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Chapter Text

Richard John Grayson has always been aware he is a charming kid. It’s a talent, he thinks, knowing exactly how to smile and talk to other people to get them to like him or to do things for him. It was easier as a smaller child, with big eyes and the innocence associated with his age, but as the years pass, he accommodates to his age and finds other ways to make people soften to him.

He never does it to his parents or his family in the circus, he has never needed it to make them love him. Their love is a given.

Their love is a constant that he has never doubted.

The people that come to see them are different. Some of them are nice, that’s true, but most of them see his family with disdain and only mildly morbid curiosity. Dick has taken their attitude as a challenge to entertain himself when he is bored, it’s difficult but not impossible to make them like him and buy him things on the stands under the watchful gaze of his family. It doesn’t always work, but he learns new things always. 

His first twelve years are full of bright memories and laughter. Even when his family goes through rough patches, he keeps feeling safe with them.

His first twelve years taste like freedom, love, and adventure. His family, in his eyes, never make a single mistake raising him, apart from their first and last one. Coming to Gotham.

***

Gotham is supposed to be a quick stop. It’s not planned on their itinerary and it’s a rushed and impulsive decision, only driven by the promise of money from the elite people from the city who wants to watch them perform. At that point, they just had been in the United States for just a couple of months and planning to tour the country for longer than they have ever stayed in one nation.

Dick peaks through the window of their trailer when they begin to enter the city. They leave behind bright lights and glamorous establishments and enter unknown territory. 

His first impression of the city is that is definitely not safe. Gotham is full of shadows and trash, and even the light of the morning looks gloomy there. The streets are full of graffiti and the people on the sidewalk look cold.

Dick has been multiply times on risky cities, but none of them reek of danger like Gotham. Or maybe he is wrong and it’s just his mind playing tricks on him thanks to the common knowledge that Gotham is bad news. Whatever is the case, Dick can’t wait to leave the city behind already,

“Cute, uh?” his mom’s voice startles him.

Dick turns to see his mom smiling jokingly at him. Her dark hair is on a loose ponytail over her shoulder and her blue eyes -the same shade he has- softens when he doesn’t immediately answer.

Dick shuffles on his place for a moment and lets the curtains of the window fall from his hand.

“I don’t like this place,” he tells her quietly, not wanting to get the attention from the others, “I have a bad feeling.”

His mom sighs a little tiredly and draws him close, one hand on his shoulder and another on his hair, letting him hide his face on her sweater. She was one of the few people in the circus that didn’t want to stop in Gotham. 

“I don’t like it either,” she confesses in a whisper, “but we’re just going to be here for a short time, will you be strong for me, my little Robin?”

Dick relaxes on her hold and closes his eyes.

He nods. She kisses the crown of his head.

“Before you know it, we’re going to be on our way, I promise,” she tells him.

Dick hugs her and lets his mom’s smell wash over him. She smells like the dry lavender she crushes between her clothes with a scent of honey from her homemade shampoo and a hint of the smell of the body wash his dad uses. She smells familiar.

She smells like home.

***

A tiny child takes a photo with him the night of their first show. He has bright blue eyes that look up at him with wonder and parents that smack his hands when the tiny child tries to hug them. Dick hugs the toddler and wishes that people who don’t like children would stop having them in the first place.

An hour later, the only thing he can remember is the blood of his parents on the floor. Their bones crack at the impact, their bodies fall in strange positions like broken dolls. Dick smells the metallic odor of blood almost immediately and gags.

(He heard the threats against the circus. He saw the wire snap just before the fall. He didn’t warn his parents. He let them die.)

He can’t remember what was the last thing his parents told him but just that morning his mom kissed his forehead as good morning and his dad tousled his hair. Just that morning he sat beside his other family and ate sandwiches bought on a shady establishment and laughed with them. Just that morning he spent an hour petting Zitka.

Dick breaks into pieces that night. What he has left of family -the circus- takes him away from the scene and hugs him until he cries himself sick in their arms.

He wishes the night would end just that way. A broken child in the care of people who are going to try to put him together with love and who are going to take him away from Gotham in the morning.

The night doesn’t end that way.

Police come to them while he is crying, some of them are sympathetic but Dick can tell just by their body they don’t care much. 

Dick is still trying to grasp English. He’s not from the country and he’s learned a lot of languages, but English is not one he’s still comfortable with.

Dick doesn’t make an effort to understand them, placing his trust in his left family to handle things.

(It’s a mistake. Everything that can go wrong that night goes wrong.)

***

His family cries when he gets taken away for Social Services.

“There’s nothing we can do,” they say. 

Later, It makes Dick wonder if they even tried and if, maybe, they didn’t care about Dick as much as he cared about them. 

He is forced to say goodbye to everyone and to follow a tall woman that introduces herself as his caseworker. He doesn’t understand her much, but the hostility on her body and her fake smile tells him enough to know she is not going to help him.

He lefts everything he knows with a couple of pictures and a change of clothes on a ratty backpack that he has.

He is forced to leave the warmth of the circus for the scary unknown that Gotham is.

***

Richard John Grayson has always been a charming kid, but Gotham is full of harsher and colder people than he has ever met. On the system his charm falls flat, they’re a tough audience and he is still reeling from his parents’ deaths.

He gets chewed up and spitted out again and again. He gets beaten up on his short stance on the juvenile service system when he fails to get a room in another place and gets more hurt once he gets placed in a Catholic orphanage, where they see him as less for not looking like them and his difficulties understanding English. He has never learned a language as fast as he does so he can survive and know what is going on.

Dick has grown up with love and support, he knows he is soft and caring just like his parents wanted him to be. He’s good at being likable to soft people. Nothing of that is going to help him to survive to Gotham.

He does what he best does. He adapts.

He’s two entire months on the system, and it’s enough for him to twist onto something he’s sure his parents wouldn’t like. His smiles turn sharp, the way he gets things change for tactics less savory. He learns to make others cry with words, he perfects the look of credible innocence when he steals food from the kitchen, and learns to cry at command when the adults running the place scold him when he does something they don’t like. He learns when it’s time to back down and to bite his tongue at scatting comments at his persona.

He learns how long he can disappear before they notice and where he can hide. He learns to throw the blame on someone else.

Dick Grayson was broken when he was thrown on the system, and now he has put his pieces together in the wrong places. He still feels frail, but in Gotham, it seems there’s no time to heal.

Gotham takes the happy child he was and spits him on something twisted.

***

Bruce Wayne comes to the orphanage after a while.

Dick just knows his name because a nun whispers it as they hurry him to a room to prepared him. It seems like he is a local celebrity or something, but he is not even from the States, so how should he know about him?

“But why does he want to talk to me?” he asks softly to the nicer nun he knows in the room, sister Amanda. 

He sits still in his place while another nun brushes aggressively his hair -they have slapped him for moving too much in the past, and he would prefer to talk with the guy without a blooming bruise on his face- and another draws nicer clothes from a closet on the room.

Sister Amanda is going through some papers on her hands at his side.

“I dunno,” she tells him on a flat tone without raising her head, “but If we are lucky enough, he will take you out of our hair, God knows we need less mouths to feed.”

Dick hums. The nun working on his hair is getting frustrated and pulling his hair too much, it hurts. He knows better to whine, though.

“Change onto this.” The nun in the closet throws clothes at him.

The one on his hair inspects him with a frown and raises a hand to put it on his cheek to erase what he supposes it’s a dirt spot. Then she buries painfully her nails on his cheek.

“Say or do something wrong and you’ll regret it,” she hisses at him.

Dick doesn’t doubt her. He has met nuns before, gentler women that used to pinch his cheeks and coo at him when he was smaller. Gotham’s nuns -at least the ones running the orphanage- are rougher, a little violent, and believers that hitting and inflicting pain are valid parenting tactics. 

Dick avoids her gaze and nods.

***

After changing clothes Dick is walked to the only room that looks decent on the building. It’s a big room with soft-looking couches and neatly looking shelves full of books, trinkets, and some candles and religious imagery. It has a nice coffee table. The other kids had told him that the room is the only warm one on the winter and the place where the nuns hide candies. The nuns call it the “break room” and neither Dick nor the other kids are allowed inside it. 

Bruce Wayne smiles when Dick comes in. 

Dick watches him warily while he speaks with Sister Amanda. He has a vapid expression on his face and overall looks like he’s not very bright, but when he gazes at him his eyes freeze him on the spot. His eyes don’t match his face nor his corporal language. They’re a darker shade of blue than his own and have a sharpness that softens when he sees him. 

“…be okay,” Mister Wayne finishes saying to Sister Amanda, breaking eye contact with him to face her better.

Sister Amanda smiles back at him and puts a hand on Dick’s shoulder, tightening her grip to squeeze him painfully. It’s a threat that, judging by the way Mister Wayne’s eyes darken, doesn’t go unnoticed nor welcome.

“We’ll be close if you need us,” she says to the man before turning to Dick. “Be nice, Richard.”

And with that, she gets out of the room, letting them alone.

Dick sits on one end of the couch carefully and watches the apparition of a spark of hesitation on the older man’s eyes when he imitates the movement at the other side of the couch. Mister Wayne shifts in his place stiffly, all the smoothness from before gone. It makes Dick want to laugh at the awkwardness of the man. 

Dick summons a tentative smile at Mister Wayne. 

“Hi,” he tells the man.

Somehow, the moment feels important. Life-changing. The same way his parent’s fall felt at the moment but without the horror, the shock or the blood. 

The room’s quiet, it smells a little bit like dust and cheap scent candles. 

Mister Wayne smiles back at him, a little stiff at the corners of his mouth.

“Hello, Richard, right?” he asks.

Dick bites his tongue, so he doesn’t correct him, and nods. 

Outside, far away from the orphanage -without his knowledge-, a butler prepares a room for an extra guest humming, a kid watches his mom lose herself on drugs, and a lonely small toddler cuts with round scissors a small section of a newspaper talking about the death of the flying Grayson.

Chapter Text

Dick Grayson is used to change. He is used to jumping from place to place, meeting different people speaking foreign tongues. He is used to eating new food. He is used to drastic temperature changes. He is used to befriending kids for weeks before never seeing them again.

His mom had told him once that it was in their blood to be unable to be still in one place.

The thought that Dick is going to stay in one place for years is weird. Living in Wayne’s manor is weird. Bruce Wayne is weird.

(Alfred is nice)

A week after living in Wayne’s manor he starts feeling restless. He has gotten all the food and clothes he could wish but, while he welcomes space after living with so many kids, he doesn’t have anyone to talk to, or anything to do, for the matter. He could ask for toys or things, he supposes, but he wants Bruce Wayne to like him so he can stay on the manor -where nobody has hit him or made fun of his accent- and acting like a needy kid is not going to make the cut. So he smiles at Alfred and talks for a bit to him until he is too busy to keep him entertained and then goes to sit in silence on a window where he waits for Mister Wayne to come back home. 

Sometimes he only gets a glimpse of the man parking on the entrance and a brief sight of the man walking to his study, other times Mister Wayne greets him and talks to him a short time before disappearing for the rest of the day.  It’s frustrating and maddening, but he bears it with a sunny smile.

The worst thing about the solitude is the time it gives him to think about his parent’s death. His head plays over and over the threats Tony Zucco gave to the circus and the memories make him want to do something about it. He told a police officer with kind eyes everything he knew at the beginning when he was still in the juvie, but from what he had heard the chances of catching the man who murdered his parents are slim.

He dreams of pushing Tony Zucco off a building. 

He dreams of spilling blood from the man that took everything from him.

***

Choosing between staying on the good side of a millionaire so he can take advantage of everything money offers him -as a future- and searching for the murderer of his parents so he can get revenge should have been easy. 

Dick considers himself a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them. Logically he knows revenge won’t get him anything, if Mister Wayne knew what he was thinking he wouldn’t hesitate to put him back where he found him, but he is tired of nightmares and tired of the cold anger that has nestled on his chest. He is tired of feeling useless and tired of the silence and the feeling that he is just another abandoned toy that Mister Wayne got bored of.

It’s just his luck the first night he decides to go out to start searching he is caught out.

“What are you doing here?”  

Batman had been a popular topic among the kids in the orphanage. He was a legend, a myth, a shadow hidden on alleys that protected the unfortunate. A nice fairy tale that helped them to sleep and to hope.

Currently, the fairy tale is looking right at Dick on the top of a roof.

Dick just stares at him, dumbfounded, without fully processing the question the man asked him.

Dick opens his mouth, closes it.

“Just chilling,” he finally squeaks out.

Batman is tall and broad and, while his mouth is uncovered, the rest of his body is on a costume with a cape. Dick kind of wants to touch the fabric to know if it’s as uncomfortable as it looks.

“It’s midnight,” Batman informs him like Dick doesn’t know, his voice is low and rough, “go home kid.”

Dick fidgets on his place a little, he doesn’t want Batman to get mad or to call to the Wayne Manor but he can’t just go. Not when he knows he won’t get any sleep until he feels like at least he is doing something.

“Okay," he lies to him, softly, and mentally scrambles for something to add to reinforce his lie, “I just wanted a little of fresh air.”

Batman’s movements stutter for a moment like he can’t decide to leave him be and trust on him or stay with him to make sure he’ll be fine.

At the end he sits beside him, twitching a little when Dick swings his legs on the edge of the building in a childish movement.

“This is Amusement Mile,” Batman says.

Dick knows. From the place he sits, he can see the empty space where the Haly’s Circus tent was just two months ago and the building of an Aquarium. Behind him are the restaurants, clubs, and apartments still making noise.

“I know,” Dick tells him pulling up one of his legs to hug it. The cold air bites his nose, the excitement of meeting Batman starts to drop. “Gotham Aquarium is right there, and I know there’s a zoo close.”

Dick points with his finger the closed building. Batman doesn’t turn around to see it.

“You’re the Grayson kid,” Batman blurts out, “the one recently orphaned.”

Dick is unimpressed with the tact of the man, and it must show on his face because Batman twitches again in his place. It reminds him a bit of Mister Wayne, who is awfully awkward in his presence.

“Yeah,” Dick agrees with a flat voice and, with a little curious tilt on his voice, he adds, “Are you always this bad with kids?”

Batman doesn’t have time to answer that, a scream on the street below them puts an end to their conversation.

Dick watches the man disappear on a smooth movement, his cape flaring up behind him like wings. It’s kind of cool.

***

Looking for Zucco takes him to places that he should have never gone to, with people he never should have been with in first place. It’s dangerous and it’s probably going to end with him dead on a ditch somewhere, but Dick doesn’t care, he keeps searching every night until his legs hurt, and the exhaustion hits him so hard his vision swims.

Dick doesn’t find anything related to his parent’s murder during his night’s escapades, but he keeps running into Batman so often he starts suspecting the man is following him. Running into Batman once without being in the middle of a crisis is almost unheard of, running into the vigilante every night? It’s fishy.

He comes to diverse conclusions of the man, but his most recurrent thought is that for a legend and such skilled fighter Batman sometimes is so reckless it makes him wince, not that Dick it’s better, but he’s twelve . 

On his fourth night running into the dark knight, he finally gains enough courage to voice his thoughts.

“Do you want to die?” Dick asks him dryly after a particularly nasty fight that almost ended up with Batman being stabbed.

Dick is not enough self-centered to think that Batman truly needs his help in fights, he has seen the man keep fighting after being shot , but he thinks Batman needs to somehow learn how to be more careful. Honestly, it’s a miracle the man is still alive.

Batman just grunts in an annoyed tone that Dick interprets as a ‘stop talking’ . Dick is getting good at deciphering his monosyllable sounds.

“I’m just saying,” he tells him jumping after him through the roofs with ease, “if you want to die so badly maybe you should try to see a therapist first instead of trying to become a martyr through a stab from a common mugger.”

Batman stumble catches Dick off guard. The man turns around and stares at him.

Dick crosses his arms.

“What?”

Batman sights and pinches his nose, just the exact way Mister Wayne does when he is summoning the strength to face a stubborn employee of his company after being called during dinner.

“You are a weird kid,” he grumbles, half exasperated, half fond. Dick’s heart stutters for a moment, unprepared for the mild response to something that would have gained him a slap on the orphanage. 

Dick preens.

“Thanks.”

The Dark Night barks a burst of surprised laughter, and then stops, appearing startled at his own amusement. 

“It wasn’t a compliment, Richard,” he informs him, but the corners of his lips are just slightly curved upwards.

It feels like one. It makes Dick feel warmer, braver.

“Dick,” he tells him, sitting on the spot he is standing on.

He can almost see Batman’s eyebrows go up.

“What?” he asks, befuddled.

Dick offers him one of his real smiles instead of flashing him with one of the fake smiles that he perfects every day in front of a mirror. He knows It’s a little brittle on the edges and duller, he knows it makes him look like a lost and unsure kid. It still feels right on his face for the first time since his parent’s death.

“It’s short for Richard,” he explains, “it’s what everyone called me before.”

Batman sits in front of him.

“Dick,” he repeats, softly, the exact way Bruce says Alfred back into the manor, “why did you wait so long to tell me?”

Dick shrugs.

“People think it’s weird, they look at me funny when I try to tell them to call me that,” he murmurs, thinking in the beatings he got back in the juvie and the slaps and injuries he got from the nuns when he tried to correct them on his name, “it’s easier to let them call me whatever they want.”

Batman nods, letting his shoulders drop just a tad and pressing his lips together on a tight line, again, just like Mister Wayne does when he hears something that he doesn’t like, and uh , isn’t that a funny thought?

***

Mister Wayne calls him Dick accidentally when he greets him in the morning during breakfast, the man is half-sleep and doesn’t seem to notice his slip. Dick’s mechanical movements over his oatmeal pause, just for a second, and then he greets him back and pretends he didn’t hear anything.

It’s too early to be awake when both stayed up until sunrise last night.

***

Dick lets Batman put a bag over his face so he can bring him to his headquarters a couple of days later, he thinks it’s a bit silly but he doesn’t voice his thoughts. The man guides him out of his car, to a rocky surface that becomes smooth with every step. Dick would be scared if he hadn’t seen the man getting chew out by Alfred for not wiping out his shoes before entering the manor after stepping on a puddle of mud.

“Wha- where are we?” Dick asks when Batman removes the bag over his head.

They’re in a giant cave with polished floors and gadgets everywhere. The space is enormous, and he can see stairs and more rooms around him. Dick itches to explore.

“I know how badly you want Tony Zucco, Dick,” the man declares, without answering him, “I only have one question, when you do find Zucco…then what?”

Dick doesn’t answer for a moment.

He thinks of his nightmares and Batman cracking a reluctant smile at his attempts to lighten him up. He thinks of his parents, of Mister Haly being exhorted and the sound of bodies slamming at the ground.

“You mean, will I kill him?” Dick looks at Batman. “…Mr. Wayne?”

The surprised face Mister Wayne does makes Dick want to snicker, for days he had been playing with the idea that Mister Wayne was dropping hints at him on purpose to find out his identity, but it seems the man was just that careless. Though, amusement aside, it’s a bit worrying. 

“You called me Dick on breakfast a few days ago,” he reveals, enjoying the pinched expression of the man, “but I’ve been suspecting since the moment I first met you as Batman, you’re awfully awkward with kids.” 

Mister Wayne closes his eyes and pinches his nose, murmuring something Dick doesn’t catch.

Dick takes advantage of the moment to get himself together. He relaxes his shoulders just a tad and puts a calculated determined expression on his face that he practiced for a moment like this.

“We want the same things, Mr. Wayne,” he lies to the man with a straight face, “and if you’ll let me, I want to help you fight for them.”

***

Mister Wayne trains him, he teaches him to fight correctly, how to punch, how to kick, when to step back, and how to spot an opening. He teaches him how to fill out reports, how to use the bat-computer, and the principles of hacking. He teaches him chemistry, how to synthesize antidotes, basic lab security, what not to touch, what not to mix. He teaches him first aid, what to do if someone shoots him, what to do if a civilian gets hurt or in shock. He teaches him how to investigate.

Alfred is not happy with Mister Wayne for that.

“Master Bruce,” he says stiffly while he eyes Dick filling a practice report and working on a computer code at the same time, “are you conscious that not anyone will be able to learn things at the same rate that you have done in the past? You need to be more mindful.”

Dick ignores him, absorbed in his work. He has never gone to school or had been taught what’s too much workload, but he thinks he would know. He would feel tired or something.

For now, he feels comfortable multitasking.

Mister Wayne seems to agree with Dick because he doesn’t lift his head from his paperwork.

“He’s fine, Alfred,” he says distractedly, “he’s been keeping up with me without a hitch, kids are quick picking up things.”

Dick quirks up a smile.

Alfred pinches his nose and murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like ‘ Trust Mister Wayne to randomly find a genius child that can keep up with him .’ 

Dick feels flattered, but he doesn’t think he is a genius. He just really like learning. And he is currently being driven for his obsession with finding his parents’ murderer and killing him.

He stops a second on his tasks when a stab of guilt attacks him because he is just using Mister Wayne and Alfred to his own end. He smiles at them, and he makes them laugh but the price he is going to charge is going to be too high.

And the worst part is that he is starting to like living in Wayne’s Manor. He enjoys patrols and feeling like he is helping other people, but he doesn’t know if he can stop now that is getting too far.

Dick doesn’t let any of his thoughts show on his face, Mister Wayne is too sharp to miss a pained expression on his face and he doesn’t want to answer any questions.

He holds his breath for five seconds and lets it go, then he goes back to work.

***

“Really, Dick? The wires ?” Mister Wayne seethes. “It could have killed him.”

Dick yawns, they’re sitting on the cave in front of the computers where they type reports after a case. The clock above them quietly moves to point that is almost nine in the morning and Dick hasn’t slept.

He wonders how long Mister Wayne will keep him before he returns him to the orphanage.

“It serves him right.” He tells him with a flat voice, not bothering to even fake regret. “And how could I have known he was going to try to escape the police in that car after confessing?”

He knew it was his car because he had come to the place in it, and sure, he had cut the wires of the brakes hoping it would kill Zucco if he tried to run away, but to be fair he hadn’t known it was going to work.

Or at least mildly work, because now the man was fighting for his life in the hospital.

Mister Wayne puts his face between his hands. 

Dick is tired.

“It’s about intent, Dick,” Mister Wayne answers, his voice muffled by his hands, “you cut the wires hoping it would kill him , didn’t you? You have been just lying about your change of heart all this time.”

Dick thinks of his parents. He imagines they would be disappointed in him for trying to kill a man. But they’re dead and they don’t have a say on his life anymore.

Dick doesn’t believe in God or any type of afterlife, so at least he can comfort himself thinking his parents won’t ever get to see the twisted person he is becoming.

“Yup.” He simply admits. It’s a light response, but a confession, nonetheless. 

It shows how little he cares about the thought of killing someone.

“You’re really good at lying,” Mister Wayne says, and it’s not a compliment.

Dick spins a little the chair where he is sitting, smoothing his features so the hurt on his face won’t show. He knows he deserves the cold tone, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like someone stabbed him in the heart. For better or worse, he likes Mister Wayne, and -when he spends too much time besides the man- he feels like he wants to be someone Mister Wayne would feel proud of.

“Thanks.” His voice is airy on purpose, hiding his feelings even when it doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s like he can’t stop himself from digging himself further in a hole. “It’s a talent.”

They’re in silence for a moment, then, finally, Mister Wayne raises his head to look at him at the eyes.

“Why?”

Dick hums, cheerfully, showing off how easily he can pretend to be something he is not. It comes out as unsettling if he is interpreting correctly the expression on Mister Wayne’s face. Dick hates himself a little.

“I dunno,” he answers honestly, “I think I’m just broken.”

He is. He can feel it on his bones. He is broken, and he feels small, frail, and scared because he can’t find an ounce of regret in his body and Mister Wayne is going to hate him now.

Mister Wayne, who gave him a home and food and attention. Mister Wayne, who sits with Dick in the library to read in silence while Dick completes puzzles or tasks and smiles -just a tad- when Dick beats him on some board game.

Mister Wayne, who is currently looking like he is regretting every decision he has ever made in his life.

Mister Wayne’s eyes inspect his face so intensely it makes Dick uncomfortable. Finally, his expression relaxes after a long time, like he found something -an answer or an explanation, Dick doesn’t know- on Dick’s face that he can make sense to.

“Go to sleep,” Mister Wayne tells him, softly, like Dick is going to break in a million of pieces in any instant, “we’ll talk in the morning.” 

Dick is so startled that he almost trips on his way upstairs to go to sleep, even when he walks calmly and suppresses the urge to run. Still, Dick notices disturbingly, Mister Wayne’s face looks like he knows .

Like he can see now right through Dick now that he has all the pieces of the puzzle.  

***

Tony Zucco doesn’t die, but he falls into a coma that the man is unlikely to wake up from thanks to the trauma on the head he got. Dick is pleased enough with the development.

“I want you to promise me you are never going to kill someone or try to,” Mister Wayne requests after they get the news from a call.

It’s ten in the morning and they’re sitting together in front of a TV turned off in pajamas. They’ve been worrying Alfred so much the last few days that he let them eat breakfast while watching TV, even when he knew Mister Wayne and he were going to get crumbs all over the carpet.

However, Alfred doesn’t know about what Dick did, and Dick is immensely grateful for it.

Dick sets his plates over the carpet carefully, pointedly not looking at Mister Wayne.

“I don’t think I can promise that,” he tells him honestly, “but I can try, if no one kills someone of my family again.”

Dick frowns. It shouldn’t be hard seeing that he has nobody else left.

Mister Wayne just sighs, he’s been doing that a lot lately.

Dick doesn’t know why the man hasn’t get rid of him, he’s been nice to him even after the Tony Zucco mess. And he’s getting awfully good at deciphering his facial expressions. It’s unnerving.

“All right,” Mister Wayne settles to say, massaging one side of his head with a hand, like he’s getting a headache, “I’ll take it.”

Dick stares at him.

“That’s it?” he asks confused.

Mister Wayne looks at him, his eyes are a darker blue than Dick’s eyes. 

“Dick, you’re just twelve,” Mister Wayne tells him flatly, “we’re still going to need to have a long conversation about this, but right now I’m going to let it go.”

Dick leans back into the cushions of the sofa.

“Huh,” he says, and Mister Wayne takes advantage of his bewilderment to turn on the TV to end the conversation.

Dick watches him the entire time.

Mister Wayne is truly something else.

Chapter Text

Dick, even as damaged as he feels, knows love. 

He has had twelve years of it. He knows it in the form of hugs, cuddles, gifts and soft eyes from his parents. He knows it in the form of tales around a bonfire, with his mom’s arm around his shoulders and a kiss on his forehead. Love is security, softness, understanding and kindness.

Love was when his mom bought him small desserts to share even when the money was tight, love was when his dad would get him trinkets from the markets. Love was a fire on his chest that burned bright during his childhood.

(When he flies, he can almost feel his dad's hands showing him the correct way to do it. When he lets himself fall -just for a moment- he can hear his mom laugh running to catch him on the air.)

Life on the Wayne Manor is lonely but, even when Dick feels too small on such a big place, he can see flashes of love daily. 

Love on the Wayne Manor is softer, subtler and sadder. He sees it in Bruce's parents’ room -a room of another time forever frozen- with a single rose on the vase over the dressing table, a rose that changes every week. He sees it on Alfred’s fussing, on the worry wrinkles around his eyes when Bruce's in a mood. He sees it in the sparkle of Bruce’s eyes when it’s a good day and he spends the evening taking tea in the kitchen with Alfred.

Dick doesn’t feel like he can love like before, but that’s okay. Loving in the way everyone loves on the Wayne Manor it’s ok, it’s a step. At least it makes him feel less damaged.

He hesitantly embraces the life that is offered to him and, even when he struggles in finding his place and role into the Manor, he feels understood and never judged for Bruce and Alfred and maybe that’s enough. 

