Chapter Text
When Timothy Drake is eight years old, he tries a mimosa at a gala. It goes down like fire, the bartenders at larger events always heavyhanded with their pouring. Instantly, Tim questions the appeal of alcohol.
He had picked up the drink to try and seem older, wiser, to see what was really so enticing about the glassy-eyed stares he’d seen Bristol’s high profile society sport at the end of long nights.
He’d taken a large gulp, expecting a bitter taste and wanting to get it over with. He barely keeps it down, almost losing his composure and running to the bathroom to spit it out. He manages to force it down and immediately sets the tall glass down on a table, grabbing the nearest hors-dœvre to try and rinse the acrid taste out of his mouth.
Regaining his composure, Tim surveys the room, wary of anyone catching him in his embarrassment. Luckily, it’s late enough in the night that any stares turning his way are vacant, accompanied by flushed cheeks and inebriated giggles. Tim, fully cowed, sets out to find his parents in the packed ballroom.
As he makes his way through the crush of suits and gowns, Tim’s world grows warm. The room goes soft around him, and elbows which previously caught him in the head and shoulders no longer register. His face and neck are warm, and his thoughts begin to wander. A small smile grows on his face. Tim wonders if it’s past his bedtime as he yawns, then remembers the taste of champagne burning through him.
It clicks, in that instant, why adults drink. The world seems easier to deal with, the pressure of expectation less cloying.
Timothy Drake is eight years old, and he feels as though his life is beginning.
Despite his thrilling discovery, Tim knows by proxy that children should not drink. Well, he knows that if a child drinks, their parents should not find out. Thankfully, Tim lives a life left alone.
Tim is eager to chase the feeling from that fateful night, but he also prides himself on his foresight and intelligence. He organizes one afternoon, and reads and reads and reads. Learns what drinking too much, too fast can do to the body. Learns what drinking regularly from a young age does to the mind. Learns about addiction and days–lifetimes–spent in turmoil. He reads about weeks spent in a stupor. He reads enough that he knows he has to temper this craving.
He reads fast enough that he is not dissuaded, the next time his parents are out of town and Mrs. Mac has the week off, from pulling a cheap bottle of vodka from the far back of his parents’ grand liquor cabinet, one with the seal already broken.
He starts the evening out in his room, heartbeat thundering, terrified of being caught. He bought a bottle of cranberry juice earlier, and he pours it liberally, intent on drowning out the doubtlessly acrid taste of vodka.
By the end of his night, Tim is emboldened. He lounges in the living room, the summer sun setting low in the sky behind him, a gentle breeze pushing through floor-to-ceiling doors leading out to the back patio. Curtains billow in the doorway, and Tim gazes at them from where he lies on the plush white carpet.
His house is sensible, Tim thinks. Comfortable. The couches are low and plush. The lights are all warm. Books line the walls, punctuated by dimly lit artifacts. Etruscan vases gaze across the room. Han Dynasty incense burners break up harsh lines with their swirling designs, imitating smoke. It’s a bit sad, to Tim, that these objects once held and were held. That they now stand alone on high shelves. His gaze drifts up, and up, and up to high ceilings. He longs for music but settles for the sound of his own breathing. His face is burning and he feels melded to the floor. He feels cradled, cupped in the palm of a giant.
Tim will keep this tradition to about once every four months, for a while. Enough time for his paranoid brain to settle, forgetting about brain and liver damage. Forgetting about how incriminating “underage drinking” sounds, even to his own ears.
At nine years old, Timothy Drake’s young synapses fire as he watches Robin complete a quadruple flip through the Gotham skyline. His mind superimposes an image of Dick Grayson tumbling through a high-top tent onto the scene. Dick Grayson is Robin. Bruce Wayne is Batman. Tim steels his resolve, then buries the secret as far down within him as he can manage.
At ten years old, Tim finds a home on top of skyscrapers, tucked behind air conditioning fans as he tries to capture his heroes in flight. It takes him one week to memorize their routes. He forgets about his little drinking habit for the time being, and when his parents aren’t home, Tim finds a new ritual.
