Chapter Text
There’s an art to a proper dramatic entrance.
Despite how Batman makes it seem, it isn’t easy to just melt out of the shadows, scaring the absolute shit out of your poor unsuspecting target as you demand your answers. It generally requires careful planning, a fair amount of experience breaking and entering, and a lot of patience.
For example, Dick has been skulking around in the shadows of Bruce’s bedroom in the brownstone for at least an hour and a half at this point, and the man still has yet to return for the night. It’s been so long that Dick can’t even properly claim to be “in the shadows” anymore; he’d already given up on staying close to the most dramatic hiding spot (the space between the door and the wall, so that he wouldn’t be seen until Bruce closed the door after entering) in favor of slouching on the armchair by the window. At this point, he’s ready to melodramatically flick on the lamp and call it a night.
He doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until he wakes with Bruce’s hand warm and firm around his shoulder. He doesn’t immediately react to being woken, but Bruce can tell anyway; he pulls away before Dick even opens his eyes.
Dick watches through lowered eyelids as Bruce makes his way across the bedroom. He’s wearing an Ivy University sweater and black sweatpants—one of his generic sets of street clothing, and not what he wears to sleep, meaning he must have just returned. He woke Dick up before getting himself ready for bed, then. Dick watches as he collects a set of clothing from the dresser and goes into the bathroom without saying a word. The door clicks shut.
Well, unfortunately for Bruce, the sunk cost fallacy already has its claws in Dick. He’s already been sitting here waiting for—he checks his phone—three and a half hours, apparently; an extra fifteen minutes for Bruce to finish his nighttime bathroom route is nothing. He sits back and waits, watching the way the light under the bathroom door flickers to shadow as Bruce moves back and forth.
He mentally catalogs the steps of Bruce’s routine as he hears them: the hum of his water flosser, the buzzing of his electric toothbrush, the flush of the toilet, the steady stream of the shower that Dick admittedly dozes off for a few minutes to. He wakes again to the opening and closing of containers, the drawers sliding, the gentle thud of the mirror swinging shut on the medicine cabinet.
The bathroom fan turns off, followed by the light. Then the door opens, and Bruce steps out, wearing only a pair of dark, silk sleep pants and carrying the rest of his clothing in a bundle held to his chest. He glances at Dick, still slumped in the armchair. Then he turns away and puts his clothing into the hamper beside the armoire.
“Why’d you tell them?” Dick says. He doesn’t ask very loudly; no need to, here. The brownstone is in a quiet part of the city—there usually isn’t much traffic, especially at this time of morning-night. There aren’t even crickets. It’s quiet enough that he can hear the click of Bruce’s throat as he swallows from across the room.
Not entirely as unaffected as he’s trying to seem, then.
“It was the right thing to do,” Bruce says to the armoire.
“You’re gonna have to explain that one to me.”
Bruce walks across the room to his nightstand, on the opposite side of his bed from Dick, and fiddles with his bed controls. “Tim visited you today.”
“Because you visited me yesterday.”
“He knew,” Bruce says. “And it wouldn’t be long before the others found out. The more time that passes between now and when they eventually learn the truth, the less they’ll think I respect you.”
“Because that matters so much to you.”
“It does, actually.” Bruce looks at him, then. “You seem to be operating under the assumption that none of this means anything to me.”
Dick sits straighter in the chair, curling his hands around the ends of the arms for support. “The entire time I’ve known you, you’ve hammered it into me that the entire concept of soulmates doesn’t mean anything to you. I don’t think I’d call it an assumption at this point.”
Bruce studies him in silence for a few seconds. Then he takes a step away from the nightstand, and then another.
“My parents were soulmates,” he says, slowly rounding the bed. “When I was younger, I wanted nothing more than to find someone that I could be as comfortable with as they were with each other. After they died, I gave that up. No one else needed to become involved in what I set out to do.” He stops a few feet away from Dick. The yellow-white streetlights peeking through the blinds cast stripes over the soulmark on his skin. “My other half would be the Bat.”
