Work Text:
Day Six (Aug 18): “I’m fine, I swear.” - Sickfic - Hiding Injury - Scars
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A car honked down the street and Tim flinched. Someone complained loudly on the phone, an old woman a window over banged plates and cutlery together doing the dishes, the morning sun reflected off a skyscraper right into his eye. His migraine dialed up some more.
Urgh. What a wonderful start to the day. Peter was late, less than five minutes, right now, but still. If Tim could just get out of the noise and the smells and the everything of New York, he could lock himself in the office and wait for the headache to pass. He should have taken ibuprofen earlier, maybe if he hurried back up the stairs, he could pocket some, or- But Peter always had horrible timing, and just then his car rolled to a stop in front of Tim.
He got in the car and they exchanged Hellos. At this point, they would be exchanging pleasantries or making small talk, or, to be honest, Neal would start rambling about things that Peter would only listen with half an ear and nod to. Instead, Tim stared blearily out of the window, closing his eyes now and again, to stave off a bout of dizziness and feeling like the obvious was escaping him.
"Are you okay?" Peter asked, putting his car in park and turning towards Tim with a slightly worried expression.
"Mmm-hm…" Tim nodded and got out of the car before Peter could call him back. It was just a little headache. Probably.
---
Peter was talking about something, Tim thought. There was an important case coming up? Peter always said this case was more important than the last, and the next one was going to be more important than this one, blah blah blah. What was it this time? Extremely important mortgage fraud? Why did he have to be here? What good could he possibly do here? Fill out paperwork. That just made him feel like a truly integral part of the team, didn't it? You know who makes me feel loved? Tim thought, eyes fixed on the mug of cold office coffee, Kon. And pancakes. Jason makes me pancakes.
"-you even listening?"
"Hm? Yes. Definitely agree."
"What? You have no idea what I was talking about, do you?"
"Yes, I do." Tim nodded, looking up at the projector. "You said-" There were several strings of numbers, containing mostly 2s, 5s, 7s, and oddly few 4s, or 0s. "That all of these amounts are fabricated and-" the names that stood out most were John, James, Jim, and several iterations of Smith, Smythe, Schmidt, and so on. Some names looked more believable, but those were biblical first names like Michael, Adam, or Noah, and last names out of the periodic table, like Argentum, Bismuth, and Cobalt. "None of these people are real. Or the same person over and over again."
"That's not what I said."
"But it's what you were talking about, right?" One of the names was Jason Krypton. Tim did not pout, so he tried drinking the office sludge instead. He made a mental note to get his hand on that coffee machine soon, what sort of disgrace- this watery piss was as caffeinated as… as chocolate milk. Tim couldn't come up with a good comparison, and the thought left him in the next instance.
"Neal! Pay attention!"
"I am, Peter, not like you could tell anyw-ha- achoo! Urgh…" Tim stopped, blinking slowly into mid-distance. Everything went quiet for a moment, and not a single thought passed through his mind for a while. He forgot what he'd been saying. Hm. Couldn't have been that important anyway.
Peter stared at him, concern visibly rising with every second Tim stayed offline. There was that feeling again, of the obvious escaping him-
"Oooh. I’m sick. Peter, I’m siiick." The end of his sentence tapered into a whine.
Peter stared at him incredulously. "You get whiny when you're sick?"
"Do not!" Tim slowly crossed his arms on the table and pillowed his head on them.
"Do you need-"
"I want pancakes," Tim mumbled into the table. Jason's pancakes. Hey, maybe he could convince Kon to call himself Jason Krypton next time he needed an alias? Not like it's any worse than Todd Peters, right? Who was he kidding, Jason would love it. He always loved Tim's ideas.
"I was going to ask if you need to go home, but I think I already know the answer."
"Yeah. Yeah. You always know best, huh?"
"I think I know you pretty well, Neal."
"You still think I'm white." Tim scoffed. Peter looked entirely taken aback, not that Tim was surprised, really. White default and all.
His eyes weren’t as hooded as his dad’s, and his skin wasn't as bronze as his mom's, so, if he were to put it in the words of the people who leered at him at the Wayne galas (they never dared say it when his parents were around), he looked somewhat 'exotic' (gag), and so long as he stayed out of the sun, he found he could even pass.
