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Something is very wrong—or, to be more accurate, many things are very wrong.
First of all, Robin—or who Bruce presumes is Robin, judging from the R on the suit and the distinctive bright colors—is not Dick Grayson. Everything about him is different, from the pants that Bruce couldn’t convince Dick to wear to the gelled-up spikes of his hair. He also seems older, by at least a few years.
Second of all, it’s not just them in the Batcave. The other teenager wearing black and red and an unfamiliar symbol is also a complete stranger. He’s speaking animatedly over the comm; whatever else has happened, the earpiece is still in Bruce’s ear, so he can hear the unfamiliar voices speaking back.
“How much longer?” not-Robin is saying now.
“A few minutes. I just got into the tunnel,” says a male voice—Nightwing, not-Robin called him. He was the first one not-Robin contacted after Bruce opened his eyes and looked into not-Robin’s shocked face.
Bruce still isn’t entirely sure what’s going on—all not-Robin had said was, “We have a B situation,” and Nightwing had immediately responded with, “I’m on my way.”
If Bruce had to guess, he’d say dimension travel. It would explain why he doesn’t recognize a single person here, and also why both not-Robin and not-Dick insisted on waiting for Nightwing to arrive before they discuss anything with him. This may be a universe where Nightwing is the primary hero of Gotham, and not Batman. The obvious next question is where Bruce is in this universe.
He has a feeling he won’t like the answer.
The low rumbling of a motorcycle engine precedes its appearance in the Cave. The man that climbs off is wearing a skintight black suit, with blue accents sweeping across his chest and down his arms—the wings referred to by his moniker, Bruce presumes. Nightwing leaves his helmet on his motorcycle before making his way over to them.
He’s wearing a domino mask, but from what Bruce can see, he thinks the man looks to be about Bruce’s own age. He’s almost a head shorter, and leaner, too, but not any less dangerous for it—Bruce has spent enough time training with expert fighters of all different stripes to be able to recognize one when he sees one.
Nightwing raises both eyebrows when he’s close enough to see Bruce. “What happened?”
“He was studying that alien technology Superman brought,” not-Dick says.
“We didn’t see what happened exactly,” not-Robin says. “There was a flash and then—” He gestures to Bruce, as though his presence would be explanation enough.
And maybe so. His words imply that Bruce—or, at least, a Batman—does exist here, though whoever it is must be different enough that not-Robin could tell from a single look that Bruce doesn’t belong.
“Right,” Nightwing says. “Okay.” He sweeps a hand through his hair, then grabs the bottle of solvent from the drawer under the Batcomputer.
Not-Robin takes a step forward. “Are you sure you should—”
“We need him to trust us.” Nightwing removes his mask with efficient movements, revealing a pair of deep blue eyes. He lowers the mask and smiles, and Bruce blinks, taken aback.
He isn’t used to thinking of men as pretty outside of a subset of supermodels, but Nightwing certainly fits the description.
“So,” Nightwing says, kind smile still on his face, “any chance you’ve taken in a little circus orphan yet?”
Bruce just barely catches himself from gaping openly at the implication that Nightwing is the eight-year-old who’s been dogging his heels in a bright yellow cape. “You can’t be.”
Nightwing’s smile widens slightly. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll also take that to mean it hasn’t been that long. A year, maybe?”
“Six months.”
Nightwing—Dick, could it really be Dick?—whistles. “Well, given the tech you were working with and your current state, we’re either dealing with time travel, dimension travel, or age regression. We’ll need a blood sample to be sure.”
So the Bruce here is older, by a visibly significant amount. That tracks, given Nightwing’s—Dick’s—current age.
Bruce flicks his gaze over Dick’s shoulder at the rest of the current company. “And who is we?”
“I need to know what we’re dealing with to know what information protocols to follow,” Dick says. “Sierra five in the playbook, only I don’t think you’ve written it yet.”
“How can I be sure I can trust you?”
“What does your gut say?”
Bruce prefers to trust his mind over his gut, but he has to concede that, in this case, there are too many unknowns. What he does know is that they’re all in the Batcave, they all have access to the same comms, and, if he looks hard enough, he can see Dick Grayson in the lines of Nightwing’s face.
“All right,” Bruce says.
