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Bruce woke as soon as his bedroom door opened. He blinked awake, stiffened, and in the next moment forced himself to relax.
There were tiny little footsteps creeping past his door, and he forced himself to keep his smile away. There was a pause in the steps, and he let out a soft, open-mouthed snore. A small, muffled giggle. Then a tiny hand was tugging at his blankets, hauling himself up onto the bed.
Dick Grayson was nine, and so, so small. At or least, Bruce thought he was small for his age. He didn’t exactly have a wealth of experience. He carefully kept his eyes closed, waiting to see what Dick was going to do.
Bruce felt him settle on the covers, before pulling them back from his face. He felt him lean closer, before Dick whispered, “Bruce. Are you awake?”
Bruce squinted; twisting is head to stare up at Dick. Dick was staring down at him with a smile, and when he saw Bruce looking, he beamed, his entire face lighting up, his eyes glowing.
“It’s morning, Bruce,” Dick continued, still nice and quiet.
“Is it?” Bruce’s voice was sleep-husky, and a quick glance at his bedside table told him it was barely past nine in the morning. He’d only just gone to sleep a few hours ago. He couldn’t bring himself to feel angry or even slightly annoyed at Dick. Oh, no, my son loves me and wants to spend time with me, how dare he!
All he felt was a kind of all-consuming joy that Dick felt he was worthy of that love. That Bruce was worthy of that trust.
“You have to get up!” he whisper-shouted.
Bruce hummed, pretending to think it over. Then, in one fluid movement, he reached out of the covers, and pulled Dick underneath, cuddling him close. Dick squealed with laughter but burrowed into his side anyway.
“Ten more minutes,” Bruce mumbled into Dick’s hair. He wouldn’t be going back to sleep, not now that he was awake, but he would have lain there for hours, just happy to spend time with Dick.
“Bruce,” Dick whined, shoving at his arms, clawing his way out of Bruce’s hold. He crawled out on top of the covers and when he slipped of the side of the bed, he used his entire body weight to pull the rest of the blanket off with him.
Now, Alfred made his bed like he was a maid in a high-end hotel, and Bruce was a guest that had just checked in, so when Dick tried to pull the blanket off the bed, the blanket pulled taunt but then didn’t budge.
Dick dropped the blanket with a huff. Bruce watched as his brow scrunched, and he thought for a minute. Then, his expression smoothed, and he said, “Alfred won’t let me have any cereal.”
Bruce slowly closed his eyes, biting back a laugh. After a beat he opened his eyes, and frowned. “Well. That’s not good. I suppose I should get you something to eat then, huh?”
Dick beamed, nodding vehemently.
So, Bruce flung his blanket off, donning a silk robe over his bare chest, and matching silk pants. They were both black. He bent down to pick up Dick, settling him on his hip, as easy and instinctual as breathing.
As they walked down the hall, towards the stairs, Dick told him about his dream. Apparently, it involved him and Alfred and an ant the size of the Empire State Building. “So, we called the ant Bob, and we took him to the Manor, but Bob didn’t like the rose bushes – because he’s allergic to roses – so you tried to take them out, but you didn’t read the instructions and just dumped fertilizer all over them, so there were even more roses, Bruce. Like the entire yard was roses. Bob was not happy. He kept sneezing.”
“That’s terrible,” Bruce said, as he entered the kitchen. He set Dick down on the kitchen bench. He set his hands on his hips and stared critically at the kitchen cabinets. Now, where did Alfred keep the cereal?
After a moment’s hesitation, he just started opening the cupboard doors one by one.
“It is terrible,” Dick agreed. “Are you gonna have cereal too? I think Bob would’ve liked Cheerio’s. Or maybe even Captain Crunch! What do you think Bob would like?”
“Um.” Bruce blinked down at the bowls he’d just found. There were far too many. Have they always had this many bowls? Some were shallow with flat sides. Some were deep, and round. Some were deep but stretched out into a bigger circle. He grabbed two at random, weighing them in his hands. They felt right. He wasn’t really…awake a lot of them time when he ate breakfast. “Um,” he said again. “Cinnamon.”
For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the name – all he could remember was the taste of cinnamon.