(Mostly. Dick was the one who perfected that, taught it to Jason, tried very hard not to teach it to Damien, and tried even harder to unlearn it lately. Jason just kept out of public scrutiny these days, embraced his Gotham drawl, his obvious not white-ness, even if he didn't know where exactly his family was from. His father never talked about it, the last couple of generations in the slums meant he was somewhat black, somewhat some other stuff, and while his mom had talked of her mom and Puerto Rico, Jason had no idea where his bio-mother was from. That one wouldn't be hard to figure out, Tim thought, but Jason didn’t seem to be looking. Spanish was his first language and that was it.)
“Sorry, sorry, you’re right...“ he mumbled, distantly aware, that he should shut up right about now. “Neal Caffrey is clearly white. Neal clearly doesn’t have an accent, Neal is clearly an only child, Neal clearly has a spleen.”
“What? Neal. Don’t people need medication for that?”
“Yeah, yeah, but, you see, Neal Caffrey has a spleen.”
Tim glared at the tabletop. What the hell was he talking about? “Wait- no,” he said, haltering. "'s just a cold. No big deal." He shook his head, then froze when his brain started making pirouettes in his skull. "Can I go home?"
"Yes, Jesus." Peter let out an explosive sigh. "Get up, I'll drive you."
Tim cringed, he might get motion sick, but if he admitted he might throw up in Peter's shitty car, he would take the offer back, and anyway, now he was being a bother again and-
"Neal. Up."
Oh, not an offer, an order. Well then, if Tim threw up it was entirely Peter's fault and he couldn’t blame him, ha, outsmarted. And Jason always says I get dim when I'm sick.
---
Fifteen minutes later, Peter's car remained stain-free, though there had been a close call, and while the stairs seemed endless at first, he couldn't even remember the majority of how he got from the car into his bed.
Tim stared at his ceiling, telling himself off for ignoring the migraine yesterday, or the dizziness this morning, urgh.
"Do you want me to call someone?" Peter was suddenly directly next to him. Fuck, that only-child comment must have really pissed Peter off if Tim was hearing that tone right.
"Uhm." He really shouldn't. He couldn't. This wasn't the time, especially not with Peter right there.
His hands fisted into the blankets, he could feel the moon push and pull at the earth back and forth and back and forth and-
"Neal?"
Tim opened his eyes, forgetting when he had closed them, and turned his head vaguely in the direction he had heard Peter's voice coming from. It was like he was looking at nothing, he could remember the dimensions of his room, the angle he was laying at, the person standing in the corner of his eye, but his brain didn't seem to process any of it; Tim was looking at Peter but forgot that he'd seen him the moment he blinked. "...hm?"
"Should I call an ambulance?"
"I have… pills in the cabinet in the… bathroom. Non-narcotic, please."
"...I’ll be right back."
The steps retreated and Tim’s fingers started struggling with the buttons on his shirt. "Hate," he mumbled, stopped for a moment to kick his shoes off, then said it again. "Hate. Hate."
"Neal?"
"I hate suites. Yuck, why do I have to wear this- whose idea was it-"
"Neal. Your medication."
Tim carefully and slowly turned his head, his eyes focusing perfectly on the pill bottle being held in his direction. It's the right one, he decided, the one he had to take two of, to fix his migraine after it already started, but when three rolled into his palm instead, he barely spared it any thought and only heard Peter make a protesting noise after he'd already swallowed them.
"...water." He mumbled after a moment, blearily squinting at what might be a glare. "Is there still, uhm. The red cans in the fridge?"
The glaring man moved towards the kitchen and Tim was starting to doubt who it was. Pissed off Peter sometimes had the energy of pleasantly tempered Bruce. Maybe nobody was even here.
A can of coke clinked onto his bedside table. "Did you mean coke?"
That wasn't Bruce's voice. Tim frowned at the can in front of his face. Sugary soda was what Bruce made him drink when he was sick, so his blood sugar wouldn't crash. He already forgot to eat enough as is but when he got sick he was even worse. As a neglected kid he used to just pass out after a while. Alfred was appalled the first time he heard about it, Bruce had looked genuinely scared.