***

The first person he starts to love since his parent’s death is Alfred. He has already promised himself he is never going to replace his parents, but Alfred takes him by surprise. Dick doesn’t watch himself around him because he thinks at first he is just the butler, and by the time he realizes he is most than that -he is the boss, he is Bruce’s parent, he is the heart of the house, he is the pillar- is already too late to take anything back.

Alfred teaches him how to cut vegetables, he adjusts his scarf and beanie on cold days and makes sure he never overworks himself when he gets too deep on a case with Bruce. He is the one who soothes his nightmares with hot chocolate and takes him to school when he starts to go. He is the one who gets the brunt of Dick clinginess when he wants a hug.

Dick prefers not to dwell on it, but Alfred is the one who becomes a parent to him in everything but title.

His relationship with Bruce is different. He is partner, his coworker, his confidant and friend, and he doesn’t put limits until Alfred lectures him or notices something he doesn’t like. He makes it obvious he has never had to take care of a kid. He lets Dick go on patrol whenever he wants, he doesn’t put a bedtime and just pretends not to see when he sees him playing on the chandeliers. He is not his parent; he doesn’t want to be his parent and understands Dick’s silence and cheerful but fake smiles better than himself. 

His love for him takes a different path, one that he doesn’t notice until it’s too late.

***

It starts innocently enough. 

“Do you need help?” Dick asks, peeking up at the mountain of paperwork Bruce is working on.

Dick gets bored easily, back in the circus it wasn’t a problem as he was constantly helping one way or another or practicing all day, but there’s not much to do in the manor during summer. Night patrols help him, but not having nothing to do during the day is making him crazy.

Bruce doesn’t raise his eyes from his paperwork.

“No, thank you,” Bruce turns him down absently.

Dick huffs, letting himself fall on the chair across the desk.

“I’m bored, Bruce,” Dick clarifies, “I want you to say yes so I can have something to do.”

Talking to Bruce it’s kind of a hit or miss. The man has become creepily attuned with Dick’s feelings and how he sounds when he lies, but the man struggles a lot with basic communication. If Dick wasn’t as good as he is at picking up Bruce’s hidden words, he is sure they would’ve already had a lot of fights born of miscommunication.

And if he wasn’t as clear as he can vocalizing his needs Dick wouldn’t get anything done.

“It’s from daylight work,” Bruce warns, and Dick hears the unspoken ‘It’s boring’.

Dick doesn’t care, anything would be good to distract him. He takes a handful of papers full of graphics and messy red ink words on the borders of the paper.

“Teach me how?” Dick requests.

Bruce raises his head and squints at him, like he is weighing his seriousness. It’s a good thing Dick is being honest.

Bruce nods.

They spent the evening going document through document, Bruce patiently explaining what every sheet means and what he has to do and how. If Dick is slowing him down -he certainly is- Bruce doesn’t say anything, he only smiles at him -a subtle raised corner of his lip- and keeps going on with relaxed shoulders. 

It’s nice, and it should be a 100% normal bonding activity, except every time Dick does something right and Bruce acknowledges it -with a park on his eyes or an appreciative noise- his stomach flutters. Except at some point Bruce’s hair catches the sun and the sight of dark hair shining at the edges makes Dick’s cheeks burn a little. 

Dick asks Bruce to close the curtains -maybe the warmth of the sun is coloring his cheeks- and makes him take a break so they can eat dinner together -maybe he is just hungry- before Alfred searches for them.

Dick has brushed the whole thing aside by the time they start getting ready for the night.

It starts innocently enough.

***

His hands are tiny against Bruce’s, his figure is a small thing next to Bruce when they are out of costume. Dick’s voice is soft, Bruce’s voice is deep and a grunt. 

The contrast works perfectly when they fight, Dick is the innocence, the hope and light. Bruce is the fear, the darkness, the justice.

The contrast is what makes Dick feel the distance between them.

By the time Dick turns thirteen he can’t fool himself anymore about how he feels, and at the moment he dares to acknowledge he starts to realize it’s an impossible goal. He starts to think maybe there’s more wrong with him than he thought.

***

Alfred thinks it’s funny.

Of course he does. He doesn’t understand Dick’s crisis and he only notices because Dick is an idiot who lets his guard down on his presence because he trusts him. Alfred knows him, and it’s hard to miss his blush on Bruce’s presence because Dick can’t control himself.

Dick sits moodily on the kitchen table with his breakfast in front of him and Alfred on the other side taking tea. Bruce had to go to work in the morning to clean something his employees did and therefore he left Dick to sulk alone -in Alfred’s company- in the Manor.

“Master Richard, I promise you Master Bruce won’t vanish on the air,” Alfred tells him, raising his steaming cup to his lips, “you can spend all the time you want with Master Bruce when he comes back.”

The last words are said with a quirk on Alfred’s lips.

Dick feels his cheeks hot, he kind of wants to curl on a ball and disappear.

“Alfie,” Dick whines, purposely light and childish.

Alfred wouldn’t laugh if he knew how deep his teasing cut Dick, but Dick is determined to not let him know how serious he is taking the whole situation. Dick prefers Alfred thinking it’s just a silly crush that it’s going to vanish in a while and a thing that they will laugh at in the future.

Dick wants to desperately believe it too.

“It’s not like that,” Dick grumbles with a pout.

He feels a little nauseous, but he still forces himself to eat. Alfred is not dumb, he would quickly realize something is wrong if he told him he isn’t hungry after just a little teasing.

Dick eats, and he prays silently to the gods he doesn’t believe in that his feelings will go away.

***

It’s just a harmless crush, Dick tells himself. He has had them before; it’s going to make him clumsy for a while and then it’s going to disappear in a month, or in three if he has really bad luck.

Except it is not, all his crushes had been on kids of his age. Some of them ended with shy kisses on his cheek, others with a sad rejection. All of them were temporary, moving from place to place meant he already knew nothing was going to last.

Bruce is different, he is older, permanent and Dick could get him in serious trouble if he said something out of place in the company of wrong people.

Dick stares at the open book on his lap without seeing the words. He needs to get a grip on himself, or someone is going to notice.

Perhaps Dick is just being overdramatic, perhaps Alfred is right, and Dick is just getting ahead of himself.

Time, Dick thinks, he just needs to give it time to disappear.

***

“Sometimes I regret choosing to wear this,” Dick murmurs, picking at his short cape.

It’s a cold day of February, and his legs are freezing. It seemed like a good idea to just copy paste his acrobat uniform from the circus into his vigilante uniform, but it was made with only gymnastic practice in mind, not with crime fighting in the middle of the night in mind. 

Bruce had agreed to let him use it without need to argue for it, he understood better than anyone the need to honor a past life lost on violence. Alfred had been the one that had resisted more, he had talked about how inappropriate and unsafe it was to wear, and Dick had understood it, really, but at the end it was a design his mom had put together for him. It was a design that reminded him that he needed to be better, he needed to relearn to be the light everyone said he was.

(He had to make himself cry a little to get Alfred off his back, which had made Bruce look at him so disapprovingly Dick felt bad for days.)

“You picked it out,” Bruce reminds him from where he is silently perched.

They are doing stakeouts in a warehouse and, while the job it’s a bit boring, Dick enjoys the opportunity to spend time alone with Bruce. It would be perfect if it wasn’t for the cold.

Dick flashes him a winning smile.

“I know. I still want to complain though, it makes me feel better,” Dick informs him.

Bruce huffs, but a tiny smile pokes out the corner of lips.

“We can do undercover work next,” he offers, “we have that tip from that mob boss that we have to check anyway.”

Dick feels warm all the sudden. He enjoys patrols, fights with the only purpose of winning, he likes the simplicity of bad puns, kicks and punches. But he has a talent in pretending and getting what he wants, and it’s something Bruce has transformed into a useful tool.

Maybe Bruce knows, maybe he doesn’t, but turning something Dick hates about himself into something that helps people -even in the form of information gathering- means more to him that he could probably imagine.

Dick gives Bruce a tiny smile, a real one. 

(He only gives them to Bruce because the last time he gave one to Alfred he got alarmed and proceeded to ask him what was wrong. No that he doesn’t mean any smile he gives him, but he exaggerates them to fit the image of the cheerful kid he wants to pretend he still is.)

“Yes, that would be nice,” He tells him softly.

Bruce turns back to the warehouse, satisfied.

***

Days turn into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. Time doesn’t stop because Dick is going through a crisis. Fights come and go, and cases don’t stop appearing. He learns to switch his mood depending on the situation he finds himself in, sometimes he can laugh and enjoy a good chase after a bad guy, other times Batman has to stop him from breaking more bones of people who left other people with empty eyes. 

Bruce lets him on sensible cases that Dick thinks he shouldn’t see. Murder scenes, sexual abuse, torture, trafficking, suicides. Dick’s takes them in stride, but if he were another kid -any other kid- he doesn’t think he could stomach some of the cases.

As Alfred predicted, Dick’s crush vanishes at the mark of three months. As Dick feared, it solidifies in something stronger.

***

He tries to get over it, he really does. 

Once he is in school, a public one in a good part of the city as he compromised, he tries to date -just shy kisses, hand holding, time spent together- but it always crumbles quickly for him. The girls he dates are nice, they’re kind and funny, but they also feel like they live in a different world than him. They’ve grown up sheltered, they have parents and siblings and spend their days under the sun and the mall, they cry because a friend didn’t invite them to a party or because their parents didn’t let them go, they avoid looking at misery, they ignore the kids on the streets, they don’t understand . Dick can’t blame them because they aren’t the problem.

He feels like he can’t connect with anyone who is not Bruce, not at the level he craves.

But he waits and waits and, just two months before he turns fourteen, he finally cracks and admits to himself that it seems like it’s not going to go away in the near future. 

He wants Bruce .

***

“Do you think Bruce is ever going to tie down?” Dick asks after breakfast a Sunday, while he is helping Alfred to wash dishes.

It’s a nice morning, a rare day where the sunlight decides to appear, and Dick is already planning to spend his day in the garden.

He makes sure to make his tone just mildly curious, like he just had the sudden thought.

Alfred doesn’t stop his cleaning, but he hums.

“I’m not certain, Master Dick,” he tells him, “he has never professed interest in marriage, but perhaps he will change his mind if he finds the right person... or perhaps he already found her.”

Dick keeps scrubbing, repressing a flinch.

“You’re talking about Selina,” he states levelly.

 Alfred smiles all soft and fond, just like he always does when he talks about Bruce.

“Wouldn’t that be lovely?” Alfred sighs, “if only they would stop dancing around each other.”

Dick stares at his reflection on a pan for a moment, stilling his movements. He still has baby fat on his cheeks and big blue eyes that makes him look younger. He couldn’t get further from Selina, who is pretty, taller and an adult .

“I do like her,” he says, because he does. She is funny and smart and always gives him small gifts when they stumble onto each other, “but I think Uncle Clark is a better option.”

He doesn’t think that. Uncle Clark looks at Louis Lane like she hung out the sun and the stars and everyone can see it. Bruce and Clark are close -Dick is pretty sure they’re best friends- but when they look at each other there’s no longing or anything.

Alfred just laughs.

“Yes, they would also be nice together,” Alfred humors him.

They fall into a comfortable silence after their small talk, but Dick can’t stop thinking about how he doesn’t have any chance with Bruce at the moment. 

Maybe in a couple of years he can build something real, maybe he can get what he wants. A steady life at Bruce’s side.

But to get that he needs to start shifting things now, while their relationship is still constantly changing and not clear. To get what he wants he needs to be sure of his decision, because he is going to need to make sacrifices to play the long run without guarantees.

Dick keeps scrubbing dishes on a rare sunny morning, feeling afraid as he weighs his options.

***

When Bruce laughs the corner of his eyes wrinkle. 

When he is sad, he gets quiet.

When he gets mad, he hides for a while to cool down when he is not under the cowl.

He takes his coffee with a spoon of sugar but prefers Alfred’s tea without it. 

He likes cookies, cake and ice cream even when he doesn’t eat it often and has a stash of candies under his bed that Alfred pretends not to know about.

Dick learns his tells, memorizes his habits, and treasures their time spent together.

The thought of staying forever at the sidelines, pretending he loves Bruce as a friend or a brother, makes him nauseous. Maybe he is just exaggerating, but he thinks the hurt will never go away if he doesn’t even try.

***

The plan he puts together is long -as in years - and Bruce will probably catch out quickly, but Dick can work with that.

The hard part is the first part.

***

He is nervous, but no longer unsure. Everything he is going to do is going to be a gamble and he knows it. 

What he is doing is possibly the stupidest thing he will ever try.

“Hey, Bruce, can we talk?” Dick asks after school.

He’s still in his uniform, with a hoodie over his uniform’s vest and a bunch of documents on his hands that he finished last night to help Bruce with his workload after another Arkham break. 

He is getting more and more involved in Wayne’s Enterprises now that he knows what to do, and Dick knows it won’t take long until Bruce starts bringing him to his work. Part of his plan is counting on it.

Bruce is sitting on his desk, yawning and sorting the things over his desk in piles.

He smiles when he sees Dick.

“Yes, of course,” he answers with a smile. 

Dick closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

He almost feels bad for what he is going to put him through.

Chapter Text

Dick likes subtlety, he finds comfort in unspoken words and delicate constructed situations that he can build with some nudges. He likes to think he’s good at it. 

Bruce is better than him at that game -which is fair enough- but he doesn’t enjoy it, and has trouble seeing through it when it comes down to people he cares about. Like and Alfred and Dick.

Dick thinks about mainly using it to get what he wants, but there are too many uncertainties. So many things that can get lost on misunderstandings and that can get confused for other things.

Straightforwardness would work better for Bruce, but it doesn’t make it less scary.

***

Dick is certain Bruce senses his nerves and hesitation when he sits in his usual seat in front of Bruce’s desk, he’s not trying to hide it -It’s kind of pointless when Bruce can see right through him- but he still feels more vulnerable without even trying to mask his expressions.

He leaves Bruce’s paperwork over the desk and tries to shoot him a reassuring smile that only makes Bruce scrunch his face on alarm.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, taking the paperwork and putting it aside. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

As always, Bruce is expecting the worst.

Dick rolls his eyes, relaxing a bit at Bruce’s familiar worry.

“I’m fine, B,” he tells him, crossing his arms and leaning more comfortably on his chair, “it’s just… It’s a delicate matter.”

Bruce doesn’t seem appeased by it, he keeps searching on his face for something that Dick is not hiding. Dick manages somehow to return the stare without faltering.

Dick chose the time to do this because of a lot of factors. Bruce is not busy anymore, he’s tired and less sharp, nobody is expecting any of them at any place and, most importantly, Alfred is out for a while on his weekly shopping trip. 

The manor feels enormous as always, but Dick takes comfort at the moment in the privacy and the knowledge that nobody, but Bruce, is going to hear him do this.

 “What is it?” Bruce asks warily.

Dick opens his mouth. He closes it and huffs in frustration when the courage he accumulated falters. 

“I think…” Dick starts slowly, watching close Bruce’s facial expressions, “I think I like you.”

The words are easy on his mouth, natural. Dick chose them because of their simplicity and the innocence related to them that, hopefully, will prevent Bruce from freaking out too much.

Bruce blinks, he looks taken back and confused.

“Thank you…?” Bruce says.

Dick sighs, already feeling a headache. He raises a hand to massage a temple on his head. 

“When I say I like you, I mean I like you - like you.”

Bruce raises his eyebrows, looking bewildered before he catches what he’s trying to say. 

Bruce’s face drains of color. 

Maybe Bruce would react differently if Dick was any other person, but he’s been at every step of Dick’s vigilante life and he has watched how much Dick struggles with acting like a normal teen -preteen? – and how he never reacts to things the way he’s supposed to.

Bruce has never made him feel bad for it, but this is a line Dick knows he is not going to cross without a push.

“Dick, I don’t- If there was something that makes you think-” Bruce’s stutters, looking pained and uncomfortable.

Dick forces himself to not divert his gaze even when he feels a little stab of pain in his chest.  

He already knew what was going to happen, he accounted for it. There’s no need to feel hurt. He knows this is only going to be the first rejection of many in the future. It’s just a reality, Bruce is a good man.

But the only thing he needs right now is to get the idea in the open, to crush any possibility from Bruce’s to see him as his child. Even if it hurts both of them.

“I know, B,” Dick says dryly, “I know you aren’t going to reciprocate a fourteen’s year-old feelings who is under your custody.” 

Bruce shifts on his seat, and his gaze sharpens a little in suspicion. He seems to be realizing that a confession from him is out of character. It’s not a secret Dick hates putting more on the table than he has to.

“You are a child, Dick, and I could never-“ Bruce cuts off his words with a grimace. “I could never, but you are telling me this for another reason, aren’t you?”

Dick nods and steels himself.

“It won’t go away,” Dick tells him with honesty, “I’ve been crushing on you since I was 12 and at this point, It doesn’t feel like it’s going to vanish.”

It’s the truth, something he has made peace with, and it makes Bruce look sick. 

“I don’t think you did anything in particular to make me feel this way,” Dick hurries to soothe him, “I just got unlucky.”

It doesn’t help, there’s more horror and chagrin in Bruce’s eyes than before. His face looks too pale and Dick is tempted to ask if he needs to go lay down for a bit.

Dick already knows Bruce is going to start blaming himself the moment he turns around.

“Okay,” Bruce says faintly, “I’m sure we can fix this, just give me a little bit of time, okay?”

There is no fixing , Dick wants to tell him but, instead, he drops his gaze to his lap and nods so Bruce can’t see his thoughts written on his face. 

He’ll humor Bruce with whatever he thinks he can do anyway.

“That was all,” he tells him before the silence stretches, “I’m going to do my homework now.” 

He gets up and doesn’t wait for an answer -he doesn’t know if Bruce can answer- to leave. 

The door closes with a soft sound after him.

***

It lands him on therapy, of course, it does. 

Dick witnessed his parent’s murder, he has tried to kill someone, he likes lying and pretending and he goes out every night in a costume to beat criminals instead of dealing with his issues but, of course, Bruce draws the line at the mere thought of a crush on him.

“Hi, Mister Wayne, Richard, you can take a seat wherever you like,” the nice lady who Dick’s been talking to for three weeks says.

Dick has only talked about his parents’ death with Misses Trevor and a little bit of his time in the orphanage. He has to admit therapy it’s not so bad. Re-telling what happened to him makes him feel lighter and more centered with himself.

He has not touched the reason why he landed in therapy in the first time -not that Misses Trevor has pushed- but it seems that she thought it would make Bruce less anxious if they could speed the process a little in some sessions. 

Family therapy is, or at least something close enough to -probably- analyze their dynamic. 

Dick slumps over a puff chair and with amusement how Bruce sits stiffly on a rigid chair at his side.

Dick already knows Bruce didn’t think the therapy thing too much and, as result, he doesn’t know how to act. He can’t be Brucie, and he can’t be Batman. He’s just regular awkward-allergic to communication Bruce.

“Is something you can think to make talking more comfortable?” she asks, eyes soft careful, “this type of session can get heavy.”

Her eyes are on Dick, probably thinking he’ll get awkward talking about his feelings, but he’s been stealing himself since the confession day. The one she should be worried about is Bruce.

“Do you have chess?” Dick says instead of throwing Bruce under the bus. 

She does. It’s a standard wood-made set that he puts between Bruce and him knowing it’ll be a nice distraction for Bruce and an excuse to not look at anyone if things get awkward. Bruce probably doesn’t need it to talk, but it doesn’t hurt to give him something to do in the session.

Bruce sends him a wary look, but he starts setting the pieces on the board without comment.

Bruce always gets the black pieces.

“You know why we are here today,” Misses Trevor says when they start playing. 

Dick hums, Bruce nods.

“I’m worried about Dick,” Bruce says bluntly, “His feelings aren’t… adequate.”

Internally, Dick rolls his eyes. Bruce can be so dramatic sometimes.

Misses Trevor nods, getting more comfortable on her chair.

“Has he ever done something inappropriate?” she asks.

Dick flicks his eyes to Bruce’s face. Of course he hasn’t, he is not stupid. Bruce already looks ready to bolt every time Dick passes time with him, a sign of his interest in him would only push him away.  

“He’s been getting flirty,” Bruce answers stone-faced.

It appears Bruce doesn’t think the same. Dick feels his hackles raise because he has not . He has made sure he behaves normally on patrols and when he helps him with paperwork.

“It’s called bantering, B,” Dick interrupts letting his offense show on his face, “if I had been trying to flirt you would have noticed.”

Bruce acts like he didn’t hear him.

“He gets flirty right before I go to work,” Bruce keeps going, looking straight to the therapist. “Touchy flirty,”

That’s not- Dick feels annoyance bubble inside him. 

Dick, against all odds, is still a touchy person. He likes to link arms with his school friends, hug people when he sees them and before they go. He likes sitting close to people and he doesn’t mind being squished between others.

Back in the circus, his parents would always have a hand on his hair, or over his shoulder, they would hug him many times during the day and let him fall asleep on their laps when they traveled. Everyone he knew would sit close without care, they would let him braid hair and fall asleep over everyone.

Bruce and he aren’t like that, but Dick still likes to try to touch him -graze his hand or his elbow- when Bruce is about to leave for several hours.

Dick’s disagreement must be all over his face because misses Travis looks at Dick, making an encouraging movement with her hands to make him talk. 

“Bruce doesn’t know what physical affection means,” Dick says flatly, flicking his eyes to the board, “and I refuse to be ashamed for how much I like hugs.”

Dick’s voice is not cold, but Bruce still seems to catch his honesty and irritation because he flinches almost imperceptibly. 

Dick lets his horse eat a peon.

***

Dick ends up actually liking therapy. There’s a lot he can’t discuss with Misses Travis because of his nightly activities, but overall, he likes talking to someone without feeling that he is burdening them. 

Alfred makes Bruce’s favorite dessert when he learns about it, and it becomes painfully obvious he doesn’t know why Bruce is making Dick go. 

He wonders what Bruce told him, but he never asks. Ignorance is bliss and all of that, after all.

***

“Did you actually arrange a playdate for me?” Dick hisses at Bruce.

Dick had been excited when Bruce had asked him to join him on the trip to the Hall of justice, he had met all their members at some point, but he didn’t want to lose a chance to see Uncle Clark and Diana again. 

He had been excited until he had realized everyone had brought their kids with them.

From their spot, close to the door of the Hall of Justice in the shadows, he can see Diana’s little sister -wonder girl? he thinks-, Flash’s nephew and the sidekicks of Aquaman and Green Arrow. Everyone with the exception of Green Arrow’s sidekick is bouncing on their heels.

“It’s actually for Wonder Girl,” Batman corrects him with a bored face, “Wonder Woman thought it would be good for her to have friends of her age.”

He’s not lying, but that doesn’t mean it’s the whole truth either. 

Dick eyes the black-haired girl talking excitedly to her sister, Diana probably told him her real name at some point, but he can’t remember it. She is dressed in a red shirt without sleeves with golden seams on the borders and Wonder Woman’s symbol in the middle, and blue panties with white stars, which Dick can’t really criticize without being a hypocrite. 

Dick glares at Bruce but, when they turn around to join the league, there’s an easy smile on his face already.

***

Their names are Speedy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, and Aqualad, and maybe it’s a little mean of him but when they present themselves he has to fake a cough to not laugh at his faces. They are eager to be out of their mentors’ shadows, but Dick knows that while they don’t change their names and costumes, they’ll be always tied to them.

Criticism aside, Dick finds himself reluctantly liking them.

They’re funny, light, and understand the itch under the skin that makes them act when someone needs help.

They’re also a bit weird, and at the end of the day, Dick smiles at his new five contacts on his phone.

Perhaps Bruce is hoping that one of them will catch the attention Dick has for Bruce, but what he accomplishes is making Dick’s fondness grow.

***

He celebrates his fifteen birthday two times, one in the manor and another with his new friends.

Bruce plays pretend. He pretends there’s nothing wrong with Dick, that Dick’s feelings are innocent, and that Dick doesn’t stare at him a bit too much. He pretends Dick’s normal.

Dick lets him, there will be time for the rest.

***

He jumps two grades. Bruce is hesitant to let him do it, but Dick’s vigilante image is not based on intelligence. Nobody thinks Robin is smart, they only link him to acrobatics, soft eyes, and bright smiles. 

Dick never tells anybody that even if Bruce said no, Dick was going to do it without his permission. 

Alfred gave him his blessing and that’s all he needs.

***

The first time someone calls Bruce his dad he’s fifteen and a half.

The only reporter he has talked to since he decided to do something about his feelings is Clark.  Clark never minds when he launches at him and calls him Uncle between giggles, and Dick likes him because there’s something calm and kind always on his eyes that always makes him better at giving advice.

He also gives out the best hugs.

Bruce drops him at his place for the weekend when he has to go on a short business trip, and it collides with Alfred’s free weekend. 

(Dick is the one who suggests it after Alfred tries to tell Bruce it’s fine, that he can take care of Dick for two days, but he has skipped too many free days and Dick feels sick with guilt.)

They’re eating take-out while Dick talks excitedly about how Bruce is formalizing a special paid internship on his company for him when Clarks says it.

“Do you think your dad is going to give you his company in the future?” Clark muses out loud, looking inside his almost empty Chinese food container.

He doesn’t mean anything by it, but it makes Dick’s chatter stop abruptly, because nobody has called Bruce his dad before, and the fact that it came from someone so close to him makes it worse.

It makes his stomach turn.

Clark raises his head when Dick doesn’t respond.

Dick knows his face is blank, washed of all emotions. Something he normally does only with Bruce.

“Please, don’t call him that,” Dick tells him quietly and softly, a sweet threat on his voice that he can’t avoid putting there even when he knows Superman could crush him with a hand.

Clarks looks at him with alarm.

“Dick, are you okay?” he asks hesitantly, reaching a hand to touch him on the forehead.

 Dick lets him.

“Just don’t do it,” Dick answers still quietly, “he is not my dad.”

He could be back to act cheerfully in a second, pretend that small bump never happened, and resume his conversation, but Clark is not stupid. Clark would notice Dick is more than what it meets the eye, he would realize there’s something wrong with him. He would be unsettled.

(He wouldn’t like him anymore.)

Instead, what he does is ask, “Can I use your bathroom?”

He plays the upset teen that is trying his best to calm down, he goes to the bathroom, comes back, and makes up a lie about him still being sensible over his parent’s death (it makes him feel guilty to use them that way, but it’s the best he has) and Clark eats it up.

Dick’s heartbeat is calm during the whole process.

Lying is always so easy for him, and it always makes him wonder if the people he loves would still love him knowing the real him, all his sharp edges, and the fakeness that follows him most of the time.

***

Bruce and Dick are in a limbo.

Misses Travis tells Bruce Dick’s crush is going to vanish with time, that it’s not uncommon for teens to have crushes on people they look up to. She tells Bruce he can’t stop spending time with Dick for it, but he needs to put boundaries in place in case things escalate. Overall, she thinks it’s harmless.

Bruce knows better.

He tries to distance himself from Dick, he stops talking about what he did in the league, how did his meeting with Uncle Clark went, what did Diana gossip with him. He only talks about night and day work and cases. He encourages him to join a team with his friends, to go on long missions with them so they can’t spend time together during patrols.

It hurts, but Dick was already expecting it, and it’s worth it when Bruce starts slowly looking more resigned. Even if he’s still wary. Even if he doesn’t return his feelings.

That’s the longest part of what he has to do: the space he has to give Bruce to process without spooking him, proving himself of being able to put aside his feelings to work with Bruce and trying to make Bruce accept that it won’t go away. It’s a slow process. It’s maddening.

***

One thing that doesn’t disappear is the deep understanding they have for each other, their mutual ability to translate a lip twitch or a silence. Dick always knows when Bruce wants coffee, when he hasn’t slept or when he hides an injury. It makes fights and cases a choreographed dance. Together they surpass the odds, they win fights that would seem impossible and communicate without the need for words. They trust completely in each other in the field, and it pays off.