“I don’t think ants like cinnamon,” Dick told him, like it was something obvious. “But maybe Bob. He’s nice, I think he would at least try it.”
Okay, bowls? Check. Now he just needed the cereal. He started opening more and more doors. Eventually he opened that turned out to be the fridge. Bruce hesitantly reached in to grab the milk, before setting it onto the counter next to the milk.
Dick was watching him fondly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
As Bruce set the milk down, Alfred stepped into the kitchen from the dining room. Bruce sagged with relief. Oh, thank God.
“Ahh, Master Bruce, Master Dick. I was wondering where you’d both escaped too. Both of your rooms were empty when I went to wake you.”
Wake him? The manor didn’t have a set breakfast time. Unless there was an event on that he couldn’t miss…
Oh.
He’d forgotten.
In his defence, he’d had gotten shot in the head three times last night, right at the back of his skull. His cowl had cracked, he’d gotten two stitches from the pressure and range of the bullets, and half a bottle of painkillers to fight back his concussion. That had never stopped him going from an event before of course. But today was different.
Today was the press conference where he introduced Dick Grayson to the world. He’d managed to hold them off for a month. It was a miracle in and of itself of course, that he’d managed to hide Dick from the media. He’d stopped going out to galas and parties, when he’d gone to one every night except Tuesdays – nothing good ever happened on Tuesdays.
Of course, the media was curious. Violently, blood-thirsty, frothing at the mouth curious. So, instead of letting the media grow ever thirstier and far more willing to climb over his fences to peak in through his windows, he’d decided to bite the bullet and introduce Dick to the world.
He hadn’t talked to Dick about it yet. He’d sent out the email last night around eleven-thirty last night for twelve in front of City Hall. He wasn’t worried about people not being there. He was Bruce Wayne. The press didn’t just ignore him.
“Where’s the cereal, Alfred?” Bruce asked. “I checked the cupboards.” He pointed at the bowls and tapped the milk. “I found these.”
“Very well done, Master Bruce,” Alfred said.
Bruce preened for a minute. He did do a good job, didn’t he?
“The cereal is in there,” Alfred continued, pointing at a door hidden in the corner. “In the walk-in pantry. About your neck height. All of them are labelled.”
Bruce nodded, before arching his brows, asking Dick a silent question.
Dick hummed and hawed for a beat, before nodding resolutely. “Cinnamon,” he said, sounding entirely sure of his decision. “Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”
Bruce nodded again. If Dick wanted Cinnamon Toast Crunch, then by all of his power, he was going to get his damn Cinnamon Toast Crunch. He stepped into the pantry, grabbed the clear containers with a clear sticker over the front, and pulled it out.
Dick had moved from sitting with his legs hanging over the side of the bench, to sitting cross legged in the middle, with a bowl in front of him, and a bowl sitting in front of a stool next to the bench. It was at that exact moment that Bruce realised there were multiple stools in front of the bench. That perhaps the entire purpose of the bench was to be sat at, and not simply there.
Honestly, it made sense.
Bruce opened the lid of the plastic containers, and bought out a mound into each bowl, until it looked right. Dick poured the milk, and then they both picked up a spoon which Alfred must have produced from the depths of hell because Bruce hadn’t been able to find them anywhere.
Well, it was Cinnamony. It was Crunchy. He wasn’t sure how it was Toasty, but if he squinted, they looked like tiny little toasts, so it almost made sense.
They ate in silence for a beat. Then, Dick said hesitantly, “I think Bob would like it. We’ll have to try some more. And the other flavours.”
Bruce nodded, eating more of the cereal. After a few more minutes, Bruce decided to finally bite the bullet. “So, Dick – you know how I’m kind of, famous. Right?”
Dick nodded. “My mum said that your cute, and my dad said your just stupid. But I don’t think your stupid. You just get a bit lost.”
Bruce huffed. Well, lost was better than stupid. He cleared his throat, and continued. “Well, Gotham – and well, America in general – is kind of nosy, sometimes. So, they’ve all noticed that I haven’t been going out as much as I used to.” Bruce had gotten a lot of emails. “So, before they get all creepy and stark stalking us when we go and get ice-cream-”
“Can we have ice-cream for lunch?” Dick interrupted.
