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Dick's apartment was small, claustrophobic, and always smelled a little bit like stale sweat, owing to poor ventilation, its owner's habits, and also just the fact that you couldn't air out a Bludhaven apartment; whatever was outside would always smell worse. It was perpetually a bit disorganized, with the few available surfaces that weren't already occupied with paperwork holding sentimental knick-knacks.
It was Damian's favorite place in the world, even if he'd rather have all twenty finger- and toe-nails ripped out than admit it.
He was also fairly sure that was actually a Robin-era bo-staff the curtains were hanging on rather than an actual curtain-rod, and he was equally sure if he asked Dick at just the right time, he'd tell him a story three parts pathetic, ridiculous, and bizarre. The man only owned three forks and had so since he moved out at sixteen, which meant on the absurdly off chance that all his siblings dropped by, at least half of them would have to eat with their hands.
Dick was very lucky they weren't that kind of family.
Nowadays, however, he was considering buying a fourth. If only because his youngest brother was very particular about the cleanliness of his tools and didn't well tolerate the standard of living a bachelor in his mid-twenties generally kept.
"Hey!" Dick shouted, grabbing for Damian's hands. "Don't use an actual knife on raw chicken; I have a kitchen knife."
"What is the problem?" Damian asked, wrinkling his nose in confusion. "What are you afraid of, salmonella on my dagger? The point of stabbing someone is to hurt them."
"I think giving people blood-borne food poisoning constitutes as cruel and unusual punishment," Dick said, prising the knife out of Damian's grip. He tossed it in the sink, which was also holding three of the four plates Dick owned; they'd have to rinse and clean one if they both wanted to eat.
"Everything we do is already illegal," Damian pointed out flatly. Dick grinned down at him, resisting the urge to ruffle his hair; Damian's shoulders barely crested the kitchen countertop, which, combined with the way he had to stand on the tips of his toes and strain to cut anything on the cutting board, made it dangerously easy to forget that he wasn't just a normal baby brother.
Then Damian tore the chicken down against the grain of the meat in a quick and efficient motion that spoke of volumes of experience with a completely different flesh, and the moment was gone.
"Disinfect that cutting board when you're done," Dick called, rooting through his pantry for the half-remembered spice list. Mustard seeds didn't go in garam masala, right? Probably not.
"Yes, yes, I'm aware," Damian said snappishly. Dick waited a few seconds before hearing the sink run as confirmation; then he pulled the plastic container up on a tub of what he was pretty sure was ground cumin, sniffing it to confirm.
"Do you want to chop the onions?" Dick asked, pulling the aromatics out as well. "Or are you scared you're gonna start tearing up and ruin your image?"
Damian, predictably, tutted at that, rinsing off the cutting board and knife one final time. "I'll be fine," he said, so insistently self-sufficient. Dick watched him set up for a bit before twisting to pull the fridge door open, grabbing a small lemon from the veggie crisper.
"Here," he said, straightening up and elbowing Damian over, both their hands on the cutting board now. "Halve this lemon, run the face over the knife. Lemon juice will cut down on the sulfur gas being released and means I won't have to deal with a crying preteen in my kitchen."
He dodged Damian's halfhearted swipe with a laugh and pulled out his own stalk of ginger, grabbing for one of his spoons to peel the tough skin away.
"Did Alfred teach you that trick?" Damian asked, wiping the serrated knife down until it was dripping with citric acid.
"My mom, actually," Dick said, firmly scraping away at the ginger. The brown paper skin of the root came away in scraps, which he carefully collected into a pile for later. "It's also good for when you mince the garlic; run it over your fingers when you're done to make the smell go away."
"Hm," Damian said. "My mother taught me a similar trick. But for the smell of blood."
Dick paused. Damian paused.
"Was that a joke?" Dick finally asked.
"Yes," Damian rolled his eyes easily, "of course it was a joke. The smell of blood isn't covered up that easily."
"That is not the part most people are usually familiar with," Dick muttered, pulling the duller of his two knives out and setting in to mince the ginger. He cut off four thin coins of fibrous root, dropping them against the gashed and pockmarked wooden cutting board before stacking them all up to slice into matchsticks.
