Chapter Text
The ride to Gotham is short and sweet. The car Dick was driving a relic from his days as Damian’s guardian, older yet still a nice car. Leather seats but more than just the driver and passenger seats. Unlike the car Bruce would drive him in, sometimes not even making Dick wear a seatbelt, only using his arm as a restraint at sudden stops. Bruce and him would drive around for hours when Dick had first moved into the manor, both of them too insomniatic to have a normal sleeping pattern. They would stay out driving until Dick would fall asleep to 80s rock music, the summer heat keeping him warm juxtaposed with the fresh and cooling AC Bruce demanded to be put on so he wouldn’t melt in the heat, along with the ice cream cones that came out on particularly bad nights.
Dick had been so paranoid when he had to drive Damian around, first that the press would see and have a field day, then that Dick would either crash the car or get hit by another driver. Most of the time Alfred would be the one to drive the boy around, but sometimes Dick would be the one to take him. Damian would sit in the backseat (Dick would not be having this child sit in the front seat, no sir), seatbelt on (Dick’s second requirement, easily agreed to after Damian saw his first car crash victim), seat heater on in the dead of winter. Heat on full blast, despite Dick sweating through every single ride. But Damian would be too cold otherwise. Damian would steal the aux cord half the time, playing a mixture of Arab pop, modern classic, and grunge music. His music taste was not Dick’s style, but he could get into some of the more upbeat Arab pop.
Dick didn’t play any music right now. He was playing a podcast called The Dry Guys , recommended to him by Barbara. The current topic of the podcast being fossilized wood. Dick typically loved music, just not right as he was focused on the long drive between Blüdhaven and Gotham. Typically Dick would listen to American pop music, delving to other genres as he rides with the siblings he's collected over the years.
Dick doesn’t even get through half the episode before he enters Gotham, driving over the bridges to reach the Wayne Manor driveway, a text to Bruce informing him that he would be taking Damian to school:
>>Me: tking dami to school, tell alfred pls
>>B(ossman): Okay. Please tell him that I will be home by 7:30pm tonight. Alfred has been made aware. Duke and Tim have already driven themselves to school to purchase coffee.
>>Me: k
When Dick parks his car in the driveway a wave of deja vu washes over him, vague ideas of this exact day playing out before him in a memory he can almost grab. Entering the manor lead Dick to realize that it is mostly empty, Alfred doing his monthly Costco run. Dick calls out, “Dami? You here, bud?”
Dick heard the floors creak, Damian flying down the stairs past Dick towards the kitchen, headed for the coffee maker as Dick grabs the back of his sweatshirt hoodie. “Absolutely not! You’re going to stunt your growth!” Damian hasn’t grown much since the last time Dick saw him, a small shock to his system. He thought that Damian would have at least reached his shoulder by now, but Damian still needed to grow a few inches before reaching that milestone. Damian squints at Dick in vague disgust before using a step stool to grab the electric kettle from the cabinet, along with the teabags. Dick had always liked tea as a kid. There used to be a Sudani man in the circus who made Dick call him Amu and made the best shai with milk and too much sugar. As Damian set about grabbing teacups and heating up water, Dick pulled the sugar down from its hiding spot. Damian didn’t enjoy the taste of milk in tea, preferring a more sugary drink for sure, but still enjoying the flavor of the tea itself. Tim had a photo of Damian trying milk tea from a downtown cafe/boba spot as Damian’s contact photo. Jason had a photo of Tim taking a photo of Damian trying milk tea for the first time as a contact photo for Tim. Dick has a photo of all three of them roughhousing after Damian expressed his indignity at being photographed “without consent” and that “even though New Jersey (said with a sneer) was a one-party recording consent state” he had “higher hopes of those he was supposed to call his brothers in arms”. It quickly became a thing . Babs has the CCTV footage.
The two worked in comfortable silence to make Damian a morning cup of tea. Dick took a few moments to blend out Damian’s concealer a bit more, apparently unable to keep the worry off his face as Damian scoffs and looks away. Uncomfortable. They drink (Damian drinks and Dick watches) tea in silence as well. Dick makes several moves to speak before aborting the ship, the possible trajectory of the conversation making Damian clearly upset. The few speaking moments they did have were short and to the point, over homework and detentions being served, something Dick himself did not miss. Jason had been the one to enjoy school, Dick being too much of a “wild child” to like it and Tim being too… asleep… to experience it, his catnaps making him the bane of all of his teachers' careers. Bruce used to have to sign a letter a week, showing that he was aware that Tim kept falling asleep in class, that he was aware that Tim had a concerning relationship with Zesti soda. A quick peek inside the fridge proving this to still be true, despite everything Alfred had to say about it.