Dick takes a second to understand what Bruce is saying, and then takes an extra second because the conclusion feels too outrageous to be true. “So the reason you put your soulmark on the suit… was so Batman could be a proxy for your soulmate?”
Bruce’s gaze lowers to somewhere around Dick’s knees. “I pledged my life to my mission. If that meant that I would be alone forever, then so be it. There wasn’t meant to be room for anyone else, soulmate or otherwise.” His eyes meet Dick’s. “At least, that’s what I believed, at the time.”
He pauses, and takes half a step closer. The tone of his voice softens marginally when he says, “It was unthinkable to me that anyone else would understand what I’ve been through, and come out of it with the same drive that I did. For many reasons, I never expected you. If nothing else, believe that you mean something to me.”
“And what is something?” Because that’s the crux of it all, isn’t it? Everything’s changed between them, but at the same time, everything hasn’t. Soulmate is just a word, among all the other words that Bruce has used to define their relationship—partner, sidekick, teammate, soldier, ward. Son. “What do you want from me, Bruce?”
“You asked why I adopted you,” Bruce says, instead of answering the question Dick asked him just now. Typical. “You have a strong attachment to family. Having lost yours at a young age, you’d be reluctant to lose anyone else. I thought that… even if you disagreed with me at times, or even hated me, you would always still be my son.”
“That…” There is so much wrong with the statement that Dick doesn’t even know where to begin. Sometimes it feels like manipulation comes as easy as breathing to Bruce—easier than actually expressing himself, by far. Dick isn’t sure that Bruce is even fully aware of it himself, and that sounds like a hell of a conversation to have.
He ends up starting with the easy part. “Okay, without getting into how messed up that is, you do know I operate under a pretty loose definition of family, right? I mean, my first idea of family was an entire circus troupe. I get that it’s easier to think of close relationships in terms of fathers and sons and brothers and sisters, but you don’t need to put a name on the way you love someone for it to mean something.”
“Without a name, it only exists in the abstract.”
“The tangible meaning comes from everything but the name.” Dick gets to his feet, an arm’s distance between him and Bruce. “What exactly do you want from me, Bruce?” he asks again. “What does it mean to you, for me to be your son? Because if that’s what you want, then—”
“All I want,” Bruce says, “is for you to stay. For you to be happy here, with us. With me. Whatever else you want to give—that’s your choice.”
That’s more of an admission than Dick expected to get. Most of the time he thinks Bruce would rather swan dive off the Watchtower than admit he’s missed Dick; a confession like this is practically unheard of outside of imminent death situations.
And yet, right now—it still isn’t enough.
“But what does that mean?” Dick says. “Do you want me to visit more often? Move back to Gotham entirely? Come live here, with you?”
“You left to become your own man,” Bruce says, “and you did. Whatever you decide has to be your choice alone.”
“Bullshit.” Dick can’t intimidate Bruce, but he steps closer and gives it his best shot anyway. “This isn’t just about me. It’s—”
“It’s your life,” Bruce says, unyielding. “I won’t take it from you again.”
“It’s already yours,” Dick says helplessly.
Bruce takes half a step back, and Dick—thinking for a bizarre moment that he’d stumbled—grabs his arm to steady him.
“Bruce—I’ve known since we met,” Dick says. “It’s been almost twenty years. You don’t think I’ve already thought about it from every angle? Had every crisis I could possibly have? And I came back to you, every time. You didn’t even know, and I still came back. And I always will.”
At some point during the speech, Dick’s hand had found its way to Bruce’s chest. It rests there now, fingers pressed against the bat’s spread wing.
Soulmates often have the habit of touching each other’s soulmark locations, even if the mark itself is hidden by clothing; it’s an easy way of detecting soulmate pairs in public, especially if one or both has a mark in an unusual place. Bruce has never hidden his mark, so Dick’s seen it pretty regularly, but he’s always been struck more by a vague curiosity rather than an urge to touch it.