"Neal. Are you sure you don't want an ambulance? You're crying."
Tim blinked, he hadn't noticed the tears but now that Peter had pointed it out, it was impossible to miss. Oh no.
"No." He said quietly and wiped at his suddenly wet face. "I want- I'm fine."
"Neal." Stop saying that name, he wanted to say but Peter was crouching down to eye level. A hand landed on his shoulder, rubbing soothingly. "Kid, if you want to call someone, I can turn a blind eye, just this once."
Tim glared. "'M not stupid," he hissed.
"I can see you’re having an awful time, and I won't abuse the little trust we've built between each other, just for a lead I already know will go nowhere."
Tim hesitated, tried to resist the offer (Bruce was probably busy anyway, and he didn't want to bother him just because he was sick and he felt lonely) he bit his bottom lip to stop it from trembling and nodded.
After a moment a phone was pressed into his hands, and Peter held his hands like that for a beat. "Are you going to be okay here?"
Tim clenched his eyes shut and nodded, fighting vertigo. "See you at work tomorrow?"
Peter smiled vaguely. "Or the day after. I'll check in on you."
His fingers clumsily typed Bruce's phone number and Tim stared at the display, hesitating. Bruce might not mind if Tim called, but what could he do, all the way in Gotham? Say there-there? Bruce wasn't the best with his words or emotion in general. Tim would appreciate any attempt at it, but it wouldn't help, and Bruce would probably just feel stupid and useless if he couldn't come over and-
Kon could come over.
Tim exhaled shakily and all tension went out of him with it. He giggled, feeling stupid he forgot. His boyfriend could fly and be here in minutes, and Tim had almost forgotten.
Tim grumbled, threw what he just now realized was his FBI-issued phone on the table (or rather in the direction of it), and rummaged his other phone out from under his mattress.
Kon👽 was the second number in his contacts, Jason💥 right above it.
CN U COME PLS
Tim only had to wait a second before he got a text back.
On our way <3
---
Tim woke to golden sunlight falling through the window onto the sheets, and something sizzling in the kitchen. He took a deep breath, trying to dispel the grogginess, and picked the scent of bacon in the air. Jason's awake. Which meant the line of heat behind him was Kon.
Tim smiled. He vaguely remembered falling asleep with his phone in his hand, then being carefully maneuvered out of his suit and tucked into bed in between two bodies.
Tim dragged himself out of bed and stumbled towards the kitchen.
Jason looked over his shoulder when he saw Tim come through the doorway and winked at him. "Mornin' sleeping beauty," he said, leaning towards Tim, as he came up behind him and put his full weight against Jason's shirtless back. "How're you feelin'?"
There was a thick cluster of scars on the shoulder where Tim had put his ear. "Already much better, now that you're here," Tim said automatically and Jason chuckled.
"Anythin' special you want for breakfast?"
"...Pancakes?" Tim asked, voice shy and sleepy.
"Alright," Jason laughed and picked Tim up like a princess. "Let's put you-" "Hey!" "-back to bed, here," Tim expected Jason to just throw him, but Jason carefully deposited him back at Kon's side. A big, warm arm immediately slung itself around Tim's middle and he was pulled back against Kon's chest.
"You'll have your pancakes in a minute, let's make it breakfast in bed, yeah?"
Tim hummed in agreement, eyes already falling shut again.
In what felt like only a moment later, Kon's fingers were combing Tim's hair out of his eyes and a kiss landed on his forehead. "You have a fever," Kon mumbled against his skin. "I'll go get your medication. Maybe I can convince Jason to make tea. Try to sit up, yeah?"
Tim grumbled and tried to drag himself up, but froze when he smelled Jason and a tray of pancakes approaching. Jason scoffed fondly, seeing the awkward position Tim was in, and put the tray of food on the night table, to help Tim up.
"Ya big baby," Jason grumbled and put the food finally in front of Tim. "Tea comin' right up."
"And here's your pills," Kon said from the doorway.
Tim grinned. "I love you," he said, looking between them both, and stuffed his mouth full of pancakes.
Jason made a playful, disgusted noise, and Kon rolled his eyes and brought the meds over.
"We love you too."