Dick is not the perfect soldier; he doesn’t just follow Bruce’s orders. He knows how to recognize when Bruce is over his head when he is fighting. He knows when he has to improvise and go against the script. Dick is not Bruce’s sidekick; he is his partner.

That’s why Dick and Bruce don’t do fights. They’ve had arguments and disagreements in the past, that’s true, but they’re always resolved quickly.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that they can’t stay that way forever, but it does.

***

He is almost sixteen when everything falls apart. 

***

“You should have been beside me from the start.” Bruce- Batman growls.

From the beginning, Dick knew the conversation wasn’t going to end well. He knows Bruce, and that means he knows the face of irrational fear and anger that clouds his judgment at times. He knows Bruce can’t be reasoned with like that, he knows it can last hours or months.

Bruce has never done that with him.

“I’m supposed to be your partner, not your errand Boy-Wonder,” Dick argues back against his better judgment. 

The wisest thing to do would be to hide for a while to give time to Bruce to cool down, and Dick would do it if only Bruce hadn’t decided to corner him on the medical wing of the cave the moment he woke up after being shot by the Joker. And after that nasty fall that sprained his ankle.

He should at least refuse to answer Bruce, but Bruce is doing a good job at angering him on return.

“Lately, you’ve been neither.”

Bruce is starting to raise his voice. Dick refuses to do the same, but it’s getting harder to keep his voice even.

“It was your idea for me to join the Teen Titans,” Dick’s voice is strained, “you can’t blame for this after pushing me away.”

Bruce ignores what he says, and it makes his cold anger start to burn.

What right does he have to feel hurt for Dick spending time with his friends when he was the one who arranged the whole thing? 

“This is a war, Dick,” Batman fumes, “Robin is my second, my lieutenant. Anything less than total devotion to this cause is simply wasting my time.”

The hypocrisy is almost unbelievable.

“Then, I can leave the Teen Titans and stay here if that’s the problem,” Dick offers, because -while having a team of friends is nice- they wouldn’t disappear if he decided to leave the team.

It’s a simple solution, but even as he says it, he knows it’s not going to work. 

He sees it in Bruce’s eyes. Him getting late to a fight it’s not the only reason.

“Bruce…” Dick softens his voice when he catches Bruce’s glance at his shoulder and bruises. “I’m okay.”

Bruce’s face twists in a snarl at getting caught. 

“I should’ve never let you fight,” Bruce snaps at him. “You almost died tonight, Dick, and had you, the Joker would not have been responsible, I would.”

“Bruce-”

“We’ve been lucky,” Bruce talks over him, “In what I do, there is no place for a child.”

Dick’s anger comes back rushing in.

“A child,” Dick repeats flatly.

Bruce turns his back to him, and he doesn’t look at him when he says, “You’re fired, Dick. Get out of my cave.”

***

It should be the end of it. Dick can work without being Bruce’s partner during the nights.

Except Robin is his, not Bruce’s. It helps him in ways he never thought about, it grounds him, it makes him feel like someday he can become someone his parents would be proud of if they were still alive. There were things he was willing to sacrifice, but somehow the situation crosses a line Dick wasn’t aware of.

Anger can be used as a tool if someone knows how to use it, but overall, it’s dangerous from Dick’s point of view. It makes people make bad decisions and burn bridges.

Dick, unfortunately, it’s just human.

He packs a bag that night and goes to Alfred to say goodbye. He doesn’t explain what happened, but he hugs him tightly and promises to call every night. 

(It breaks his heart how shaken Alfred looks when he announces he is leaving before dawn. It hurts him to hear him promise he’ll talk to Bruce, that he can fix whatever Bruce did. It makes his eyes burn realize he is leaving his parent behind in such an empty house without explanations.)

He wants to hurt Bruce, he wants to make him lose something as important as Robin is for him.

Before leaving, Dick takes a shower, and -with only a towel around his hips- he slips in Bruce’s room to burn a last bridge.

(Dick knows deep down that Bruce still sees him as a child, and that at Dick’s apparent lack of interest in doing something inappropriate Bruce has gotten complacent. 

He takes away Bruce’s hope of having a normal relationship. He takes away the small oasis they had between them.)

(The night ends with Bruce’s horrified screams and a heated screaming match between them. 

It ends with Dick getting dress up in a minute and just walking away without turning to look back.)

Chapter Text

There is one problem Dick doesn’t account for the moment he decides to leave the manor- well, there are more than one, because it seems, through his rage, he has forgotten his common sense.

But the first one he notices is that his face is a known one . 

People in Gotham are obsessed with Bruce Wayne, and it doesn’t matter if Dick has been avoiding the spotlight since he was thirteen, people know his face. It’s always from a lucky shot or an invasive reporter, but they know how Bruce’s ward looks, and the photos always extend to other places. Like Jump city, where the Teen Titans operate.

If people catch up with the wind of Bruce’s and Dick’s fight the situation it’s going to get messier with the media involved. Letting a fifteen-year-old leave to another state alone it’s not going to reflect well on Bruce.

Every time he goes out as his civilian person he is recognized when he doesn’t put a disguise on. It makes his skin itch because he’s aware it’s a ticking bomb.

He stays in the Titan’s Tower for the first months, still trying to be Robin with his team and taking trips back to Gotham for his school and his work at his internship. There are more people going out and in than before and, while Dick likes not being alone, he finds himself growing more and more restless living between his friends. He feels stuck.

He starts making a program to systematically wipe out his face from every website, but it’s not enough. They always recognize him. 

They always ask for a photo, and Dick knows it’s just a matter of time before a gossipy magazine or a newspaper catches the wind of his living situation.

It’s a tricky situation, and he can’t think of anything to solve it.

That’s it until Zatanna comes to stay in the city for a while to follow a case.

***

Adults aren’t the most helpful when teens ask for help, Dick has come to learn.

Bruce had been an exception -as always- but the other heroes and mentors always have had trouble understanding certain struggles of Dick’s friends -which was one of the first reasons they formed the Teen Titans- and not taking them seriously when they came to them.

Perhaps, it’s because they’re teens, and in their eyes, they’re too emotional and they don’t have problems. And to be fair, Dick can kind of understand it, he knows his friends look too dramatic without context. 

(Wally’s first break up with a girl of his school had looked overdramatic for a two-month relationship, but Dick had held his best friend through his tears and had felt his heart hurt at his friend’s pain. At the time, Dick would have done anything to soothe him, even if it would have involved hurting someone else.)

If he were to ask to Zatanna for a charm to hide his presence or camouflaged him or something he’s pretty sure she would believe he’s exaggerating. She would be kind about it, but she wouldn’t help him.

Besides, Zatanna regulates too closely magic artifacts. She probably wouldn’t consider Dick to be responsible enough for one.

To be taken seriously, Dick concludes, she should have the impression his situation is affecting him too much, and that’s something he can actually do.

***

“I wish they would just leave alone,” Dick sniffles quietly.

He’s curled up in a chair inside Zatanna’s trailer, and he’s taking plenty advantage of the knowledge that he is small looking, and that he looks pathetic in a cute way when he cries- or fake cries, he supposes. 

(He can’t remember the last time he cried for real.)

Zatanna hands him another handkerchief, her face scrunched in worry. She has had a hand on his back for the last half an hour, trying to comfort him.

He’s been going to her the last few weeks sporadically, making himself cry every time a reporter harasses him and watching her get more worried with every passing day. 

He knows everyone is aware of his falling out with Bruce, he had discussed it with Clark a few days after the fight -with a censored version- and a couple of days he had regretted it after realizing he had told everyone (Dick hadn’t asked him to be discreet, but he thought it was implied ). Zatanna is not the exception, and he’s sure she is convinced he’s going to her because he isn’t talking to Bruce and Clark is often busy.

“Oh, hon, I’m sorry,” she soothes, and the pity on her eyes gets the heaviness Dick has been waiting for.

He blows his nose and directs his gaze to Zatanna’s reflection on a window to hide the way he is gauging her reaction.

“I just- the press was bad before but now-” Dick interrupts himself like he can’t find the right words, “every time they ask about- you know who- I can’t stop myself from remembering I wasn’t good enough for him and-”

Dick makes his words break in the middle of the sentence.

“-I wish there was a way to make them stop noticing me,” he finishes in a whisper.

She goes still, her hand freezes over his back. 

Too straightforward then, but there’s no going back to choose smoother words. He pretends he doesn’t notice. 

He scrubs his eyes and gives her a small smile in the silence that follows his words like he doesn’t notice what he just said.

“I’m sorry, for taking your time,” he tells her, maintaining a wobble on his voice, “but thank you, for listening.”

Her face softens just like that again.

“Any time, kiddo,” she promises, and she sounds like she means it.

Being called a kid is annoying, but Dick makes sure not to let his irritation show. He hugs her before going out again. 

He tries to find guilt inside him for what he is doing but -surprise, surprise- he just feels numb.

***

He is not surprised when Zatanna offers to help him, but he is surprised when she does it the very next time they see each other. 

She wrings her hands in front of him the whole time, her eyes darting around nervously.

Dick truly thought it would take at least another week for her to break.

After his daily sob session, when he seems to calm down, she takes a deep breath and offers him the solution.

“I can make them forget you,” she announces, “only the people who is not close to you. Friends and people with an emotional bond to you will keep their memories.”

He stares at her -taken back- because he was not expecting that, and It must show on his face because Zatanna rushes to explain herself further.

“It would be tricky, but I know it can be done safely and it would stop people from harassing you,” she tells him, her face hardening. “You are a kid, Dick, you shouldn’t have to endure those horrible people treating your life like it’s their business.”

Dick thinks he should be pleased with how the situation is turning in his favor. In reality, he starts feeling dread pooling on his stomach as she keeps talking about the process, and how unpainful it’s.

If there was one thing Batman always drilled on his head was responsibility. 

As partners on the field, they always found themselves making difficult choices and heavily relying on ethics. Dick has found again and again that Bruce doesn’t forget that criminals are people, and he had always made sure Dick remembered it when he needed it. Sometimes Dick was sure Bruce gave too many chances -someday, Dick swears, it’s going to backfire at them- but in the end, he understood why. They don’t consider themselves heroes, but they still have to be better. They can’t dance on the dangerous line where morality get blurry, they can’t afford to slip. 

(Bruce had told him once he felt like if he slipped he could never come back from it, and that he was afraid Dick was the same, even when he -Dick- didn’t feel like that.)

The point, people are people, and there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed and things that should be respected. The mind, Dick believes, is one of them, and more when it comes to civilians who are annoying but not that harmful. 

And sure, Dick’s morals are already kind of gray -the fact that he went to Zatanna in the first place is proof enough- but even he can’t ignore the easiness in the way Zatanna talks about manipulating memories for so many people like she had done it before enough times to not consider how bad that sounds.

He only wanted Zatanna to offer him a way to hide in plain sight, not this.

“I-I don’t know what to say,” Dick stammers when she finishes, and he’s being truthful.

Her nervous movements stop, her eyes get a bit sad.

Dick, suddenly, has a bad feeling about the whole situation. 

“You don’t have to say yes, Dick,” she assures him, “I just thought I would offer.”

She looks regretful now, and not in an ‘I regret offering this’ way, but in an ‘I’m sorry for what I’m going to do’ way. 

Dick’s mind runs the math quickly. 

If he were Zatanna, he wouldn’t want the risk of somebody spilling out even the minimal hint that he’s doing something unethical. In Zatanna’s eyes, he’s only a kid, and kids tend to tell other people about things they don’t feel comfortable with. 

Zatanna can manipulate memories, and she doesn’t seem to feel like it’s a big deal.

Dick’s mouth feels dry.

He raises his eyes to her face and forces himself to fake the most grateful expression he can make. 

“You don’t have any idea how much that would mean to me,” he tells her, making himself tear up, “Thank you, Zatanna.”

He hugs her and ignores the way Zatanna’s face melts in relief.

His heart beats a little too fast to pretend he’s unaffected, but Zatanna is not Superman and she has no way to know about it.

***

Walking around the streets with his bare face feels weird.

No one turns to watch him anymore, and it feels kind of nice to be just another face in a crowd.

He wishes he could enjoy it more but, instead, hot shame invades him when he remembers the circumstances.

Shame for accepting, for daring to be afraid, for breaking Bruce’s moral codes, and just proving to be a disappointment.

(He knows Bruce will think the worst of him when he finds out because Dick has proved to have poor decision-making skills when he’s upset.)

He feels tainted, in the way he felt when he realized Gotham twisted his heart beyond recognition.

It doesn’t take him too long after the incident to finally take a break from Robin.

***

The air is cold when Dick goes out. He only has a thin sweater on him, and he should probably get a coat before he gets sick, but inside his apartment seems to be just as cold, so does it even matter? He puts his hands on his pockets and stares at the heavy clouds in the sky. Perhaps it will rain, or it will snow. Gotham it's unpredictable like that.

His apartment is close to crime alley, just close enough that the tenant didn’t bat an eye when he asked for a room even when it’s obvious he is not eighteen. He just handed the money, and nobody asked any questions. A little bit worrying, but it works in his favor for now.

It's been over a year since the last time he talked to Bruce.

Dick starts to move on the sidewalk. It’s getting darker and he wants to come back before the night falls, he is not afraid of being assaulted but getting cocky it’s always a mistake.

He walks slowly to the convenience store a couple of streets away. It’s a wash-up building with chapped paint and dubious cleanliness, but everything it sells it’s cheap, and since Dick was stupid enough to not steal a credit card from Bruce before going away, he can’t afford to lose any penny on his pocket.

Most of his money comes from Bruce’s paid internship, which credit card was thankfully being kept between his possessions. The first thing Dick had done after their fight, and after realizing he couldn’t afford to end the internship, was to call Lucius to ask if he could move departments one floor below Bruce. He had sprouted lies about wanting to expand his knowledge to make Bruce proud, and Lucius had believed him.

Dick is not even sure if Bruce knows he still works on Wayne’s Enterprises. Lucius is a busy man, and it’s possible he thought Bruce and he had talked about it beforehand and didn’t bother to mention it to Bruce. It’s probable that the thought of Dick still being on Wayne’s Enterprises hasn’t passed by Bruce’s mind.

It doesn’t really matter at the end; he hasn’t seen a hair from Bruce since their fight.

Alfred always tells him on the phone Bruce misses him, and Dick knows it’s true on an instinctual level, but he is stubborn, and he refuses to back down and come back with a tail between his legs.

(Dick misses him so hard sometimes it hurts almost physically.)

His high school graduation was attended by all his friends, plus Alfred. They had gone to eat at a restaurant, and he had spent the whole evening turning to his right expecting to see Bruce’s exasperated but reluctantly amused face, only to be faced with Wally’s smile. It had soured his mood every single time.

The convenience store bell jingles when he opens the door, the girl behind the register looks up quickly -probably to make sure he is not someone dangerous- and then resumes her lecture on a magazine over the counter when she recognizes him as a regular. 

The shelves inside are cluttered with things, with only a small space to pass between the aisles. It’s not neatly organized, and every odd week they change the place from the products, but he is already used to it. 

It feels almost nostalgic to hunt for sales. His parents had started to teach him how to spot them before they passed away.

He picks up the carton of eggs, cereal, and milk he needs and pays the girl.

Outside, a slight rain has started to fall.

Dick sighs.

***

He still doesn’t know what to do about Bruce, but he still wants him.

Time passes, he signs up for a local college and chooses the Business track, still childishly gripping at the hope that one day Bruce will let him stay at his side even at work. He could think of plans -he is sure he can make miracles with the situation on his hands- but thinking about Bruce and their fight hurts him.

He leaves Robin behind, and lets Nightwing raise from his ashes, and, somedays, he swears Bruce watches him from afar at the side Dick chooses from Gotham to protect.

Life goes on, but Dick doesn’t stop thinking about him.

Chapter Text

There is a small restaurant in the heart of Gotham Heights. 

Their drinks are terrible, and their food is mediocre at best, but Dick has been working on the establishment for a couple of months as a waiter since he turned eighteen, and he has come to discover that the tips are not only good, but they are also great . It normally takes a little flirting, but customers can be generous.

He receives discounts on the menu. It has quickly become one of his favorite places to meet up with his friends when they have the time to travel to Gotham. 

His friends hate it, so when he spots Barbara pushing its crystal doors with a condescending expression, he knows she is not coming for a social call. 

He waits for her to sit at a table before notifying one of his co-workers he is taking his lunch break early. It’s a slow hour, so they wave him away without a thought.

“Hey Babs, I ordered a black coffee for you and food,” Dick says with a grin as a greeting, sliding on the seat in front of her with a smile.

He doesn’t bother to hide the way he tracks the way she tucks a bright strand of her red hair behind her ear.

They had been starting to become friends before his fight with Bruce, and he had played the role of a teenager crushing hard on her to gather the information Bruce wanted from her the months leading to that night. After the fight, Dick hadn’t bothered to correct himself. There hadn’t been time, he had mostly moved to another city and dropped all contact with her.

A mistake, because now he is aware Barbara’s loyalties currently lay with Bruce.

She had been the first to start the contact again after he came back to Gotham to stay, and Dick is eighty percent sure it’s because Bruce asked her to do it. He is also ninety percent sure that most of the information from their talks it’s going to him.

It’s annoying, but he does enjoy talking to someone in person who is not a co-worker or a classmate, and keeping up with the act of him crushing hard on her makes her less careful with her words and the information she sometimes accidentally drops.

“Hey, Dick,” she greets him back, giving him a smile of her own, “thank you, how is it going?”

As always, he wants to say, he has been staying awake until unholy hours in the morning, trying to balance the school load from finals, the paperwork from the R&D department from Wayne Enterprises, taking extra shifts in the restaurant so he can afford to buy the books he is going to need the next semester and going out most nights to patrol the city. Most of his money goes to his nightly activities because being a vigilante it’s ridiculously expensive.

On the good side, being aware of how expensive medical care is, and how pricey is to get his equipment has made him more cautious during his patrols and fights.

“Good,” he says, keeping up his smile, “school and work have maintained me busy, but summer is close, so I’m hoping I can rest a little more in school break, you?”

Things are calm, Barbara tells him while their drinks and food come to the table. It appears that being Gotham City public library head it’s not that exciting, but it pays the bills. Dick is jealous.

“I do like helping people around,” she tells him while she takes a polite bite on her sandwich, managing to not grimace at the cold meat in the center, “but the slow days make me wish for a robbery in the bank across the street, or for a false bomb alert, you know?”

Dick knows work can be so dull. 

Their conversation seems to be calm and nice, just two friends just updating each other on their life, but Dick is not surprised at all when Barbara steers the conversation to Bruce. She always does it.

“He’s having a benefaction gala soon in the Manor,” she says at some point, direct as always, “It’s important, you could go.”

Dick makes her a face.

He doesn’t know what Bruce told her to always try to make him go back, or if she is doing it without prompting. Actually, the latter seems more likely. Dick can’t picture Bruce talking to her -or anyone- about what happened. She probably just sees him as a clueless teen who doesn’t know what he is doing and who can’t survive on his own.

Dick is not sure if she is aware he’s doing okay all things considered. He normally just talks to her about his classes and the fleeting works he has been in. 

“No, hear me out, I truly think you should go,” she insists, scrunching her eyebrows, “I’m not supposed to say anything but- well, there is… a new development.”

Dick has to give it to her, she can sound really vague when she wants to.

He squints at her. She doesn’t sound alarmed about it so it can’t be something too bad.

“Is he dying?” he asks her just to be annoying.

Barbara looks exasperated.

“No, Dick, he’s not dying, just-” she moves her hands around her coffee, “just go to the gala, okay? I know you still get their invitations.”

He does, they get automatically send to his e-mail, and Lucius sometimes hands him in person some of them.

“I’ll think about it,” he lies with his best imitation of honesty.

He doesn’t need the topic of Bruce ruining a perfectly fine day for him.

Barbara stands up, drinking her coffee on a go and not bothering to pick up the rest of her sandwich.

“Thank you,” she says sounding relieved, “I have to go now, but I’ll see you around, wonder boy.”

She pays for her meal and goes away as quickly as she entered. It’s normal for her to do so, leave after she feels like the business she came for is done. 

Dick waves at her with a false dopey smile and wonders absently if she even likes him.

***

The Gala still hasn’t come when Dick learns why Barbara wanted him to go to the Manor.

Dick is having a good morning the day he hears the news. He is making his daily stretching routine and starting to walk on his hands just for fun with the TV on in some random news channel.

It’s a rare day where he doesn’t have anything to do, and nowhere to be. He doesn’t have any classes nor work on his internship or a shift at the restaurant. 

He is planning to stay at home all day, just doing laundry, cleaning, and getting groceries. Maybe getting some homework done if he feels particularly productive.

But then the news about a traffic jam ends, and he sees it.

A small figure in the news smiling.

One of the last reminders of his past life.

His colors.

Robin.

It feels like a punch on the stomach. 

The careful balance of his weight on his hands wobbles, one of his wrists bends.

He falls with a curse.

***

“You are lucky your wrist didn’t break,” Leslie tells him while she wraps his wrist on a bandage, “You aren’t quite bad as the others, but you need to be more careful.”

Dick takes her lecture with an embarrassed look on his face and follows her figure as she moves around the room. Leslie doesn’t ask where or how he fell, but he assumes she is less grumpy than usual because it’s obvious he didn’t get hurt during patrol.

“You know the drill, don’t use your wrist for two days, and avoid putting too much strain on it for at least two weeks,” she says, and she gives him a pat on the back.

He goes back to his apartment after thanking her. A sprained wrist it’s something small for people like Bruce or Barbara, but Dick forte is gymnastics. He does jumps, flips, somersaults, and balancing, and he is painfully aware a permanent injury on his wrists or ankles would condemn him to the need to retire or to a life of chronic pain. 

Bruce had thought Dick was weird for being so obsessed with caring for his ligaments, but careless with stabs or shot wounds.

It all comes back to him, Dick thinks bitterly.

***

Dick hasn’t heard from Bruce for a long time.

He only has seen him from afar, talking in some corridors with other people in Wayne’s enterprises, in magazines, in the TV.

He has been meaning to talk to him for some time now, since the day he realized he was tired of feeling mad. Since the day he found his longing getting stronger than his anger.

Of course, he hadn’t done it for a lot of reasons. He didn’t know how Bruce was going to react, he didn’t want Bruce to think that he could pull out bullshit like that all the time, he didn’t want to give the impression he’ll always crawl back, he didn’t want to appear to be pathetic. But he has been thinking of him every single day, wondering how he is, what cases is he working on and how he has been sleeping.

Hearing about a new Robin feels like a slap on the face.

His anger boils again. It feels like Bruce taking away Robin from him all over again.

Dick knows he should wait for his anger to cool down again before doing something stupid, but the situation doesn’t feel like something that it could wait. 

Once he learns about the new Robin it’s like he can’t stop seeing him everywhere, from graffiti on the street to the newspapers. He itches to track him down during the night, but with his sprained wrist and the poor judgment he carries when he is mad, he can’t see how that could end well.

The gala it is.

On the day of the event, he asks for the day free on his work and puts on his best suit in the afternoon. He gets to the Manor in a taxi when the place is already bustling with people, ignoring the crawling sensation on his skin he feels when he puts a foot on the property. 

The over the top decoration and the buffet table is nostalgic. Dick remembers being twelve and avoiding ladies who liked to pinch his cheeks, he remembers Bruce calmly telling him the names of the important business partners he needed to keep happy, and Bruce exuding smugness when Dick managed to enchant a crowd of people after someone made a nasty comment about him.

Dick had enjoyed the galas back then, he was good with people, and it always felt like an undercover job, where the only thing he had to do was to appear charming and innocent. It used to feel just like another partnering job with Bruce. 

Now, he feels uncomfortable as he mingles in the crowd. 

The Manor isn’t his home anymore, and he feels no longer welcome.

***

He spots Bruce an hour in, in the middle of a group of people, laughing with a group of investors. He was half expecting to not run into him at all, and the sight of him startles him badly. The grip of the glass of champagne on his hand wavers.

He looks good on the black suit he is wearing, with a blue tie of the same shade of his eyes and the end of his hair curling ever so slightly at the nape of his head. 

For a moment he forgets why he is there in the first place, the longing and sorrow drowns his anger in a violent tide.

Bruce meant everything to him -he still does, if Dick is being honest with himself- he was his partner and friend. He looked at the broken pieces Dick was and stretched his hand for him to take regardless.

Dick hasn’t wanted to think about it, but maybe he is just making a fool of himself. Perhaps Bruce finally forgot about him and moved on, and Dick making a scene is going to be the last straw to finish destroying what it’s left of the mess of their relationship. The new Robin seems like proof of it, proof that Dick wasn’t special at all.

Dick is mad, he is sad, he feels like he can’t breathe properly. He misses the easiness he shared with Bruce. He misses the long patrols with Batman’s cape around his shoulders, the comfortable silence shared in the middle of the night, the conversations of cases in the cave, the long afternoons looking over paperwork, and the secret smiles between them. 

He misses feeling complete at Bruce’s side.

They are strangers now, Dick thinks, distraught gripping at his heart. He doesn’t know if Bruce has acquired new habits, if he still has the same routine or if he still uses the same brand of shampoo. He doesn’t know if he’s still able of understanding him with a look.

He feels faint, maybe attending wasn’t such a good idea after all.

He forces himself to rip away his eyes from Bruce’s chiseled jawline to walk stiffly to the buffet table, picking and stuffing canapés on his mouth without truly tasting them, nervously darting his eyes to Bruce’s figure. He has to wait for Bruce to be alone, anyway.

(Robin was his . It doesn’t matter if Dick never had any real claim over Bruce, his mom gave him that name and he has the right to fight over it.)

“Gross,” a small voice whispers, almost too quiet to be heard.

Dick would ignore it if he wasn’t eager to distract himself from his ongoing breakdown. He doesn’t have to look far, he just has to turn his head to his left to connect his gaze to a dark-haired kid hiding behind a pillar in the salon, close to the buffet table where Dick is standing. 

The kid startles badly when he realizes Dick is looking at him. The kid’s face turns defensive.

Dick has just a second to analyze him before the kid hides most of his body behind the pillar again. It’s a bony kid, thin and a little short. He looks a bit scruffy, the blazer of his suit is open, his white shirt is untucked and stained in what he suspects it’s grape juice. His suit also looks more expensive than Dick’s entire department.

Dick feels a bit bad for scaring the kid. He thinks he would also be grossed out if he saw someone stuffing his mouth with food without chewing.

“Sorry,” Dick apologizes sheepishly, mouth still full, putting down the canapes he was about to keep shoving down his throat.

The kid peeks out his head again, bright blue eyes squinting at him. Whatever the kid seems to find, it makes his shoulders lose tension.

“I wasn’t talking about the food,” the child tells him warily.

Dick checks his suit to make sure he didn’t spill anything on it. It’s an expensive one, one of the few pieces of clothes Alfred gifted him when he realized Dick had grown another inch on his last birthday. Dick would get upset with himself if he managed to ruin it after the first put on.

“I was talking about the fucking puppy eyes you were making at Bruce,” the kid blurts out.

That’s- not what Dick was doing.

Dick can feel himself getting defensive in return. It’s kind of his fault for getting so worked up in public, but he doesn’t like people pointing out things he’s sore about, and Bruce’s topic is in the top of those things.

“I was not making puppy eyes at him,” Dick denies, frowning.

Even if he did, he thinks he should be forgiven. It’s the first time he is seeing Bruce in person since he was fifteen.

The kid snorts in disbelief, stepping out from the pillar to get closer to Dick.

“You’re the third person I’ve seen mooning over him,” the kid says crossing his arms, “Are you one of his ex-hook-ups?”

The kid couldn’t get further away from the truth, but wow, that surprisingly hurts .

(He’s nothing to Bruce, and the remainder that Bruce still sleeps with other people stings.)

Dick bristles and, for a second, he seriously considers getting in a verbal fight with a child that looks no older than ten. Luckily, he knows better to cause a scene over Bruce in the middle of a Gala. 