Now that he’s doing it, though—he understands. And he burns at the thought of Bruce touching his.
“Dick,” Bruce says, voice quiet and low. His hand closes around Dick’s.
Dick snaps his gaze up from the soulmark to Bruce’s face.
“I’m not... good for you.” Bruce isn’t meeting his eyes—is looking down somewhere around their joined hands, instead. “You have a life that’s separate from mine for a reason. Many reasons. And you were right. Nothing should change, just because I know now.”
Isn’t that just typical Bruce. “First you say that I should do what I want, then you say that what I want is wrong.” Bruce’s gaze snaps up to his. Dick holds it steadily. “Sounds to me like you’re trying to get me to do what you want. Just without saying it.”
Bruce frowns. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“Then, for once, just say what you mean.” Dick turns his hand over, curling his fingers around Bruce’s palm. “Jason thought you might’ve been lying tonight. Trying to manipulate them, or me. And I knew it wasn’t true, but—we can never be sure, can we? Not when it comes to you.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“I’m tired of doing all the work in every conversation.” Dick squeezes Bruce’s hand as his gut clenches. He didn’t realize how long he’s felt it until he said it. “For once,” he says, voice cracking, “can’t you make it easy for me?”
“I can’t.”
Damn it, Dick’s too old to be crying over this. He tries to tug his hand away from Bruce’s to swipe at his tears, but Bruce holds him fast.
“I wish I could,” Bruce says, sounding miserable, “but I don’t know how. As ashamed as I am to say it, I don’t know you, Dick—not the same way you know me. And we’ve only grown further apart, ever since you left.”
“Ever since you made me leave, you mean.”
They don’t talk about Spyral, ever. Dick wrote up all the notes, Bruce reviewed them and asked a few clarifying questions, and then they sealed the files. After that, it was like it had never happened.
“You were the only one I could trust.”
“You could have told me that without forcing my hand,” Dick snaps. “I was recovering, and you told everyone I’d died. You had a funeral for me. And maybe I did die, but you were the one who killed me.”
“It was the safest way forward—”
“That you could think of. We’re supposed to be a team, Bruce.” Dick drops his hand and smiles tiredly. “Which brings us right back to where we were last night. You don’t trust me, not really. Not to make these kinds of decisions with you.”
Bruce closes his eyes for a few seconds. When he opens them again, he looks older and wearier than before. “I said earlier I wouldn’t take your life from you again. I know your time in Spyral was—difficult.” It’s such an understatement Dick almost laughs. “I swore to myself it would be the last time I asked for so much of you.”
“You can ask,” Dick says. “It’s not like I don’t want to help you. But I need you to actually ask, not treat me like a kid who couldn’t possibly make the right choices unless you didn’t give me any other. You’ve never even apologized for it.”
“I knew the position I was putting you into,” Bruce says. “I don’t deserve to even ask for your forgiveness.”
“Well, I deserve to at least hear that you feel sorry for it, instead of just hoping that you do.”
“Hearing sorry on its own has never helped anyone.”
“It helps me.” Dick exhales forcefully through his nose. “I’m not you, Bruce. How many times am I going to have to tell you that before you get it through your thick head?”
Bruce is silent for a moment, studying Dick’s face. “Then, for what it’s worth,” he says, voice a low rumble, “I am sorry.”
It isn’t an impressive apology by any means, but it is sincere. Coming from Bruce—it’s a start, and Dick will take it.
“Thank you,” Dick says, just as quietly. He doesn’t offer forgiveness—Bruce won’t accept it, for one; for another, Dick isn’t sure he even wants to give it, not before they’ve actually talked about everything in more than just passing.
But that’s something that they can address later.
“It’s been a long night,” Dick says, stepping back. “You should get some rest.”