As often as he dares, Tim sets out just before sunset, carefully avoiding the few cameras his parents have set up around the property. He takes a bus to Gotham proper from Bristol, and climbs a lower building, usually a residential apartment complex, where he will wait for Batman and Robin to begin their night. Eventually, where he will wait for Batman and a new, smaller Robin to set off, sometimes joined by Nightwing. He will tail them from a distance and go dizzy with how fast his heart is beating, how clammy his hands are.
At the end of their night, Tim returns home, shaking. The fear never goes away, and a secret part of Tim doesn’t want it to. It keeps him from getting too comfortable in Gotham. He’s never scared enough to stop his hobby, but he is too smart to grow complacent. He got cocky once, and barely got out of a mugging with his life, darting away as Nightwing dropped down between Tim and the idiot who shouted at him to “Drop the fucking camera!” within earshot of the Bats.
However, Tim is nothing if not headstrong. On weekends, when it’s suffocatingly hot and humid out even in the dead of the night, when he doesn’t have to worry about school the next morning, Tim will find the tallest building he dares scale, and settle behind a vent protruding from the roof. He’ll sleep until morning, and make his way back to Drake manor during the only fresh hours of the day. The dew on the lawn will greet him, and Tim will eat breakfast alone, smiling.
Timothy Drake is twelve years, nine months, seven days, twenty-two hours, and twenty minutes old when Jason Todd is beaten nearly to death in a warehouse.
Timothy Drake is twelve years, nine months, seven days, twenty-two hours, and twenty-one minutes old when Jason Todd dies in a fiery explosion.
Timothy Drake is twelve years and change when he shakes apart down the road from where Bruce Wayne’s psyche is quickly shutting down.
Tim finishes the handle of vodka he’d been nursing for years that night, and throws up what feels like an ocean. The floor of the bathroom is cold, the lights are white and bright, the toilet is the only thing holding him up, Robin is dead. Jason is dead.
A few months later, Tim shows up at Wayne manor, demanding to speak to Mr. Wayne. Mr. Wayne, who Tim has watched tear himself apart for a few months. Mr. Wayne, who Tim is afraid will die if he keeps this up.
Six months later, Tim dons the uniform. Grief and elation tear through him in turn, and he excuses himself from the Cave to bolt home and tear himself away from the moment. He curls up in front of a fireplace taller than he is, and stares straight forward into the light until sleep overtakes him.
When Janet and Jack Drake are poisoned, and Tim is left without a mother and with a comatose father, Tim is undone. He spends hours sharply aware of every fact of his life. Dust is collecting on the shelves, food is going bad in the fridge, and Tim’s mother is dead.
His shoulder is dislocated during patrol, he has bruised ribs more often than not, and his mother is dead.
Slowly, Jack Drake comes back to life, and just as Tim reaches an understanding with him, reaches a point where they feel like father and son, maybe for the first time in Tim’s life, Jack dies with a boomering in his chest. Tim implodes.
Two years fly by, and Timothy Jackson Drake is an orphan by the end of them. Tradition and tact disappear from his drinking habits. No one is around to catch him as he stumbles through Drake Manor, clutching at his head every time he remembers that no one is around to catch him.
Bruce, Alfred, and Dick hold Tim together through sheer force of will.
At fifteen, Tim thinks his plug at Gotham Academy must have sold him a laced cart, and he must really have brain damage, because Jason Todd shows up at Titans Tower in full Robin get-up and beats the shit out of Tim. The whole affair sets his head spinning, and in the weeks following, Tim will marvel at how surreal his life truly is. No laced cart, at least.
The world keeps spinning, and Tim floats away from reality, drowns in euphoria when he gets the chance. He doesn’t let himself dabble beyond weed and alcohol, because the yawn of the abyss scares him, admittedly. He’s seen what hard drugs do to a person. Every Robin–every hero, vigilante, hell, every citizen of Gotham–has seen it. So he drinks at Drake manor. He gets good at rolling. He doesn’t hide his habits from his family, but he carefully avoids mentioning them.
Too bad it’s not in their blood to leave well enough alone.