“Where are your parents?” Dick asks, ignoring the kid’s question. With his luck maybe he’s the child of a reporter helping his parents to dig out dirt on Bruce.

The kid’s face closes, his eyes turn guarded. A sore point then, perhaps absent parents, or dead ones. The former is more likely for rich kids, but -aside from his clothes- he doesn’t look like a rich kid, nor talks like one. Maybe he is the son of a worker or one of the kids invited for their scholarships.  

Dick is actually starting to feel sympathetic for the kid when his face turns challenging.

“He’s the one you’re fawning over,” the boy says defiantly, like he’s expecting Dick to laugh at his face.

Whatever Dick was expecting to hear, that’s not it.

His world tilts, and the straightens so quickly Dick feels dizzy. It feels like someone pulled a rug out from under his feet.

Dick blinks rapidly, trying to process parent and Bruce in the same sentence.

He knew Robin had to come from somewhere, but he hadn’t stopped to think who the kid was to Bruce, or how did Bruce manage to get someone to wear the costume. He had been too busy feeling pity for himself and rage over the whole matter.

“Did he adopt you?” He asks skeptically, but he looks more careful over the kid. “I haven’t heard about Bruce getting a kid.”

He looks about ten, so much younger than Dick was when he was Robin, and now that he knows what to look for, he sees it. A kid who isn’t used to being dragged to galas in tidy suits. Wildness on his eyes, a tense stance, like he is expecting a fight at any second.

He has the distrustful look on his face that the street kids wear every single time Dick approaches them to bring them food, clothes, blankets or to ask them questions.

The kid’s face turns pink and annoyed.

To Dick’s surprise, he gives a sharp nod while looking like he is wishing to be anywhere else. 

“He thought it would be better to present me in a controlled environment, whatever that means,” he mumbles, his posture deflating like a punctured balloon, dragging his feet.

It does make sense. Bruce and he had done the same thing when he was twelve. They had gone to a relative pacific Gala and restricted the entering to only a couple of handpicked reporters. But that had been a plan they had fitted only for Dick because he knew how to smile and make people coo around him. 

It had involved a lot of talking, socializing, and pretending to fit in with rich people. It had been exhausting, but it had paid off after the general consensus had stayed in Dick being a charming and polite child.

For the state of the clothes of the kid, Dick has the sensation his case isn’t going to be the same.

“Has any reporter talked to you yet?” he surprises himself asking, “or took a photo?”

The kid wrinkles his nose adorably and shakes his head.

Dick hesitates. He could leave, let the kid make a mess for Bruce to fix. Nobody would hold it against him, nobody would even start to think he could have helped.

But the kid is tiny, God, was Bruce truly letting him go out as Robin?

“Have you talked to anybody at all?” he is hoping the answer is going to be no, as unlikely as it is.

The child takes one of the canapes Dick was shoving on his mouth minutes before.

He examines it.

“Yeah,” the kid pops a canapé on his mouth, “didn’t go so well.”

Between his teeth, the kid whispers almost inaudibly, “Bunch of rich assholes all of ‘em.”

Dick could leave. He really should. The kid doesn’t know what he is doing and probably to this point all the elite socialites are bad-mouthing the kid. 

He has it on him to leave the kid to the sharks, he knows it. He doesn’t even like him, he stole Robin from him and is wearing his colors without knowing the story behind them.

Except the kid looks lost, and it pulls a heartstring that Dick reserves for the people he saves. Dick can see the unsureness on his stance, the anxiety buzzing under his skin on his jerky movements. He’s an easy prey on the careful game of politics that Dick enjoyed dancing around. 

(He’s also Bruce’s kid, it seems, and if there is a minuscule chance on Dick and Bruce’s amending their relationship it could be good to stay at least on a neutral ground with the kid. Dick likes to be a step ahead of the situations, and if getting Bruce back involves enduring a bratty kid so be it.)

The socialites are already a lost cause, but the reporters are not. If they write bad about the child his life it’s going to get harder. Once the word has an opinion of him, he’s never going to manage to shake it.

He darts one last look to Bruce’s dazzling smile. 

He thinks about Robin, about his parents and the anger still boiling under his skin.

He takes a deep breath and forces himself to put aside the bubbling resentment building inside him.

“All right, come on, I’ll help you,” he tells the kid,“but first you need to wash up.”

Chapter Text

“Straight back,” Dick mumbles under his breath to the kid, keeping an eye on the kid while they walk through the crowd.

The kid holds himself hunched, like he is trying to look smaller to disappear between the crowd. It’s not a rare sight. Kids running alone -normally smaller ones- in Gotham walk between the crowds in the same way, like little ghosts you don’t notice unless you have a good eye. They’re great at blending in.

In a high-class event, the kid sticks out like a sore thumb.

Every kid in the Gala has straight backs, mechanical movements of practiced manners. Rehearsed smiles, prepared polite lines. Most of them have a parent or a nanny behind them to coach them through interactions, but half of them are already good enough for themselves to only need a reminder or two to fix their posture or brighten their smile.

If this was any other Gala, the kid would only have to stand beside Bruce for an hour or so before having the choice to hide in some corner with the other tired kids, but this one is for him. He’ll have to stay for the most part of it.

The kid glowers at him, but he straightens his back.

“Hands out the pockets,” Dick reminds him.

The kid doesn’t look happy to do it, but he obeys, letting his hands out of his pockets to curl them in little fists. Unsure of what to do with his hands.

Dick stops. They’re outside the closest bathroom, in a calmer hallway Dick knows leads to the kitchen that it’s only used for Galas. They are not the only ones there, there is a bathroom waiting line and a couple of parents and nannies fixing their kids' appearance. 

Further away in the hallway, there are more rooms and more hallways he memorized when he was younger. He knows exactly where to twist to find Alfred leading and terrorizing the hired kitchen staff with a severe and judgmental face, and where to walk to get to Bruce’s favorite hiding spot for social events. Wayne’s Manor was his home, after all, even when he is not welcome inside anymore.

Dick shuts his eyes for a brief second, crushing his flaring melancholy without mercy. When he opens his eyes, he is already setting his mind back to business. 

Smoothly, he turns to the kid and lowers himself to his height. It’s not a motion that looks out of place -not with so many exasperated adults fixing their kids' appearances- but, when he starts reaching with a hand the kid’s hair to tidy it up, the kid flinches.

Dick stops his hand midair.

“I need to fix your hair,” Dick tells the kid, making sure to soften his voice and eyes to not spook him.

Perhaps he should have asked for permission before. Normally, he always has on the tip of his tongue a ‘can I touch you?’ when he needs to touch or reach someone he doesn’t know but… It’s just hard to remember being careful with someone he knows is punching guys during most nights by Bruce’s side.

The kid watches him warily for a long moment, then he flickers his eyes to their surroundings, taking in the adults around them cleaning and tidying up their own kids. The kid must realize Dick can’t do anything to him, even if he wanted to -not with so many witnesses- because he gives Dick a sharp nod. Permission.

Dick is quick with his hair, tucking the kid’s shirt in, buttoning up his blazer to hide the stains on it and tying neatly his own tie around the kid’s neck to complete the rich kid look. He makes ‌his touches the most detached and professional possible when he realizes the kid is as tense as an arrow at his closeness.

It’s easy to tell the kid has some serious trust issues with strangers which, while it’s not a bad or even rare thing, it obviously runs deeply on the kid. And it’s not a basic and healthy wariness of strangers. His obvious discomfort tells a story of a probable traumatic personal experience with someone he didn’t know so well.

People that are distrustful just don’t follow a stranger so easily, so Dick wonders why the kid even decided to accept his help when his fear is so obvious.

“All right,” Dick says when he decides the kid looks good enough. “Tell me what Bruce already told you?” he requests, straightening and putting enough distance between the kid and him to make the kid relax his shoulders.

The kid fidgets at his petition, and he is quiet when he says, “Nothing.”

Dick stares at the kid for a beat too long.

“Nothing,” Dick repeats emptily, feeling dread creeping up his spine. 

Surely Bruce wouldn’t dare? 

The kid shuffles in his place awkwardly.

“He told me this gala was to present me in a controlled environment,” the kid offers with a shrug.

Dick looks up to the ceiling, trying to gather all the patience he can.

A month before Dick’s first gala, Bruce had given him a pile of papers with the names of every single guest of the gala, with their names and backgrounds. Two weeks before the gala, Bruce and Alfred had sat with him during the afternoons to teach him the manners everyone expected from him as Bruce’s ward while eating and socializing. A week before the gala, Bruce had gone through the gala’s itinerary a thousand times by then.

Bruce had let him go on his own because he knew Dick could handle it, and because he knew Dick already knew what to do back then.

Dick had enjoyed that night because he loved -and still loves- the exhilarating feeling of accomplishment when he charmed people, but also because he was in control the whole time.

Bruce not giving the kid that option- that security, sounds like a poor joke.

What the hell are you doing Bruce, Dick thinks, exasperated. 

Dick sighs, giving the kid his best soothing smile.

The kid is a piece of work then. 

Dick can only hope to mitigate any damage the kid makes.

“That’s okay,” Dick lies. “You’ll do just fine.”

***

Dick searches right away for the safest bet between the crowd with the kid on his heels. The safety net Bruce is not stupid enough to not guarantee its presence.

It doesn’t take him long to spot his uncle Clark distractedly looking through his phone with a champagne glass on one hand at the opposite side of the room.

“Have you met Clark Kent?” Dick asks the kid as he leads him to his uncle.

The kid shakes his head, nervously clenching his hands in fists at his sides. 

Dick is positively going to strangle Bruce when he sees him again.

“He’s a reporter for the Daily Planet,” Dick explains to the kid, spotting the exact second when his uncle detects him with his hearing. Uncle Clark’s head tilts slightly to their way. “You don’t have to be nervous with him. I promise you he’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”

More than throwing flowers to his uncle to reassure the kid, he is admittedly doing it also because it reflects well on him. Clark already loves him, he knows, but a little bit of flattery to ensure a little more fondness from his uncle to him never hurts. He is just killing two birds with one stone.

The kid shoots him a dubious look, but he doesn’t voice any concerns. Good.

Dick, mentally, is making a short list of reporters he’ll let actually talk to the kid. He sees by the corner of his eyes a handful of the softer ones, but they have to be careful to not draw attention from the sharp ones. 

(Vicki Vale fakes a laugh a couple of meters away. 

Lois Lane has the head of a company cornered against the buffet table on the verge of tears.)

Clark Kent smiles at them when they get closer.

“Dick, it’s good to see you,” Clark beams brightly at him, before offering a kind smile to the wary kid looking at him. “And who would be this young man?”

Dick beams back at the same time he realizes he doesn’t know the kid’s name. The thought of asking didn’t even cross his mind, and the kid offered little information about him.

Does that look bad? Or is it understandable? Surely his uncle knows already about the kid, and visibly helping the kid that snatched Dick’s name like it was nothing should be good enough in the eyes of everyone else… except people always expect Dick to be an angel and go beyond just basic human decency.

Honestly, that’s his own fault. Sometimes he lays his performance too thick.

Without losing a beat, Dick softens his face and pushes Jason gently forward with an encouraging smile. 

There, that solves the problem.

“Jason,” Jason mumbles, he taps nervously his fingers against his tight, but Dick pretends not to notice. There is no safest person in the room for Jason to be visibly nervous than Clark anyway.

His uncle shoots an unsubtle look at Dick.

So, he does know about Jason.

“Bruce’s kid?” Clark asks with soft eyes, redirecting his eyes to the kid. “Bruce has told me a lot about you.”

The kid loses some of the tension in his body. He peeks up at Clark with distrustful eyes before glancing at Dick like he is looking for a confirmation of Clark’s words. Or for comfort, he is not sure what is weirder. Dick just smiles at him and nods.

“Yeah,” Jason answers cautiously.

Clark does not let the silence stretch or become uncomfortable at the kid’s short answer, he immediately takes a notepad from inside his jacket.

“Do you mind if we do a small interview?” Clark asks kindly.

Jason takes a deep breath. He visibly steels himself. 

“That would be nice,” the kid agrees, forcing a small smile.

***

“He’s doing good,” Clark comments, walking to him almost two hours later, looking at Jason being cooed over yet another reporter. 

He is not. Jason is just doing the bare minimum to make sure he doesn’t condemn himself to being constantly attacked by the public eye.

Dick still nods in agreement with a practiced warm smile. He is standing aside, close enough to interfere if the kid starts looking overwhelmed, but far enough to not gather attention on himself from the people talking to Jason. Far enough for Jason to look like he is doing all on his own.

Periodically, the kid glances over him for reassurance that he is doing okay in his interviews. He is doing decently. Dick picked out the gentler reporters -the ones Dick knows for certain have kids- and the ones that are always desperate to suck up to Bruce. They’ll embellish Jason’s answers for sure.

Dick wants to go back to his apartment already.

Clark hesitates, “Are you and Bruce….?”

Dick closes his eyes briefly again. This time it’s half a motion born of genuine pain and half-born of the necessity to openly communicate his answer without the necessity to elaborate. Small gestures are easily missed by normal people, but Clark is not a hero known for his emotional intelligence for nothing.

His uncle Clark’s face twists on sympathy.

“I wanted to meet Jason,” Dick lies, not wanting to enter the dangerous territory of Robin. “When Babs told me about this gala, I just thought…” he trails off, but Clark gets it.

They stay quiet for a long moment, watching Jason’s cheeks being pinched and the reporter asking for a picture. Soon, Dick will have to swoop in and excuse Jason before his patience runs out. Then, he’ll have to give him another ten-minute break before he can introduce him to a couple of important socialites. And then Dick will be free to hunt Bruce down.

He has caught flickers of Bruce around, but he has made sure to stay out of sight when Bruce looks in Jason’s direction. Afraid of what he will find in Bruce’s eyes when he looks at him.

“You’re good with him,” Clark abruptly says, turning to Dick with sincere eyes. “Don’t let Bruce’s situation stop you from spending time with Jason.”

Dick takes a long moment to process his words and, when he does, he feels himself wanting to bristle like a cat. 

Clark’s words are full to the brim with assumptions Dick doesn’t like. He gets it, Clark is working under the belief Dick is somehow related to the kid now, but it touches on the entire issue about the mess of his relationship with Bruce. 

The truth is that Dick is using the kid as a distraction. He cares about the kid at the same length he cares about strangers, which… Well, it’s probably a higher amount than the average person cares for a stranger, but it’s still low on his priority list. 

He will give the kid basic human decency, but he doesn’t think he’ll seek to spend time with Jason on his own volition without nothing for him to win.

Dick doesn’t answer this time.

***

Dick knows it’s time for Jason to retire for the night when he has to intervene when Jason looks a rich heiress dead in the eye and tells her she needs to file a complaint to her plastic surgeon for her nose job after she pinches his cheek.

It is kind of funny to watch, but the young woman he is talking to just happens to be one of the biggest supporters and donors to the free art education program Bruce has been working on under the Martha Wayne Foundation for the last two years. So, not that funny there.

That’s exactly why Bruce should have made the kid memorize the guest list.

Dick plasters a horrified expression on his face as he gently pushes Jason behind him just as the woman turns red in rage.

“I’m so sorry for his behavior, Miss Morgan.” Dick apologizes, making sure to look extremely ashamed. “I’ll make sure Mister Wayne hears about this.”

The woman huffs, smoothing her pink dress with a hand. She has an intricate bun on her head and big diamond earrings on her ears.

She seems to be about to argue when she double looks at him. She blinks, rage disappearing from her face as she looks at him on the face. She isn’t as discreet as she probably thinks she is when she looks at him up and down appreciatively. 

A year ago, Dick would have found the attention flattering. Now he just finds it irritating when he is not working and being generously tipped because of it. Still, Dick would flirt for a bit with her to distract her for what Jason said if he cared enough, but he’s been babysitting the kid for the entire night, and he doesn’t have the obligation to answer for the kid’s mistakes. 

If Bruce wanted a kid so badly, then he can clean his mess. 

Dick apologizes again and gently tugs the kid to walk away from her without bothering to make up a credible excuse to not keep talking to her.

“That was gross,” the kid grumbles, shoving Dick’s hand away from him with a careless and rude movement when they get far enough from the woman.

Dick says nothing. He lets himself fall heavily on a chair in a quieter corner of the room. The kid follows his example, sprawling all over his chair with a groan.

“Straight back,” Dick admonishes half-heartedly. 

The kid just rolls his eyes.

“Are we almost finished?” Jason whines.

Dick is starting to feel tired. Following a kid the entire afternoon will do that to a person, he supposes. 

Dick searches with his eyes Bruce’s figure through the room. He is talking to a group of women but, judging by the way he is slowly redirecting his feet, he isn’t planning on staying for too long.

It’s getting ridiculous how much Dick has been doing to avoid talking to him, and the night isn’t getting any younger. 

He still has a pile of homework and paperwork waiting for him back in his apartment.

Being responsible sucks.

“We are finished,” Dick tells Jason distractedly. “That was the last one.”

 Jason straightens in his seat.

“Are you for real?” Jason says excitedly, but Dick is too busy tracking Bruce with his eyes to care.

Bruce’s body angles slightly to his right, preparing to leave.

That’s Dick's cue.

“For real,” he smiles at Jason, briefly looking over at him. “You did great, kiddo.”

With that last lie, he stands up to get to Bruce before he loses his courage.

The kid makes a confused sound.

“Where are you going?” the kid shouts after him.

Bruce is already excusing himself; Dick can tell by the fake apologetic expression on his face.

“I need to talk to your dad!” he half shouts back, smoothly slipping into the crowd again.

He already wasted enough time. Almost three hours or more to the trash just because he felt unsure of his decision to confront Bruce. 

He’s being ridiculous, that’s what he is being. Delaying his confrontation with Bruce will change nothing. It’ll only keep filling his nights with anxious thoughts.

He walks forward, directly to Bruce’s tall frame.

***

Bruce’s eyes are as blue and sharp as Dick remembers them being when Dick slips to his side.

“Hi, Bruce,” Dick casually greets with a tight smile, and he is immediately rewarded with the amazing sight of the dark night almost tripping over his feet as a reaction to his voice.

It lasts a fraction of a second, but that’s the equivalent of almost having a heart attack from Bruce.

Bruce recovers quickly. His face loses his trademark Brucie’s smile, replacing it with a blank face. His whole face stutters shut. Nothing unexpected.

(Dick’s heart hurts.)

Dick can tell he’s wary, though. A small twitch on a hand and an almost imperceptible wrinkle over his right eyebrow gives him away.

Dick is not sure what he was expecting from Bruce, but he looks like he’s been doing just fine.

“Dick,” Bruce stiffly greets back. “What do you want?”

Ouch. Spitting on his face would have hurt less.

Dick huffs, feeling defensive. He crosses his arms over his chest, which is a dead giveaway of his discomfort and irritation, but there is no point in pretending with Bruce. Not when Bruce knows all his tells, anyway.

“I want to talk,” he says flatly, raising an eyebrow and meaningfully glancing at the closer hallway.

In private, he knows Bruce hears. 

Bruce must know Dick is not going to go away, because he walks towards the quieter hallway without protest, face blank. 

Dick follows him in silence to his side and automatically stops at the same time that Bruce does in front of the only room that is reinforced against his uncle's super hearing close to the ballroom.

He knows neither of them believes Clark is going to spy, but while the possibility exists, they can’t take any chances. Not with this conversation.  

Dick locks the door behind him when they enter, not willing to risk someone noisy trying to open the door to hear them. Bruce tenses at the sound of the lock.

There is nowhere to hide in the bland room with only shelves of books on the walls.

“I haven’t heard from you in twenty-eight months,” Bruce starts without an ounce of emotion in his voice. “Why this sudden urge to resume communication?”

That’s a little over two years. Two years without working together during the afternoons, without talking about their days or stopping to eat in that grimy place in the center of the city after patrol.

Two years of anger, disappointment, and longing.

The apparent easiness in Bruce’s voice angers Dick. 

“I think you owe me an explanation or two, Bruce,” Dick answers coldly, feeling his anger start bubbling again.

He forgot how easy it was to feel so strongly about Bruce. 

Bruce turns to inspect the books to his left. An obvious attempt to hide his full face from Dick.

It takes Dick an instant to realize he is being blatantly obvious for the same reason Dick didn’t bother to hold back his urge to cross back his arms. Dick knows Bruce too well.

“What makes you think I owe you anything?” Bruce retorts with a condescending tilt in his voice.

 That’s- Bruce is trying to anger him on purpose. Trying to drive him away. 

It’s a transparent action. Obvious.

It works.

“Uh, I don’t know, the years we spent together?” Dick spits, his thin control finally snapping, “The fact that you took Robin from me because, and I quote, ‘You almost died tonight, Dick, and had you, the Joker would not have been responsible, I would’ but still dared to give Robin away to a random kid?”

Bruce falters. His shoulders tense.

Dick laughs, bitterly, broken. He’s sure he would be crying if he had the responses of a normal person. 

“It was quite a kick for me to learn about the new Robin on the TV,” he keeps going when Bruce fails to answer. “The man who couldn’t handle the responsibility of having a fifteen-year-old partner suddenly decides it’s all right to take on a ten-year-old sidekick? Yeah, I think I have the right to know why.”

There is a long tense moment. 

Dick doesn’t bother to compose himself. There is no point. Bruce has already seen his ugliest sides.

“That’s not an easy question to answer,” Bruce says evenly. He’s still looking at the books.

Dick passes a hand through his hair in frustration, not caring if he’s going to get out of the room later looking like a mess.

“Well, why don’t you look at me and give it a damn try.”

 Bruce doesn’t move for a long moment. But, after a minute, he turns slowly to Dick, giving him a guarded look.

Bruce sighs and, before he says anything, Dick already knows Bruce is going to tell him a big fat lie.

“The truth is, Richard, I taught you everything I could,” Bruce lies with a straight face, like neither of them knows he had just panicked at Dick getting hurt and his affections and just fired him. “It was time for you to step out on your own .”

Dick rolls his eyes.

“I was fifteen, Bruce. It didn’t matter to you that I didn’t have any life other than the one we shared?” he asks, hurt dripping on his words. “You’re really some piece of work, aren’t you?”

Dick hugs himself, sliding slowly to the ground against the door behind him to sit on the carpet. He must look crazy, and dramatic but, again, Bruce has seen worse from him.

Bruce and he stare at each other for a long minute.

Bruce’s expression opens a little, letting Dick get a glimpse of his unsureness. It’s on the curve of his eyebrows, the slight drop on the edge of his lips. Bruce doesn’t know what to say anymore.

He’s hoping Dick sees it and does something about it. That’s what they did before; Bruce would have trouble finding words, but Dick would take a look at his face and he would know.

Dick deflates. 

He missed him so much.

“Why the new kid?” Dick mumbles, diverting his gaze. Having pity on Bruce.

Bruce hesitates. He steps closer to Dick cautiously, like he is a wild animal.

He sits on the carpet too. In front of Dick. 

“His name’s Jason,” Bruce says, his expression blooming into something warm . “He was boosting the wheels of the Batmobile the first time I met him. I tried to help him out by setting him up in a special school, but that didn’t work out.”

Dick nods, looking at the plain red carpet under them.

“Later on, he helped me on a case. He handled himself quite well, that’s one of the reasons I took him on. And because he’s so full of misguided anger and frustration. He reminded me of myself just after my parents were killed.” Bruce keeps going. “I really believe that if I left him on his own, he would be dead by now. Training him to be Robin has channeled his energy towards a more positive goal. In my own way, I think I may have saved Jason’s life .”

Dick lets silence stretch for a moment. Then snorts.

Yeah, sure. Bruce actually believing he is making a positive impact on someone? Hah. Fat chance. The next thing he’s going to try to tell Dick is going to be that Selina decided she wants to be a housewife now.

“Bullshit,” Dick says, looking at Bruce’s face again. “How about the truth for a change, Bruce.”

 Bruce’s face twists in frustration. Dick can relate. Having someone to always pick up when you’re lying can be annoying.

Bruce curls his hands on fists, and then relaxes them.

“Okay, I admit it. I recruited Jason because the Batman needs a Robin,” Bruce says, and wow, that must hurt him to say aloud. “Fighting crime in Gotham is not a one-man job. I couldn’t do the job alone.” 

It takes a lot for Bruce to swallow his pride and say something like that.

And yet, he is fucking lying.

Dick huffs, getting irritated again.

“I said I wanted the Truth, Bruce,” Dick says dryly.

Bruce bristles.

“How dare you to…” Bruce starts looking offended before cutting himself.

Dick watches him getting up from the floor with an abrupt movement. Bruce takes a couple of steps back, looking frustrated at Dick for not buying his lies.

“The truth…” Dick prods purposefully gently. And fake.

That does the trick.

Bruce tenses again, he walks back to the books he was pretending to examine earlier and turns his back to Dick. He closes off again.

 “All right,” Bruce says unhappily. “I admit it. I was lonely.” 

Dick takes a sharp breath.

He is not lying. Why is he not lying?

Bruce is quiet when he adds, “I missed you.”

Dick’s anger vanishes just like that. 

It’s sad how just three words from Bruce are able to cut Dick’s anger. It’s pathetic how Dick feels like he can’t breathe just because Bruce stumbled upon the right words without even knowing it.

The worst part is that he knows Bruce is being platonic about his words, but it’s still enough for him to feel hope blooming on his chest.

He’s happy. He’s sad. He is miserable.

Perhaps he could have had Bruce’s company for the last two years if he wasn’t so proud. If they had talked before.

So much wasted time.

“Bruce,” Dick gets up from the floor too, taking a couple of steps forward to Bruce’s back. “I’m…”

“I would appreciate it if you left now, Richard,” Bruce cuts him off, freezing his heart. “Please, get out.”

Dick wants to close the distance. He wants to force Bruce to turn around so he can see his face. So he can see the answers to his questions.

There are still so many unsaid things between them. So many unfinished businesses. So many issues.

It's a mess.

But he knows he is going to get nothing else from Bruce right now. Dick already pushed him to his limits. And he got enough from Bruce to keep chasing him.

Dick steps back and unlocks the door.

His voice is soft when he says, “Goodbye, Bruce.”

And then he is out, gently closing the door after he leaves the room.

Plans start twirling around his head as he crosses the room full of people still laughing and talking to the main door.

Perhaps that was what Bruce was afraid of. Of giving Dick ideas.

It’s a little bit late for that.

He needs to get closer to Bruce again. He needs to close that gap between them.

Dick can do it. He knows it. He can recognize a chance when he sees it.

He’s so lost in his thoughts he completely loses Jason’s small frame until his voice calls his name.

“You’re leaving?” Jason asks to his back.

Dick turns around. Jason is standing behind him, looking at him with open curiosity. 

Jason arches an eyebrow at Dick's disheveled appearance, and Dick suppresses a grimace. He doesn’t want to know how he must have looked, leaving a room with messy hair and wrinkled clothes when the other person inside was Bruce himself. Who is a known Playboy. And whose kid obviously noticed them leaving the room a bit disheveled.

Great.

On the other hand, he had totally forgotten about the kid, aside from that brief moment where Bruce’s face had shifted to a warm expression when he had talked about him. Bruce could have lied about why he had given the kid Robin, but that fond expression? That was real.

“Yes, I have work in the morning,” Dick tells him while the wheels on his brain start running. 

The kid nods, awkwardly shuffling his feet to get closer.

“Thank you,” Jason says with embarrassment clear on his face and voice. “For helping me when you didn’t have to. I’ll see you around?”

The last sentence is said with a small tilt of hope.

Uh.

Dick blinks, and then truly looks at the kid.

He doesn’t look unsure in Dick’s presence anymore. He looks comfortable enough with Dick now.

He’s still wearing Dick’s only ridiculously expensive tie, and he’s looking at him with less alertness than before.

Suddenly, Dick realizes Jason is Bruce’s kid, and he’s living in the Manor now.