Damian, on his end of the board, was grappling with the onion, tearing away at its papery skin as he struggled to chop it into thin squares.
"Here," Dick said, covering Damian's hand with his own. He carefully manipulated both their fingers until Damian's knuckles rested against the flat of the steel blade, fingertips exerting just enough pressure to hold the vegetable together as they, together, levered the blade down, leaving the chopped onion glued together by its own juices. "Like this. This one I learned from Alfred."
"Hm," Damian acknowledged. Dick moved back to his own work, but out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Damian adjust the way he was gripping the knife to better match his own grip and he smiled a little to himself. They worked in easy silence, prepping neatly and dropping the scraps into a plastic bag to go in the freezer to boil for soup stock at some later date; even after decades of living with billions of dollars at his disposal, Dick had never been able to shake the cooking habits of someone who'd rather die than throw away something still useful. And all food was useful.
"Here," Dick said, twisting off a generous number of garlic cloves from the bulb and handing them to Damian. "You know how to smash 'em to get the skins off quick, right?"
Damian tutted again before placing the flat of the blade right over the inclined surface of the garlic and pounding down violently with the flat of his fist in answer. The garlic clove burst apart, papery skin cracking open like an eggshell. Dick wondered if his downstairs neighbors heard that.
"Just checking," he said, going to pull his big saucepan out; the thing had been one of the first kitchen utensils he'd ever bought and it had served him well in the decade since. "I'm gonna start cooking the meat now, you get to work mincing those."
Dick poured a little oil into the bottom and waited for it to heat up on the stove, jiggling the pan every once in a while to see if the oil had stopped slow-crawling along the sides and started lapping at the edges like it was water, the only sign that it was hot enough that he knew of. Mostly, though, he watched Damian, who was small enough still to run around underfoot and unnoticed in a kitchen where Dick couldn't even open the refrigerator door and the cupboard without losing any space to stand.
"I didn't know you knew how to make this," Damian finally said, breaking the silence.
"Cooked a lot of one-pot meals when I was younger," Dick shrugged, turning his attention back to the pot. He rolled it one more time, and the oil rippled like water; finally ready. "Mostly because in college, I only had the one pot."
He wasn't looking at Damian, too focused on adding in the cubes of chicken without crowding the saucepan too heavily, but he knew his brother well enough to know Damian was rolling his eyes at him. He smiled, flipping over the browning meat.
"Did your mother ever make anything like this for you?" Damian asked.
"Not this dish exactly," Dick said, letting the oil drip off the chicken thoroughly before dropping it onto his plate. "But the ingredients are familiar. We varied up the list all the time, though; just depended on what was cheapest at the grocers in whatever country we were in at the time. Some countries had tariffs on imports in other ones, so sometimes we'd have to make do with potatoes instead of chicken, or carrots instead of leeks."
"Wow," Damian said. "Tariff law. That's so incredibly interesting."
"Brat," Dick said fondly. "Hey, can you measure out the whole spices? I'm almost done with this chicken."
Damian dutifully grabbed for the little empty jars of what had probably used to be store-bought jam until Dick thoroughly scrubbed the insides and poured them full of whole spices that came in cloudy plastic bags from the ethnic grocer down the street. As Dick rescued the last of the browned chicken from the pan, dripping them dry down the sides, Damian went at the cardamom pods and cinnamon sticks with the butt of his knife, grinding them down to chunks alongside the delicately measured out peppercorns and cloves.
"Hey," Dick laughed, "these are the whole spices; the ground ones can come later."
"If you smash them, they release more flavor," Damian said stubbornly.
"Yeah, if you smash them, not powder them."
"Smash them more," Damian said logically. "Flavor is stronger."
Dick shook his head and poured the spices into the leftover hot oil, dropping a couple bay leaves in as well and stirring once with a wooden spoon. "Keep an eye on that," he told Damian, moving to let his younger brother stand guard over the spitting pot. "When the cloves start swelling and the leaves change color, call me over."
"How much swelling and color do they change before I know to call you over?" Damian asked, taking to this task with all the intensity he dedicated to crime-fighting.
