Work Text:
Text D(ick) to W(ally): Can u pick me up from Reisner’s
W: Let me guess bike won’t start
D: That a no on the ride?
W: no stupid it’s a yes. Bruce already left huh?
D: yeah
W: Be there in ten buddy
Dick closed his phone, grateful that he had at least Wally to count on. He looked around the restaurant at the other patrons, the ones laughing together, some father and sons that weren’t even arguing. Didn’t see anyone else’s dinner companion get pissed and leave his meal and oh yeah…his son behind.
‘But I’m not really that, am I. I never got to the golden circle. I’m just the circus freak he had pity on for a few years before he kicked me to the curb. What a fool I was to think we’d ever get back to the way it was when I was kid, when I did everything he asked without complaint, when I idolized him instead of realizing the innumerable ways he screws up and screws people over, especially the ones stupid enough to love the jackass.’
‘If only I could cut that part of me out, leave it on the batcave floor.’
Dick took another swallow of bourbon, didn’t even like the crap but Bruce had ordered it. He had already downed his glass and Bruce’s untouched one and another double. He was too drunk to ride his bike home and he wasn’t leaving it on the street. Good part of town or not, it’d be gone by sunup. His bike wasn’t another thing he sacrificed for Bruce, ‘like your pride.’
‘Shitshitshit…how could I have been so naïve, believing this would end anyway but the way it did.’
‘He hated I’d become a cop and he wasn’t going to budge. He never changed his opinion..and I am always going to be wrong to make him be right.’
Dick swallowed down more alcohol, knowing it was blowing his weekend plans for getting up tomorrow and heading out for a hike and patrol the next night. He would be riding the porcelain train in the morning and still hungover sick and stuck with the headache from hell even by that night. And while he drown the distaste of his father’s…excuse me, ex-guardian’s displeasure…Bludhaven could go into the crapper tomorrow night because Nightwing took the night off.
‘Do you even know how to make any good decisions, Grayson?!’
He didn’t know how long he sat there, until he ordered another glass and stared at it a good while. He was going to sample that glass when a hand clamped down on the top, a hand that wasn’t pale and freckley like Wally’s was. Looking up a little blurry eyed, he thought he’d gone and passed out, was in the middle of some drunk dream. “Jason?”
Jason pried the cup out of Dick’s hand, downed it himself as he settled in the chair Bruce had abandoned. Not waiting for Dick to get his crap together to form words, Jason said, “West called. Said you needed me more than him. Didn’t get it until he said who you were supposed to be in the middle of eating dinner with tonight.”
Dick sat back in the chair, eyed up his younger “brother” who had very strong opinions about their “dad”. “You think I’m a real pathetic chump, don’t you? And you know what….you are right. I am,” a bit of a slur to his words.
Jason had never seen golden boy drunk and he didn’t like it, any more than he liked the hurt and self loathing ebbing off his usually bigger than life brother. ‘Damn you Bruce! He’s the one that loves you the most asshole and you treat him like this. Worse, he lets you treat him like this!’
Draining the glass, Jason sat it on the table, hated that Dick’s eyes had already drifted down, too ashamed to even meet his gaze. “Just because you dare to love people, that doesn’t make you a chump, Dick,” he softly praised, glad it was startling enough of a statement from him for his brother’s eyes to fly up to his. Wanted to rail at Bruce’s bullshit ways of abusing his sons when he got pissed or when the man got scared shitless like he was about Dick deciding to be a cop on top of being Nightwing. But yelling at Bruce, it wouldn’t do any good, ranting about Bruce wouldn’t do Dick any good.
The waiter showed up then and Jason told him to wrap up the leftovers, the barely touched steaks from both plates and put the bill on Bruce Wayne’s tab. The waiter nodded like running a tab for the city’s richest citizen was something he’d done before. When the waiter left, the brothers were alone again, Dick giving that thousand yard stare before speaking, “I wish I was like you….not giving a crap what anyone thought about me…what he thought. I’d be…” Dick gave a croak that was a travesty of a laugh, “…I was going to say happy but I don’t think….” He shook his head and looked away. Happy wasn’t in his lexicon, maybe it hadn’t been since his parents died, maybe he just put on the performance and started to believe his own bullshit. But now…it was too hard to play that part. He was too tired, and alone and useless, as a cop and as Nightwing. Crime was….it wasn’t going anyway. He wasn’t saving more people than the city was killing.
And here and now he could say it, in this high class restaurant where even Jason wouldn’t throw a hissy fit, where Dick could tell himself he was only saying it because he was drunk. “I think…I want to stop,” his watery gaze met Jason’s suddenly frozen form. “All of it. Day...” he drew in a shaky inhale before he choked out the alternative, “and night.” Jason’s jaw clenched and Dick didn’t care if Jason was pissed, if he thought he was being a loser coward. ‘Might be what I truly am.’
Dick rubbed his raw eyes. “I just…none of it matters, anymore. You know.” Dared to look at Jason, face his reaction and he hadn’t seen the look in his younger brother’s eyes for years, not since Jason had come back as Red Hood, not since he’d been a teenage just realizing his “big brother” was as fragile as the rest of the human race.
But then Jason’s features settled into that ‘take no prisoners’ stubbornness. “Get up, we’re leaving.”
Dick drunkenly waved a hand toward the kitchen. “They didn’t bring our leftovers back yet.”