The Manor that is always empty and lonely if you don’t follow Bruce at all hours of the day. The Manor that rarely has personal guests and it can feel isolated and stifling if someone is not going through the same grief as the rest of its inhabitants.

Jason has obviously been through some bad stuff, but Bruce's and Alfred’s constant grief is a very particular type of pain.

Dick can bet Jason it’s painfully lonely. He can bet Jason would welcome a bit of company.

He bets Bruce wouldn’t have the heart to say no if Jason asked personally if Dick could come over.

That sounds like a solid plan, doesn’t it?

Dick gives the kid his brightest beam. One of his warmest ones.

Dick searches into his jacket’s pocket for a piece of paper and a pen, shoving aside a couple of crumpled bills, his keys, and an emergency tranquilizer he always keeps on him.

He scribbles his number on the corner of the paper and offers it to the kid.

“Here. There’s going to be times when you’re going to want to talk to someone or get help with something else. This is my number,” he tells the kid, keeping a soft smile on his lips. “Bruce is not much of a talker. I’ve been where you’re at and I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”

The kid nods, but he has a skeptical look on his face. He’s still a bit wary of him.

Understandable, no matter the couple of hours he spent helping him, Dick is a stranger to him. A stranger giving his phone number to a kid, no less. 

“Alfred can vouch for me if you ask for Dick Grayson,” Dick adds, knowing that if someone will be able to convince the kid Dick it’s not a weirdo it will be Alfred. 

It would be a shame if the kid didn’t contact him just for being overly cautious.

The kid stares at the piece of paper and then gives a sharp nod, finally giving him a grin.

Dick grins back. 

He doesn’t let his smile disappear until he is sure he is out of Jason’s field of view.

Bruce’s kid, huh.

Chapter Text

He’s been watching the warehouse like a hawk for a couple of days now. 

It’s a standard one, with old and plain white painted walls and graffiti scribbled all over the outside. Somebody has broken at least a quarter of the windows, and the metal doors are always falling apart. It belongs to an old man who lives across the city and rents it to whoever asks without asking any questions.

It has, above the ceiling, big and wide roof windows with thin and clear crystals that, through the years, Dick has been checking sporadically since he discovered it’s a hot spot for low criminals. 

He’s been taking advantage of the knowledge that low criminals are awful at communicating and, therefore, none of them have picked up the trend of them getting caught shortly after renting it.  He would feel offended if it wasn’t so handy at times.

This time the warehouse has been taken for a small group of coke dealers, who aren’t dumb enough to leave the roof windows unchecked, but aren’t smart enough to check the place for listening bugs and cameras. It’s, overall, an easy surveillance job, and the warehouse being transformed into a coke lab isn’t particularly alarming without any of their materials.

He still takes his patrol breaks in a neighbor building, hidden between a pile of old refrigerators someone has been accumulating, just to make sure there aren’t any changes until the raw materials for the lab arrive.

It pays off a night before the materials are scheduled to arrive, when he spots a small figure with his colors jumping onto the warehouse roof and stopping to peer at the roof windows. The scene has Dick rolling his eyes and standing up to chase the kid away from his case.

He’s not expecting the kid to skip Bruce's basic surveillance training. Jason doesn’t even try to hide, nor analyze his surroundings, and that means Dick spots first the tall man approaching Jason’s back. 

There’s no way Jason is not going to catch the man’s presence. The guard doesn’t even seem to be trying to be that subtle- 

The man punches the kid and pushes him against the thin crystals of the roof window. Dick winces at the sound of breaking glass and the image of the kid falling through it. 

Without wasting another second, he jumps on the roof. He wastes a couple of seconds searching Batman around once he lands, but he doesn’t catch Bruce’s shadow nor feels any heavy eyes on his back as he would expect.

The guard is still leaning into the broken roof window, peering into the inside with a malicious smirk. Dick doesn’t feel any guilt as he pushes him into the broken window with a kick.

“-kid’s not alone!” someone screams inside when Dick follows the guard through the window with a graceful flip on the air.

The pieces of broken glass on the floor crack further when Dick lands on his feet over them. 

For a moment, everyone’s frozen. The lab equipment is still over the tables, there are boxes all over the place and the kid is still on the floor, surrounded by the group of thugs sporting pocket knives and bats between his hands. 

Dick smiles and theatrically bows to them.

“Goodnight gentlemen, I’m here for the kid and I would appreciate it if you didn’t hurt him,” he cheerfully says.

Nobody moves for a long minute. Dick can see the slowly coming realization over their faces that he isn’t moving to attack anybody. The realization that -apart from the lab equipment- there’s no proof of them doing anything illegal. 

In the stillness of the situation, Jason moves, too quickly for the thugs but too slowly for Dick. Before he can punch someone and worsen the situation, Dick catches his wrist without his smile faltering.

One of the men, the leader, sneers at the kid, breaking the stillness.

“Don’t get tough with us, kid,” the man tells Jayson with a smirk. “We ain’t the one that got caught trespassing .”

Jason’s face twists into indignation. 

“What!?” the kid yells. The anger on the kid’s face sours his expression. “What are you trying to pull? Any fool can see that this is a cocaine processing lab! ”

The kid wildly gesticulates at the lab equipment with his free arm. The men glance at Dick, but when he doesn’t do anything to stop them, their smiles widen.

Dick is going to beat them up somewhere else next week anyway. He already has listening bugs and trackers on the men’s belongings since day one.

“Oh, yeah?” the leader smiles uglily at Jason, “Mind telling me where the Blow is?”

The kid visibly fumes in rage. Dick tightens a little his grip on the kid’s arm as a warning. That’s his cue to remove the kid from the situation.

Dick steps in front of Jason with a sheepish smile.

“I’m sorry for the trouble. You know how kids are. You get your eyes off them for a second, and next thing you know, they’re breaking and entering a building.” He says it in a joking and light tone. A couple of thugs snort. Most of them keep their faces straight. “We’ll take care of the window, so don’t worry about it. C’mon kiddo.” 

He tugs gently but firmly at Jason’s wrist so they can get out. Everyone else watches them in fascination, like they can’t believe they are getting out unscathed. 

Jason follows him with a dumbfounded look. Halfway, the kid finally snaps out of his indignation and tries to get out of his grip.

“We can’t… I mean-” the kid stutters, twisting on his grip to stare at the people behind them.

Dick internally sighs. On the outside, he ignores the kid’s protests and drags him out of the warehouse, taking advantage of the kid’s confusion.

***

Dick isn’t really surprised when Jason’s face is suddenly plastered in every news outlet for the following weeks of the gala. The photo of Bruce smiling broadly with a hand on Jason’s shoulder travels everywhere, along with titles like “ Wayne’s Enterprises new heir ” or “ Everything you want to know about Bruce Wayne’s adoptive son”.

Of course, it’s expected, Bruce is the most popular figure in Gotham and the owner of one of the biggest companies in the country. If even a sneeze from him is newsworthy for Gotham, a surprise kid is going to feed the press for months.

It’s expected, but still annoying. After all, having the reminder of the new Robin shoved to his face during his daily life isn’t nice. 

That’s one of the reasons of why Dick doesn’t try to contact the kid the following weeks after their initial meeting and, with the kid standing in front of him with an angry expression in an alley, he’s starting to wish he had more time.

“What was all that about?” the kid hisses at him, tearing out his wrist from Dick’s grip and gesticulating with both of his arms.

Dick hadn’t noticed back in the gala, but the kid’s hair is slightly curly, and, without any gel it makes him look a bit feral. Dick’s yellow cape undulates behind Jason, reminding him of who Jason is exactly dressed like. Dick can’t help but frown behind his mask.

“Just trying to save you from a big mistake, kid,” he absently answers, leaning a bit forward to examine the kid’s costume. Jason doesn’t notice.

“Mistake!?” the kid angrily repeats.

The green gloves on the kids' hands, the mask, the cape, the red vest, the leotard, the boots… everything is the identical design Dick had begged Alfred to use when he started going out as Robin. There’s not a single change in it, and it makes something ugly and dark curl on his chest.

He remembers sitting beside his mom on a picnic table while she doodled costume ideas for him. He had watched her draw with a big smile and talking her ear off during the whole day. It had been during a couple of off days his mom had gotten after she had sprained her ankle in Italy.

Instead of grumbling and holing herself in their trailer like his dad did when he got injured, she had decided to sit outside to enjoy the fresh air. She had been smiling the whole time and talking animatedly back. And after the show, his dad had handed them food, kissed the top of Dick’s head, and listened to his mom bounce ideas over him.

(Every time Dick reminisces about his past, it feels like a half-forgotten dream.)

Dick blinks, trying to shake off his memories. It doesn’t work.

“You can’t bust anyone for possession if there’s no dope to be found,” Dick answers mechanically.

His mom had sewed his costume humming a song Dick doesn’t remember anymore, and the first time he had put it on, his parents had cooed all over him and taken a photo to commemorate the occasion. They’ve been smiling and laughing then.

Dick doesn’t have many photos of his parents anymore. Most of his belongings had been lost when he had gotten thrown into child services after his parents passed away. He has some photos, posters, and old newspaper clippings, but Robin had been his stronger memento from them. The one piece of himself he had refused to let go from his past.

And now… the kid is wearing his name and his family colors. 

“We didn’t even search the place!” the kid growls. “How do you know they don’t have a stash in there?” 

‘I missed you,’ Bruce had said during the gala when Dick had asked why he had taken someone else under his wing. He had been too busy drowning in the feelings of longing and wanting Bruce’s presence made him feel to analyze the situation further.

He got distracted and missed the important.

It’s dangerous to forget Bruce is better than Dick at planning things ahead, because this feels like a well-placed and calculated hit.

It’s hard to believe Bruce forgot what Robin means to Dick.

(They were so close to each other. Why would he do this to him? )

“You can smell an active processing lab a mile off,” Dick says, fighting to keep his voice calm. “Those guys are waiting for the raw material, the unrefined coca pastes which I know for a fact won’t be due to arrive until tomorrow night.” Dick tries to focus on the kid and the situation, but it’s a challenge. “They’ll probably switch to another back now that they’re spooked.”

Was Bruce trying to distract him from what he had done with half-truths? Was he driving the conversation away from the real problem? 

Is Bruce trying to hurt him ? He can understand Bruce’s messy attempts at pushing him away, born of fear and uncertainty. He can understand the cut contact and the silence after Dick confessed his feelings and got shot, but the goal of Bruce’s actions has never been to hurt Dick in any way. 

Dick’s feelings for Bruce had made it inevitable for him to get hurt, but this is different. This feels too personal.

It feels like another line being stepped over.

Something cold grips his heart.

He can’t help but miss Bruce. He can’t help but remember the shared laughers and the feeling of being deeply understood. He can’t help but want every part of him. 

He can’t help the slow fear that starts taking over him. Dick poured every single drop of himself between Bruce’s hands and stripped all his layers for Bruce to see, weakness included. He forgot that, although, being seen and known feels exhilarating, it means giving another person tools to take him down with a hit.

Bruce has a heart of gold, kind intentions, and always sees the best in everyone. He’s a good man, but he can get so focused on getting a goal that he forgets how easily his actions can harm other people. How easily he can destroy Dick.

“No biggie,” Jason rolls his eyes at Dick’s words defensively. It takes a second too long for Dick to realize his darkening mood probably slipped out in his tone for a bit. “We’ll locate their new digs and bust them when they take possession.”

We.

Dick’s attention snaps back to the conversation. He puts a temporary pin on his thoughts.

The alley where he’s standing with Jason is barely lit by a close street lamp, but even with a bit of light, he can see droplets of blood running on the kid’s arms and legs. Jason fell into broken glass, didn’t he?

“You’re hurt,” Dick says dumbly. He suppresses the urge to slap himself at the surprised tone of voice he uses. He softens his voice when he continues, “I- sorry, I didn’t notice. Let me see, I have gazes and disinfectant.”

The kid squints his eyes suspiciously at him -Dick can’t blame him- but after a moment of hesitation, he gives him a sharp nod.

They’re quiet while Dick gets the remaining glass out of the kid’s skin and cleans the injuries. Jason looks far more relaxed in his presence than the last time they saw each other. Dick wonders what made the kid trust him more before he realizes they’re in costume and that, if there’s anything the kid must know about his vigilante persona, is that Nightwing is safe.

“Where’s your mentor?” Dick finally breaks their silence, halfway through his job of placing band-aids on the kid’s cuts. Jason frowns at the childish designs Dick is putting over him but doesn’t argue. “I haven’t seen Batman around.”

Is this visit planned? Dick wants to ask instead. 

How much of this is Bruce trying to drive Dick away from him? How much of this is a coincidence?

The kid’s expression sours at his question.

“I don’t know, I kinda slipped away from him an hour away,” the kid grumbles. Dick makes a questioning sound that makes him look away and mumble. “He’s been insufferable lately.”

Dick wants to scold him for giving information away so easily. The kid should know better than to open up to another mask he doesn’t personally know. Instead, Dick puts a sympathetic expression on his face.

“Harsh boss?” Dick jokes. 

Jason snorts.

“More like dictator ,” the kid says, rolling his eyes. “He’s refusing to let me go on my own patrols, even when I’ve been fending for myself since forever. I don’t understand what’s the big deal.”

Dick eyes the yellow cape the kid has on. Funnily enough, it tracks. Dick remembers he had rarely left Bruce’s side during patrols back when he was still Robin. There hadn’t been really any agreement beforehand. It had just felt natural for Dick to stick at Bruce’s side, even when he had gotten the hang of vigilantism. It had helped Dick had adored their partnership. 

But. Jason is not Robin. He’s just like a kid putting on the shoes of an adult and pretending to be someone else. And, at least as far as Dick knows, the kid lacks previous experience in proper fighting techniques and doesn’t have any special abilities. It’s just a natural reaction to try to constantly monitor an inexperienced kid surrounded by dangers.

Dick doesn’t know what Bruce was thinking when he decided to try to make Jason Robin, but he can already see the cracks on the stubborn tilt on Jason’s chin, on his reckless behavior and lack of followed procedure. He has no doubt this is going to explode in Bruce’s face. 

Robin was the echo of a kid who was once cheerful and kind. He was a mask of innocence and practiced reassurances. Robin was a mask, a carefully constructed facade. He had needed Robin to be a wolf in sheep's clothing to outsmart criminals. Jason isn’t. Jason is what Dick tried to be for years; a normal child with eyes still filled with light despite their circumstances. 

But, maybe Dick isn’t giving him the credit he deserves. Gothamites are weirdly resilient.

“Sounds like worry,” Dick hums, putting a last band-aid on a minor cut the kid has on the forehead. Jason makes him a face. “Be patient, you’re what? 10? It’s normal for the Bat to want to keep an eye on you.”

Jason’s face breaks into indignation.

“I’m twelve!” the kid argues.

He is? He looks way smaller. 

Dick ruffles the kid’s hair.

“I know, kid. I’m just messing with you,” he lies. Then, reluctantly, he asks, “Do you want me to help you to search for the Bat? He must be worried sick.”

Jason shuffles on his feet, looking very unhappy at the suggestion.

Dick patiently waits for the kid to talk. He isn’t in a hurry to return the kid to Bruce- Actually, he is not in the mood to see B right now with the mess his thoughts are, period. And the odds are that B already knows where his kid is and is choosing to give him a little space, anyway. Maybe he can just redirect the kid in the right direction and make up some excuse to not accompany him all the way.

“Can I just stick to you for a bit?” Jason asks, surprisingly shy. Twisting his hands awkwardly. “I’m sure B’s going to bench me immediately when he finds me.”

Jason looks up at him with a nervous but hopeful expression. 

Dick doesn’t really want a kid that has trouble following orders trailing after him, but he would be lying if he were to say he isn’t still curious about the kid. 

“Yeah, no problem,” Dick answers easily, mind made. “We can hang out for a bit.”

Some time spent with the kid won’t hurt.

***

Dick likes to patrol between Amusement Mile and The Bowery regularly. They’re rough places infested of corrupt police and mob bosses, but he always gets more intel on those places, even when he’s not actively searching for it.

It’s dangerous though, and he doesn’t care if Jason grew up in those neighbors. He’s not letting the kid close to the worst part of the city. It’s one thing to know how to blend in the crowd to survive, and it’s entirely another thing to slip into there with a colorful costume, basically asking to be shot at. Dick would know, he has the scars to prove it.

He doesn’t tell Jason anything of it when he leads him to East End, and buys a sandwich for himself and Jason, sitting on the edge of a building above a calm street. 

Jason accepts the sandwich with a sheepish smile and doesn’t comment about Dick’s decision to stop his patrol for a snack. It’s late anyway, so if the kid has been outside since nightfall he must be hungry.

“You’re not from Gotham,” Jason tells him conversationally between bites. 

Dick tilts his head, lowering the sandwich between his hands. 

That’s a new one.

“What do you mean?” 

Jason squints at him, still chewing. The kid eats like he’s starving, messy, and fast. Like the food between his hands is going to disappear at any moment. Dick wonders if he realizes he’s eating like that.

“You have the accent, but you’re too…” the kid visibly struggles to find a word. “Bright, I guess. And kind, and optimistic. Too good to be from this city… if the rumors were to be true, of course.” The kid ends hurriedly, blushing slightly and avoiding Dick’s eyes.

Dick’s suddenly not hungry anymore. 

‘I’m not,’ Dick wants to say. Should say to appear to be modest and down to earth. He knows the words to this script, and it hasn’t been the first time he’s been complimented on his ‘kind’ behavior. His stomach twists uncomfortably anyway.

What’s kindness anyway? Is it to help without expecting anything in return? Is it to offer a shoulder to cry for strangers and to randomly bring pastries to his work to share? Is it to bring clothes and food to the kids hiding in the alleys?

Dick is aware he checks out a lot of boxes, but he’s always aware of the rewards of the behaviors he profusely shows. He recognizes the benefits of having a large group of people liking him, and most of the time he can’t help but gauge how useful people can be to him in the future and act on it. He’s always expecting something in return, from the street kids who see and hear everything, to his best friends who are related to powerful people.

Jason isn’t an exception.

Dick looks up to the dark sky above them. 

Dick can’t see any stars from where he is. He can’t remember if it’s even possible to see one in Gotham.

“Too good to be from this city, huh? I don’t think that’s true,” Dick absently denies. “I mean, there’s Batman.” He pauses, and then realizes how he sounds. “… and Batgirl, and now you, of course. All of you were born and raised in Gotham and are still putting the best of you to help people.”

Dick thinks he fits just fine in this horrible and gloomy city because, no matter how many masks and acts he puts on, he was broken down by Gotham. He didn’t actively seek to help people. The only reason he is wearing a mask and a suit is all Bruce’s influence.

Bruce is entirely another case. He’s too soft on the inside, too sensible to failure, and keen to give second opportunities if asked. He’s always playing the dangerous game of giving everything of himself to a city that had already taken too much from him. For Dick, it’s still hard to wrap his head around Bruce’s wiliness to keep sacrificing things for a city that rarely gives him anything back.

If Gotham doesn’t deserve someone, that person is Bruce.

Jason shrugs, but Dick can tell he’s pleased by the way his chest puffs slightly. Dick has to look away to stop himself from chuckling, and by doing so, he almost misses the analytical glint in the kid’s eyes. Almost.

“You seem to think highly of us,” Jason carefully prods. Dick hums in agreement, forcing himself to take another bite from his food. “But I don’t understand. If you like us, why does everyone think you and B hate each other? Why you’ve never worked together?”

So direct. Dick doesn’t let his internal turmoil show on his face.

 “We have,” he argues. It’s true, but it makes him hesitate slightly before saying anything else. He could lie and deny he and Bruce have a deeper issue, citing Bruce’s problem working with other people, but he knows it would be foolish. Sooner or later, someone is going to spill the beans to the kid about him. “We have, it’s just that we had a fight a couple of years ago, and- well, we don’t talk anymore.”

This time, he doesn’t make the mistake of letting the longing show on his face or the tone of his voice. He only injects the appropriate amount of awkwardness and stiffness into his words.

The kid looks at the sky Dick had previously looked at too.

“That’s silly,” Jason says, wrinkling his nose. “Surely it wasn’t that bad, not if B let you keep a territory here.”

Dick snorts. Yeah, sure.

He shrugs when the kid turns to him with a questioning expression.

“You’ll hear about it eventually. Everyone in the hero community knows about what happened anyway,” Dick tells him, instead of elaborating. Then he stretches, ready to change the topic not caring a bit about how obvious it’ll be. “Wanna know the best food places that are open after midnight?”

The kid does. Dick shows him some of his favorite food carts and stores that are open the entire night, places that are not as expensive as the ones Bruce prefers. Then, he escorts the kid to Bruce’s territory and slips away the moment he catches Bruce’s shadow in the distance.

***

Summer break starts with a recurrent small shadow trailing after him at least once a week during patrol. 

Dick still hasn’t done anything to try to get closer to Bruce through the kid in his civilian identity. He’s unsure if it’s a good idea to face Bruce after the revival of his conflicting emotions about Bruce’s decisions.

Maybe his anger will extinguish again the moment he sees him, or maybe he’ll do something stupid.

It doesn’t matter; he has the time to sort his feelings and thoughts before he tries to resume his pursuing. Meanwhile, he lets the kid trail after him when Jason feels suffocated by Batman’s attention.

“I finally finished Macbeth,” the kid babbles at him a Friday, oblivious to the irritation Dick feels at having to change his patrol route again to keep the kid out of trouble. “My- uh, grandparent gave me a copy last week because they’re going to make a production next week and he thought I would like it. He was right, obviously.”

Dick hums in acknowledgment. 

“Is that the play of ‘to be or not to be’ quote?” He asks, knowing fully it’s going to enrage the kid.

Jason bristles, as expected. 

“That’s Hamlet. How can’t you know that?” Jason scoffs, frowning at him. 

Dick shrugs at him, slowing his movements down so the kid can follow him more easily across the roofs.

“I’m not a big reader,” he says, and it’s not even a lie. He doesn’t read for fun often. “Tell me what’s about?”

The kid launches immediately into a retelling of the book. Dick hums at the right places and asks enough questions to seem interested enough. He doesn’t tell the kid he has seen the play at least twice with Bruce and that he has read the book before, even if he didn’t like it.

It’s a nice quiet night despite the kid’s presence. 

At least until Bruce ruins it.

They’re passing through East End when Dick catches two figures standing over the usual rooftop where Jason and he sit to eat. He stops in his tracks, not caring a bit about Jason’s chatter getting interrupted as he crashes against his back.

“What the hell-” the kid starts, before following Dick’s eyes at the scene taking place in front of them.

Heartbreak is an experience Dick has seen all his friends go through a million times.

They’ve always been a bit too sensitive about their emotions, a little too vulnerable with their hearts, and reckless with their trust. It always feels like it drives them to low times in their lives where Dick can only try to support them.

Deaths, hard cases, break ups, petty fights between their friends, or even failing grades are enough to knock them off their feet. Their sensitiveness is, sadly, what shapes them into heroes.

Dick has always been more guarded than the rest of them. The one to not lose it when they fail to save someone or to ignore petty remarks with ease. His friends have described him as a pillar, but Dick is pretty sure Bruce, at some point, has thought of him as a sociopath.

But, the truth is, Dick has weak spots just like any of his friends, and it’s just his luck Bruce knows every single one of them. It’s his own fault he disturbed too much of the waters between them.

The moon hangs high in the sky like a bright balloon, and just under it -and over Jason and Dick’s recurrent eating spot- Bruce leans into Selina and kisses her. It’s a scene taken out of a romantic movie, with Catwoman gently putting her hands over Bruce's armor, letting herself be held by Bruce’s hands on her waist.

Just like a cornered animal, Bruce lashes out, determined to drive him away. To hurt him.

It’s an official -and unspoken- second rejection, and it makes him almost physically recoil in hurt.

He should move. Get away from there, but suddenly he can’t breathe, and his feet are stuck in the roof. His heart squeezes painfully in his chest.

Selina puts her arms over Bruce’s shoulders, breaking the kiss, and her dazed smile is obvious even from where Dick is standing. Bruce is saying something but, instead of trying to read his lips, Dick can only focus on the flicker of his eyes to where Dick is standing. Bruce brings Selina’s hand to his mouth slowly, and kisses the back of her hand gently. 

He does it without taking his eyes off Dick.

One second after, they jump together to one side of the building. The way Bruce caresses Selina’s waist suggests they aren’t going to a more private place to just talk, and it makes his skin crawl.

“That was awkward,” Jason breaks the silence after a long minute.

Dick feels numb. He turns to the kid, who is still watching the rooftop warily. With a jolt, he realizes the kid hid behind him before Bruce turned to him. He opens his mouth, closes it.

“Uh?” Dick manages to get out, his head still spinning. 

The kid moves to stand at his side and looks at him. Dick has never been more grateful to have a mask hiding his eyes.

“It’s just- uh, for a moment there it looked like he kissed Catwoman’s hand while watching us,” Jason tells him while scrunching his nose in disgust. “B can be such a weirdo sometimes.”

Dick laughs, just barely managing to smother the note of hysteria he’s feeling. He’s not sure if B noticed Jason at all.

This was a message just for him.

“Let's just- find another rooftop to eat, alright?” Dick suggests. His fake cheery voice shakes slightly at the end, but Jason doesn’t seem to notice, busy watching the rooftop with a thoughtful face.

Dick leads him to the building across the street.

“Do you think they’re going to get into an official relationship soon?” Jason casually asks. 

Dick hides his shaky hands behind his back. His stomach turns. 

He wants to go home and hide under his blankets like a kid.

“Wouldn’t that be lovely?” Dick repeats the words Alfred had once told him. He can’t quite manage to make his voice warm. “If only they would stop dancing around each other.”

***

The moment he shakes the kid off, he goes back to his place and throws up. 

But it doesn’t matter how much his heart feels like it’s being sliced in two, his eyes stay dry.

He wishes he could cry. He wishes he could scream and break plates, having difficulty to breathe between sobs. But he doesn’t. He can’t, no matter how hard he tries.

Instead, he crawls into his bed and stares at the ceiling emptily until his alarm goes off in the morning.

Chapter Text

When he does it, he is thinking he wants to hurt Bruce, just a little bit.

He is aware he should wait to cool down. He’s already proved himself incapable of making good decisions when he’s freshly hurt.

The issue is the rumors in the street about Batman and Catwoman. The stories coming out about civilians walking into them making out in alleys. The blurry pictures of them holding hands or kissing from afar. The steady gossip that he has started to hear on his work from his coworkers.

The issue is that Bruce is too good in what he does, and by the end of the week Dick is in such a horrible mood he can’t take it anymore.  

Everything comes to an end on a Friday. During a call with Alfred, the only person that, if Dick isn’t careful, will be able to figure everything out.

“Sorry I haven’t called,” Dick apologizes through the phone while he breaks eggs into his pan for his dinner, “It has been getting busy around work.”

Alfred sniffs, managing to sound enormously judgmental with only a sound. Dick distantly can hear the crinkling sound of fabric being moved. It’s easy for Dick to picture Alfred folding clothes neatly into a basket in the laundry room. If he concentrates enough, he can hear the sound of the dryer working in the background.

“You are far too good for that place,” Alfred says, making Dick internally sigh.

Dick is too tired to argue. He knows Alfred doesn’t approve of his job as a waiter, but he can only hear too many suggestions that he should look into alternatives to get money -aka talk to Bruce- before he feels like snapping. And, with Bruce rubbing his relationship with Selina into Dick’s face, he’s not in a good mood to talk about it at all.

He stirs his eggs a little aggressively.

“Next semester I’ll be finally eligible for a scholarship,” Dick reluctantly points out, because the lack of one has been the only reason he has been working his ass off since he left the manor.

School is expensive when he isn’t eligible for any scholarships because his supposed guardian is filthy rich. 

“Richard-” Alfred starts.

( I would appreciate it if you left now, Richard. )

It takes just a word for him to lose it. Which is just more proof of how deeply Bruce has gotten into his head.

