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“Don’t be mad.”
Bruce has been raising Dick long enough to know that that sentence never bodes well. Especially when it’s the first thing to pop out of the twelve-year-old’s mouth when Bruce answers the phone.
“What happened?” Bruce asks with a sigh.
Dick’s voice shakes a little as he repeats, “Don’t be mad.”
“Dick. What happened.”
“I ripped my stitches,” Dick says. “I—I don’t know what to do, I need help.”
“I’m on my way,” Bruce assures, standing from his desk and grabbing his car keys. Dick was stabbed last week on patrol, and now he’s home alone because Alfred is out of town and Bruce thought it would be fine. Dick told him he’d be fine. Alfred is definitely going to kill Bruce when he finds out. “Are you putting pressure on it?”
“Yeah.” Dick doesn’t say it, but by his tone, the duh is heavily implied.
“Everything okay, Mr. Wayne?” Janet from accounting asks.
He smiles. “Fine, fine. My son just cut his hand when he was trying to make lunch.”
“Don’t tell people that!” Dick protests over the phone.
Bruce ignores him. “I need to go home and make sure he doesn’t need stitches.”
“Oh no!” Janet says. “I hope he’s alright.”
“Thanks,” Bruce says, then waves as he continues on his mission. He passes the elevator, choosing to race down the stairs to the parking garage instead. Attention back on Dick, he asks, “How much blood is there?”
“Uh, kind of a lot,” Dick says. “I’m not dizzy yet, but I have my shirt pressed over it and it’s already pretty wet.”
Shirt. Not gauze or towel. “Where are you?”
“Don’t be mad.”
“Dick.”
“I’m in the woods,” Dick says.
“Why aren’t you at the house?” Dick is supposed to be taking it easy. He hasn’t been cleared for exercise yet—likely won’t be for another week.
“I just went on a bike ride, and I must’ve hit something sharp because my tire popped and I fell. Please don’t be mad.”
Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I think I broke my wrist, but it’s just that and my stomach,” Dick explains as Bruce finally makes it to his care. “Should I go back to the house?”
“No,” Bruce says quickly, nearly yells. He takes a breath. “No. Don’t move. The bleeding will increase, and you might do more damage.”
“Okay,” Dick says.
“I’m on my way,” Bruce says, speeding down side streets and taking shortcuts to avoid the traffic. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
It’s one of the worst drives of Bruce’s life. Dick talks to him through the whole thing, then helps guide him to his location. It takes a total of thirty-two minutes before Bruce finds Dick at the bottom of a steep hill. Next to him is his bike, which is partially bent. The fall had been worse than Dick let on.
“Are you alright?” Bruce asks, kneeling next to Dick and looking him over.
Dick smiles at him. “Just a little scrape. No biggie.”
Bruce frowns, takes in the shirt pressed against Dick’s bare stomach. It’s dark red. “You’re hemorrhaging.”
Dick’s smile falters, then fades completely. “Yeah. Feeling kind of dizzy.”
“Hnn. Let’s get you home.”
On the count of three, Bruce scoops up Dick and begins to climb back up the hill. It would be much easier if he wasn’t wearing a suit and dress shoes, but making Dick wait just so he could change wasn’t an option.
Bruce eventually makes it back to the cave, and he quickly stitches Dick’s wound and casts his broken wrist. Luckily, Dick doesn’t end up needing a blood transfusion, but he’s working on juice and crackers to help with the dizziness.
Dick is going to be fine, but he was lucky. If he hadn’t had his phone on him, he could’ve died, and Bruce wouldn’t have even known where to look.
Bruce runs a hand over his face. “What were you thinking?”
“Am I in trouble?” Dick asks, fingers bending the straw of his juice box.
“Do you even realize that you could have died?” Bruce asks harshly, causing Dick to flinch. “You weren’t even wearing a helmet!”
“I’m sorry, okay?” Dick shouts back, meeting Bruce’s eyes for the first time. “I felt fine. And if my tire hadn’t deflated, I would’ve been fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It was a bike ride. I wasn’t even going fast. And besides, you go out with injuries all the time,” Dick counters.
Bruce clenches his jaw. “That’s not the point.”
Dick glares at him. “Can I go now?”
“No.”
Dick rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest with a huff. “Then just get on with it. Ground me or whatever.”
“I’m not going to ground you. But this can’t happen again.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m serious, Dick.”
“It’s not a big deal. Biking wasn’t even what caused this—it was the fall,” Dick insists. “I could’ve done the same thing tripping down the stairs.”
Dick’s right, but he shouldn’t have been biking, especially on his own. But Dick’s also right that Bruce doesn’t exactly set the best example—hell, Bruce has let Dick out as Robin with injuries before, and he’ll probably do it again if it becomes necessary.
(And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he’s not cut out to be a parent.)
“You’re such a hypocrite,” Dick grumbles.
Bruce runs a hand over his face, unsure of what he’s supposed to do, what he’s supposed to say. All he knows is that he was terrified today, and his son is in front of him acting like none of that matters. “Enough.”
They’re quiet for a minute, then Dick asks, “Are you mad at me?”
Bruce’s face softens, and he looks at Dick closely. Maybe he hadn’t made the best decision today, but it had been scary for him too. Worse, when Dick had needed him, he’d been afraid of how Bruce would react. “I’m not mad.”
Dick sniffles. “Can we still go to the baseball game tonight?”
“Do you feel up to it?”
“You promised we’d go,” Dick says.
Bruce nods. Dick had been looking forward to it, and with everything that happened today, Bruce had honestly forgotten about it. “We’ll go.” Bruce checks his watch. “We should probably head out in about two hours. You should rest until then.”
Dick hums, nodding. “Do you wanna sign my cast?”
Bruce smiles. “Sure, chum,” he says, reaching for a marker as Dick holds his arm out toward him.
Alfred will still kill him when he finds out what happened, but it will be manageable so long as Dick isn’t mad at him too.