Archive of Our Own ^beta

All the way home, the sound thunders around his brain. Droplets drip-drip-dripping on the passenger seat, creating dozens of exploding watery fireworks as they ricochet against the leather. Even though, Don’t ruin the upholstery, Bruce’d growled, freezing Dick mid-crouch, mid-escape.

Dick, shivering next to him, teeth chattering in tune to the car’s roars. Silent throughout the entire ride, jaw clenched to minimize the sound. Face—the side of it visible to Bruce—haloed in glimmering, yet-unshed water drops, that would paint anyone else in unflattering hues of the drowned dog variety. On him, it looks august. Majestic, even.

A wreath befitting saviors.

His whole mandible must be sore. The rope was sturdy enough, Bruce can attest to that. His own wrists twist and pull painfully, viciously, on every wheel manoeuvre. Even through the layers of the suit, the skin pricks and burns where the knot was digging in. Where Dick’s molars bit clean through, just before the oxygen ran out. A second later, an unlicensed teenager would’ve been steering the car.

Add that to the ever-growing list of offenses.

Dick’s shrugging off the seatbelt and plucking the domino mask clean off before the cave gate slides open to swallow them, never mind that the Always-Masks-when-in-Car rule has been in effect for the last two years, drafted specifically for such occasions. Bruce doesn’t so much allow it to happen as not manage to get a word out in time, before Dick’s hopping out of the car and striding towards the stack of incongruously fluffy towels, courtesy of the British sense of hospitality. Bruce, still slumped against the back of the seat, somehow manages to slump even further. The night—the three hours still rightfully claiming it—promises to be long.

By the time he musters up the temperance to push up and out, Dick’s head’s scrubbed dry. Raw, too, probably, if the lack of remorse in every movement is anything to go by. His biceps flex and release with each swipe, and Bruce has to shake himself out of a reverie where noticing such stuff is anywhere near within the ballpark of acceptable.

It’s primarily his fault, the way mostly everything these days is. Foresight goes a long way in their line of business, and Choking training is, apparently, vastly different from Drowning training. The sound of gurgling breaths, bubbling to the surface as Dick’s head was held underwater, is echoing around the walls of Bruce’s short-term memory. Past that; the sheer lack of hesitation, the complete absence of a split-second reluctance, even though Dick’s annoyingly accurate gift of anticipation was cultivated even before it was train-drilled into him, in a pre-Bruce past they both usually skirt around.

Even so, even with Dick two-step-ahead-ing tonight’s wannabe it-villains, calculating the distance and the rope girth and the breath left in his lungs, nothing held him back. Nothing ever seems to, when it comes to Batman. It’s a thought that leaves Bruce’s palms with nail-carved ditches, the result of all the frequent fist-clenching, though the chance to test if the courtesy of blind loyalty extends to Bruce Wayne has yet to present itself. Selfishly, Bruce hopes it someday will.

As it is, he has tonight’s suicide dunking to justify his wide strides that stop barely a foot away from Dick, his right-hand grip that hold Dick’s face in place, then turn it this way and that with just a tad more force than strictly excusable.

‘Let me see.’

Dick answers his bark with a baring of teeth, which makes it all the easier for Bruce to hook two fingers inside his bottom lip and press against the gums. The consequent hiss almost bites said fingers off. Nothing loose, at least. Consolation, Bruce has accepted, has to be found wherever it might.

The next time Dick tugs his face back, Bruce allows it.

‘The knot was softened from all that time underwater. I knew I could untie it.’

‘You also knew there’d be a hand holding you down, but that didn’t seem to stop you from diving in.’

This particular rolling of Dick’s eyes, Bruce has come to understand, usually indicates indignant, eschewed guilt. ‘Good thing I freed you so you could pull me up.’

‘Getting drowned to save me from drowning is logistically counterproductive, Dick.’

Dick twists his face in a way that clearly relays disapproval. At thirteen, four-plus-syllable words are abysmally placed in the coolness factor scale. Bruce’s word for Dick is defiant, which ranks a bit higher, at least.