He doesn’t know how he has managed to keep himself in check and fully functional, but suddenly all the frustration, sleepless nights and hurt bubbles to the surface again like a volcano. He can’t stop himself from spiraling right there and then. 

What can he do? Bruce wants him to stop having feelings for him, and he wants Dick to back down, but it isn’t that simple. Even if he tried to give up just to get Bruce to stop hurting him on purpose their lives are always going to be intertwined. With Dick walking around the same circles that Bruce in the hero community, working in Wayne’s Enterprises, and having brunch with Alfred every so often they are always going to be destined to stumble into each other. Bruce will never stop noticing Dick’s feelings for him now that he knows how to look for them, and their relationship will never go back to what it was. It’s just not realistic.

And Dick is the only one with everything to lose. 

“Can we just not? ” Dick snaps, his voice rising far too high. He turns his stove off and slams a plate so hard against his counter it shatters into pieces between his hands.

He flinches at the sound and then stares at the mess in the middle of his kitchen. The mess that takes up half of his apartment, because he lives in a shoebox, with a small kitchen, a bed, a table, a couple of chairs, a desk, and a small wardrobe all cramped together and nothing else.

He deflates, suddenly feeling foolish and dumb.

He imagines that’s what Bruce sees when he looks at him. Just an unstable crazy mess.

More hurt crawls under his skin. He can’t stand it anymore.

“-okay?” Alfred worried voice echoes in his small place. He sounds frantic and it only serves to make Dick feel worse.

He’s really losing it.

He takes the phone again with shaky hands. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scream,” He mumbles as a wave of shame hits him, “I’m okay, It’s just- I’ve been stressed lately. I’m really sorry for screaming, Alfie.”

There’s a pause.

“My dear boy-” Alfred starts again, but Dick can’t handle the anxiety in his parent's voice.

He hangs up without thinking.

***

The same night he loses it, he goes out and decides to put an end to it.

When he does it, he is thinking he wants to hurt Bruce, just a little bit.

It’s a plan made up on the spot, but Dick has always been good with improvisation. And he just wants Bruce to stop hurting him more sooner than later.

He’s lashing out in retaliation, which Bruce should have accounted for already, but even Dick knows Bruce can’t plan for everything.

So, he improvises.

No matter what everyone thinks, Dick is aware Bruce is not actually in love with Selina. Bruce is attracted to her, that’s for sure, and he likes her and cares for her, but it’s not love. 

(It could be, if Selina wanted to. That’s why Dick has always been wary of Bruce’s relationship with her since the beginning.)

“Cat,” Dick greets, making sure to act like he just bumped into her instead of having to track her down for an hour.

Selina takes a look at him and smiles warmly. 

He knows Selina has a soft spot for him, it’s expected after all the years Dick spent acting like he was starstruck by her in order to distract her from Bruce. 

“Kitten,” Selina greets, and she sounds genuinely delighted to see him. “It’s so good to see you, kid.”

She accepts the hug he offers him, and he pretends to be amused and not mildly annoyed by the chocolate she slips into his hand like he’s still twelve and pretending to be amazed by her.

“It’s good to see you too,” Dick tells her back with a beam when they break their hug. “I feel like haven’t seen you in forever.”

Selina nods.

“Since the fight I heard you had with Bats,” she agrees, her voice turning mournful. Dick knows she is not bringing it up in malice, but he still has to force himself to not react. He can’t mess this up. “I’m so sorry, kitten, that I wasn’t there for you.”

Dick forces himself to give her a sad smile.

She’s everything Dick can never be. 

Pretty and uncomplicated. 

“It’s okay, it wasn’t your fault,” he mumbles. Then he purposefully hesitates. “Actually, if you aren’t busy would you mind listening to my thoughts a little bit? I know we haven’t seen each other for a bit but- I don’t know, I just thought…”

Selina listens to his nervous talking with a fond smile. She looks at him like he’s a particularly cute puppy. It grates on Dick’s nerves.

She puts a gentle hand on his arm to cut his words.

“Kitten, of course, you can talk to me about anything. You know you can trust me,” she reassures him.

Dick smiles at her back when she walks to the edge of the roof where they are. She pats the empty space beside her without turning.

The murmurs of people talking in the street below are the only sound between them for a while when Dick sits.

The moon is just as bright as last week.

Dick steels himself.

“Lately, I’ve been thinking maybe I’m being silly for staying mad at him, you know? I keep thinking that it’s not worth it anymore, not with the new kid.” Dick tells her softly.

Selina visibly thinks it over. Dick, very carefully, counts his breaths to keep it together. 

“I don’t know if I’m the best person to give advice about family matters,” she says uncertainly. “But you don’t need to forgive B if you aren’t ready, kitten. I’m sure that you can find other ways to spend time with your little brother.”

Dick can feel the smile on his face turning plastic. 

The label of ‘brother’ doesn’t come as a surprise at all, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make him want to break something all the same.

Maybe he’s too rattled to do this right now, but he can’t find the strength to back down. To let Bruce get away with everything.

He takes a deep breath.

It’s the first time someone calls Jason his brother but, no matter how upsetting it is, he knows it won’t be the last time. He needs to get over it.

“I just- I don’t like the idea of exposing the kid to our fights,” he tries to keep the discomfort out of his voice. He is not sure if it works, but for all Selina knows he could be uncomfortable just talking about his fight with Bruce. “But I don’t know how to make peace with B. So, I just thought- I don’t know… you and B have fought before, but you always made up and I wonder how you do it.” 

He ends up with his words in a week mumble. To sell his nervousness he wills himself to blush in embarrassment.

Selina laughs.

“Oh, kitten. Your father and I have a completely different type of fights,” she chuckles. Dick forces an amused snort out at the same time his stomach turns at the reminder. “But I understand. Sometimes your father can be hard to approach.”  

Dick feigns interest at her words, but he knows he won’t be able to recall what she exactly tells him in minutes.

She speaks about fights and stubbornness. She speaks about family and forgiveness.

Dick just hums and tries to remember how to smile.

***

There are three things Dick knows for sure about Selina. 

One, she’s in love with Bruce.

(“I know how emotionless your father sometimes looks, but I promise you he’s not.” She tells him with a fond and warm look on her face.)

Two, she hasn’t noticed.

(“Talk to him, I know he misses you. He won’t turn you away.” Selina says at some point. Dick pretends he doesn’t feel like she’s stabbing him.)

Three, she is terrified of compromise. 

He has seen it hundreds of times. The moment she realizes she’s getting too close to Bruce, she disappears for weeks or months just so she can feel in control. She drops B when she feels vulnerable, and distances herself from him until she feels safe enough to resume their dance. And thanks to that, Dick is lucky to know exactly how to drive her away from Bruce for a long time.

At the end of Selina’s advice, he doesn’t have to think the words to do it. He just lets his mouth run loose. 

“Thank you, seriously. Sometimes I think no one knows how to actually handle him, but- well, I dare to say you’re an exception.” he tells her with a grin, “I think you’re the only person he actually listens to.” Then, he softens his voice, and says, “He loves you, you know?”

Selina’s smile falters.

Love, Dick knows, is the only word and concept that both Bruce and Selina run away from. 

Bruce doesn’t think he deserves it. Selina, in some form, thinks it will tie her down and force her to leave everything she enjoys. She’s terrified of it. Unready. 

“Kitten,” Selina starts sounding unsure, “I don’t know where you heard that, but your father and I aren’t like that .”

Dick chuckles like she’s being silly. He nudges her playfully with his elbow.

“I know B is a private man, but even I know about you two going out. I haven’t been able to not hear about it in the streets. I’m sure at his point half of Gotham is already expecting you two to wear matching rings out of nowhere,” he jokes, pretending he doesn’t notice how tense Selina’s getting. “Even Robin-”

Selina stands up abruptly.

Dick stops.

“Cat?” 

Selina tries to smile at him. It doesn’t work well.

Dick furrows his eyebrows, like he’s confused. In the future, if someone asks him, he will say he thought Selina was getting nervous because she really thought Bruce and her were being discreet.  

“Cat,” he says a shade more gently. “It’s okay. Neither Robin nor I mind. You two are cute together.”

Selina presses her lips in a tight line. She tries to smile again.

“I just remembered I had a thing tonight,” She obviously lies. “I’m sorry, kitten.”

Dick blinks at her.

“Oh,” he says with a befuddled voice.  “Okay, see you later?”

She nods but doesn’t say anything else as she goes away.

Dick should feel awful about what he did. Sabotaging Bruce’s relationships with others shouldn’t even be considered. It’s not fair, not when Bruce has so very few people he’s close to.

But he does not feel bad, he just feels relieved that it’s finally over.

***

Dick isn’t surprised at all when Selina goes off the grid shortly after their last conversation, nor when Bruce corners him on a roof with Jason hot on his heels the very next night.

Bruce’s fuming, and he’s so angry his fists shake. Dick feels vindicated when Jason puts himself between him and Bruce after he makes a show of flinching back at Bruce’s anger.

“B, I really don’t think-” Jason tries to say, but Bruce isn’t looking at him. He’s looking right at Dick.

“You need to stop this,” Bruce talks over Jason directly to Dick, rage dripping from his words. “This is getting way too far.”

Dick stays in his place, tilting his head unimpressed. Taking advantage of the fact that Jason is facing Bruce to provoke him further.

“I’m not- I haven’t done anything, ” Dick retorts back shakily, lacing confusion on his tone for Jason. He maintains a bored face just for Bruce to see though. “I don’t understand.”

Bruce tenses further. Jason stops him from trying to advance.

“Why would you do this?” Bruce grits between his teeth. 

Dick raises an eyebrow. That’s such a stupid question.

Bruce falters. “You need to stop this,” Bruce repeats, less angry but no less decisive. 

Dick sighs quietly. 

He’s tired. 

So, so tired.

“I haven’t done anything,” he repeats just for show. Then, he taps Jason’s shoulder gently. Jason turns his head partially to him, eyes wide and fearful. Dick’s stomach twists a little in guilt. “It’s okay, kiddo. B won’t hurt me, we’ll just talk.”

Jason doesn’t look convinced at all. Dick gives him a remorseful smile.

“I’ll have to ask you for some privacy, though,” Dick adds with a wince, already regretting faking fear at the very beginning. 

The whole kid’s face sours.

Behind him, Bruce’s jaw tightens. 

“If you’re just gonna talk, then there shouldn’t be a problem with me staying here, listening ,” The kid argues, starting to get visibly upset. Color creeps up the kid’s neck and his lip trembles.

Dick sighs again, already done with the situation at hand. 

He may have slept relatively well last night, but he still feels stressed and exhausted. He doesn’t want to deal with a tearful kid on top of everything else.

“Listen-” Dick says before trailing down at the sign of Jason tensing further in distress. He forces himself to rethink his words. “You can look if you want, but I’m afraid I’ll still ask you for a bit of privacy.” He finally compromises.

The kid hesitates for a second, but he seems to know he’s not going to get a better deal because he says, “Deal.” And nods firmly at him.

Bruce stays quiet.

***

It’s a bit uncomfortable to try to talk to Bruce with the kid standing visibly on the neighbor roof and staring intensely at them, but Bruce doesn’t seem to mind because he picks up the argument right where they left it.

“I don’t know what you told Selina, Richard,” B tells him, in a low voice. “But people saw you last night with her, just before she left the city in a hurry. I know you did this on purpose.”

Dick rolls his eyes at him, angling his head in a way he knows Jason won’t be able to see his expression. He maintains a relaxed posture even when he feels like he wants to punch Bruce’s pretty face.

“Of course I did it on purpose,” Dick admits easily. “Just like you’ve been consciously choosing to very obviously hook up with her just to hurt me.”

Bruce growls, but at least has the decency to not denied it.

“Don’t try to put this on me, Richard,” Bruce scoffs, opening and closing his fists in anger. “Do you think it was okay what you did? Because if you do, I don’t want to know what lines you’re willing to cross to get what you want anymore.”

That gets a dark laugh out of Dick. His anger flares up again. He’s suddenly recalling how infuriating Bruce can be.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite,” Dick hisses, “Do you think you’re better than me? Do you think that what you did was much better than what I did? Let me tell you something, Bruce; If you really cared a bit about Selina you wouldn’t have used her the way you did just to hurt me. Did you tell her what you were doing? Huh?” Bruce gets very very still. “She was convenient, that’s all she was for you this week. Or maybe that’s what she’s been for you all this time.”

“I didn’t-”

“No, let me talk,” Dick snaps at him. “I don’t know if you have realized this Bruce, but I’m not starting anything. This is the second time we have talked in years, and I didn’t plan this to happen at all. And I’m sorry if my feelings are an inconvenience to you, but I can’t dictate them, and I can’t stop myself from wishing and planning for something that will probably never happen. I know this. You know this. So why are you still trying to kick me when I’m already down?!”

Bruce startles back at Dick’s raised voice. B looks warily at him and in the direction where the kid is standing. Dick doesn’t dare to turn to see the kid’s reaction.

Dick is better at managing his emotions than this, but he’s been having a very shitty week and Bruce’s presence doesn’t help at all.

He waits for his anger to disappear just like in their last conversation, but it doesn’t. He’s angry over Bruce’s reactions, over how easily Bruce had pushed him aside after their first fight and proceeded to ignore him for years. Over how Bruce had taken Robin from him and given it to a random kid.

“I didn’t know you knew it,” Bruce awkwardly says. Always being the one to say the worst thing in the worst moment.

Dick looks up at the sky trying to find the strength to not strangle him.

He draws a deep breath and releases it before speaking. “Listen, Bruce,” he says with a strained voice. “You don’t have to try to make me mad at you, I’ve been already mad at you for a long time. What you’re doing isn’t helping, because I’m getting tired very quickly of being the only one getting hurt in this mess. And If I go down, I’m going to drag you with me. Do you understand?”

Bruce nods stiffly. Good.

“Stop trying to ruin my life or whatever you thought you were doing, okay?” Dick repeats himself in case he wasn’t clear enough. One can never be sure with Bruce if he’ll listen. “You already cut me off and I’m already watching you hand my family legacy like it’s an old rag. You don’t need to do more, really. Right now, I only want you to leave me alone, so congratulations.”

 Bruce doesn’t move a muscle, but Dick can tell he’s avoiding looking at him. He doesn’t bother to read Bruce more than that.

“Good talk,” Dick finally nods. 

He doesn’t check into the kid when he goes away. He walks into the opposite roof and jumps, disappearing into the night and leaving Bruce’s figure behind.

***

Dick isn’t a very tidy person. He is disorganized, bad at scheduling a time in his life to clean, and very careless at where he throws his things in his apartment. He doesn’t care a lot about keeping a façade of cleanliness in his home when people very rarely visit him.

There’s no one but him to care if his apartment is disgusting.

That doesn't mean he doesn't know how to do it, but on the rare occasion he decides to clear up his apartment it means that either he’s feeling very productive that day or he’s very anxious.

The habit comes from Alfred, he knows. Instead of getting hurt during patrol on bad days because he’s upset, he scrubs every inch of his apartment until his hands are raw red and they hurt at the touch. It’s not healthy, and it’s a very stupid thing to do when he needs to be at his best for his work and his patrols. 

Normally, he isn’t enough emotional to want to do it, so he can count with the fingers of a hand the times he has done it.

The very next day after he talks to Bruce, he finds himself cleaning every inch of his small apartment like he’s on a mission when he wakes up. It’s the only stuff he can think of doing instead of spiraling about how he decided to ruin his entire life just for something so childish and stupid.

It doesn’t take too long to clean every corner, and Dick is contemplating cleaning the bathroom a second time when someone knocks on his door.

He isn’t surprised at all when he opens the door and finds Alfred waiting patiently for him. He was expecting Alfred to check up on him sooner or later. What he is surprised by, however, is the kid trailing warily after him.

“My dear boy,” Alfred breathes, drawing him into a hug with worried eyes. “It is so good to see you.”

***

Alfred doesn’t make any judgmental comments about his apartment even when Dick can tell he is dying to say something. Perhaps Dick had spooked him after the last call they had, or maybe he already noticed his red hands and the cleanliness of his apartment. It doesn’t matter. Alfred stays quiet as he puts the kettle on and busies himself in Dick’s kitchen.

Jason sits beside him on the edge of his bed. 

Dick doesn’t smile at the kid. He’s so done with everything related to Bruce it’s not even funny.

Jason still decides to lean forward in his direction and whisper very loudly. “I know what Bruce did.” 

Dick feels his eyebrows go up. Alfred’s movements don’t change, but Dick isn’t stupid enough to think he’s not paying attention to the kid’s words.

Dick squints at the kid.

“And what did he do?” he asks unimpressed, not bothering to whisper.

The kid opens his mouth and closes it. Something troubled passes through his eyes. Heartbreak. Devastation. 

Jason’s eyes get wet.

Dick straightens.

No way.

There’s no way .

The kid fiddles with the edge of the jacket he has on.

“Dick,” the kid says hesitantly in another whisper. His eyes are big and fearful. “I know.”

Chapter Text

There have been plenty of people in Dick’s life that have, at some point, questioned Bruce’s intentions towards him. 

There had been a reason the nuns in the orphanage he was in had put so much effort into making Dick presentable the first time he met Bruce, even if he hadn’t realized it at the time. And why Bruce had gotten Dick’s custody so easily without many questions.

Of course, there hadn’t been any newspaper or magazines or new sites brave enough to publish any of that trash, but that hadn’t stopped the whispers behind Bruce’s back. It hadn’t stopped well-meaning socialites and teachers from giving Dick their numbers just ‘in case’.

It has been a long time since Dick has heard that particular tone of worry, but it’s the first time he has heard it from someone who actually knows Bruce.

Dick blinks at Jason. Once. Twice. 

Then, he turns to Alfred with an actual honest expression of bewilderment on his face.

Alfred doesn’t stop moving, but, probably feeling Dick's eyes on him, he turns and tilts his head in acknowledgment in Dick’s direction. His expression is way too calm for him to truly believe what Jason is implying.

“As I have said many times, Master Jason,” Alfred steadily says, “There is no reason to worry about Master Bruce.”

Jason’s jaw tightens, his eyes wary and fearful still.

It’s obvious the kid has more to say, but he keeps his mouth shut as he looks down at his hands.

Alfred isn’t brushing off Jason’s concerns just because, Dick knows. Alfred raised him. He knows about every fight and injury Dick has ever gotten during patrols. He knows about his nightmares, about his parents, and about the life Dick lost. 

Alfred doesn’t know all his secrets, but he definitely would've caught any major switch in Dick’s life if there had been one, particularly from trauma. Dick hadn’t grown up under his careful watch and spent almost every day since he came to the Manor at his side for nothing.  

But Jason doesn’t know anything about that, and it’s a complicated topic to get into when there are so many things to be said.

Dick sighs tiredly, before standing up. 

“Do you want to help me take the trash out?” He offers to the kid, “I’ll explain on the way.”

Alfred makes a startled noise. He looks worried when he says, “My dear boy, you do not have to talk about it if you are uncomfortable.” 

Dick smiles at him weakly.

“It’s okay, Alfie,” Dick shrugs, going for unbothered and probably failing miserably in Alfred’s eyes. “Everyone already knows what happened, and he’ll be hearing about it from other people anyway if I don’t tell him.”

“Dick...” Alfred tries again, a notch softer.

It’s sweet for Alfred to be worried about Dick’s feelings, and maybe it’s for the best for someone else to spread the lie to Jason, but with Dick’s luck if Jason starts acting withdrawn from Bruce, he’ll be accused of sabotaging their relationship.

“C’mon kid,” Dick offers a small smile to the kid instead of acknowledging Alfred’s worry, “It’ll be quick.”

***

“I know Bruce hurts you,” Jason blurts out the moment they’re out of Dick’s apartment. His voice is shaky, but he looks determined now that Alfred isn’t present. “I’m not imagining things; I know I’m not .”

Dick adjusts the trash bag he’s holding in one hand. His feet are light against the floor as he walks. 

The kid’s eyes are fearful and devastated. He’s already bracing for Dick to confirm his worst fears. Maybe he thinks Dick is afraid, that his voice is being cut off by Alfred and Bruce. That he’s trapped.

“Kid-” Dick pauses. He’s being too impersonal. “Jay, look at me,” He fixes with a soft but firm voice. 

The kid automatically raises his eyes to meet Dick’s hesitantly. Now that Dick is searching for it, he can see the terror clear as day in Jason’s eyes. There are already tears at the corners of his eyes.

Dick would offer him a hug if the kid wasn’t so obviously skittish and cautious of touch. 

“I want you to listen to me very carefully. Can you do that, Jason?” Dick waits for the kid to nod before carrying on. “Bruce has never, never in my life put a hand on me, sexually or otherwise. And he won’t ever hurt you in any way, okay? He’s safe.”

The kid stares at him in disbelief. 

“But you- I saw you two in the gala and Alfred told me-”

“We got into an argument,” Dick interrupts Jason, feeling irritation break over the sympathy he feels for the kid. Maybe he should’ve listened to Alfred. “I won’t lie to you. Your father and I aren’t exactly on good terms, but it doesn’t have anything to do with- whatever you’re thinking.”

Jason examines his face in search of any sign Dick’s lying. Perhaps Dick would be in trouble if he was, because he isn’t in his best shape to lie.

“But- the way you looked at him…” Jason trails off, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion.

Dick’s left eye twitches. He knows lately he has been just sloppy at hiding his feelings, but he hates being called out.

“Kid, I hadn’t seen Bruce for a while, and- well, we didn’t exactly part on good terms before, so forgive me if I got a bit emotional after I saw him for the first time in two years,” Dick admits with a grimace. “Listen, I’m assuming you know who I am, right?”

The kid nods slowly, a cautious expression on his face. Dick is grateful the kid at least knows how to be a bit discreet.

“And you know who I was,” Dick prods.

The kid averts his eyes for the first time in their conversation. His grip tightens on the bag he’s holding.

“Alfred told me, “the kid mutters.

Dick nods.

“I got hurt during work and B freaked out,” Dick bluntly says, already done. “We fought and then he fired me. And I was so mad I decided to leave the Manor, so we never really resolved anything. And then…” Dick hesitates.

He pauses enough to process the kid’s trusting expression. It’s a mistake.

His resolve falters.

“I saw you, and I was mad at Bruce because he didn’t tell me, so we fought in the gala. Nothing else. And yesterday…” Dick trails off as they get into the tiny elevator that only works a couple of days during the week. “-yesterday…”

Jason presses the button to the ground floor. The doors close.

“Yesterday…” Jason repeats.

Yesterday, your father broke my heart , Dick thinks hysterically.

Dick could spin the situation in so many ways, but with the kid looking up at him with shaky hands and wide eyes, his mind blanks for the first time in years.

Dick’s throat closes. He stares at the floor.

“Dick?” Jason calls. He sounds worried.

Dick is silent for a very long moment.

Whatever he was hoping to have with Bruce is over, and their relationship is shattered and scattered on the dirty ground, along with Dick’s heart. And the most horrible part is that nobody knows, and that’s how Bruce will want to keep it. 

There’s no proof nor witness to Dick’s longing and pain.

It’s all worthless.

Dick really did ruin his life for nothing.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dick finally says. “Yesterday had a long time coming.”

They keep quiet on their way down the building and to the trash bins.

The kid watches him with analytical eyes the whole way.

“Bruce has never looked at you the wrong way,” Jason states the moment they start going back.

Dick doesn’t look at him.

“No,” he simply says.

His shoes are ratty. He needs to buy another pair. Take extra shifts.

The kid’s shoes are still shiny. Dick bets the kid has at least another ten new pairs waiting in the Manor.

“But you have,” Jason says.

Ah.

Dick waits a beat for the panic and fear to appear. He should be scrambling to convince the kid of the contrary, for the kid’s own peace of mind. For Bruce’s sake.

Instead, he finds himself not being even surprised. He doesn’t care enough about the kid knowing. Does it even matter if the truth absolves Bruce from the crime the kid accused him of?

Who is going to believe him, anyway? Dick can always pretend he was just joking, or convince everyone that the kid is so insecure in his place in the Manor that he is making up lies in the worst case.

He turns to the kid, who is looking at him with a puzzled expression, and gives him a small smile.

The kid can know about Dick’s feelings, but he is not going to burden this small child with the details of their falling out and fights. He refuses. Even when it would be easy to twist his opinion to his favor. Dick isn’t that awful.

Dick doesn’t want to get into another fight with Bruce.

“Bruce will never touch a hair on your head, I can promise you that much,” Dick sighs, and that’s the end of it.

***

Alfred makes chocolate pancakes and tea. Dick’s groceries are almost nonexistent, so it’s a miracle Alfred manages to find ingredients for it. 

Jason is very quiet while they eat. He doesn’t look freaked out anymore, but Dick can tell he’s deep in thought. Dick also eats in silence, too emotionally drained to try to start a conversation. 

He chews slowly, trying to pretend he’s enjoying the food when it tastes like ashes in his mouth.

The silence must bother Alfred because he clears his throat politely in the middle of their breakfast to draw their attention. Dick turns his head to him. Jason only lowers his fork onto his plate.

“We are planning a birthday gala for Master Jason,” Alfred announces. “He’ll be turning thirteen on August sixteenth. We were hoping you could attend.”

Dick’s eyebrows raise in surprise. At his side, Jason chokes on his food. Dick ignores him in favor of sending Alfred an incredulous look. 

“Alfie, no offense, but I think that is the worst idea I've ever heard,” he says, setting his fork on his plate. “And I’ve led a team of untrained superheroes teens.”

He may sound like he’s exaggerating, but he doesn’t feel like he is. If Bruce and he don’t get into another argument, it’s going to end up being one of the most awkward experiences he’s ever lived through.

Jason, taking sips of his tea to soothe his throat, looks at Alfred with a perplexed frown. Slowly, the kid’s face changes completely to astonishment as he fits another piece of the puzzle in its place. 

Dick doesn’t bother reacting to the kid’s realization. He just takes a sip from his own tea.

Alfred raises an eyebrow.

“My boy, I do not pretend to know what Master Bruce and you have been fighting about lately. Or what recent foolish thing Master Bruce has decided to do this time, but this is not about him. It’s about Master Jason.”

Dick sets down carefully his cup on the table.

“I really think it’s not a good idea, Alfie.” Dick repeats softly.

Alfred’s eyes are sad but understanding.

“You do not have to decide right now, my dear boy,” Alfred answers gently. “Just think about it, all right?”

***

Alfred doesn’t ask about Dick’s outburst on the phone, or about his red hands and his clean apartment. 

He doesn’t make any more remarks about his job or his apartment. Instead, he hugs him extra tight and extracts a promise to call more often before leaving with Jason.

Dick watches them leave and wishes he could go back with them to the Manor.

He misses his room. He misses the Cave. He misses the food.

He misses the security, the calmness, the comfortable silence.

He misses Alfred.

(He misses Bruce.)

***

“Why doesn’t Alfred know about your thing with Bruce?” Jason bluntly asks a couple of weeks later.

They’re sitting at one table in the restaurant Dick works at. It’s Dick’s break, and he doesn’t particularly want the kid’s company, but when Alfred had dropped him out, he hadn’t had the heart to turn him away.

Alfred probably thinks he is helping Dick and Jason to build a sibling bond instead of just making Dick feel like an unpaid babysitter, but it is what it is.

He munches the chicken tenders he bought for both of them with a shrug, ignoring the brief irritation that flares up at the personal question. 

“Why would I?” He asks patiently. “Nothing happened between us, apart from our arguments about it.”

The kid wrinkles his nose.

“But hasn’t he ever wondered why you and Bruce fell apart?” the kid presses. He’s getting pushier as time passes, and Dick can easily tell it’s Bruce’s influence at work. “All I hear is about how much you and Bruce understood each other in the field. Doesn’t he find it suspicious how it only took you one fight with B to stop talking to each other?”

Dick hums.

It would be a good point if it did not include Robin in the mix, and if Alfred wasn’t aware of how much Robin meant for him and from where it came.

However, that’s not something Dick is willing to share with him.