"You'll know," Dick said, purely because that was the most unhelpful thing he could say to him.
"I hate you," Damian said as Dick grabbed a tub of yogurt from the fridge, popping the plastic lid off with one long tear.
"I know," Dick said back, actually ruffling Damian's hair this time, now that he was too occupied with watching the spices splutter over the pot to try stabbing him.
"It's the warm spices next, right?" Damian asked. "The, uh, jeera, sabut daniya, and shimla mirch."
"And salt," Dick added absentmindedly, pulling a bowl out to pour the ground spices in. "Or namak, I guess. First goes the onion and the ginger-garlic paste, though. One after the other."
Damian nodded sharply before leaning over the pot again, narrowing his eyes. "The bay leaves turned brown," he noted. "They were green earlier."
"Yeah," Dick said, amused. "That's how you know it's time to add the onions in."
Damian scraped in the onions with a knife, squinting dubiously as the oil started hissing with the introduction of wet ingredients. Gamely, he picked up the wooden spoon and went to stir it a few times anyways, his wrist at an awkward angle due to how short he was compared to the intended user the countertop was made to accommodate.
"What's jeera in English?" Damian asked.
"Uh," Dick stirred the ground spices together into a rust-colored pile, wracking his brain for vocabulary he rarely had a need to use. It wasn't like he usually narrated to himself as he cooked. "Cumin, I think."
"Oh!" Damian said. "Like cumin lamb. Drake orders that from the Chinese place often, because he doesn't know how to cook."
Dick laughed at the distinctly tattletale quality of Damian's voice.
"Well, we'll make sure you don't end up like that. Go ahead and stir the onions until they start browning."
"Peyaj," Damian named crisply.
"Purum, " Dick offered in answer. That set them off for the next five minutes it took to brown the onions, each taking turns offering a word for onion until Damian got to "洋葱," and Dick conceded defeat so he could pour in the ginger and garlic and let those fry for another half minute.
"You added enough jaal, right?" Damian asked suspiciously as he watched Dick tip in the spice mix.
"I know you have something against your own taste buds," Dick said, rolling his eyes as he scraped the last of the spices off the sides of the bowl with his finger and wiped the residue quickly on the lip of the saucepan, fast enough that his fingers didn't register the burn. The bowl went into the overcrowded sink and Dick gave his fingers a quick perfunctory wash before picking up the meat and waiting for Damian's nod; then, he tipped them all in at once, letting the chunks of seared chicken splash down into the slurry of spices and alliums.
"You kind of look like a witch, dressed in all black and stirring the pot like that," Dick said, filling up a mug with ever so slightly yellow tap water -- it's fine, Dami, anything bad'll get boiled away anyways -- and scooping a good tablespoon of yogurt out of the tub.
"Better than looking like a tropical parrot, perched like that," Damian shot back, tugging at the boldly patterned button-up Dick was wearing. He shrugged; it was an old birthday gift from Donna, and it was so ugly he'd loved it instantly.
Together, they spooned all the yogurt tablespoon by tablespoon into the saucepan and ensured the chicken was covered entirely in the rust-red sauce. Dick poured the water in after and then put the lid on the pot with finality, leaving it on the stove to cook on low for a while.
That famed Batman and Robin semi-telepathic teamwork kept them going through all the dishes in Dick's sink, Dick scrubbing and Damian drying. Damian only took a little coaxing to start talking about his most recent assignment in his art class -- to recreate a photo with pencils -- though it would probably take a lot more coaxing on Dick's part to get him to take him up on his suggestion -- to ask Tim for one of his photos.
Damian was drying the last of the dishes as Dick was checking on their food, giving it a quick stir with the wooden ladle, when he chose that moment to start using his serious-matters-voice. It wasn't too different from his usual voice, considering how serious Damian usually was about everything, but it still had Dick snapping to attention.
"Richard," Damian asked, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, "Why did it take you so long to apply for citizenship?"
Dick smiled, his mind already whirring, trying to figure out what angle Damian was taking with this. "Ah, I just kept putting it off. Why?"
Damian stared very determinedly at the plate, which he was nearly attacking with the towel. Dick came up behind him and gently pried the plate out of his hands, leaving it on the countertop.