Currently, the Defiant is snapping back to earn the title. ‘And whose fault is that? All this training, bags over my head, nooses and ropes. Two minutes underwater, it all flew out the window. Ob-so-le-te,’ he enunciates, ‘okay? It felt—’ Right before Bruce’s eyes, he deflates, like someone pulled a plug and all the snark wheezed out. Only in fear, does Dick show his age. The last dregs of a childish disposition. ‘It felt different,’ he concludes, ‘I couldn’t breathe.’

Bruce considers all his potential replies and picks, true to character, the worst possible one. ‘Evidently.’ Can’t even blame the ensuing bristling, the shoulder-hunching. The death glare. He sighs, tries again. ‘A shower will do you good. You barely dodged hypothermia.’

It’s owing to his tone meticulously molded towards suggestion rather than order, that Dick actually heeds him. Not without a spurned glance over his shoulder, fallen angel-style, but. You take your wins wherever they find you, Bruce knows that, too. All too well.

By the time Dick ambles out of the shower, steam-pliant and still dribbling like he’s never been landlocked, most of the report has been typed out and the beginnings of an underwater-training plan have been drafted. Dick leans back against the console, the drip-drip-dripping tinny now, as droplets hit metal. Latest-tech, arm-and-leg expensive metal. Bruce scrambles for a towel.

‘How’s the jaw?’

Dick winces in lieu of any helpful reassurance, then nods any residual pain away. Here, now, post-shower and scrubbed clean, the defiance shows itself for the veneer it is. Self-conscious, is what he is. Bruce accurately predicts what the next thing mumbled out of his mouth will be, fortune-telling vision or not.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault.’

Dick scoffs, once. Nobody else holds the power to make Bruce feel dismissed by a gust of breath. ‘It’s my lungs. I can’t expect you to hold your breath for me, too.’

A beat too late, Bruce says, ‘You’re right,’ and revels in his quenched expectation at the jolt that pierces Dick’s form. Admissions of guilt acquire worth in their rarity, Mother always said.

The worth being, presently, the mild queasiness etched around Dick’s mouth. ‘I am?’

Bruce graces that with a hum. ‘Underwater breathing hasn’t been sufficiently touched upon in your training. That’s not on you.’

It’s as back-handed a consolation as can be, evidenced by Dick’s furious frowning, directed towards the cave floor like he wills it to borrow a biblical page, as it were, and liquify. Bruce feels the tell-tale signs of upwards-tugging on the left corner of his lips. The one not visible to Dick, mercifully.

As he’s reaching out, the motion’s already playing out in his head, so that, when the back of a knuckle grazes against the still-humid skin of Dick’s thigh, it’s superimposed over its imaginary counterpart, twice felt. Intense like nothing unforbidden could ever be. Barely a touch. Enough to undo him.

It’s a good thing his breathing has long since been forged into masterfully schooled. Not that it makes much of a difference, when that single point of contact prompts Dick to look up, finally, into Bruce’s eyes for the first time since the masks came off. Well, Batman’s eyes. That mask’s still stubbornly on. And even so, under that familiar, cherished safety, Bruce’s breath hitches under Dick’s gaze.

He knocks his knuckle against the side of Dick’s thigh, innocently to anyone who’s not looking too closely. Then pulls back. All in one, wobbly breath.

Dick spends two beats staring at the space vacated by the retreated touch, mouth twisted in unholy revelation. His eyes travel back up, not smoldering but not far from it, either. ‘Can we train?’

Now, this. It’s a territory familiar enough Bruce allows himself the hint of a smirk. ‘I’ll make some arrangements.’

Dick nods, mostly to himself. ‘I can do better. I will.’

‘I know.’ Since Bruce’s contribution seems to have run its course, he finds it in himself to wrench his eyes away and return to the task at hand. No report has ever composed itself. ‘Go get some sleep, kid.’

A respectable amount of days later (5-7 work days for the order to get delivered, plus a couple more to underline Bruce’s lack of eagerness), everything’s set. Throughout this entire time, Dick’s been an angel. A perfectly patient angel. No questions, no probing, no covert eagerness. For almost a fortnight, Dick is pure determination and focus. Even more so than usual. Bruce is actively contemplating the benefits of close calls.

