there he recognized the voices and calmed down, but still moved forward, more out of curiosity than anything.

He lingered in the doorway, surprised to find Barbara already there, and watched the scene in the kitchen with growing amusement. Taking in the room, he found that Alfred and Tim had baked cookies since Dick had been evicted from the room, and the elder man was no longer there.

Tim had the front of Jason's t-shirt balled up in his hands, his face an angry red as he yelled what Dick thought of as nonsense at Jason, well Jason only looked bored with the youngers threats, scoffing out an insult, and with his words, Dick realized they were fighting about cookies.

"YOU PRICK!" Tim was yelling, shaking Jason back and forth and drawing back a fist. Jason only rolled his eyes, smacking his lips together and screwing up his expression.

"What did you make those cookies out of anyway? Clayface? Disgusting."

If possible, Tim turned redder, his eyes narrowing, "Then why did you eat them all?!" he demanded, and the argument gradually grew louder, Jason seems to be riling Tim up as much as possible.

Slowly with a lowered voice, Dick leaned towards Barbara, "Wait, so Jason seriously only ate all the cookies Tim made?" he asked, figuring that she had been watching for longer than him, so she must have more context. 

"Yep," Barbara said, tilting her head as Tim threw a punch, only for Jason to dodge, "although," she continued, "whether he was foolishly protecting us or pathetically protective of Tim is yet to be seen."

Dick stifled a laugh and rolled his eyes fondly, turning away from the scene as Tim held a rolling pin over his head and headed back to where he'd left his laptop.

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It took about three days of constant bickering about cookies before Jason and Tim found a new topic to fight about, this time it being Tim's "annoying and fucking stupid" habit of taking pictures of everything and everyone. Dick was lounging around in his room, wasting time and texting Wally about the rise in gas prices when their shouting reached him, along with the sound of walking upstairs and the frequent shutter of a camera.

"Fucking hell, would you fucking quit it with that fucking thing?" Jason's voice snapped, now in the hallway outside Dick's room.

His demand was responded to with another shutter of the camera. Dick chuckled softly but silenced again as Jason growled. Faintly, he felt a little bad listening in on them, but it was their fault for arguing so loudly in the first place.

"I swear to fucking god I'm going to break that stupid fucking camera!" Jason said again, voice louder, and Dick knew what Tim was going to say before the words left his mouth.

"Maybe with your face." Tim sounded as amused as Dick felt, and at this point, he had completely abandoned texting Wally in favour of overhearing Tim and Jason.

There was a loud thud, followed by a smaller one, and Dick assumed that Jason had punched the wall and knocked one of the paintings off.

In the hallway, Tim held up his camera, hiding one of his eyes from sight so only his bright grin was visible as he snapped a photo of Jason with his fist indented in the wall and glaring at Tim. Said teen lowered his camera, looking at Jason with his own vision rather than through the lens of a camera, and edged around the wide-eyed boy until he could walk down the hallway ahead of him. There was a moment of stillness, and then heavy fall of footsteps on the carpet that told him Jason was following.

As they progressed down the hall, Tim picked up his camera from where he had allowed it to hang around his neck and began to click through the photos he had taken. Most of the recent ones were the inhabitants of Wayne Manor. Bruce, hunched over his desk surrounded by piles of paperwork, Jason, with a blooded split lip and a black eye. More than a dozen of Dick in mundane positions, always looking camera-ready and ridiculously attractive no matter what angle Tim tried. Getting a bad photo of Dick was just impossible.

Tim felt Jason's exhale against his ear and felt his presence hovering, watching Tim click through the pictures. Tim held back a shudder, careful to not react, although he was suddenly more careful with how far he went back, knowing that he hadn't yet downloaded his photos of Batman and Robin- or should he say, Bruce and Dick- onto his laptop and off his camera. No one knew that Tim knew, and Tim knew that no one knew that he knew, so he would let them try to keep their secret until they finally decided to tell him.

He heard Jason scoff at the number of photos he had of the flower vases that lined the halls of the manor, and turned into Jason's bedroom, making sure to hit the door with his ankle so that it swung closed and Jason ran into it.

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Dick looked up from his phone in time to see Tim looking up from his book- -Macbeth- and flicking his eyes towards where Jason sat on the other side of the couch. Tim's legs were stretched out across the couch and about a centimetre away from where Jason was sitting criss-cross and watching one of those over-dramatic cop shows on the large television. It had taken them about twenty minutes of kicking and fighting for them to settle into the position, and Tim's feet with nudged Jason every time he moved to turn the page.

Tim looked away quickly, not knowing Dick had seen him, his eyes running back and forth quickly to find where he was on his page, and just as he did, Jason's eyes titled in Tim's direction, lingering on the lanky boy for a long minute, and only occasionally focusing on the television. 

Sometimes, the look was soft, and other times it was so aggressive Dick imagined it could kill. Realizing he was the one staring now, he turned his attention back to his phone, where his half-finished text was waiting to be scent.

D: Jason keeps looking at Tim when he's not looking, and Tim keeps looking at Jason when he's not looking, and I can't tell if they're planning to confess to or kill the other

He sent the message and abruptly stood up, causing both boys to snap to attention and watch him leave the room before they slowly turned back to each other.