"I looked it up," Damian said softly. "You should have had a path to citizenship through Bruce right after he adopted you. It's a statute. Why didn't Bruce file when you were a child?"
Ah. They were going to have this conversation. Dick was shocked nobody had ever told Damian this, but then again, the legal specificities rarely came up, paling in comparison to the sheer vastness of the complicated intricacies of Dick's relationship with their father.
"That's for minor adoptees," Dick said gently. "And Bruce didn't adopt me until a few years ago. I was his legal ward when I was a minor."
Damian was silent for a while. Processing, probably. He did that often, whenever he was confronted with a curveball; Dick got up to collect the scraps of ginger peels he'd set aside earlier and boil some water for tea.
"Did you ever…" Damian trailed off as the kettle started to whistle and Dick turned down the heat, popping the lid off to drop in a few black tea bags and the scraps. "Did you ever resent Father for not adopting you?"
Dick kept facing away from him, putting the lid back on.
"Maybe," Dick said finally. "When he adopted Jason right away. I used to wonder if it was because I wasn't from here. If there were legal tangles -- and there were quite a few legal tangles -- or if he just, I don't know, was using me for practice. He said it was because he didn't want to replace my parents but I don't know. I never knew that, growing up."
He turned to grab two mugs from his cupboard, still not ready to look his youngest brother in the eyes.
"You've known Father for longer than I've been alive," Damian said softly. "I inherited my citizenship from him but for you, you've lived in this country for decades."
Dick smiled a little wryly. "It's like the opposite of a birthright citizenship," he said, finally turning to sit at the table and sliding an empty mug over to Damian, who caught it without breaking eye contact. "Instead of being born on American soil, my parents died on it, and I've been here ever since."
"Not ever since," Damian pointed out. "Drake and Todd say you leave often. Todd called you flighty."
Dick furrowed his brows. "Is that why he told me you punched him last week?"
"Puns like that aren't to be tolerated," Damian sniffed.
"Thank you for defending my honor," Dick laughed. "Anyways, those were my teenage years and my early twenties. I'm a bit more grounded nowadays."
Because that just made him sound unbearably old, Dick opted to get out of his seat and walked onto his hands, pulling open his cupboard doors with his bare feet and balancing the handle of his sugar bowl all the way down to the table, still upside down.
"That's disgusting," Damian said as Dick maneuvered sideways in the limited space to cartwheel back onto his feet, a lateral motion that put him right at the fridge door, which he took advantage of by grabbing the milk in there.
"It's fine," Dick said back, "You like it with honey anyways."
He produced the little bear-shaped squeeze bottle with a flourish, smirking as Damian scowled and gave his empty cup a squirt of the over-processed honey, mixing it in with a splash of milk. Dick grabbed a strainer from his cutlery drawer and came over to pour the tea into Damian's cup first, the liquid darkening and browning as it rose up to the lip of the cup.
For his own cup, he poured the milk in just after and only enough to make it semi-translucent rather than the opaque brew Damian preferred, sprinkling a meager teaspoon of sugar to cut the bitter. The hot aroma of ginger in tea rose up around them, mixing with the warmed milk and the spicy smell of dinner simmering away on the stove next to them both.
"Do you want to get the bowls?" Dick asked. Damian jumped up, going for the two bowls they'd cleaned, dried, and stacked to the side for this. Dick waited at the rickety two-seater table, blowing idly on his hot mug of tea, as Damian carefully ladeled their food into two bowls. He smiled as Damian returned, setting down a bowl of curried chicken in front of him before he retreated to the other end of the table.
Damian probably didn't realize he was leaning in and closing his eyes, smelling the spiced steam coming off the bowl, but Dick wished he could get his phone out and take a picture stealthily enough without tipping his brother off.
"Does it taste good?" Dick asked as Damian took a cautious bite, spearing one of the cubes with his fork. He was suddenly curious in that moment, if -- in addition to whatever legion of cooks the League of Assassins employed -- Talia had ever made this for Damian.
"Like that was ever in doubt," Damian snorted. "I keep telling you, Richard. We make the best team."