“Yes, anyway. I’ve decided to introduce you to the media. You remember the other day when we went to go get McDonalds?”
“I was hungry, and you couldn’t work out how to turn on the stove, and Alfred was at the store, so we went to McDonalds, and you spend, like, heaps of money.”
Bruce had spent fifty dollars because he wasn’t sure what they even sold, and then he’d tipped three hundred dollars. The server had started crying, so Bruce had tried to tip more, certain that he had underpaid. At some point he’d run out of cash and just handed over a check to the manager under the express order that he divvies the money up among his staff.
That night Batman had dug into the man’s bank account and divvied up the money himself, going so far as to send a verification to the guy’s email, and to send follow ups and confirmations to the bank. He had then wiped his trail, and it was like he had never even been there.
“So, before we get ice-cream, we’ll go to City Hall, and then I’ll speak into a microphone and say that, you are Dick Grayson, and I’m fostering you after your…after your parents. And they might ask you a few questions, and you can choose not to answer-”
“Can I?” Dick interrupted, spoon frozen, suspended between his mouth and his bowl. As he watched, a drop of milk began to fall to the marble bench between then. “Can I answer? I want to. I used to answer questions at the circus all the time.”
“You can do whatever you want, buddy,” Bruce said. He finished his last bite, and went to put the bowl in the sink, when Dick lifted his own bowl, and began to drink straight from the bowl. Milk dripped down his chin, staining his pyjamas. They were covered in owls.
Bruce slowly copied his motions.
He thought briefly that Alfred might have a heart attack if he saw Bruce doing this. Bruce had never done this before. He’d never even thought about it.
When he was a kid, his breakfast had always come out pre-prepared. When he’d gotten older, he used to sit on the bench just like Dick was and watch as Alfred prepared his food. Often something hot with fresh fruit. They’d only just started to get cereal when Dick moved in. So yeah. He knew cinnamon, and now apparently, he knew drink the milk when cereal is finished.
Dick set his bowl down with a sigh, patting his stomach like he was satisfied. “Can we get ice-cream now?”
“Shower first, Master Dick,” Alfred said, stepping back into the kitchen and swooping in to grab the bowls and spoons before Bruce even set his onto the bench. “Make sure to brush your teeth, as well.”
“Every single one?” Dick whined.
“Every. Single. One.”
Bruce held out his arms, and Dick latched onto his side. “Hurry, Bruce! We’re going to be late!”
Bruce told Dick the press conference wasn’t until noon.
“Bruce. That’s like, soon.”
Oh, really? “Then you better be quick, then, eh Dick?”
They hadn’t even reached the steps yet, but Dick launched himself off of Bruce’s side, and thundered up the stairs, running as fast as he could. Bruce followed him at a slower, sedate pace. He got to his room, showered, exfoliated his entire body, went around his eyes with a q-tip to make sure none of the black face paint from last night was gone, did his skincare, combed out his brows.
The last thing he did was a final inspection of his face to make sure he didn’t have any stubble left, and then he began to blow dry his hair. Once it was mostly dry, he gelled it until it was artfully tussled. He skirted in some eye drops to get rid of the redness and slim his blown pupils. He rubbed cologne over his pulse points.
He made sure to colour correct and conceal over a bruise on his chest. He would be wearing a white shirt today, so he wanted to make sure nothing off peaked through. Satisfied, the back of his head stinging, he began to dress.
White shirt, thick material, a touch too tight, the top buttons undone, giving the world glimpses of collarbones, and the dip between his pecs. A thin chain necklace, slacks – specifically made tight around his ass – some shoes, and rings on each finger except his ring.
He smiled vapidly into the full-length mirror, not a care in the damn world. Perfect.
Bruce left his room, snagging a pair of glasses, and sitting them artfully on his head. He stopped outside of Dick’s room and listened carefully. He could vaguely make out the sounds of Alfred murmuring softly, and Dick responding.
He knocked, and waited until Dick said he could come in, before he opened the door.
Dick was dressed like a distinguished gentleman about to go to a country club. A button up white shirt, a red bowtie, khaki slacks, brown oxfords, and he was currently pulling on a soft brown sweater. Alfred straightened his bowtie and began to comb his hair.