Bruce catches his arm. “Stay. It’s late, to be getting back to Bludhaven. The guest room is already made up.”
“All right.” That’s one thing they won’t have to argue about tonight; despite his cat naps, Dick is still so tired he could collapse on the spot. “Good night, then.” He waits for Bruce to let go of his arm, so he can leave, but Bruce doesn’t.
“Before you go, would you mind— Can I see it?” Bruce says, sounding almost nervous. “Your mark. I don’t know how I missed it for so long.”
“I worked my ass off to hide it, so,” Dick says dryly. He turns around and frees the hem of his shirt from his waistband—a habit he’d gotten into, so his shirt wouldn’t ride up, on top of favoring high-waisted bottoms and wearing a full-body undersuit under his suit, which gets truly awful in the summers.
“Can I—”
“Yeah.”
Dick holds his breath, but he still inhales reflexively when Bruce’s fingertips graze over the soulmark. Bruce’s fingers are cold, but the touch sends a frisson of heat down Dick’s spine. Bruce flattens his palm against the mark, and Dick bites his lower lip to keep any sound from escaping. Held air bursts through his nose in a shaky exhale.
Dick loses track of how long they stand there, breathing into the quiet, until the gentle pressure of Bruce’s palm against his back urges him to turn around. He does. Bruce doesn’t let go, even after Dick’s facing him again. Dick doesn’t think they’re standing any closer than before, but it feels—different, with Bruce touching him. Anchoring him.
“Part of me is angry that you’ve hidden this from me for so long,” Bruce says roughly. “The other part is devastated, that you felt the need to, even now. And I don’t know how to change that. I don’t know how to fix things between us.”
“Do you want to?”
“Of course I want to.”
“Sometimes I’m not sure,” Dick admits quietly. “Sometimes it feels like you don’t really need me.”
Bruce’s laughter comes so suddenly that Dick actually jumps, Bruce’s hand pressing more firmly against his back as if to steady him. “I don’t need you? My god, Dick, I don’t know what I’d do without you. Without me, you gathered the family and moved on. But without you—I don’t know where any of us would be, least of all me. I could have killed Lex then, for what he did to you. And then, when he mocked you—” Bruce’s laugh then is bitter. “Don’t underestimate your importance to me.”
“Then don’t understate it to me.” Dick rests his arm against Bruce’s, laying his hand on his shoulder. “I’m human, Bruce. I’m an illogical, silly human who needs to hear you say nice things like ‘you’re important to me’ and ‘I need you’ so that I don’t spend my days wondering if you even like me. And it’s stupid—” he says, before Bruce can interrupt, “—and I know it is, but I just—
“I need you to ask me to stay so I don’t feel like an idiot for wanting to. I need you to call me just to talk so I don’t feel like an idiot for missing the sound of your voice. And it’s not how you think, or what you need, and I know that and I know that’s why you never do it, but it makes me feel like the biggest idiot in the world for loving you as much as I do. And I hate it. I don’t want to feel like I’m making a mistake just for loving someone, but every fucking person around me acts like it’s a death sentence to be bonded to you, and I hate it. And I hate that I understand why they feel that way. And I hate that some part of me is grateful to them for understanding.”
He didn’t mean to say nearly so much, but once he started, he couldn’t stop and—it’s such a mess. It’s all such a fucking mess, and he doesn’t know what he even expects Bruce to do with everything he’s saying. It’s not something that can be resolved in a single night. Hell, it probably can’t even be resolved in a single year.
And then Bruce wraps him up in his arms, warm and tight, and Dick clings to him with everything he has. “I’m tired, Bruce,” he whispers.
“I know, sweetheart,” Bruce murmurs back, and Dick can’t remember the last time Bruce called him that. Tears sting his eyes. “I’m sorry,” Bruce says. “I’m so sorry.”
Dick laughs wetly. “You’re learning already.”