“RR, can you get the—thanks.” Dick takes the device from not-Robin and shows it to Bruce. “This will detect if the energy signature of your cells belongs to this dimension or another. It’ll also analyze the surface particles on your skin to check if you’ve been temporally displaced. Just needs a little finger prick here.”
Bruce puts his finger against the device, and doesn’t flinch at the pin-sharp prick of the needle.
Dick pulls the device away and checks the readings. “And we have a winner. Alien tech-induced age regression it is.”
“Is it permanent?” not-Dick demands.
“Not if we can help it,” Dick says as he hands the device back to not-Robin. “But in the meantime, at least we won’t be breaking the fabric of spacetime with introductions. Bruce, meet Tim and Damian.” He gestures to not-Robin and not-Dick in turn. “Red Robin and Robin, on the field. I go by Nightwing nowadays. And you’re Batman, of course.”
Bruce frowns, questions upon questions flicking through his mind: Where did Tim and Damian come from? Who are they, to Bruce? Why are they both named Robin, and Dick not at all? Who is Dick to Bruce, now?
“How many of you are there?” Bruce starts with. Two more who know the secret is already unexpected enough, but somehow he suspects that they aren’t the only ones.
“There’s one more living here in the Manor,” Dick says. “Cass, also known as Batgirl. She’ll be here later tonight.”
“But there are others.”
A corner of Dick’s mouth ticks up, like a little laugh. It’s muted, compared to the giggling child Bruce is still picturing whenever he blinks. “We’d be here all night if I got into everyone.”
“Hm.” Bruce frowns at the other two. They’ve removed their masks, following Dick’s example; Tim still looks largely unfamiliar to him, but Damian unsettlingly reminds Bruce of himself—and someone else, who he can’t quite place yet.
“I’m your child by birth,” Damian says after a few seconds of staring. “The only one, as far as I’m aware.”
“I see.” And Damian lives here, as well as Tim, Cass, and presumably Dick—which suggests they’re all his children? And all vigilantes, at that?
Bruce isn’t sure he likes that. He is sure that he doesn’t like the fact that his biological son is wearing the Robin costume, and Dick isn’t wearing any of his former colors at all.
He’s also sure he doesn’t like the way this adult Dick smiles. Dick—little Dick, the Dick Bruce remembers—smiles because he can find joy in the smallest things. It’s something Bruce admired about him from the start.
This Dick smiles like he’s hiding something underneath it.
“Why don’t you guys go tell Alfred what’s going on and ask him to make up a room for me?” Dick says to Tim and Damian. “I’ll catch Bruce up.”
The flash of disappointment is unexpected—Dick is a grown man now, and it’s expected he wouldn’t be living at the Manor any longer.
The glance exchanged between Tim and Damian is also unexpected, as if they’re surprised Dick is staying. Bruce presumed that they all get along well enough, but maybe they don’t.
Dick is no longer Robin for a reason, even if Bruce doesn’t know it yet.
Despite the moment of hesitancy, Tim and Damian voice their agreement—and that’s also interesting, that they defer so easily to Dick, without even checking in with Bruce on instinct—and head to the back of the Cave, leaving Bruce alone with Dick.
“So,” Dick says, sitting back on the edge of the Batcomputer desk, hands propped against the edge. “I’ll send a message over to STAR Labs tonight, see if anyone’s worked with similar tech before. Usually, this kind of thing wears off on its own in a few days. Until then, I can tell you what you need to know to get by—not much point in trying to give you the crash course on the past twenty years if you’ll remember everything soon anyway.”
Bruce won’t be able to operate efficiently as Batman or as Bruce Wayne if he’s lacking information—but, of course, that’s presuming he’ll be operating at all. “You’re benching me.”
Dick smiles that smile that Bruce doesn’t like. “You’d do the same if I suddenly showed up twenty years younger.”
Bruce scowls, but has to acknowledge the point.
“Seven days,” Dick says. “If it takes longer than that, we’ll ramp you back up.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.” Dick’s lip quirks again, and this time Bruce isn’t sure how to read it. He doesn’t think Dick is laughing at him, exactly, but there’s something about the expression he can’t quite decipher.
“So, now that we’ve got that settled,” Dick says, “any not vigilante-related questions you have for me?”
“Why aren’t you Robin?”
“That is, technically, vigilante-related,” Dick says. “But the short answer is, I grew up.”
That isn’t a true answer: growing up doesn’t mean growing out of Robin—or growing away from Bruce, which is what Bruce is starting to suspect has happened.