“You look very nice,” Bruce told Dick.
Dick beamed up at him. “You look very clean,” Dick told Bruce.
Bruce choked on his spit, before tipping his head back and laughing outright. “Thank you, Dick. I tried.”
Dick nodded at him, disrupting Alfred’s comb. “Good. I was worried.”
Bruce bit back a smile. “I’ll be in the study for a bit okay, Alfred. Dick, we’ll leave soon, maybe an hour?”
Dick waved him goodbye, and Bruce made his way to his study, sitting down heavily at his desk, pulling out papers and a pen.
He had dozens of emails and things to sign – he’d taken to working at home when he’d taken Dick in. His shareholders and members of staff did not appreciate it. In all the security tapes he had watched over the weeks, to ensure that he missed absolutely nothing, there was plenty of talk about what new drug he was currently taking, or new hyperfiction he had discovered.
Part of him wanted too just…not. To just let Batman take over and do all the crime fighting. To do all the fixing of the city from the dark underbelly up.
But Batman was temporary. Destroy the dark, use Bruce Wayne to build it back up. So, Wayne Enterprises had to expand and invest in the city. Libraries and public-school funding and hospitals and free clinics and homeless shelters. Bruce Wayne was going to fix this city, and Batman was going to be buried in his Cave, never to be touched again.
The hour passed quickly.
That was a lie.
The hour dragged on, every minute lasting an eternity. He did not like paperwork. It wasn’t because it was hard. It was because it was violently easy. He would read the paper, sign the bottom, or he would read the paper, make adjustments, scan and send back.
Bruce had once meditated in Nanda Parbat, naked in the snow, until he was nothing but the wind. That had been easy. All he had to do was focus of the tingling of his toes and his fingers, as it slowly spread up his limbs, until he was numb and nothing but his mind. The quieting of his mind had taken longer, but eventually, he if he had opened his eyes, he’d been surprised to look down and see his physically body, not just a breeze.
So, yeah. Easy. He’d been newly seventeen. He’d gone from Gotham at fifteen, homeless and hitchhiking through the America’s until he’d hit the edge of Argentina where he’d jumped on a boat, and travelled West, until he’d hid East Asia, island hopping through Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, until he’d hit the mainland. He’d fought with freedom fighters, and against warlords, he’d robbed trains and cars at knife point, and he’d learned.
Most of all, he’d learned how to fight and to win. To think and to wait and have a hundred different plans and contingencies at any given moment in any given situation.
But Ras had told him that he needed to become calm. If he wanted to be a shadow, he had to learn how to be nothing but the wind.
He tried to think about paperwork as another kind of meditation, but it was just not mindless enough.
So, yeah, the hour dragged on, but when it finished, he shot out of his chair. Dick was in the informal lounge, the tv playing a kids tv show, and Lego’s strewn over half of the flooring.
“Let’s go, Dick,” Bruce called. He waited until he heard Dick reply, before grabbed a set of keys from the mudroom, and clicking a button on his keys to open the garage doors.
Eventually Dick joined him and pointed at the bright red Ferrari. “That car matches my tie.”
Bruce switched keys and clicked them. The Ferrari beeped. “Let’s go then.”
Dick climbed into the front seat of the car, and began pointing at all the different buttons, and asking, “What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?”
Air conditioner, the parking break, the wipers.
At some point throughout the drive, he ran out of questions, and started talking about Bob again. Apparently, he’s going to build a miniature of the Manor and the grounds out of Lego, and he’s going to find a miniature Bob to put in the Lego Manor.
Bruce told him it’s a good plan.
And then they were there. Hundreds of reports and flashing lights. Bruce hit a button that tinted the windows. No one could see in, no one could see that it was Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. They all knew it was him, of course.
Everyone knew Bruce Wayne’s cars, so when he pulled up, there was a surge as people ran towards the car, but the security guards he hired were there to push all of them back behind the barricades they’d started to climb over.
“Are you ready, Dick?” Bruce asked him, letting him see the flashing lights and the muffled screams of the reporters through the doors.
Dick nodded slowly. Then he smiled shyly up at Bruce. “It’s just like home.”