“That’s the easy part,” Bruce says, the barest whisper of amusement in his voice. “I don’t know how I can even begin to fix this. How I can be the soulmate you deserve, not one you feel you have to apologize for.”
“As long as you’re trying,” Dick says softly, “then that already means a lot to me.”
“You’re giving me a lot of credit for the bare minimum,” Bruce says dryly.
Dick smiles lopsidedly at him, stepping back from the embrace, though Bruce’s hands stay wrapped under his elbows. “Baby steps. Wouldn’t want to scare you off too quickly.”
“What scares me most is knowing that I don’t deserve you,” Bruce confesses, “and not knowing whether it would be more selfish of me to try to convince you of that, or to say nothing and hope that you don’t feel the same.”
And, once again, they’re right back where they started—to the question that’s at the core of everything between them, but that Bruce still hadn’t given him a straight answer to. “Do you trust my judgment,” Dick says quietly, “or not?”
“I do,” Bruce says without hesitation.
“Then you need to start trusting me to make the right calls,” Dick says, holding onto the outside of Bruce’s shoulders. “I’m old enough and experienced enough to draw my own conclusions without you holding my hand. You know I’ll always ask for your opinion, but if this is going to work, then you can’t try to make my decisions for me, indirectly or not. You’re right. Spyral needs to be the last time.”
“I owe you that much.” Bruce hesitates. “If I, perhaps unintentionally—”
“Then I call you out, you apologize, and we try it again. Old habits are hard to break, I know.” Dick smiles wryly. “But it sure is a shitty one you’ve got there, B.”
“You’re not the first to say so,” Bruce says. “Though that’s perhaps the kindest way I’ve been accused of it.”
Dick hums. “Let me guess, the word ‘asshole’ is usually thrown around more?”
“I’m particularly fond of ‘pointy-eared bastard’, myself,” Bruce says dryly, and Dick grins at him. Bruce begins to smile in response, but it goes tense as he visibly suppresses a yawn.
“All right, bedtime for real this time.” Dick moves to slide his arms out of Bruce’s grasp, but Bruce holds him fast. Dick raises his eyebrows. “Is there—”
“You should—” Bruce says at the same time.
They both lapse into silence. Dick tilts his chin up at Bruce—go ahead—and Bruce swallows, Adam’s Apple bobbing in his throat.
“Would you,” Bruce says, with an expression on his face that anyone else would consider calm but that Dick knows to mean he’s terrified out of his mind, “like to sleep here. In this room. With me.”
Even though Bruce adjusted his phrasing, it still doesn’t really come out sounding like a question—but the request feels monumental enough that Dick finds it easy to forgive the awkward delivery.
“That depends,” Dick says slowly. “Would you let me be the big spoon?”
The smile on Bruce’s lips is faint, but his eyes are practically beaming. “Whatever you want is yours.”
Dick grins. “Careful there, B. All that power could go to a man’s head.”
“I can’t think of another man more deserving.”
Dick is ashamed to admit he flusters. It’s easy to forget how charming Bruce can be, given how he acts most of the time. He turns it up to a thousand for Brucie Wayne, but he has a natural sincerity and charisma that’s managed to draw in both Selina and Talia—and now it’s directed at Dick. And Dick doesn’t mind it; far from it—it’s thrilling, and heady, and far too easy to want to give in to.
But he isn’t ashamed to admit he needs time.
He slips out of Bruce’s grasp. “‘Baby steps’ applies to me, too,” Dick says lightly.
Bruce inclines his head. “Noted.”
Dick takes his hand and squeezes to let him know they’re still okay. “Let’s rest. We’ll have more time to talk tomorrow—or later today. You know what I mean.” Time is weird when you’re on a polyphasic sleep schedule.
But Bruce does know what he means; he tugs on Dick’s hand, guiding him towards the bed, and says, “Tomorrow, then.”
Tomorrow, and the rest of their lives.