“Why Nightwing?”
Dick pauses. “You know, I kind of expected you to ask about more practical things, like whether or not all the rooms here are still where you left them.”
Bruce hadn’t thought that would be a question he needed to ask. “Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Well, sometimes buildings get destroyed and you need to rebuild them from the ground up. This isn’t a hypothetical, by the way,” Dick says, which is vaguely concerning. “Anyway, the layout’s mostly how you’d remember it, so don’t worry about getting lost.”
Which means that wasn’t actually a question Bruce needed to be concerned about—which means Dick is deflecting.
“As far as my own memories are concerned, you are my only partner,” Bruce says. “I’m sure you can understand why it might bother me that neither of those things is still true.”
“Neither—oh.” Dick’s eyes widen as he pushes off from the Batcomputer. “Hey. Just because I’m not Robin doesn’t mean we’re not partners anymore. It’s just—a little more complicated, is all.”
“My fault, I’m assuming.”
Dick scratches his jaw with a finger. “Not entirely. But, like I said—complicated. Not sure we should really get into all that tonight.”
Bruce hums, considering. “What are you hiding from me?”
Dick lowers his hand and frowns. “What do you mean?”
The deflection would work on almost anyone else, Bruce thinks, but this adult Dick has the same tell that his childhood self does—that brief moment of stillness, only apparent because of how much he’s in motion otherwise.
“By your own admission, there isn’t much that’s essential for me to know at the moment,” Bruce says. “And you aren’t telling me anything that couldn’t be said in front of Tim and Damian. There’s no reason for us to have stayed back unless they need to get their stories straight with Alfred first. What I don’t understand is how you communicated it to them.”
He’s sure Dick had, somehow. Most likely, the look shared between Tim and Damian was their reaction to whatever it was that Dick had asked them to conceal. But however Dick had encoded his message, Bruce still can’t interpret it.
Instead of acting caught out, Dick grins. “Nothing ever gets past you, does it? It’s not a big deal—just something that I think would cause more stress than you really need to deal with, right now.”
For a second, Bruce worries that someone had died, but that fear passes quickly—Dick is still alive, and Alfred, and that’s all the current inhabitants of Wayne Manor accounted for, which means it has to do with something else entirely. “Wayne Enterprises—”
“Is fine,” Dick says, and he seems exasperated now, but not upset. “I’m not going to tell you, so stop trying to guess. You trust me, right?”
Dick is, in Bruce’s recent memory, eight years old and a vigilante for all of three months.
But he supposes his answer doesn’t change either way. “I do.”
Dick’s smile flickers back onto his face. “So trust me. It’s not a bad thing. Sometimes the future can just be… unexpected.”
Bruce still doesn’t like being kept in the dark, but he recognizes he isn’t in a position to change Dick’s mind on it. That doesn’t mean he’s without options, though. “Seven days.”
Dick hesitates for a second, but then he nods. “All right. Seven days.” He holds his hand out, and after they’ve shaken on it, he steps away from the computer. “Any last burning questions? They should be done scheming up there.”
Bruce hesitates, then decides to ask before he loses his nerve. “Are you happy?”
It was Bruce’s greatest fear—that Dick would eventually come to resent him, for robbing him of his childhood to pursue a mission without end.
Dick’s answering smile puts that fear to rest in an instant. It’s a small smile, gentle—and undeniably joyful. For a second, Bruce swears his heart stops.
“Happier than you could ever believe,” Dick says. He puts his hand against the outside of Bruce’s shoulder and squeezes, lightly. “I’ve never regretted it, Bruce. Not even for a second.”
“I’m glad,” Bruce says quietly, suddenly hyperaware of Dick’s smile and his touch.
Bruce’s older self may have had time to become accustomed to the man Dick would eventually grow into, but the shift from eight to twenty-eight was sudden enough that Bruce is still having a hard time reconciling them as the same person. But no matter how kind and attractive Dick is now, he’s still eight, and highly off-limits.
Bruce fears it’s a fact he’s going to have to remind himself of often.
“My word,” Alfred says when they emerge upstairs.
He's so much older than Bruce remembers—the lines on his face more pronounced, and his hairline a few inches further back, the hairs all turned grey.
But he’s still here, still alive and still with Bruce, and for that, Bruce is deeply grateful.
“It’s good to see you well,” Bruce says softly.
