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Sometimes Dick wonders if Bruce knows that he’s a real boy.
Sometimes he wonders if Bruce picked up a child at the circus the way one might win an unfortunate goldfish, if he brought him home after Juvie the way you’d bring home a puppy from the shelter.
Dick knows that Bruce loves him, that’s not in question. But sometimes he wonders if he knows that the thing he loves is a person same as him, complex, imperfect, growing and changing in ways that can’t be controlled.
Bruce is bad at people in general, Dick knows. There’s no reason to read into it too much. Bruce is bad at people in general, and he romanticizes, deliteralizes, things for him are never allowed to be themselves, but always symbolize something larger.
So Dick is not child, boy, son, himself. He is Child, Light in the Darkness, Joy and Wonder, with no room left over for him to breathe.
Sometimes Dick wonders if he did this to himself. He wonders if he tricked Bruce somehow. If he made his eyes too wide and bright, and worked too hard to make Bruce want to keep him, if he lied to him about what he was, fairy sprite instead of flesh and blood.
The trouble is, that Dick loves to be myth. Robin is bright-shining, radiant, and Dick is masterful in his creation. Dick has performance in his blood and in his bones, and when he wears his family’s colors he knows how to soar and make it magic.
Dick doesn’t mind being myth. He isn’t opposed to embodying a symbol of something larger than himself. He doesn’t regret creating of himself something for Gotham to believe in, he isn’t even opposed to Bruce believing in it a little, too. He just wishes that he could be certain that Bruce could see that beneath it all, Dick is still human.