“You know how your dad is,” Dick says with a grimace. “Is it really unbelievable he would find a way to drive someone away, even accidentally?”

Jason wrinkles his nose in distaste.

“Jeez, I actually can see that,” the kid mumbles unhappily. “And to think this isn’t even his fault in the first place…”

Dick, very carefully, doesn’t let himself grit his teeth and frown like he wants to.

Instead, he sighs and pushes the kid’s plate toward Jason.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dick tells him with a bored tone of voice. “Eat up, kid. You’re all skin and bones.”

***

Bruce becomes a distant figure again. A ghost that follows Dick on his mind every day and fills his sleepless nights.

However, the kid stays.

Dick doesn’t quite understand him. He doesn’t know what to make of the kid following like a lost puppy in both his civilian and vigilante life.

They are nothing. Dick is sure the kid understands it, that he knows Dick will never play the role of a brother for him. That they are not related, and Dick is nothing more than just another person mooning over Bruce.

But the kid stays. Perhaps it is just because he’s starstruck, but Jason is there at least once a week during patrol, and Alfred drives him to Dick’s apartment way too often for Bruce to know where his kid is spending his time while he’s busy. 

Dick doesn’t know what to do with him, so he does nothing.

He indulges the kid’s excited recount of his day and steady chatter about the latest book or case he’s been working on and tries to not think too hard about it.

***

“Do you think B likes me?” Jason asks out of the blue one week into July. He’s lying down in Dick’s bed on his belly, with a book in his hands, just in front of the only fan Dick owns.

Dick, sitting on his table and working some sheets from Wayne Enterprises, raises his head and straightens in alert. He can feel the sweat sticking his shirt to his skin at the movement, but he ignores it in favor of examining the kid’s face.

He is looking down at his book like it is the most interesting thing in the world, nervously picking at the edge of the page he is on.

An uneasy feeling sparks inside Dick.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Dick asks carefully.

The kid shrugs. He still doesn’t look at him.

“I dunno,” Jason mumbles. “Just wondering,”

Dick slowly closes his laptop and walks the short distance from his dinner table to his bed. He sits on the edge of his bed, but before he can even think of what to say, the kid talks again.

“I- never mind, I’m just being dumb,” the kid rushes to say, tensing his whole body. “I don’t know why-”

“Hey, hey, nothing of that,” Dick interrupts him gently before Jason can spiral. “You’re not being dumb, Jason.”

Jason stubbornly keeps his mouth shut. Dick doesn’t touch his arm gently like he wants to. He knows the kid doesn’t like being touched without warning and he is only going to freak him out if Dick tries when he’s already tense.

“Jason- Jay , it’s okay,” Dick softly tells him. “Talk to me.”

Jason visibly fights internally with himself. The conflict is apparent on his face.

“Sometimes,” Jason starts slowly. Hesitantly. “I feel like he doesn’t like that much. Sometimes we’ll just be having a good time, you know? And then he’ll just go all cold and distant, and I never know why. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. ”

Then, in a pleading tone and looking straight at Dick, he asks.

“Is it me? Is something wrong with me?”

There are actual tears in Jason’s eyes, to Dick’s horror. Hesitantly, Dick opens his arms a bit in invitation.

The kid throws himself so fast into Dick’s arms that he’s taken aback. Even then, he doesn’t lose a beat. He pushes down the surprise in favor of hugging the kid properly, letting Jayson hide his face against his chest. It’s a familiar movement, one born of a life of learning and perfecting the art of comforting people.

He lets his hold be gentle and not constricting, unlike Jason, who seems like is doing his best to bruise his ribs. 

He doesn’t have to think about the soothing words he lets out. They always come automatically, even if he doesn’t always completely believe them.

“Don’t say that. There’s nothing wrong with you,” Dick firmly says. “You’re the sweetest child I’ve ever met, Jay. You’re brave, smart, and kind, and I know Bruce thinks the same of you. He loves you, kiddo.”

Jason is shaking his head before Dick stops talking.

“How would you know that?” Jason mumbles bitterly against his shirt. Dick ignores the growing wet spot where the kid’s head is resting. “You’ve only talked to him like two times in the last three years.”

Dick is grateful the kid isn’t looking him in the eyes, or else he would see the clear offense in Dick’s face. The kid really needs to work on thinking before talking.

But. He has a point.

Dick hasn’t exchanged with Bruce more than a handful of words since he was almost sixteen.

It doesn’t matter how in sync they both were nor how much Dick still can read every micro-expression on Bruce’s face. Jason hasn’t seen them at their best, and he probably never will.

Dick is mad at how much of a fair question it is.

“I know because I know him,” Dick answers, keeping the indignation out of his voice. “Don’t get me wrong, he can be an asshole when he wants, but he’s not that type of asshole.”

The kid snorts on his chest. Dick tries not to think about the state of his shirt. It’s not the time.

What he does think is about Bruce. About how warm his eyes had looked when he talked about Jason, about the proud hand on Jason’s shoulders in the photos Dick has been seeing, and the brief stories of both Bruce and Jason he hears from Alfred when they talk.

He thinks about Bruce caring so easily and so much he gets scared.

He thinks about Bruce being a fucking idiot that doesn’t know how to express himself properly with words.

“You’re his kid. His only kid.” Dick absently pets Jason’s hair gently. “And he loves so easily. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the center of his entire world. But he- well, he isn’t the best at expressing affection.”

Jason laughs, slowly relaxing under Dick's ministrations.

“You can say that again,” the kid says under his breath.

Dick tilts his head as a thought occurs to him.

“Actually, I’m not sure he even knows what he is supposed to do with a kid,” Dick slowly says, stopping his petting. “I can’t remember the last time he was alone with one for more than an hour.”

It’s a disquieting thought, but it’s true. 

Sure, Dick had been a child, but he hadn’t been exactly normal, and Alfred had taken him under his wing, fulfilling the parent role without thinking twice. 

Bruce, on the other hand, had let Dick make decisions no child should have ever needed to take. And, while Dick had bloomed like a flower under the responsibility against all odds, he should have cracked under the pressure like a normal twelve-year-old. Bruce had taught Dick to drive and trusted his input in missions like he was any other colleague and not just a kid.

Dick had never minded when Bruce left him for a week or a month for a League mission or some business from Wayne Enterprises. And he had known better than to take it personally when Bruce just needed some time alone or when he was snappy.

Bruce had never had to try to parent Dick. 

Bruce had never tried to treat Dick like a kid until it was too late.

Jason grumbles under him unhappily when Dick doesn’t resume his petting immediately. 

Dick chuckles halfheartedly, carding his fingers softly through the kid’s hair again, even as his mind races. 

Jason relaxes completely against him, and it doesn’t take long for the kid to fall asleep.

Yet, the uneasiness doesn’t leave Dick. 

If Bruce is basing most of his knowledge of kids off Dick, then what does that mean for Jason?

***

He can’t help but start noticing things he had overlooked before. Things he didn’t care enough to look at twice.

There is not a single instance where Bruce drops or picks up Jason. Dick had attributed it to Bruce not knowing or doing his best to avoid Dick after their last fight, but Jason only mentions Alfred when he talks about going outside during the day.

Dick doesn’t believe Bruce doesn’t know where his kid is every minute of the day, but he can believe that it hasn't occurred to Bruce that picking and dropping Jason is a thing he should be doing. 

There is also the matter of Jason’s retelling of his days, Alfred is always there, but Bruce some days or doesn’t talk to his kid or interacts so little with Jason that he isn’t worth mentioning once.

It’s worrying.

***

Dick does go to the kid’s birthday in August. 

He arrives at noon, four full hours early, with a cloth bag on his arm, a present between his hands, and determination burning bright in his chest.

Alfred’s entire face brightens when he finds him waiting in the door.

“You don’t have to knock, my dear boy,” Alfred half scolds him, taking the present from Dick's hands and hurrying him inside. “You know this is your home too.”

Dick beams at him, even if what he says isn’t true.

“It doesn’t feel correct to just barge in,” Dick easily says, following Alfred inside the ballroom Bruce always uses for the galas. The workers putting the last touches on Jason’s gala send him curious looks. “And I wanted to see you too before you were too busy.”

Alfred huffs a small laugh as he puts Dick’s gift wrapped in shiny red paper alongside a couple of others in the table gift. His eyes soften in fondness.

“I’m afraid you’re a day too late for that, my boy,” Alfred says, but his tone is light. 

Dick smiles sheepishly at him.

Of course, he already knew that. Alfred is always busy the entire week before big events in the Manor, but he rarely rests more than half an hour on the day of the events. It’s perfect for Dick to hunt down Bruce before the party can start.

“Well, I guess I’ll have to go bother Jay instead,” he pouts. “I can’t let the birthday boy be alone on his day, can I?”

Alfred lets him go, and Dick keeps his smile and playful expression only until he is sure Alfred -or anyone- can’t see him. Only then, he drops his happy façade and walks directly to the stairs leading to the family wing of the Manor. 

The bag on his arm is heavy with unwrapped books. Alfred hadn’t commented on it, but Dick knows he thinks they’re for Jason. 

They’re not.

***

Bruce isn’t in his study.

Dick grits his teeth when he realizes that only means one thing.

Bruce is still asleep.

***

When Dick hadn’t seen Jason last night during patrol or heard from him, he had assumed both Bruce and the kid had taken the night off to celebrate Jason’s birthday. Or to rest for the gala.

It hadn’t occurred to him that Bruce would be enough of an asshole to go out alone and sleep until noon on his kid’s first birthday at the Manor.

His steps are quick but silent on the carpet on his way to the main bedroom. He only stops a moment in front of his old bedroom, which, judging by the low music coming out the closed door, is Jason’s now.

Bruce’s bedroom is at the end of the hallway. Dick’s room had been just to his right. Dick had chosen it because he could always hear Bruce coming back home or going out in the early morning, and it looks like Jason has discovered the same.

He’s extra quiet as he opens Bruce’s door and closes it softly after him. The sound of the lock is less quiet, but unless Jason is a meta-human in secret, he won’t be able to hear it. Nor anything that happens in the room unless one of them starts screaming.

Bruce’s room is just as Dick remembers. Enormous, black mahogany furniture that is probably older than Alfred, and dark and heavy curtains stopping the sun from illuminating the room. Nothing has been moved, and the only new decoration is a photo of Bruce and Jason outside a courthouse on his bedside table. 

The lump in the middle of the bed that must be Bruce doesn’t twitch. Bruce must be exhausted for him to not wake up immediately. 

Dick lets his bag drop to the floor, and without care, he starts drawing the curtains open without a warning.

Bruce grunts in his place.

“Just a minute more, Alfred,” he mumbles.

Dick rolls his eyes as he walks to Bruce’s bed and pulls his bed sheets out of the bed and dumps them on the floor. 

The way Bruce does a double take at him when there’s nothing hiding him would be funny if Dick wasn’t so pissed at him.

“We need to talk,” Dick curtly tells him, already moving on and opening Bruce’s wardrobe. 

There is no suit prepared for Bruce, so either Alfred is mad at Bruce or he trusts him enough to dress himself for the occasion. Alfred didn’t look stressed, so Dick is leaning towards the latter.

Dick starts moving the suits, searching for the ones he knows Bruce looks particularly good on.

“Richard…” Bruce starts with a growl, and it’s a warning of a fight Dick doesn’t want right now.

Dick pulls out a couple of suits and throws them in the bed, for Bruce to have at least the illusion of choice.

“Let's put a pin into our latest fight, all right? I’m not here for that,” Dick interrupts him before Bruce can say anything, turning to him. “I know we are both capable of compartmentalizing when we want to. And this is kind of important.”

Bruce analyzes Dick’s face with intensity. Dick stares back at him without fear of him finding something out of place.

The way Bruce’s mouth turns down on the edges in acceptance is enough for Dick to move again.

He goes back to Bruce’s wardrobe and pulls out Bruce’s favorite pair of formal shoes. He’ll need them for the long day after him.

“Quiz time,” Dick flatly says. “What bedtime should a twelve-year-old have?”

Bruce stares at him in bafflement. Dick is painfully sure that is not the question that has Bruce confused. Bruce looks like it hasn't even occurred to him that young teens need a bedtime.

“How much undivided attention should a kid have?” Dick asks. He puts Bruce’s shoes in front of the bed and searches for a red tie with a similar shade to the tie Alfred had sent a photo during the week.

Bruce doesn’t answer.

“Which ways are a nice way to bond with a child?” Dick keeps going as his eyes pick up the perfect shade for the tie. 

He takes it maybe a little too aggressively. 

“How old should a kid be to be left alone?” 

There’s dead silence.

When Dick turns to leave the tie in the bed, Bruce finally speaks.

“This is an intervention,” Bruce says aloud. He looks and sounds lost.

Dick can’t find any sympathy for him right now. Not after everything.

“Jason thinks you don’t like him, and he has every reason to think that.” He says coldly. “Kids aren’t pets, Bruce. You can’t pick a child from the street like he’s a dog, get bored of him, and hand the responsibility to Alfred. He doesn’t deserve the crumbs of affection you’re giving him.”

Bruce looks stricken. Dick blinks.

That’s a new weak spot.

“I’m not- I didn’t think-” Bruce fumbles and stutters. It’s weird to see him so expressive of something. “I thought I was doing good.” He ends up saying, weakly. 

He probably doesn’t know what he is doing wrong, but it doesn’t matter. Dick is there for that.

Dick walks back to the wardrobe to search for a dress shirt for the suit.

“You need to stop trying to handle your kid like you handled me,” Dick finally spits out the bitter truth. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, but it would explain the cold hot behavior Bruce had been exhibiting towards Jason. It makes him feel a little guilty. “I knew what I was doing most of the time, Bruce. And I knew where to draw limits and when to take care of myself. I didn’t need nor want you to hold my hand through anything. I wasn’t your kid, nor I felt like one. But Jason? I have bad news; he is both your kid and a child.”

Dick stops at an ice-white dress shirt; it looks fairly similar to the one Jason will be wearing during the Gala. He pulls it out.

“Jason can’t read you like I did. He doesn’t know what you’re thinking or feeling if you don’t tell him, and it makes him insecure that you aren’t even trying to be affectionate or spend time with him.” Dick puts the dress shirt on the bed too.

Bruce is doing his best impression of being constipated, but his eyes are pleading. It’s easy to read the question he is not voicing on his face.

What can he do?

Dick rolls his eyes again, hard.

He picks up his bag from the floor and walks towards where Bruce is still sitting in his bed in his silk pajamas. He dumps the handful of parenting books he brought with himself into Bruce’s lap. 

“There, know you can’t have more excuses,” Dick dryly tells him, and then he walks to Bruce’s door, unlocking it. He doesn’t feel like he can interact with Bruce anymore without giving in and drinking him with his eyes. Better to leave before he can spark another fight. “Just for the record, it’s very shitty of you to sleep until noon on your kid’s first birthday just because you couldn’t control yourself and decided to stay up too late. And for God’s sake, get up right now, take a shower, and give that kid a proper hug.”

Dick opens the door quietly and, before Bruce can get a word, he gets out and closes the door.

He gives himself a couple of beats to concentrate on his breathing and fast heartbeats. Then, he smooths his own dress shirt, walks to the kid’s room, puts a warm expression on his face, and knocks.

***

The party goes well. Everyone coos at Bruce matching clothes with his son and, after Bruce gives Jason a big and awkward-looking hug, the kid spends the rest of the night looking like it is the best day of his life. It’s a little sad, in Dick’s opinion.

“Bruce is going to sign me up for school in September,” the kid beams at him at some point. Both Bruce and Dick have been avoiding each other during the whole evening, but the kid doesn’t seem to notice as they take turns to spend time with the kid periodically.

It’s the unspoken deal for the night.

Dick beams right back at him.

“That’s great. Are you excited?” Dick asks him. 

He keeps smiling as the kid nods enthusiastically and babbles at him about Gotham Academy and its clubs. He hopes the kid won’t be disappointed in the amount of bratty kids that are bound to be in a school like Gotham Academy. 

Privately, Dick thinks Jason would do much better in a public school like the one had gone to, but it’s neither his business nor his responsibility. 

Overall, it’s a nice day. 

Jason doesn’t seem to like the people in the Gala that he doesn’t even know, but with Bruce awkwardly patting his head or talking to him, he doesn’t seem to care too much about their presence. Stopping most of the people from trying to talk to the kid gives Dick a headache but, when at the end of the night, Jason blows out the candles of his cake with a big smile, he knows it was worth it.

***

Dick isn’t in the front row for Bruce’s change, but there are days when Jason asks him to stay in the door of the apartment complex he lives in because Bruce is picking him up instead of Alfred, and there are days when Jason breaks into his apartment with big smiles and stories to tell him about Bruce.

There are nights when Jason has to go home early to get sleep, and new schedules he has to follow once he enters school.

Dick won’t ever admit it aloud, but the kid starts growing on him.

*** 

And then, there are the sleepovers.

Dick won’t think too hard about it until Jason is gone, but the kid starts staying the night occasionally during every week. Alfred doesn’t like it because he knows Dick’s apartment is way too small for guests to stay overnight, but the kid doesn’t seem to care that he has to share a bed with Dick these days, or that he can see the entirety of Dick’s apartment with a glance. 

He doesn’t seem to mind that Dick feeds him cheap food and that his idea of hanging out is going to the public museum and zoo of the city. 

The kid is way too used to tight budgets to even bat an eye at Dick’s economic struggles.

So, they let him stay with Dick overnight, or spend weekends with him when Bruce has a business trip that Jason can’t go on.

It stops bothering Dick, because the kid is nice and spends most of his time either talking Dick’s ear off or reading in silence.

***

Bruce sometimes talks to him, but they don’t really talk.

There are conversations about Jason’s patrol times, when he is allowed to stay with Dick, and when he is not. There are conversations about the latest book the kid has been reading, about the next vacation the kid will have, and the school events that the kid has told Dick but not to Bruce, and vice versa.

Both of them are polite to each other, but Dick half of the time can’t look Bruce in the eyes and half of the time Bruce has a foot ready to bolt the moment the conversation is done.

They ignore each other during Christmas, and by the time Jason turns fourteen they perfect the art of dissipating any tension between them when Jason is in the room.

***

Jason attends Dick’s graduation with Alfred at his side and all his friends and gives Dick the longest hug after his dinner celebration.

“Now you can stop working at that shitty restaurant,” Jason grumbles in the hug.

Dick barks a laugh as he ruffles the kid’s hair with one hand.

“You’ve been spending way too much time with Alfred, Jay.” Dick admonishes playfully. 

They’re outside the restaurant they just ate in, standing with Dick’s friends and waiting for Gar, who seems like ate way too much pasta and is still in the bathroom.

Donna, being the closest, coos at their hugging. Dick purposefully rests his chin on top of Jason’s head, knowing people think Dick looks adorable like that.

Soon, he won’t be able to do that anymore. Jason is starting to have growth spurts.

“I wish I had a little brother to hold him like that,” she says with a pout.

Dick doesn’t react, but he feels Jason bristling like a cat at her. 

Dick hides his smile behind Jason’s hair.

“He’s not my brother,” Jason complains. 

Donna laughs. Everyone laughs when Jason denies the title.

Little do they know how true it rings for both of them.

“Okay,” Donna humors him. “Then what is he for you?”

Jason hides his face in Dick’s chest and doesn’t answer. Donna looks like she wants to laugh again.

It’s a good question, though. 

One Dick doesn’t have to think twice.

“Well, he’s obviously my kid,” Dick answers without hesitating, just the right amount of humor in his voice for his audience to not take him seriously. 

Just the right amount of honesty for Jason to pick it up.

Kory, at their side. Tilts her head in consideration.

“I didn’t know he was your son,” she bluntly asks, confused. “Wasn’t his father Batman?”

Donna can’t hold her laugh at her words. And neither can’t stop their hysterical laughs any of his friends who have abandoned any pretenses that they weren’t listening.

Even Alfred coughs a small laugh.

Jason finally finishes his hug, ignoring the laughs around. His face is red, but he looks a bit too pleased to be upset for no one taking Dick seriously. After a year around Dick, he has realized Dick is a little bit of an expert at lying but not really lying.

(The kid either doesn’t care or he thinks Dick hasn’t done the same to him ever.)

Dick smiles with humor, too.

***

Jay turns fifteen.

His birthday party has become a small event by that time, where only Alfred, Bruce, Dick, and Barbara come. Clark stops by in the afternoon to give him the gifts the Teen Titans and the League have sent.

Dick knows Bruce worries about Jason not making any friends in school, but if Jason doesn’t want to talk about it, Dick won’t push it.

***

Jay turns fifteen, and Dick finally starts calling him Robin without gritting his teeth.

He doesn’t call him Robin as Bruce does. Like he’s calling a cape.

He doesn’t call him Robin like the Titans or the League. Like a title.

He doesn’t call him Robin like the people he helps. Like salvation.

Dick calls him Robin like his mom used to say it, all affectionate and soft.

He uses Robin as a nickname, in the same tone Bruce calls Jason ‘Lad’ and Alfred calls him ‘My dear boy.’

“My little Robin,” Dick sometimes calls him, and ignores Jason’s embarrassed look on his face.

***

The thing about kids is that they grow very quickly, and one has to accommodate their needs as they start finding themselves.

Dick is good at finding his footing with Jay. He is good at picking his humor and knowing when to nudge and when to give him space. Jason still curls on his side as if he’s still thirteen and small, and lets Dick comfort him for it.

Dick knows Jason doesn’t fight with him because he has his emotions always on a tight leash, and no one but Bruce can’t make him lose control. He has a cold head and is good at improvising and soothing frizzled feathers.

Bruce, on the other hand, loses his footing with Jay in a blink of an eye.

***

Bruce and he don’t really talk about any other thing than Jason when they have to meet.

Later, Dick will wonder if he had been brave enough and looked into Bruce’s eyes, he would have found out how bad things were between them.

***

The day before Dick leaves for Tamaran, for a mission with the Titans, Jason asks him to stay.

“I won’t be able to put up with B without you,” Jason whines. “Where will I go if we fight again?”

Dick hugs him. He always hugs the kid gently, and the kid always hugs him back like it’s the last day he’ll ever see him.

Dick has just turned twenty-one.

“Alfie will be there, and you have the key to my apartment if you need anything,” he patiently says. He feels more than sees the way the kid wilts in his arms. “Hey, it’s only three months. I’ll be back by your birthday.”

Jason hugs him tighter.

“But I don’t want you to go,” the kid mumbles on his shoulder.

Dick’s heart squeezes. He knows he hasn’t been away from Jason for this long ever, but he hadn’t found a good reason to say no when Kory had asked for his help.

He pets the kid’s hair gently.

“I know, my little Robin, I know,” Dick tells him softly. “Tell you what, birdie. When I come back I’ll ask Bruce for you to stay with me for a week or two. How does that sound?”

The kid stays quiet for a long moment.

The silence in his apartment feels suffocating for a couple of seconds.

And then, in a resigned voice, Jason says.

“Okay.”

Chapter Text

The mission with the Titans in Tamaran is surprisingly short and easy. 

Dick is forced to sit in diplomatic meetings alongside Kory for a straight month. His other friends -who have come as backups- spend most of their time just doing tourism while Dick is stuck helping Kory to analyze contracts and documents.

He doesn’t mind, but he has to intervene a couple of times before Gar can cause a diplomatic disaster.

Their mission in Tamaran is short enough for them to come back two months early.

Their mission in New Chronus, however, takes the rest of the time Dick has scheduled.

***

“Rhea’s energy divided and spread throughout the Galaxy,” Phoebe, the goddess of the moon, had told Donna. Donna had been holding the old woman’s hand, pale as a sheet. “Who did she search for? Children alone, about to die- unwanted. She needed to raise these new seeds to instill in them our power and virtue to take those who could not have lived and turn them into Gods.”

Two months ago, Dick had researched Donna’s past. Step by step. Memory by memory. Everything his friend could recall, but none of it had existed. Nothing could be proved.

Donna’s whole life had been a lie, and Dick had watched her cry over the dead goddess after everything was said and done.

Dick could’ve gone home then. 

There had been a window of opportunity to back down and just wish them luck. He should have declined. He should have apologized to one of his best friends for not being able to help her and come back early to the small family he had created. 

Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything, maybe it would have just hurt more. But maybe it could have changed something.

Instead, he had foolishly offered his help.

***

Danny Chase, of all people, is the one to give Dick the news.

Dick had come into the room limping, leaning into Kory for balance. His suit had been in tatters.

The second he had put himself in the field of vision of Danny, the kid had come running towards him.

“Dick, I’ve got real big news.” The kid had said then, running towards Dick. A knowing expression on his freckled face.

***

His phone has twenty missed calls from Bruce dated from last week.

***

“Hey, I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure. I think Todd Jason was killed.” Danny Chase tells him, and Dick’s whole world shatters.

***

Back when Dick’s parents were alive, they used to visit a lot of people on their travels. People who received them with bright smiles and deep affection and offered them a place to stay without a second thought. They had a lot of friends that Dick doesn’t remember anymore.

But he remembers the calls his parents got every time someone passed away. It’s natural, Dick thinks, that knowing so many adult people of different ages can result in being invited to so many burial services.

He remembers crying just because his parents cried when they received the news. A mirror of emotions, because he didn’t know those people, but the sadness on his parents' faces always made him tear up regardless of that fact. 

He was such an emotional kid. Always crying his heart out, laughing until tears, screaming until his throat felt raw.

Nowadays, he is used to exaggerating or faking his emotions to pretend there’s nothing wrong with him.

This time he can’t bring himself to be performative.

“Dick, calm down. There could be a mistake.” Kory says, but Dick isn’t freaking out.

He is staring blankly at the screen before him, with the words ‘Status: Deceased’ under Robin’s photo.

( Blood on the floor, ringing ears, a lost life.)

“Jason…dead? My god. How did it happen?” Donna asks over his shoulder.

“I didn’t want you to find this way,” Donna’s husband mutters.

Dick ignores them. Calmly -with unfeeling hands- he scrolls the page down. There isn’t much information, but the date of death is there.

He missed it for just a week.

A small hand rests on his shoulder. Raven.

“Richard-”

“It’s okay,” Dick cuts her. He closes Robin’s status and turns to his chair to face his friends.

Everyone looks horrified, heartbroken. Raven and Donna have glassy eyes.

Dick doesn’t have it in himself.

He feels like he is back at the orphanage, knowing his life is over but not having the energy to feel anything about it.

(What’s the point of crying and screaming when nothing can be done anymore? What’s the point of feeling when it only makes him vulnerable to being hurt? What’s the point?)

“I think I need to go,” he announces. 

Nobody stops him from getting out of the room, but he senses the stares of confusion and worry on his back. He senses the judgment following him until he is out of view.

He just doesn’t care anymore what they think about him.

***

“I don’t want you to go,” Jason had mumbled on his shoulder.

Dick had held him through sadness, bitterness, and anger through the years. He had held him that last day. 

His little Robin hadn’t been as tall as him, but he had been in the way. 

Dick still can recall how his kid felt between his arms, how warm and small he still felt every time.

‘I don’t want you to go too,’ he thinks.

Sometimes, he understands, people don’t get what they want.

***

The trip to Gotham passes in a haze for Dick. There is no hurry on his bones to get quickly home, but the trip still feels impossibly short.

It's almost unreal to step into the Manor grounds knowing there is no kid waiting eagerly at the door for him. And there will never be anymore.

The air is chilly as he walks his way to the kitchen door, through the gardens behind the Manor, where Jason has a vegetable patch he made with Alfred’s help. 

Dick doesn’t look at it when he passes at its side. The sun is starting to illuminate the sky.

(Jason had planned to grow a pumpkin for Halloween this year.)

The kitchen door is open.

The Manor is dead silent.

***

He catches Bruce coming back from his patrol down the cave. It’s almost six in the morning when he finally hears the rumble of his car.