“Same to you, sir.” Alfred gestures him toward the hallway. “I can take him from here, Master Dick. Why don’t you go on to bed? Master Tim and Master Damian are already in their rooms.”
“Sounds good,” Dick says. “Good night then, Alfred. Good night, Bruce.”
Once Dick has disappeared down the hall, Bruce says quietly, “Will you tell me what it is he doesn’t want me to know?”
Alfred raises a single eyebrow, and Bruce winces slightly at the chastisement.
“You have the utmost confidence in Master Dick’s judgment,” Alfred says in lieu of an answer. “As do I.”
Conversation effectively ended, Alfred leads him the rest of the way down the hall to the master bedroom. Bruce had avoided it as a child, only moving in after he’d returned from his studies abroad, and even then he’d refrained from any attempts to make it his own.
It seems as though that’s changed, over the years. The curtains on the windows have been changed to a deep, rich blue rather than the red paisley he’s used to seeing. It matches the color of the curtains drawn open on the four-poster bed, and the duvet spread across the mattress.
Bruce frowns at the bed, and turns down the duvet to confirm his suspicions: instead of the single pillow he’s accustomed to using at the head, there are two laid side-by-side. It isn’t a significant detail, but combined with the secret he knows they’re all keeping from him, it’s certainly worth noting.
He never did ask who Damian’s mother was, but something in Damian’s features and light accent gave him a clue—and Bruce certainly would have been shocked to find Talia al Ghul in his bedroom.
There are no pictures anywhere to give Bruce any sort of definitive answer—he’s never been one to hang displays on the walls in the bedroom. But it’s clear from the empty nightstand on the right side of the bed that part of the scheming, as Dick put it, was to strip the bedroom of evidence—Bruce typically keeps items in both nightstands; to have one empty suggests there’s something to hide.
It’s good for a rush job, but it’s a rush job nonetheless, and now that Bruce knows what he’s looking for, it’s easier to find other things that don’t seem quite right: a strangely empty section of the closet; extra tubes of two different brands of toothpaste under the sink, only one of which Bruce likes; foundation and concealer shades darker than Bruce would ever consider using on himself.
Someone else has stayed with him in this bedroom recently, he’s sure of it. But who exactly, and where they are now—that, he’s less certain of.
He goes back to the bedroom, and to the nightstand on the left side of the bed, taking more careful stock of the contents. There’s a bottle of personal lubricant—but no condoms, he notes—a tube of plain chapstick, a black case holding reading glasses, and a black silk scarf. Underneath the false bottom is his journal, and a plain silver band inscribed on the inside with the word forever.
A wedding band. He slips it on—a perfect fit.
His wedding band.
The next question is if it’s in the drawer because that’s where he keeps it when he goes out in the Batsuit, or if it’s in the drawer because he no longer wears it at all.
At least there should be a simple way to find out the answer, and one that doesn’t involve asking anyone else in the manor.
It was a child psychiatrist who had encouraged Bruce to draw and journal as a way of expressing his emotions, since he used to go long periods without speaking. He hated most of his sessions—and eventually convinced Alfred he no longer needed them—but the journaling habit stuck, and he’d diligently written out his thoughts every night that he could.
It seems he’s still kept up the habit, twenty-odd years later; the journal starts from the new year, and is marked with a page per day. He skims the latest entry and catches familiar names—Dick and Alfred, Damian and Tim and Cass. There’s a mention of someone named Clark visiting, but he seems to be only a close friend. No mention of Talia.
He flips back to the first entry. Historically, his first of the year tends to offer a reflection of the year past, which makes it a good place to check. While scanning the page, his eyes immediately catch on the word married and he goes back to read the sentence, then the rest of the passage in full:
This is the first year that I’m entering as a married man—and, I hope, not the last. My childhood was spent basking in the joy of my parents’ love for each other, and for me. After I took on the mantle, I accepted that the simple love they shared would likely never be found in my own life. From the start, Dick proved me wrong in that regard.
Some days, as today, I wake in disbelief that, of all the people that he could have chosen, he chose me. Over and over again, he chose me. On these days, I can’t help but try to be a better, more deserving man. My greatest fear is that one day he’ll wake beside me and realize that the vows we shared were a mistake.
Bruce stops reading as the meaning becomes abundantly clear, and increasingly horrifying.
