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Getting into a big ugly fight with Bruce is so miserably par for the course that there’s a selection of satisfyingly breakable objects scattered around the Cave at all times, the better to take out your aggression with instead of fists on each other.
Dick has just been told, for what might be the 15th time over the last 7 days, that he was not allowed to be the liaison with the League for some space dust getting sold in Blud (guaranteed to either give you the most intense high of your life or literally liquify your brains, oof) because, oh.
Take your pick. Dick is pretty sure Bruce keeps a mental Top Ten list of faults for every person he’s ever met, and Bruce has been running on loop for 3 hours now before Dick finally snaps during a repeat of Fault Number 7: You Are Inexperienced But You Are Too Proud To Realise It. He reaches for a vase painted red for this exact reason and smashes it to the ground.
It’s sugar furniture and is the compromise that they’d come to when Dick had turned 28 and had yelled at Bruce long enough and loud enough that the man had accepted that they needed a better way to disagree with each other that wasn’t: violence (physical); violence (verbal); or spirited efforts to behave like the other person didn’t exist.
The vase shatters, and Dick viciously hopes that the Cave will be overrun with nasty ants that work to bite some sense into Bruce, or that they’d at least be as mind-bendingly annoying as the Bat himself is.
“I’m not dealing with this anymore,” Dick says in a relatively calm voice, anger leached out by broken sugar. “Bludhaven is my city, and I don’t need to defer to you. You can either help, or you can just fuck right off.”
He turns on his heel and heads for his bike, working hard to avoid wincing. Swearing at a parent is never going to feel right, even when B is at his worst and Dick is at his angriest. It’s a good trait, it usually feels like a good trait, except on days like this when all Dick wants is to be unkind.
Bruce doesn’t come after him, because of course he doesn’t.
Of course.
-
Dick makes a pit stop at LaSalle’s on his way back. It’s just a dingy little supermarket, but it’s also the only place in Gotham that sells Dick’s favourite brand of frozen chicken satay. There isn’t a LaSalle’s in Bludhaven, which might be a bigger flaw than all the bullshit with organised crime and corruption, etc., etc.
After all, Dick can actively lower the crime rate with his own two hands, but the last time he tried to make satay he poked himself with a skewer already spearing raw chicken, and the infection from that was more dangerous than most of the Nightwing stuff.
So he’s here for his comfort food because storming out meant he wouldn’t get to sit down and enjoy an Alfred dinner, and he deserves a treat for not chucking the vase right at B's head. Dick is browsing the cereal aisle for the best Suspicious Eastern European treats on offer, settling on ‘Fruͤuͤt Luͤuͤps’ with a black-and-white hornbill on the front when he hears a commotion.
Gotham being Gotham, his first assumption is a hold-up. 2020 being 2020, his second assumption is that it’s some asshole defending their non-right to come in mask-free.
Dick could’ve gone on for an hour more and he wouldn’t have guessed that it’s actually Local Billionaire Bruce Wayne trying to enter LaSalle’s as a horde of paps are kept out by a woman with a mop. Dick lowers the box of Fruͤuͤt Luͤuͤps he’d been planning to throw at the head of a potential assailant, even if the temptation had remained when he saw Bruce.
Coincidences are theoretically possible, but anything that involves the Batman in Gotham is usually the result of obsessive planning, so Dick doesn’t wait around to see the follow-through. He doesn’t hang around for Bruce to come to him, doesn’t bother ducking behind a cabinet and trying to hide. He just puts his cereal in his basket and stomps towards self check-out, ignoring the increasingly powerful moves executed by mop-lady to stay true to health and safety protocols.
It’s the unpleasant thing about being related outside of heroism. Slights against Nightwing isn't enough reason for Dick to deck Bruce right in his stupid face, especially not out in public, so the best hope is for a quick getaway.
No luck. He’s just halfway through Tetris-ing the milk and a box of chocolate biscuits into his bag when he feels a light touch at his elbow, and Dick turns around with his teeth bared behind his mask.
“6 feet, buddy. Don’t make me make you.”
“You could,” Bruce tells him, “but bear with me for a while.” Bruce is at the counter next to Dick, and he starts scanning a basket of apparently random items he must have hastily grabbed on his way here. A pack of lemongrass-flavoured breath mints click-clack on by, and Bruce studiously looks at his hands instead of at Dick. “I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t do your job, Dick.”