As was Wayne family tradition, they left the manor for school minutes after the last time they could leave, assuming traffic in Gotham had no insane drivers on the road that morning (aka perfect conditions, aka not in Gotham ). Damian piled into the back of the car wordlessly after a pointed look on Dick’s end after he tried to get in the front seat. “Father,” Damian starts, not very wordlessly, “Would let me sit in the front seat next to him.”
“Damian, I cannot stress how lucky you are that Firefly melted the booster seat I kept in the truck, otherwise you best believe you would be sitting in it today.” Dick makes a quick note on his phone to pick up a new one, Damian having not quite crossed the 4 foot 9 inches threshold required to move out of the booster seat. Dick starts the car up once Damian has settled down enough that it’s safe to be in a moving vehicle, his podcast picking up where it started off. Dick waits for Damian to snag
Dick takes a silent breath in, holding it before releasing it to call Bruce. The phone rings out three times, before the click signals that Bruce had picked up. “ihay ucebray . ancay amianday aystay omehay odaytay?” Bruce sighs, thinking. Damian scrunches up his nose, left out of the conversation. Pig Latin had been too juvenile for the boy who already knew Latin.
“... inefay” The call clicks again, Bruce hanging up, likely due to a meeting starting. Dick wouldn’t push it, grateful that Bruce had heard some of the desperation in Dick’s voice, or just didn’t care enough to actually think Damian needs to go to school. Dick pulls off the highway between the manor and Damian’s school, instead going to a favorite cafe that Dick had made Damian go to when Damian still tried to stab civilians. A “test” he had told the kid over hot cocoa and chai. Dick pulls his car smoothly into a parallel parking spot, despite what Damian’s shrieks of fear might suggest. Unloading the car goes similarly smoothly, Damian only tries to stab him once when he unbuckles him, and that just means that Dick can take the knife from him. Before Dick corrals Damian into the coffee spot, he uses tissue to remove some crusty blood stains from an earlier nose bleed.
“B said you could stay home with me today,” Dick murmurs softly. Damian scoffs and rolls his eyes, causing Dick to roll his eyes standing behind him. Damian bursts into the cafe with too much destructive energy, causing the glass door to smack into the wall. Dick winces before quickly checking the door over for any glass. By the time Dick has caught up to the boy, Damian has already situated himself in a corner booth, laying his head in his arms as he looks at his phone. Dick sighs again, pushing himself towards the counter to order for the two of them. A chai and hot cocoa (made with oat milk). He takes the two beverages, setting the hot cocoa in front of Damian, who scowls into the drink. Dick takes a deep breath and sip of chai, it burnt his tongue but made an effort not to relax. No need for Damian to believe that some cafe worker poisoned him (again).”How is school going? Were you able to raise your English grade?” English class with Damian was always hit or miss. He either understood the passages with more attention to detail than Dick himself would ever possess, or things like cultural references, word connotation, and common motifs would fly over his head completely.
Damian looks like he might Dick’s hand off, as he turns petulantly away, drinking his hot cocoa. For Dick’s own safety, he did not point out that Damian had a cocoa mustache. “I do not wish to talk about school if I am not there, Richard .” Which… tracks. Dick still gets copies of report cards and teacher’s notes, still listed as a secondary guardian. Damian and school don't flush well against each other. When Damian was first enrolled by Bruce, there were countless stacks of paperwork from the school, ranging from a request to put him in an English as a Second Language class (he was not), to complaints about him getting in arguments with teachers, and one instance where Damian got into an actual fight. Bruce had shut that down so quickly, one quick well-placed bribe to the school and to the parents, and then a screaming match and grounding with Damian. Damian looks up suddenly, searching Dick’s face for something. Something he evidently does not find, as he tuts, rolling his eyes and looking away. “I wish to return home,” the boy says, voice filled with contempt and something Dick can’t identify.
Dick sighs. “We gotta talk through some stuff first, bud. You had to have seen this coming.” Damian scrunches up his nose before turning away again, laying his head down.
“What do you care?” Damian’s voice is wet with some emotion, unidentifiable. He pushed his hot cocoa away from himself. “You left . To Blüdhaven .” Disgust, disgust was the emotion. Dick moved from his side of the table to crouch down next to Damian.
“Bud, I left because your dad came back. You like living with him, yeah?” It’s Dick’s turn to search Damian’s face. There’s a subtle glossiness to Damian’s eyes, and maybe it’s not disgust. “Oh, baby , what’s going on?”
Damian gets mad again at that, pulling further away from Dick. “You don’t care! You just- you just threw me away! You said I was your R-” Dick’s eyes flare, a quick glance around the cafe before he smothers the words Damian was going to say in his chest, in a quick “hug”, shushing him, reminding him to be
careful
. “You said I was
yours
,” Damian continues, “and you
left
.”