Title:  Birds of a Feather - Part 1

Genre:  Humor

Rating: PG

Fandom: Batman/Red Robin

Pairing: Tim Drake/Tam Fox

Summary:  Tam’s been stressed like crazy for finals, so Tim tries to be nice and gets her a present to cheer her up. 

Long story short… He fails… Epically… And gets his tail feathers chewed out in the process because of it.  Naturally, he turns to Dick for help, who is some help.  Not a lot of help, mind you, but some.

At least he makes a fairly decent human shield…

There’s a reason that Dick has very fond memories of “the old days” of crime fighting in Gotham City, and why he nearly crowed with delight when Tim delivered an unexpected case reminiscent of “the old days” to his doorstep.  Back when it was just Bruce and him, the original Batman and Robin, the cases they worked weren’t nearly as dark, depressing, and twisted as the cases that constantly crossed their doorsteps now.  Some of them were weird, yes, but in a fun kind of way.  Brightly colored costumed criminals… Madcap theme-driven crime sprees… Unique souvenirs to add to the Cave with even more interesting stories attached to them…

Cases where no one was murdered and no one got killed…

“Timothy Jackson Drake Wayne Draper!  I am going to kill you!”

Well… Almost no one…

“Dick!  Help!”

It took every ounce of self-control not to burst out laughing as Dick, sitting at his dining table, watched his younger brother squeeze behind the sofa in his living room in a vain attempt to hide from his furious maybe-girlfriend.  Of course, in order to achieve this feat of inner strength, Dick had to pull from the reserves of self-control he used to keep his sarcastic, ironic, and sometimes pun-laden quips in check.

“Y’know Timmy.  I would help out, but Tam looks like a biter and I’m not up to date on my bird flu shots,” he said with a broad grin.  He had to bite the inside of his cheek not to say anything as he watched Tam, who’d been perched on top of the sofa, leap to the floor so she could stealthily slip behind it while stalking Tim.

“Not funny, Dick!  Not funny at a—” Tim’s words were cut off with an undignified squawk, and Dick had to struggle not to choke on the soda he was drinking as it became immediately clear that Tam had found her prey.  There was the sound of violent scuffling, and then there was an explosion of red and black feathers from behind the sofa! 

What looked like a stunning sun conure with black and red coloring flew up to the top of a nearby bookcase looking thoroughly disheveled.  Then, once it was certain it wasn’t being pursued, it fanned out its tail and gaped at the damage that had been wrought.

“My tail feather!” the bird exclaimed angrily and clearly in Tim’s voice.  “You— You harpy! You ripped out one of my tail feathers!”

From behind the sofa, a similarly sized sun conure, only with markings in varying shades of violet, stepped out, a long black tail feather clamped firmly between its beak.  Once the savaged feather was dropped Tam’s voice came out loud and clear from the small bird.  “Just you wait till I get my claws into you, Tim!  It’ll be more than your tail feathers I’ll be aiming to rip out!”  She stamped her foot on the carpet.

“Will you calm down!  This is not my fault!”  Tim shouted from the top of the bookcase, his feathers fluffing up unconsciously the more frustrated he got.

“Yes it is!”

“I was trying to be nice!”

“Well you failed!”

“It was just a present!”

“Next time send a card!”

Dick finally got to his feet and put himself bodily between the two birds before more feathers were plucked.  “OK, OK you two… Let’s all calm down.  I don’t need the cops called here for domestic violence…” He paused.  “Or would this be considered animal abuse?”

“DICK!”

Dick chuckled.  “Sorry, sorry.”  He took a breath.  “Now can someone explain to me exactly how this happened?”

Tam flew up to he top of the sofa again and perched there as she gave Tim an evil look.  “Your brother was an idiot and gave me a cursed thingamabob that did this to both of us.”

Tim made his way to the back of a nearby dining table chair, keeping Dick between himself and Tam.  “Tam was stressing over finals and I decided to be nice and get her a present to cheer her up.  She likes bird trinkets, and I found one at an antique shop I thought she’d like.”  He glared back at Tam.  “I didn’t know there was a spell on the stupid thing!  I’m not freakin’ Harry Potter!”

Dick snorted as he attempted to suppress his laughter, earning dual avian glares again.  He cleared his throat.  “Alright.  So let me see this thing?”

Both conures looked at him as if he’d just said the most idiotic thing in the world.

A light bulb went off in Dick’s head.  “Ah.  Right… No pockets or hands or… yeah…”  He snickered again.  “I guess it’s safe to assume it’s at Tam’s place?”

(to be continued)

Author’s Note:  Even though I’ve already got too many in progress stories to work on, as soon as I got the concept for this one, I couldn’t resist starting it.  How did this crackfic concept even get born?  Well… This is kinda what happens while I’m lamenting the lack of Tim/Tam fanfics when the soundtrack to the animated film Rio pops up on Pandora.

Rest assured, this is not going to be a Rio/Red Robin crossover.  That is way too much crackfic even for me.  No… This is just a story of what happens when Tim is unfortunate enough to get his might-be-a-girlfriend a cursed trinket for a present.

Because Tim is just that unlucky.

And I’m just that demented a writer.