Then, eleven days after The Incident, Dick is led, in excited anticipation mutually shared but solely expressed, to a usually shut part of the mansion. They’ve never made a point of locked wings and forbidden rooms, but practicality is the master key of impractical houses. Not even Alfred can juggle three floors, a cellar and a lair-cave. The bats in particular are notoriously uncooperative.

Covering of the eyes falls this side of childish, and is therefore forgone, so Dick has to make do.

‘Can I open them now?’

‘There was never any obligation to shut them to begin with.’

‘C’mon, you miser. Play ball.’

Bruce’s split-second decision is swayed by the disproportionate amount of bullying that is sure to follow any attempt at rigid work talk. ‘Fine,’ he sighs, rivaling Dick’s exasperation, ‘open your eyes.’

Permission granted, Dick theatrically plucks an invisible blindfold, in blatant mimicry of actual captivity. Even adds a few rapid blinks for good measure, pretending at blindness. Only owing to that masterful performance Bruce is locked in on, does he catch the way Dick’s eyes widen in awe, then keep widening in what Bruce deems inaccurate to name anything but sheer dread.

‘Is that—?’

Curtly, Bruce nods.

‘Oh,’ Dick breathes, ‘I just thought—’ With a shake of his head, the frown is etch-a-sketch’d away. ‘Where did you even get a tank like that? B,’ he mock-gasps, ‘Have you been browsing the dark web?’

‘I have my ways,’ Bruce replies, as non-committal as he can afford. Ever since the kid taught him about VPNs, net-surfing is nothing but open possibilities. The press would have a field day tracing torture tank orders back to the respectable Wayne name.

Dick squints, first at him, in a clear sign of disobedient doubt, then at the glass-and-brass water tank and the crate of accompanying, six-for-the-price-of-four, set of manacles. They’re of the old-fashioned, executioner-type style, complete with a ball-and-chain flourish. It’s admittedly outdated, and garishly theatrical, but. It’ll do.

‘So, uh, I go in—’ Dick nods towards the tank, then smirks at the restraints, still looking a tad blanched. ‘My, are we being kinky today.’

Bruce has to clear his throat twice before it’s anywhere near firm-tone-adjacent. ‘We’ll work up to those. Let’s start with plain rope and build up your endurance this way. Your run-of-the-mill criminal will hardly ever be in possession of anything as elaborate.’ He picks the bundle up with a horrible, metallic clanging, and takes special care not to miss the way Dick’s eyes hone in on the bulge of his biceps.

The kid is looking mildly relieved at the ousting of the chains, but one look at the vat, mockingly empty with the promise of a wet grave, is enough to reinstate apprehension all over Dick’s face.

Strange. Alarming in its scarcity. Dick’s rarely, if ever, shying away from adrenaline-spiking challenges.

‘Shall we begin?’

Bruce is expecting reluctance. Hoping for the absence of it. There’s a long line of undesirable traits for this job, and faint-heartedness takes over the first half of a page.

Pride swells inside him when Dick offers his arms, palm-up, then seems to think better of it and twists them into the groove of his lower back. His chances of escaping have just diminished significantly. In a saner, more selfless version of this reality, Bruce would be the wall between this perfect, battle-ready boy, and—the battle.

Bruce has never been the poster-child for selflessness. Orphaned people seldom are.

‘Not yet,’ he says, reaching behind to guide Dick’s arms back against his sides. ‘Theory first, you know that.’

Dick scowls up at him. ‘I know how to breathe, Bruce.’

‘Evidently not.’

It’s a low blow delivered with a borderline cruel raising of an eyebrow, which would’ve been effective, were it not followed by a fierce blush that flares up across Dick’s cheekbones. Taking Dick down a peg has always been a double-edged knife.

It’s essential that Bruce holds on to something, anything, to occupy his hands, so he swivels around to grab the foldable ladder and set it next to the tank. ‘Climb on.’