Dressed as Batman, Bruce doesn’t look any different from how Dick remembers him. But he can see the exhaustion on his shoulders, the tight way he’s pressing his lips. The way he is leaning more on one leg is clearly injured.

Bruce scowls at his presence. 

There isn’t wariness in his stance anymore, but there is hurt and anger.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Bruce tells him with scorn.

Dick sits in one chair close to him and puts his hands on his lap.

“I saw your calls,” Dick tells him emptily, “And I heard about Jason. I’m really sorry, Bruce.”

He is sorry for not getting home sooner, he is sorry for not staying, he is sorry for their loss.

But his words ring insufficient and short.

They’re just pleasantries before he can ask the answers he itches to have.

“You weren’t at the funeral, ” Bruce barrels in. He clearly wants a fight. “People asked about you.”

Dick closes his eyes.

Dick has been to a lot of funerals of people he doesn’t know, or people who he wasn’t close to. It’s a natural thing to do for people in his line of work. And it’s almost funny he has never been in one of the people he loved.

Nobody had thought to bring him to his own parent’s funeral, and it had been upsetting. 

Missing Jason's feels ten thousand times worse.

“What happened?” He asks hollowly.

He hears Bruce taking a sharp breath and opens his eyes.

His eyelashes feel weirdly sticky, but he ignores it in favor of looking at Bruce. He still hasn’t pulled the cowl down.

“Bruce, please, I need to know, ” Dick pleads.

Slowly, like he’s a wild animal, Bruce sits in a chair in front of him and takes the cowl off his face. He looks beyond tired. Dick wouldn’t be surprised if someone told him that Bruce hadn’t slept since Jason’s death. 

“There was an… incident,” Bruce says. It’s an understatement, but Dick knows he doesn’t mean it to sound callous. Then, Bruce tells him.

***

There was an accident. Jason fought with Bruce and ran away to try to find his mom. Somehow the Joker got the wind of his location, and he took him away before Bruce knew where he was. 

Bruce overshares the gory details, but Dick prefers to know than to live in ignorance.

(“He was still warm when I got there,” Bruce says with unseeing eyes. “For a moment I thought he would be fine, but then I tried to find his pulse.”)

It sinks into him slowly as Bruce talks.

Jason is really gone.

He’s been gone for a while.

***

Dick listens. It’s the only thing he can do when there’s so much horror and cruelty described in Bruce’s words.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, hearing how Bruce and Jason’s relationship fell apart and how horrible the results of Jason’s autopsy were, but by the time Bruce ends telling what happened his eyes are itching in exhaustion.

There is a long silence when Bruce finishes talking.

Dick nods once, lowering his gaze to his hands.

“Okay,” he whispers when no words come to him.

He flexes his hands. His thoughts are weirdly empty.

He really should say something else, but when he opens his mouth, something strange happens.

When he tries to keep going, his words fail him. It feels like there is something stuck in his throat, not letting him talk. His eyes burn, and he doesn’t realize what that means until warm water drops fall on his hands.

He sniffles.

I’m crying, he thinks, surprised and, right in that instant, it feels like a dam being broken.

He hiccups a sob, and another follows after, and another. 

Crying feels uncomfortable, but it’s like he can’t stop now that he started. He is gasping for air, he can’t breathe, and his heart feels like it is being shattered again into a million pieces. Someone is squeezing his lungs and not letting the air pass.

“Richa- Dick, ” he distantly hears someone urgently say to him. There’s a soft pressure on one of his shoulders. A hand? “You need to breathe, you’re hyperventilating-”

The world is blurry, the ground is opening under him, and he feels like he is falling. He tries to breathe, to grasp for a strand of control, but he doesn’t find one.

He thinks again of Jason, of the bright smile on his face when he told him Bruce was planning to pay him college, of his quick hugs and embarrassed face when he got caught having seconds.

He thinks of Jason asking him to stay.

Dick buries his face between his hands and, for the first time in ten years, he lets himself cry.

Chapter Text

“How’s Alfred?” Dick asks tiredly an hour later after his breakdown. His eyes heavy and swollen. 

They’re sitting on the small round table that is in the kitchen, where Alfred likes to take his tea in the morning because it has a pretty view of the garden. Dick had spent a good part of his teenage years sitting here, eating or doing his homework with Alfred across from him, and he knows Bruce liked to sit down with Alfred in the same place during the good days. Most times, it feels comforting to sit in the kitchen because of all the good memories. 

Right now, it feels just cold.

Bruce taps his fingers on the table softly. In front of him, his steaming coffee lies untouched. Dick stares at his own cup of tea. 

He has never quite understood the big deal about tea. It tastes the same to him either in a tea bag from a cheap brand or made in a teapot. Jason had called him uncultured for it.

He enjoys the process more, but he doesn’t have the energy to make himself a cup from the start. Instead, he had accepted the simple cup with a tea bag that Bruce had offered him.

“How do you think he is?” Bruce bluntly asks back. 

Dick looks around the kitchen. It’s spotless, almost shining in the light of the early day. The spices on the counter have been rearranged and the floor is freshly polished. The windows are so clean he could almost believe there are no crystals in place.

He wonders how red Alfred’s hands are. If he used cleaning gloves or if his hands are bleeding red.

“Touche,” He mutters, and then pulls his cup to drink from it.

***

That’s how Alfred finds them a while later. Sitting across each other in silence, with empty cups, an open pack of goldfish crackers, and a bowl of green overpriced grapes that Dick found in the fridge in the middle of them.

They’ve been picking periodically at the snacks, not really hungry but knowing they have to get something in their stomach. Dick hasn’t really eaten a full meal since two weeks ago for the nature of the Titan’s mission, and knowing Bruce, he probably has been surviving through protein shakes since last week.

The food tastes like ashes in his mouth, but at least Dick doesn’t feel sick.

“Good morning,” Alfred cautiously greets them.

Bruce, looking beyond tired, picks another grape and keeps quiet.

Dick, on the other hand, mutters, “Morning,” politely as he fidgets with a cracker.

They descend into an uncomfortable silence. Dick can see Alfred trying to find something to say at the edge of his vision, and struggling to fill the silence.

Bruce sighs heavily.

“I have a meeting in an hour,” he says aloud, getting up from his chair. “I should get changed.”

Dick doesn’t look at him. He kind of wants to lie down on the ground and sleep until he feels better.

He stares at the cracker in his hand. The pack was probably Jason’s.

“I was just about to make lunch,” he hears Alfred say. Dick’s stomach turns.

A couple of grapes and crackers are easy to eat, but the thought of eating a full meal in the Manor without his kid talking his ear off makes him want to throw up.

Bruce must agree, because he says, “No, thank you. I’m not hungry,” 

Dick hears his steps exiting the kitchen, leaving him alone with Alfred. He breaks the cracker in two and sighs too.

“I’m not hungry too,” he mumbles, pushing the bowl and the crackers away from him.

“My dear boy…”

Dick raises his head to his father.

He looks old and tired. There are stress lines around his eyes and he’s paler than he remembers. He looks fragile like this.

Dick offers him a weak smile.

“It’s fine,” he lies. “It was a long trip. I’ll just go home and lay down in a bit.”

Alfred’s expression turns pained the moment he mentions going back to his apartment, but it can’t be helped. There’s nothing for Dick in the Manor right now, apart from the heavy grief impregnating the halls. 

Dick watches him putting his teapot on the stove.

“Did Bruce talk to you?” Alfred asks in a poor attempt to be subtle.

It’s a fair question. Bruce isn’t exactly known for his knack for communication, or for sharing vital information with others. But Bruce knew what Dick meant for Jason.

Bruce isn’t stupid. He probably caught Dick’s role in Jason’s life way before it solidified and let it happen. Maybe it had been because he needed the help, or because he wanted Jason to have a bigger support net. Either way, he had allowed it and knew Dick wouldn’t have accepted anything less than the truth from his mouth.

The crying probably helped too.

“Yeah,” Dick answers in a subdued tone. “He told me everything.”

Alfred presses his lips. There’s skepticism in his expression with a bit of discomfort.

Ah. He is doubting Bruce.

Dick tilts his head at him in the way Bruce had told him once it was creepy. With wide, curious, and unblinking eyes. Without pretense.

Bruce didn’t mind back then. Alfred looks at him warily in the present.

“Do you blame him?” Dick asks him without rodeos. He talks blankly, forgetting his manners in favor of his morbid curiosity.

Alfred takes a sharp breath. 

“Of course not,” Alfred says, but he’s a beat too quick to deny it, a bit too expressive around the eyes. Dick has known him too long.

Dick goes back to his cracker. He closes his fist around it and pulverizes it, letting the crumbs fall onto the table.

“Good,” Dick distantly says. “The blame game is a dangerous path to walk through, Alfie. And it’ll only end up burning all we have left.”

***

Dick leaves the Manor with the excuse that he is tired. Which he is, but more than anything he wants to lie down, curl himself into a ball, and disappear.

A part of him hates himself for leaving Alfred to deal with Bruce and their loss of Jason by himself, but he knows he won’t be any help right now. Not when he is tired and fragile.

He wants to be alone. He wants to be able to process the situation instead of feeling like he has to perform for someone else’s sake.

He goes to the cemetery.

The Wayne Family Cemetery is a gated part inside the normal cemetery of Gotham. It’s been closed off from the public since Bruce’s parents’ deaths, after someone had tried to give guided visits to Thomas and Martha’s graves.

He picks up the lock from the gate easily, and lets himself in without caring if there’s a camera seeing his movements. It’s eerily easy to get in. 

His feet move him without his permission, forcing him to walk around the graves, searching for the fresher mound of dirt to find the kid.

He finds Jason’s grave thanks to the angel statue that screams money at the far end. It’s so full of flowers that the recently disturbed dirt isn’t visible from where he is standing.

Jason would have hated it, but the funerals and the graves are mostly for the living, he supposes. 

From now on, everything related to his kid will become just an attempt at self-comfort for the ones who were closest to Jay. For the rest, he’ll become just a memory. Dick hates it. 

Slowly, he lets himself fall in front of it, in a sitting position. He leaves the bouquet of lilacs and peonies he brought with the rest of the flowers and clasps his hands firmly between each other.

“Hi, Jay,” he murmurs softly, “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I didn’t know.”

The wind is cold, and the sky is full of clouds. 

Just another day in Gotham City.

Just another loss of many.

Fresh tears start making their way down his cheeks. He doesn’t try to stop them; his kid doesn’t deserve less than honesty from him.

“I’m really sorry,” He whispers to the wind.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, just crying quietly and feeling like his heart is breaking all over again, but after a while -when his nose and cheeks are red from the cold and the crying and the sky starts to get too dark- his phone starts vibrating on his pocket insistently.

He rubs the tears off his cheeks, and gets his phone out to turn it off.

Except he pauses. Bruce’s name blinks back at him.

His stomach turns.

“What’s wrong?” He answers without thinking twice, anxiety gawking at his stomach. His voice is rough from the crying, but he already knows Bruce won’t care about it.

The tips of his fingers are freezing, his hands feel numb from the cold.

There’s a long pause.

“Where are you?” Bruce asks, ignoring his question. He doesn’t sound much different from the morning, but Dick can’t help but stay wary.

Bruce’s calling is nothing but worrisome.

“Out,” Dick tells him quietly. “Is everything okay?”

There is a beat. Two. Dick hears Bruce deliberately take deep breaths.

“You didn’t come back to the Manor,” Bruce says, and he sounds like he is forcing himself to spit it out.

Dick blinks.

“Okay?” he answers, baffled. For the first time in years, Bruce’s words confuse him.  

Dick forces himself to get up on his unsteady feet. The injury he has on his ankle throbs.

 Bruce doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then hangs up.

Dick stares at the phone, and then he decides he’s too tired to try to deal with Bruce’s issues. It’s time to go home.

***

His apartment is half empty. There are boxes everywhere on the floor and a layer of dust above his furniture.

Jason had been helping him pack before he went away on his mission so he could move to another bigger apartment as soon as he came back.

Dick had picked a two-bedroom apartment in a nicer part of the city just so Jason could stay more time with him. He had even sat down with Jason and picked out paint swatches for his room, along with decoration and furniture.

The apartment is already waiting for him to just move in, but there won’t be a kid sharing his space anymore.

Above his sink, there’s a plate and a tea cup suspended in time. His bed is made, and there are books over it. Signs that Jason did come to his apartment at some point while he was in space.

Dick takes a shower, treats his leg -a nasty gash that needs four stitches before it closes properly- and carefully puts Jason’s books on his bedside table. He shakes off the dust off his blankets and curls in his bed.

He feels like he can’t possibly make more tears after spending his whole day crying but, in the quietness and darkness of his apartment, the tears still come easily. They’re a lot more slow, and Dick could probably stop them if he tried, but he lets them fall and dampen his pillow.

Jason used to have nightmares sometimes. The kid would be silent about it, but because they used to sleep in the same bed, Dick always woke up in time to see his kid crying quietly in his sleep. 

He always wondered why Jason never allowed himself to be loud when he cried. Why when the kid knew he had people ready to catch him if he broke down? But maybe Jason didn’t really know how many people cared about him.

Hidden under his blankets, he lets a shuddering breath out. 

Hesitantly, he opens his mouth and lets a wounded whine out. 

The last time he had ever made a similar sound had been the night his parents died, at the moment he had understood there was nothing to be done to save them. He had been too little then, and he hadn’t had any of the control of his emotions as he has now.

The hurt that burns inside him is somehow worse, though. It’s inside his skin, crawling in every part of his body, scrambling his thoughts and forcing him to curl more into himself in a poor attempt to brace for the mental waves of pain. 

Unable to keep it inside, he turns his head to his damp pillow and screams into it, trying not to think about the occasional whine and sobs that he lets out between the screams.

***

At first, he doesn’t know what wakes him up.

Maybe it’s the slight drop in temperature, the sudden breeze in his apartment, the soft click of glass in his window, or the burning sensation of eyes on his back. 

His eyes are heavy when he turns around in his bed to face Bruce’s familiar figure by his window. He is in the bat suit, and he melts almost perfectly in the shadows of his apartment.

He thinks he should feel something about it, maybe surprise or anger at the breaking in. Perhaps even worry.

Instead, he doesn’t find enough strength to care.

He wants to go back to sleep. Go back to that space where nothing exists and everything is quiet and peaceful. Go back to not thinking. To not feeling.

“You didn’t come back to the Manor,” Bruce stiffly repeats the words he said to him earlier.

Dick blinks tiredly at him.

“Why would have I?” Dick says. His voice rough from all the crying. 

Bruce doesn’t answer. Instead, he stares at him for a long moment and moves to Dick’s kitchen. Dick watches him rinsing a cup before filling it with water. He offers it to Dick without any other word.

Dick sits in his bed and, hesitantly, accepts the cup and takes a wary sip to clear his throat.

“You should be sleeping,” Dick finally says after a couple of minutes in silence. He takes another longer sip. “Don’t think I can’t see all the sleepless nights you’ve been having written in your face.”

Bruce looks around his apartment, at the boxes and the dust. He looks at the couple of pictures Dick still has on his wall and takes his time to come up with an answer. Dick finishes his drink and leaves the cup beside Jason’s books.

He watches Bruce looking at the shoebox that is his apartment. The shoebox that had become a second house to Jason. He doesn’t feel anything.

“Every time I close my eyes, I see everyone close to me dead,” Bruce finally tells him in a pained tone of voice. “Of course, I know that’s just my head, but I still find myself looking through surveillance cameras and trackers to reassure myself it’s false. But you don’t have any trackers, or cameras connected to a red I can access to.”

Bruce’s hands are faintly trembling. It might be the fatigue, the lack of proper alimentation, or the injuries he might be sporting. Or it could be anxiety. 

Dick did get rid of all his trackers years ago, and he did make his electronics Bruce-proof. He had never thought it could ever be a problem.

He feels like he should offer something, like his surveillance camera access or his suit vitals, but his eyes are starting to feel heavy again and he still doesn’t care enough to give him a solution.

He eases into his bed again.

“I don’t think I can have this conversation right now,” Dick murmurs under his breath.

Bruce doesn’t move from his spot. Dick sighs.

He tries to come up with something to scare Bruce away. To leave him alone, at least for the night.

“You should take a shower and try to sleep,” Dick tries. “There’s a change of clothes Jason stole from you in the closet, and the bed is big enough for the two of us.” It is not. Bruce is built like a tank.

Bruce, predictably, steps back automatically. As if Dick has a contiguous disease. 

Dick isn’t surprised by it.

He closes his eyes.

“Or not, you can just leave me alone,” he mumbles, already half asleep. “Your choice.”

Giving for ended their interaction, he turns his back to Bruce and drifts again to sleep

***

Bruce isn’t in his apartment the next morning anymore, and he doesn’t come back during the next day or the next one. 

Dick isn’t really shocked by it, but it is still surprisingly hurtful to know how easily Bruce can walk away.

He spends the first couple of days barely able to get out of bed, only managing to drag himself out of his bed to go open the door for the food delivery drivers he calls, even when he is not eating all he orders. 

His hair is greasy, and half of his day is wasted in crying until he is too exhausted to do anything else. 

In a way, it feels selfish to try to pretend that nothing happened. It feels wrong to act like everything is fine when nothing will ever be okay again.

Maybe that’s why he forgets to keep treating his ankle. Maybe that’s why he ignores the swelling in his leg and the knowledge that he should take antibiotics and keep an eye on his injury. 

Maybe that’s why when he wakes up on the sixth day shivering in his bed and his head swimming in a haze he doesn’t try to call anyone for help, not even when he starts feeling like his leg is being lit up in fire and he starts having trouble breathing.

Why fight when all he has to do for the pain to disappear is just to close his eyes?

***

“You should never ignore an injury,” Dick chides Jason, who only rolls his eyes at him but lets him stitch his side and obediently takes the antibiotics Dick gives him.

He is starting to get too big for Dick’s scoldings to work, too cocky, too teenager-ish. It’s a normal part of growing up, but it’s dangerous in their line of work. Dick should have known Jason would start hiding injuries once he realized it got him benched by Bruce when he found out.

Dick sighs once he is finished treating his sulky teen. He hugs the kid, and squeezes him gently, mindful of his freshly treated side stab.

“You need to be more careful,” Dick can’t help but add.

Jay hugs him back, but it feels more reluctant.

“I wish you would stop worrying so much,” Jason answers, annoyed. “I’m not a kid anymore. I know what I’m doing.”

Dick hugs him a little tighter.

“I know that, Jay, but it’s my job to worry,” Dick tells him, a little softer. “If it makes you feel better, this doesn’t have anything to do with age, and it has everything to do with seeing someone I love hurting. I would take your wounds if I could, but because it’s not possible, I can only try to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Jason doesn’t have anything to say about it, except a simple dejected, “Is it too much to ask you not to tell B?”

Dick doesn’t roll his eyes in exasperation as he wants to, instead, he kisses the crowd of the kid’s head. 

“What about this? I’ll talk to your father to let you stay with me this week,” he promises. He knows he shouldn’t keep Jason’s injuries from Bruce, it’s irresponsible, but if he does it right away, he runs the risk of Jason thinking he is not safe to talk to. “You give yourself that time to heal, and then I’ll keep quiet if you are careful during patrols, and let me keep an eye on your stab.”

Jason perks up.

“Really?” Jason asks, way too excited.

Dick laughs, reluctantly fond of the kid’s foolishness. 

“Yeah, but you need to promise me to not try to hide another injury from me ever again,” he answers warmly. 

Jason groans theatrically, but he doesn’t sound that upset. Dick knows Jason only doesn’t want Bruce to know because he worries in a stifling way with the kid.

“Deal,” the kid says at last with a pout once they end their hug.

***

Bruce does come back.

A day -or maybe two?- after the fever starts Bruce shakes him awake again. Dick blinks at him blearily from his bed. He’s blurry and Dick’s head is spinning, but he could recognize Bruce everywhere at any time.

Dick stares at him, but he only realizes Bruce is trying to talk to him until he gets close enough to him for Dick to see his long dark eyelashes casting shadows under his eyes. Everything sounds too distant to understand, so he just blinks at him and tries to stay awake when Bruce puts a hand on his forehead. Bruce’s own forehead is wrinkled in concern, but his eyes are the ones who capture Dick’s entire attention.

Bruce’s eyes are full of terror.

“Br’ce?” Dick manages to mumble. A small spark of worry managing to break from his numb state.

His blankets are thrown off him with urgency, and the next thing he knows, he is being lifted from his bed like he weighs nothing. Bruce wraps one arm behind his knees and the other around his back. 

A bridal style carry that Dick would be overthinking if his head wasn’t trying its best to kill him. 

Everything gets blurry then, so he closes his eyes and drifts away again, and it’s only the sensation of cold water splashing against his back that has him waking up again with a startle.

Dick starts shivering violently.

“...up,” Bruce is saying, voice trembling. Dick isn’t sure if he’s hallucinating or not. “Do not fall asleep.”

He sounds like he’s begging. Dick doesn’t like the sound in his ears.

Dick’s lungs rattle with every breath he takes, his leg hurts, and his world is spinning around him without control. Every single one of his joints aches.

But he can try to do this much.

“...’kay,” Dick mutters.

He isn’t exactly sure of what is going on, but Bruce is holding him so he is upright, and Dick has always hated disappointing him.

***

He survives.

Of course he does. 

He has that much of bad luck.

***

“Why would you do such a foolish thing?” Alfred tells him the day he is lucid enough to maintain a conversation for more than five minutes, his voice hard. “What were you thinking?”

His parent's face is pale, tired beyond words with a haunted look in his eyes.

Dick watches him from his blankets in the guest room he was moved once he was out of danger. There’s still an IV in the back of his hand, and he knows it will stay at least for a couple of weeks more if Alfred and Bruce have it in their way.

Dick feels himself curling into himself in shame.

“I don’t know,” Dick mutters miserably, because there are no excuses. He was supposed to be better, to be the one whom Alfred didn’t have to worry about. “I wasn’t really thinking, I just- I don’t know what came into me.”

He wanted to disappear, to stop the pain that is still waiting in the back of his mind to be addressed. He doesn’t feel any better than before mentally, but he is not telling any of that to Alfred.

Alfred fuses over him, tucking him into his bed properly, putting a hand over his forehead, and checking if the medical equipment is correctly put. And then he just lets himself fall heavily in the chair beside him.

It makes Dick feel worse about himself.

“I’m really sorry,” Dick says, and he hates how small he sounds. He isn’t sure he has ever let Alfred hear and see him like this. “I didn’t mean to worry you,” he finishes lamely. 

Alfred shakes his head.

“My dear boy,” Alfred says, voice breaking. “I must have done something wrong if you think you owe me an apology for worrying about me. Don’t you know I always worry about you? It’s what one does when you care.”

Dick's eyes fill with tears again. This time without his permission.

He looks up to the ceiling, trying to will them to disappear, but he doesn’t have any training on how to manage real overwhelming emotions. It’s so tempting to let himself break in front of the only parent he has left, and still so hard when he thinks how much Alfred is already carrying.

There is a hand reaching for his. Dick is selfish enough to let his hand be held like he is a kid again.

“I should be the one apologizing if I made you feel like you could not reach out to me,” Alfred mournfully tells him. Dick's breath catches. “My boy, you should know you are not alone, and you will never be while I’m alive. I will always be ready to catch you when you fall, but I need you to talk to me.”

Dick bites his tongue and stares harder at the ceiling, but it must be evident how close he is to cracking because Alfred stands up again and, very gently, envelops him in a soft hug.

Dick can’t help it. He sniffles, and then, very quietly, starts sobbing on his shoulder. It’s stupid how safe and hopeful it makes him feel.

“He is gone,” Dick can’t help but whimper. Alfred hugs him a little tighter. “Alfie- I was supposed to teach him to drive this month. We had a trip planned for Christmas and he was so excited to sign up for his school play this year. It’s not fair. ” 

Jason was so small, and he was so excited about the future. 

“He was just a kid,” he sobs, closing his eyes. “He was my kid. ”

Alfred only holds him.

“I know, I know, I know,” Alfred chants, and it doesn’t matter if he understands what Jason meant to Dick. He feels seen all the same.

***

A conversation does not fix everything, but it leaves Dick emotionally raw and tender enough to accept Alfred’s help. 

He doesn’t think he is ready to talk about how affected he is anytime soon, but he doesn’t fight Alfred when asks him to stay at least a month in the Manor so he can monitor his condition. Dick doesn’t dare to ask if he means the sepsis he is recovering from, or his mental condition.

Bruce is another completely different beast.

“I just can’t understand,” Bruce says through gritted teeth a couple of days later. He looks just as tired as Alfred. “You always have been better than this. More logical, with better judgment and a good sense. You’ve never brushed off an injury. Why start now?”

Dick doesn’t bother to try to put a mask on with him.

He sighs tiredly.

“Don’t ask things you already know, B.” Dick tells him from where is sitting in his bed, propped up by pillows. “Because you understand, don’t you? You’ve been doing the same.”

Bruce looks uncomfortable now. He stays rooted in his place, though, and doesn’t run away like Dick expects him to.

“I’m not suicidal,” Bruce bluntly tells him. It startles Dick enough to leave him without words for a beat. “It’s different.”

Alfred hadn’t dared to open that can of worms, but Bruce’s lack of tact demolishes it.

It makes Dick snort with a sort of dark amusement. Or maybe that’s the meds talking.

He tilts his head. He knows his eyes are swollen because he still cries way too much during the day, but he doesn’t mind looking right at Bruce’s eyes like this. And Bruce doesn’t seem to mind looking back at him.

“I don’t think either of us is ready for this conversation,” Dick informs him, “And I don’t think either of us is going to get better soon, but for what is worth I already promised myself to avoid any permanent… conditions.”

Bruce doesn’t look comforted by Dick’s words. He’s quiet for a long moment. Dick can see him going through different things in his head while he discards them. 

“I shouldn’t have let you go,” Bruce finally spits with a grimace. “And I shouldn’t have left.”

Dick blinks at him.

What?

“Just because I don’t love you doesn’t mean I should have hurt you and walked away all those times,” Bruce says.

Dick stares at him. Bruce stares right back.

It’s obvious right now that Bruce feels guilty for Dick almost dying, and that he is having a realization of how much he hurt Dick in the past. It’s an evident apology. Dick understands him enough.

It’s not Bruce's fault he is so bad with words and that Dick can’t seem to control his emotions at the moment.

To both Dick and Bruce’s horror, his eyes swell up in tears.

Bruce doesn’t love him, he thinks, and his brain seems to take it as an excuse to cry again.

“I only meant-” Bruce panics as Dick starts scrubbing aggressively his eyes, feeling humiliated.

“I know what you meant!” Dick sobs. He wants to die.

This would be the perfect moment for Bruce to walk away like he always does. Hell, Dick can tell he wants to as much as he does. But. He doesn’t.

It’s the worst moment to decide to stay after so many years of avoiding Dick.

“You’re sensitive,” Bruce helplessly says. And it doesn’t sound like he is talking about it in a temporarily way. It sounds like an observation, like when he said ‘You’re a weird kid’ and ‘You’re really good at lying’ . He says it like he is pointing out something about Dick that is an intrinsic part of him.

There is no way Bruce can tell that. Not this early. Dick is emotionally unstable. How could Bruce know?

It freaks Dick out.

“You’re so bad at this,” he laments between tears, his instincts kicking in and trying to make light of the situation. “Why are you so bad at this?”

Bruce doesn’t call him out. He just stands there like a fucking idiot, staring at him and looking lost. 

Dick hates him.

“Do you want water?” Bruce asks him. 

Dick buries his head between his arms.

“Stop talking, I’m being serious, B. Just stop talking.” Dick manages to tell him thickly. He has never felt so mortified and hurt at the same time in his life.

Bruce does listen to him and finally stops making it worse, but he doesn’t go away. He stays until Dick stops crying and offers him a fancy napkin to clean his face. 

It’s the most humiliating experience he has ever lived through, but in a way is a reprieve.

A hurt heart is way easier to handle than a child's loss, after all.