He can’t have—not with Dick.
There had been awful rumors when Dick had first come to live with him, and Bruce had been content to ignore them all and file defamation lawsuits against the most vocal, assured in his knowledge that their accusations were false.
But he can’t deny the words written in his own hand, and he can’t ignore that this being the secret Dick is hiding would neatly solve another puzzle—if Dick has moved into the master bedroom, then by requesting that Alfred prepare a room for him, he made it clear to everyone that the knowledge of it should be concealed from Bruce.
It’s a masterful show of subtlety; Bruce would be impressed if he weren’t so terrified of what it means, that Dick is hiding this from him.
That this had happened in the first place.
He’s in front of Dick’s bedroom before he knows it, knocking on the door. It occurs to him as his knuckles make contact with the wood that his childhood room might not be Dick’s anymore, but then the door opens and Dick is standing there in flannel pajamas and a small frown on his face.
“Bruce,” he says. “Is something wrong?”
Bruce finds himself staring at Dick’s hand—specifically, the silver band wrapped around his ring finger. Dick’s gaze flicks to it, following Bruce’s, but to his credit, he doesn’t otherwise react in any way.
I know, Bruce thinks about saying. What happened? is also on the tip of his tongue.
“Did I hurt you?” is what comes out instead. “Will I hurt you?”
Dick’s expression softens, and he opens the door wider for Bruce to enter. “You never have,” he says. “Not like that.”
The door closes, and the room is suddenly too small.
“You’re so young,” Bruce says, horror still clinging to the edges of his voice.
“The same age you are right now.” Dick sits on the edge of the bed. “How young do you feel?”
“You know that isn't what I—”
“I know.” Dick’s hands twitch on his lap, like he wants to reach for Bruce, but he doesn’t. “I know, Bruce. You’re a good man. You would never have touched me, even if I wanted you to.”
“A child can’t want—”
“Not then.”
“Then when?”
Dick purses his lips and leans back on his hands. Then he releases the tension in an exhale, and looks up at the ceiling. “I was fifteen or sixteen, I think, the first time. I mean, I was thirteen or so when I thought I might want to marry you, but—”
“You what?” Bruce says, appalled.
Dick smiles at him. “It was a little kid’s idea of marriage, nothing scandalous. Some kids at school were talking about who they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with. Obviously, that was you, for me.”
“That isn’t right.” Intentionally or not, Bruce must have made himself the center of Dick’s world, isolated him from his peers—
“Right or not, it’s how I felt,” Dick sits back forward, elbows on his thighs. “I don’t think you knew at the time. If you did, you never told me. And like I said, it didn’t really become a problem until later.”
Bruce doesn’t want to know, but he needs to. “What happened?”
“We were sparring,” Dick says. “I had a—reaction. You definitely noticed that time, because we stopped grappling after that. Bo staff only, then I switched to escrima sticks.”
That could be the reaction of a man establishing proper boundaries; it could also be the reaction of a man forcing himself to restrict temptation. “You said that was the first time.”
“There were really only two.” Dick’s smile tilts. He doesn’t seem ashamed, exactly—self-deprecating, perhaps. “You didn’t let it get to a third.”
“What happened?”
“I was eighteen,” Dick says. “Summer before college. I thought it was mainly my age that bothered you, and it was, but I should’ve known it was the principle of it and not the number. I tried to kiss you. It didn’t really go well.”
Reassuring, but not entirely—clearly something still happened for things to turn out as they had. “And then?”
“Then I went to college. And—” A complicated expression crosses Dick’s face. “Let’s just say we both had a lot of other things to worry about, after that. It didn’t really come up again.”
“Until it did?”
A corner of Dick's mouth twitches, his same little laugh. Bruce realizes, suddenly, that it’s the same way he laughs. “Until it did.”
“When?”
“Just last year,” Dick says. “So whatever you’re worried about, don’t.”
“My journal claims you—we—married last year.”
“So that’s how you figured it out.” Dick laughs a little, a warm, breathy sound. “Yeah, we had the chance to elope, and by that point, we both thought we’d wasted more than enough time, so we took it. We had to have another ceremony at the manor after, though, because Damian got kind of mad about that.”
“And nothing happened before then?” Bruce stresses.
“Nothing outside of what I’ve already told you,” Dick says. “And if you felt anything back then, you’ve never told me, and I’ve never asked. We don’t really talk about it. It doesn’t really matter now.”
