A/N: This is YJ!Verse with Tim as Dick's older neighbor and part time babysitter. He's around 18-19.
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Tim ran his hand through his hair in frustration, and even the smooth texture of his silky black hair was not enough to calm him. Then, feeling as if one hand was not enough, Tim clutched his hair with both hands and groaned in exasperation. No matter what he did, it wasn't enough. Every sentence, every word, every /letter/ he typed seemed to only make his story appear more unappealing to the point that he wanted to scrap the whole thing altogether.
Just as he begins contemplating on starting over again, a familiar laughter echoed from outside his window. He really should be surprised, but he found himself surprisingly calm when he saw a cheerful Dick Grayson hanging upside down from his window, knocking on the glass with a mischievous grin on his face. He looked unnaturally comfortable in his upside down position, but Tim figured he should let the kid in before he gets listed as an accomplice for helping endanger a teenage boy - not that Dick ever needed any help for that.
"Dick? What are you doing here?" He asked as he opens the window, and Dick jumps into his room, using his windowsill as a ledge to launch into a small flip.
"Ta-da!" The boy does a small bow, and Tim can't help but smile. His face quickly returned into a frown.
"Does Alfred know you're here?"
"Nope," the boy replied, but before Tim can even scold him, the boy was already at his computer, staring at his work in amusement. "Geez, your college gives you homework on break? Aren't you between semesters now?"
Tim wanted to snap at the boy, for coming over uninvited, for endangering himself unnecessarily by hanging upside down the third floor window, for invading the privacy of his home /and/ computer, but then he noticed Dick shuffling his feet - a rare sign of nervousness from the boy wonder - and looking at him expectantly. The silence in the air was a bit more tense than usual. Dick was as sensitive to disapproval as he was and he doesn't need to be the Batman to realize that the boy missed him.
It /had/ been a long two months away at college overseas, and the younger boy had so little friends who knew about both his identities. He could rarely talk freely to anyone, so when Tim had figured the secret of Batman and Robin out within a week of babysitting the little boy next door, Dick had attached himself to Tim like a leach. After two months of not seeing each other, Dick seemed to be bursting with unsaid stories, but the boy patiently waited for Tim to speak first, for any indication that Tim is okay with Dick returning to his life.
And it was ridiculous, because of course he doesn't mind. Tim lets out the sigh he's been holding and pulled up another chair next to Dick. "It's just a remedial essay of sorts. Creative writing."
Tim wrinkled his nose at the mere mention of the two words, and Dick shared a mutual look of disgust. "They make you take that?"
"General education requirement."
"Bummer. I bet your teacher's a d-r-a-g?"
It was an invitation to rant, and Tim gladly took it. "Whatever I do, it's not enough. Too much description, too /little/ description, too complex vocabulary, too /simple/ Mr. Drake, this isn't a children's book that you're writing!" One of his hands have found its way back to his hair, tugging at it viciously as he groaned.
Then, there was a flash of white light that he traced to Dick who was now holding a camera. Looking a bit betrayed, Tim reached out to grab it, but he's no superhero and Dick nimbly dodged away. "We'll laugh about this someday," the boy told him with a smug grin.
"/Dick!/ I'm not laughing."
"Well duh, that's why I said /someday/. Because right now you're kinda caught up in valuing your teacher's opinion a bit /too/ much when you're like a hundred times more awesome than him."
"Thanks, but-"
"No really, think about it. This is /creative writing/. Totally subjective. And your major is what? Definitely not creative writing. But what's important is that you can program /circles/ around him, and he probably won't understand a thing about it and give it a horrible score because he thinks it's ugly even though it'll probably end up as the next big thing after google."
"I...uh. Dick, you kinda lost me there."
The boy had the decency to blush, and Tim tried to use that distraction to reach out for the camera once again. He failed, as expected. The brief moment of action managed to give Dick a new idea though.
"Okay, so you want this camera, right?"
"And any trace of photographic evidence of my having a mental breakdown, yes."
"Then...let's grab some fresh air. Take a break - for just two hours - and then I'll give it back. Gotta make sure you're still in shape after two months of lazing about doing /creative writing/ abroad after all."
He considered it, glancing at the camera contemplatively and judging his chances of success if he were to swipe at it once more. Finally, Tim relents. "Fine."
"Great!"
And before he knows it, Tim was blindfolded and out the door. It's only after he removed the blindfold that he realized Dick's definition of fresh air was train surfing. Of course.
---
When he returned, Tim faced his computer screen once more with his heart still pounding from the adrenaline rush earlier. Apparently, there's nothing better than a night out in Gotham to strike inspiration in any would-be writer.
The word document was clean, empty, and white, but now he finally saw it as an opportunity to tell a unique tale of his own, a story he has spent five years observing. Surprisingly, his fingers feel light and nimble as they glide across his keyboard with as much ease as they did when he was typing out a program. There's no hesitation holding him back anymore. On his screen, the classic mythos of Gotham begins to unfold - it was the story that he knew best, that he could tell better than anyone else. The tale of a bright little bird who flew with the bats.