“I don’t give a crap. Come on,” and he was around the table, using his considerable strength to coil a hand around Dick’s sizeable bicep and haul his big brother to his feet. Was towing Dick behind him like an errant school boy, and heading for the door when the waiter caught up to them.
“Your leftovers Mr. Wayne…” the waiter directed at Dick.
And Dick was enough in his stupor to outwardly wince at the mix up, mumble, “Not a Wayne…never been…a Wayne…will never be…” Jason roughly grabbed the bag from the waiter and continued to lead Dick out the door by his arm.
Dick felt the night air hit him in the face and he inhaled hard, had felt…like he was suffocating in there… in Bruce’s high class world that he should have never thought he could fit into, never had really. “Circus freak…gypsy scum…unwanted orphan …” he numbly rambled off the many titles and taunts he’d been blessed with by the newspapers, his fellow students at school and the snubs at Bruce’s parties.
Hearing Dick, Jason jerked Dick around to face him with such force, his brother stumbled right into him and he had to steady him. “What the hell are you saying?!” real fury there.
“It’s who I am…have always been…” Dick nonplussed replied, like the hurt wasn’t scored on his soul from those labels.
Jason grabbed Dick by the shirt front and gave him a shake, “You ever call yourself any of those names again and I’ll kick your teeth in.”
“Can’t change who I am… J….” Dick gave a tremulous sad smile, “tried…and tried….and tried…and yeah…failed each …and every time,” finger jabbing into Jason’s chest at each repeated word.
Jason fought the urge to roll his eyes like Damian. “You are never ever getting sloshed again.” But then he pulled Dick’s arm over his shoulders and cinched his arm around Dick’s waist. “Where’s your bike?”
Dick pointed and Jason put them in motion that direction, felt Dick’s wobbly steps trying to match his stride and he slowed down to make it easier for the drunk man. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear but…the rest of us do this because you did it, not because Batman existed. None of us wanted to be damn Batman…we all wanted to be Robin.”
Dick’s breath hitched and he gave a brittle sad snort, “Then I screwed up worse than I know. No one should be Robin, there shouldn’t be a Robin…or a freakin’ Nightwing. It’s just…us thinking we’re beating back the demons we carry but …we’re not. It just grows….heavier…darker.”
Jason clutched his free hand in Dick’s shirt and rested his head against Dick’s as they slowed their pace. The next vow came out so achingly earnest Jason almost didn’t recognize it was his own voice, “We’ll make it better…I’ll make it better for you. Like you always did for me…for all of us.” Because Dick had, for all of them, even Bruce, maybe especially for Bruce. And they owed Dick…their lives…their souls…every smile they ever wore in the manor and on the rooftops of Gotham. They owed Dick and Jason would pay that debt with his last breath.
Dick felt tears escape his eyes and trail down his face at Jason’s pledge. Crap but he loved his family, with his whole heart and soul, even if it tore him apart from the inside out. “You writing cards for Hallmark now..” he joked because it was his job to make things light, to bring his brothers up, not tear them down.
“Screw you,” Jason shot back but he was smiling a weak but real smile. Dick was trying to be what he thought Jason expected him to be and that was at least a glimmer of his brother coming back online. But he wouldn’t let Dick pretend this didn’t happen, that he wasn’t in pain, didn’t need help. “You’re coming home with me and I’m not taking any of your bullshit ranting and ravings about it. You’re coming with me, Dickhead. And you’re gonna be grateful.”
A beat passed. “Wally was right,” Dick softly announced, hand clumsily patting Jason on the side of the neck. “You were the one I needed tonight.”
Jason felt his throat constrict, stupidly choked up and glad he had come for Dick, could be there when Dick needed someone, needed him. “You’re my brother, Dick,” like that explained everything but it didn’t, it didn’t express how it hurt Jason to see Dick hurt, how he’d gladly kill again to keep his brother safe, that his brother’s breakdown, it made him want to shelter Dick from the world and do anything to make him happy again. “You call, I’ll always come.”
Dick nodded, more tears falling. When Bruce had walked out on him tonight, it felt like he was abandoned, unwanted, lost never to even be missed. But Jason had come for him, had led him out of the darkness. He could only choke out a “Okay, J. Okay.” Because it was more a promise than anyone else had ever vowed to him and Jason, for all that Bruce thought he was, he didn’t make promises he didn’t do everything in his power to keep.
Getting to the bike, Jason swung on and when Dick got on behind him, he pulled his brother’s arms tightly around his waist, taunted over his shoulder, “Hold on tight to me, Dick. Don’t want you falling off like you did with Tim.”
That got the rise out of Dick that Jason wanted. “Tim’s a liar! He’s the one who did a poppy wheelie and was losing controlling. I chose to jump off.”
“Sure you did,” Jason sarcastically drawled as his brother muttered denials against his back as he headed for home. And when he hauled his brother up a flight of stairs to his latest safe house and dumped him not to gently on his bed, pulled his shoes from his feet and covered him with a sheet, he couldn’t suppress the fierce love he had for his brother. No matter Bruce’s faults, he had done at least one thing right when he had taken in the orphaned Dick Grayson, given Jason Grayson as a big brother. Impulsively brushing Dick’s bangs back, Jason delivered a rough kiss to Dick’s forehead before he left the room, hoped to God Dick was too out of it to call him on his pansy show of affection.
Text to W(ally) from R(ed Hood): He’s going to be ok. He’s with me.
W: Thank God. He’s always….bad after he & Bruce fight.
R: Thanks for letting me go in your place. I owe you…huge.
W: Take care of him.. that’s payment enough