❤︎| Hoodie (req)

Okay so wow, 1000 followers. Genuinely, what can I say, i love you all very very much, this is a huge milestone for me. Holy shit. Thank you!

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It had been one week.

Seven days since your warmth had disappeared from your life. Seven days since the person who had somehow become your safest place had looked you in the eyes, said almost nothing, and walked away.

Not taken from you. He'd left.

Tim had broken up with you.

And then he'd gone.

No explanation. No argument. No dramatic confession. No opportunity for you to ask what you'd done wrong.

Just a quiet, almost unbearable finality.

Which was what made it so difficult to understand.

Your relationship hadn't been falling apart. There hadn't been warning signs you could point to afterward and tell yourself you'd missed. If anything, the opposite was true.

Things had been good.

Really good.

You and Tim had somehow fit together in a way neither of you had expected. Where you were impulsive, he was careful. Where he overthought, you pulled him back into the moment. He had a tendency to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, and you'd gotten frighteningly good at convincing him that, occasionally, he was allowed to put it down.

He'd let you see sides of him almost nobody else did. The exhausted Tim. The sarcastic Tim. The Tim who fell asleep on your couch with his glasses crooked on his face after insisting he wasn't tired. The Tim who remembered exactly how you took your coffee but routinely forgot to eat his own dinner. The Tim who would silently reach for your hand under the table whenever his thoughts became too loud.

He'd never seemed uncomfortable with you. He'd never acted like he wanted out. So what the hell happened? You'd spent the past week trying to find an answer.

Mostly from your bed.

There had been an impressive amount of ice cream involved.

You'd ignored calls from your friends. Ignored Alfred. Ignored practically everyone who had tried to check on you. At some point, you'd even stopped answering messages because explaining that you didn't know why your boyfriend had suddenly decided he wasn't supposed to be your boyfriend anymore required an emotional energy you simply didn't have. And eventually, after enough hours spent staring at the ceiling, you'd landed on the only thing you could think of.

Three weeks ago. The hostage situation. You'd been taken, threatened, put in danger. But you'd survived.

You were fine.

At least, that was what you'd told everyone.

Apparently, Tim hadn't believed you.

You remembered the night he'd come to your apartment afterward. He'd stood in your doorway with that familiar rigid posture, his expression carefully controlled. Except you'd known him too well by then. You'd seen the guilt, the fear. The pain he was trying so hard to bury.

You'd asked him what was wrong.

He hadn't answered.

You'd asked if he'd been angry with you.

Nothing.

You'd asked if there was someone else.

His expression had cracked for half a second.

Then he'd simply said it was over.

No fight, no accusation, no explanation. He hadn't even given you the chance to be angry.

He'd just left.

And somehow, that hurt worse. Because somewhere along the way, over the last few years, Tim Drake had become a light in your life.

Your person.

The one you called when something went wrong. The one you wanted beside you when something went right. The one whose presence could make an otherwise terrible day feel survivable.

And now your apartment felt painfully empty without him. So, naturally, when you'd spontaneously decided to clean out your closet in an attempt to do literally anything other than think about him, you'd found his hoodie. The dark green one. His favorite. You remembered teasing him about it once because he wore it so often that you'd started wondering if he owned any other clothes. You'd held it for several minutes. You'd told yourself you weren't going to put it on.

You'd put it on.

It had made everything significantly worse. It still smelled like him. His detergent, his cologne.

And somehow, despite the ache it put directly behind your ribs, it had made sleeping easier.

So you'd kept it.

Today hadn't been much different.

You'd showered, at least. Managed to convince yourself to put on actual clothes instead of spending the entire day wrapped in blankets.

But the hoodie stayed.

You were halfway through a pint of ice cream, curled comfortably into the corner of your couch, when someone knocked on the door.

You stared at it.

Another knock.

You sighed.

Probably Alfred.

Maybe one of your friends.

You considered pretending you weren't home.

Then came a voice from the other side.

"It's me."

Your spoon stopped halfway to your mouth. You knew that voice. For a second, you couldn't breathe.

Tim.

Of course it was Tim. He'd spent the last seven days convincing himself that staying away from you was the right thing. He'd rehearsed the reasoning so many times that he could practically recite it. You'd been targeted because of him. Because of the people around him. Because criminals knew who mattered to him. And three weeks ago, someone had gotten close enough to use you as leverage. Tim couldn't make himself accept that it might happen again.

He knew what Gotham did to people.

He knew what happened when you became a weakness someone could exploit.

And worse, he knew exactly what you meant to him.

He loved you.

That was the problem.

He loved you enough that the thought of someone hurting you because of him was unbearable. So he'd made the decision for both of you. He'd told himself that eventually you'd hate him. That you'd move on. That you would be safer without him. He'd told himself all of it because the alternative, admitting that he'd deliberately shattered the one relationship that had made him genuinely happy, was harder to survive. And now he was standing outside your apartment, trying to remember how breathing worked.

He'd left some case files here.

That was all.

He'd come in, grab them, and leave.

Simple.

He could do simple. The door opened.

Tim's carefully constructed composure lasted approximately two seconds.

His eyes found you.

Then they dropped.

To the hoodie.

His hoodie.

The dark green one he'd worn so often that you'd once joked it had become a permanent part of his costume. His stomach twisted. You looked exhausted. Not just tired.

Exhausted.

There were shadows beneath your eyes, and the sight of them made something inside his chest seize painfully. You were wearing his hoodie. You'd kept it. You hadn't thrown it away. For one dangerous second, Tim forgot every reason he'd come here.

"Hey," he managed.

His voice was quieter than usual. He cleared his throat.

"I, uh... I left some case files here."

Brilliant.

Absolutely flawless.

He'd spent seven days imagining seeing you again, and that was what he'd come up with. You didn't answer. Tim's gaze remained fixed on the hoodie. He could remember giving it to you. Could remember the first time you'd stolen it from his room and how he'd pretended to be annoyed even though he'd secretly liked seeing you wear it.His fingers curled at his sides.

Don't.

Don't think about that. Don't look at them too long. Don't let yourself remember.

"{{user}}..."

Your name came out differently this time.

Soft.

Almost uncertain. His carefully neutral expression flickered. For the first time since he'd arrived, Tim looked directly at you. And whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this. He looked like he wanted to say something. Several things, actually.

I'm sorry.

I miss you.

I didn't want to do this.

I love you.

I can't explain.

He said none of them. His throat tightened.

"I can just..." He glanced toward the apartment, then back at you. "I can grab the files and go."

It was supposed to sound casual. You could hear the strain in every word.

"I didn't mean to..."

He stopped, jaw tightening. He couldn't finish the sentence. His eyes remained fixed on the sleeve of his hoodie wrapped around your wrist. Then, barely above a whisper, he said,

"You should probably give that back."

The second the words left his mouth, Tim regretted them. Because he didn't actually want it back. Not really. And judging by the way his expression crumpled for the briefest fraction of a second, you could probably tell. He looked away.

"Sorry."

His voice was almost inaudible.

"That came out wrong."

He took a slow breath, trying desperately to pull himself back together. Tim Drake had faced assassins, metahumans, monsters, and criminals who had tried very hard to kill him. None of them had ever made him feel as helpless as standing in your doorway.