Bruce smiled softly down at Dick, cupping his cheek, and pulling him in for a hug, pressing a kiss to his forehead. One day Bruce hoped that when Dick said home, he would start talking about the Manor and about Bruce. The other part of him hoped that Dick never forgot the circus or his parents. It was a war he didn’t think he would ever resolve.
“Ready?” he asked again.
Dick nodded, so Bruce pushed open the door, turning around to pull Dick onto his hip. He used his ass to close the door, cocked his hip, and held out his other hand ta-daaa gesture.
There was a collective deafening silence, but then the yells and shouts increased tenfold. Dick beamed underneath the noise, absolutely thriving. He waved at reporters and posed as best he could for the photos, as Bruce slowly made his way up to podium someone set up for him.
He tapped on the microphone, waiting for the crowd to quiet down. They did so quickly, breath held in anticipation.
“This is Dick Grayson. He’s my ward.”
The crowd exploded. Bruce waited a beat. Then he spoke again. “After the tragedy at the circus last month, I couldn’t leave him there, all alone. So, I took him in, and now he’s my ward.”
He knew how the world saw him. Vapid and shallow. Ran off to Europe to join a boarding school, came back when he was nineteen, almost twenty, to run his company.
He pointed at a few random reporters.
Gotham Gazette: “Why were you at the circus, Bruce?”
Bruce: “I was working too hard, needed a break.” He gave the cameras an extra vapid smile, making it just a touch tired on the edges.
Gotham Times: “Why take in the boy?”
Bruce: “Okay, first, his name is Dick. Dick Grayson. Remember the name. Second, I have a big house. Why wouldn’t I take him in?”
Gotham Quarterly: “Why the name Dick?”
Bruce: “…his parents chose it? Hahaha, what? Dick why did your parents choose your name?”
Dick: “They thought Richard was cool, but Mom only used that to tell me to eat my brussel sprouts, so they usually called me Dick.”
GnG (Gossip in Gotham): “You’re so brown, Dick. Where are you from originally?”
Bruce: “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Dick: “Kansas. My Grandparents are Romani, though.”
Bruce: “Security, remove them. Don’t care, get them out. Booooo, leeeaaavvee. One more question. Hmmm, you – tall, glasses. Daily Planet.”
Daily Planet: “What do you think of the Bruce Wayne, Dick? If he nice to you? Are you happy?”
That seemed to silence the screaming reporters.
Dick frowned, thinking about the question hard. Bruce leaned to the side more, so he was centralised. Bruce knew that Dick was happy. He knew that. So why was he so nervous?
Dick leaned into the microphone and beamed down at Daily Planet. “Bing bong!” Then he dissolved into laughter, burying his face in Bruce’s neck, little body shaking with joy. Bruce beamed down at him, feeling his face crease and shift with joy.
“Is that all you wanted to say, Dick?” Bruce asked him, just loud enough to get picked up by the microphones in front of him.
Dick shook his head and leaned back. “Can we get ice-cream for lunch? I want chocolate, please.”
“Absolutely. But I meant the question, that the nice man asked you.”
Dick huffed and said into the microphones. “Bruce is very nice. We had cereal for breakfast. He’d never had it before. He didn’t even know that had to drink the milk after you eat the cereal. He was going to throw it out!”
Then, right as Bruce was going to turn and leave the podium, he caught the whispers, and Dick must have heard them as well.
Dick lurched towards the podium, almost slipping out of Bruce’s grip to say into the microphone. “It was a silly question. That’s why I said bing bong. I wouldn’t have showed Bruce that he had to drink the milk from the cereal if he wasn’t nice! I would have let him waste it. Duh.”
There was a collective aww as Dick finished his statement, and at Dick request, they posed in front of the Ferrari, with Dick making sure the photographers noticed that his bowtie and the car matched.
Then, they climbed into the car, and Bruce spent a minute looking up the nearest ice-cream parlour. He picked the only one that had less than three robbery attempts, started the car, and he was gone, leaving the reporters and the photographers in the dust.
He glanced once in the rear-view mirror, only once, and watched as the Daily Planet reporter stared after the car, eyes all soft and mouth curved in a gentle smile, before he pulled his gaze down, and began to swerve around the other cars. They had ice-cream to get. Chocolate ice-cream.