How could it not? The foundation of their entire relationship is a deck of cards stacked squarely in Bruce’s favor. Dick never stood a chance.
And Bruce can understand easily why he might fall for Dick: he’s kind, gentle, privy to all Bruce’s secrets while not seeming to think any less of him for any of it.
What he doesn’t understand is why he allowed himself to act on it.
“The reason I didn’t want you to know,” Dick says, sitting up straight, “is because I knew you wouldn’t understand. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, but we’ve got almost twenty years behind us that you don’t know a single thing about. I’m still eight in the back of your mind, but that’s not always going to be the case.”
“Unless my memory has begun to fail me, I don’t see how that could be true.”
“The same way I sometimes start to forget my parent’s faces until I see their picture again,” Dick says softly. “That’s how.”
The ensuing silence is stifling. Dick spoke of his own experience, but Bruce knows exactly what he means. It’s something he’s always struggled to come to terms with—how even the most treasured memories can fade. Another reason, perhaps, that he’d taken so diligently to his journal.
But even that doesn’t help him overcome the feeling that he’s somehow wronged Dick—a feeling he’s sure his older self still shares.
“You’re not going to be able to convince me that I’ve made a mistake,” Dick says. “If you knew how many wrong place, wrong times we’ve had, you wouldn’t even be trying.”
“He knows you’ve made a mistake,” Bruce says, the journal entry clear in his mind. “His only concern is how soon you’ll realize it.”
“What Bruce fears is different from what he knows.” Dick stands, and steps closer. Their eyes meet, from a much smaller distance. “You were everything to me, once. You still are, in a lot of ways. But I have communities and spaces that you’re not a part of. If I wanted to leave, there are plenty of places I could go that you can’t follow, and plenty of people to support me who wouldn’t hesitate to show you the door. A lot of things have changed, in ways you can’t even begin to imagine.
“That’s why you’ll never be able to understand. Not with only what you know now. So just—try to do yourself a favor, and don’t worry about it. I’m in my own room right now for a reason.”
Bruce wishes it could be that simple, but he wouldn’t be who he is if he didn’t consider every aspect of every situation. “And if this is permanent?”
Dick smiles wryly. “For both our sakes, I hope it’s not. I mean, you don’t even know what a smartphone is. But if it is—I’m not going to hold you to vows you don’t remember making.”
Still so kind, even when Bruce is on the verge of ruining the happiness that Dick believes he’s finally found for himself. Yes, he understands completely how his older self had fallen.
“Maybe it would be easier this way,” Bruce says quietly. “For us.”
Dick considers him for a moment. “You know, I’ve thought that before,” he says slowly. “That things would be easier, if I were older. But a lot of things would be different, then, and I don’t know if it’d be for the better. All the memories we shared, the good and the bad—that’s what made us us. And this is the universe where I have you. For that, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“You love him.”
“I love you. And you love me, too—at some point, anyway,” Dick says, the self-deprecating smile returning.
“Likely sooner than you think,” Bruce admits. He remembers clearly the reverence with which he described Dick in his journal. He doesn’t believe for a moment that he fell in love with Dick so late in life. He must have begun to understand the depths of his own feelings from the moment he began pushing Dick away.
“So you finally approve of your own relationship?” Dick says, teasing.
“Approve is a strong word,” Bruce says. “But—I’m beginning to understand.”
“Honestly, that’s more than I’d hoped for.” Dick’s smile now is small, a bit shy—there are so many different smiles that he has, all for Bruce.
Dick truly is happy.
Dick takes his elbow, gently, and then lets go and takes a half step back, as if he thought better of whatever he was going to do. He crosses his arms across his chest, holding on to his own elbows. “Why don’t you go to bed? We can talk more in the morning, if you want, but—I think it’s probably a good idea for you to sleep on this.”
“You’re likely right.” Bruce pauses, and wishes he could offer Dick some comfort. When Dick felt sad and alone, missing his parents, Bruce would let him sleep in the master bedroom with him; now Dick’s here, missing Bruce himself, and it somehow feels out of bounds for Bruce to offer the same. “Good night, then.”
Dick smiles, fleeting. “Good night, Bruce.”
Bruce slips out of the bedroom, and Dick shuts the door behind him with a soft but resounding click.
Bruce wishes he’d invited Dick to bed, after all.