“No ‘implying’ about it, B. Must’ve been just Tuesday when you called me immature and irresponsible.” It takes effort not to smash the bread in to fit his bag, but this is a sugar-glass-free zone and it’s harder to keep his temper. “Must’ve been just half an hour ago you said I’m not ready for something this major. Subtle you aren’t.”
“I suppose not,” Bruce says over the beep! of a can of caramel triple-shot macchiato. “I…. was wrong. You protect your city, and you do it well. I have no right to imply otherwise.”
“Cool, cool.” Dick shoves the rest of his groceries into his shopping bag, now aggressively counting out coins at top speed to feed into the machine. “Did it anyways, though, didn’t you?”
“I did. And you said that I have no right to intrude on what you do in Bludhaven, and that’s true too.” Bruce pulls a quarter out of his pocket and rests it by Dick’s hand to help make exact change. “I don’t. What I do have, Dickiebird, is the belief that you trying to dismantle an intergalactic drug trafficking ring is a risk that is not worth taking.”
“And why is that?” Dick asks, trying his absolute damnedest not to start a brawl.
“Because, Dick, I spend most of my time believing that any amount of risk that you have to face is too high, but I have become quite good at suppressing the instinct to tell you ‘no’ and keep you safe and hidden away.” Bruce seems a little kerflummoxed about how to pay, fumbling up a storm for onlookers even though his card would probably have been accepted in the Garden of Eden. “You are good, and you are capable. I believe in you in ways I don’t in any god or superhuman. But the other side of that, Dick, is that your safety often becomes the highest priority." He pauses, continues. "My highest priority. Sometimes that isn’t right.” The cash machine buzzes and spits out a receipt, and Bruce rips it off. “But sometimes I can’t help myself.”
They’re just standing there, two adult men, one with a shopping bag and the other stuffing sweets and chocolate milk and a small bag of rice into pockets and the crook of one arm, and Dick wants to be angry and stay angry, he really does.
It’s just hard to do when Bruce does shit like this; puts in twice the effort to overcorrect a failure at good communication, ends up baring far more than either of them know how to handle properly, and now they’re awkwardly not looking at each other in LaSalle’s as Dick has to digest what it means that Batman, Bruce, his fucking dad is here saying ‘I can’t trust you to do your job, because I don’t want you to do your job, because sometimes I think of the greater good and it’s not greater than you’.
Way to make a man want to weep while holding a jangling box of Fruͤuͤt Luͤuͤps.
Dick sighs, but he’s not even at the end of the breath before he’s already smiling. Bruce is an indescribable asshole, is a bastard any way you slice it, but the source of so many of his problems is just how much goddamn care he has in his stupid twisted head. It’s stifling and it’s occasionally incredibly unhealthy, but it’s going to take a harsher man than Dick to keep a grudge against B for being the kind of guy whose cruelty is just a bastardisation of how much he worries about the whole entire world.
The whole entire world, with a little extra left over today just for Dick.
“I’m still really pissed off at you,” Dick has to make this extremely clear. “You were out of line, and disrespectful, and said shit that you wouldn’t accept coming from us in a hundred years.”
Bruce inclines his head in acceptance, looking weirdly dignified despite being a man with some Pokki sticking out a pocket, looking weirdly earnest despite the general opacity of Bruce Wayne’s public face.
It’s good enough for Dick. “I’m going to go back to the Manor with you, B, and we’re gonna have dinner. And then we can go over some of my plans, and if you question my judgment just because you want me off the case, I walk out.”
Bruce nods again. He doesn’t look happy, but he does look relieved.
Sometimes you just gotta throw an old dog a bone, and Dick’s made a lifetime career of picking up new tricks, so.
It’s going to be okay.
He bumps his shoulder against Bruce’s as he remembers the many, many times he’s seen Batman rush off into incomprehensible danger and thought no, not again, and never been able to say it and make it stick. They can meet halfway, and Dick reckons that really, it’s the least they deserve for solving this so smoothly.
“And,” he adds, grabbing some of Bruce’s groceries to put in his bag, “I will accept a maximum of 5 health-and-safety suggestions from you, but only because I know you’re trying, B. So I’m gonna try with you.”
He’s not the Boy Wonder any more, hasn’t really been a boy in years, but a Robin’s duty is to leap into the fray with Batman.
If Bruce is going to make an effort to learn how to deal with his worry more constructively, Dick’s really helpless to do anything but to jump right in and help him through it.
Bruce’s furtive grin that he very carefully tries to hide Dick from seeing certainly makes it feel worth it.