The scowl hasn’t left Dick’s features, but he obeys, albeit reluctantly. The top rung brings him head-to-head with the rim of the tank, lid hanging open.

Dick hums, fingering the locking mechanism. Tugging and testing its solidness. ‘External,’ he mutters, then flips the lid closed, securing the top part of the latch over the fixed bottom. After a sufficiently long amount of studious tinkering, he turns to Bruce. ‘No water at first?’

‘Just the rope.’

Dick jumps down with an enviable gratefulness, arms already in place for bondage. After a damningly long second, Bruce reaches for the rope and makes quick work of the bindings. It’s not the most elaborate knot, but it’s restrictive enough to do its job. Boosting Dick’s confidence with something manageable works as the perfect foundation for escalating levels of difficulty, except Bruce keeps forgetting to take into account the evaporation of Dick’s cluelessness sometime around his thirteenth March. The kid’s already rolling his eyes at the remorseful stretch of the rope.

Still, he opts for a no-comment approach. A rare sign of emotional maturity Bruce can’t help but marvel at. Were the positions flipped, the exchange would’ve taken a less than civilized turn.

Dick, though—Dick climbs the ladder, one, two, three steps to the top, then slithers, unaided by his arms, into the tank. Bruce watches as Dick lands on a standing position, then swivels, folding himself in half, until he’s feet up. Once he’s settled, flushed from both exertion and the redistribution of blood, he seeks out Bruce for further instructions. Bruce twirls his index, reverse. Dick nods choppily in acknowledgment, then points his toes towards the opening of the tank.

He’s right, of course. The exercise is pointless without the added claustrophobic variable. Bruce stretches to flip the lid shut, then secures the lock. The absence of water makes timing Dick’s efforts futile, but furthers the illusion of structure, so he makes a point out of starting the clock and giving Dick the go ahead.

Dick is—well, he’s marvelous. No surprise there. He twists his wrists inside the restraints as if to try and untie them, then thinks better of it and leaves his arms as they are. Clever boy. Reorienting his center of gravity would work against him in his current position. His manoeuvring is masterful. How he contorts his body, writhing upwards until his legs can find purchase to push, then keep pushing. Till he’s the right way up again, and only then does he hook a finger into the knot. The rope falls at the floor of the tank with a muted thud. It’s a wonder to behold.

Bruce moves belatedly towards him, but Dick stops him in his tracks with an imperceptibly smug shake of his head. His positioning’s all wrong. The only hope out of this contraption is by repeatedly thumping the lid and hoping the latch will give, and nothing but leg muscles can project the force necessary. Standing on tiptoes, Dick can barely press his palms flat against the glass ceiling.

Enough with the games. Bruce strides up to the tank and reaches for the latch, when, thwack, Dick’s palm thunks against the glass wall. Till the end of his life, Bruce will deny the way he flinches. His eyes snap to Dick because, alright, there’s confidence, and then there’s death wishes.

Dick, though. The picture of calm, he simply curls his tongue inside his mouth, muscles bulging the skin of his throat, then hooks a finger between his lips and fishes something out. It—it looks like—

Checking is redundant, but. Knowledge above conjecture, always. He reaches inside the belt’s third right compartment, and, sure thing, the razor blade count’s down one. It’s thin enough to fit through a slit. Inside the tank, Dick bends it carefully into a curve, then eases it through the infinitesimal gap under the lid. From there, he makes easy work of hooking it under the latch and pulling until it slides up. The blade plummets to the ground, twisted beyond hope. Bruce can’t help but watch as Dick slams the lid open, then jumps to curl his hands over the metal frame and scramble out.

He scowls at the ruined blade. ‘Sorry,’ he sing-songs, with a through-the-lashes look that conveys total lack of remorse, ‘I’ll get you a new one.’

‘Impressive.’ Bruce toes the razor, then picks it up and throws it in the ever-growing discarded weapons bin. ‘Of course, it’s completely useless in the case of a lock.’

‘You didn’t add a lock.’

‘That is beside the point.’

Dick graces him with an impressive eye-roll. ‘I know. It’s a neat trick, though, right? And you’re always saying how I shouldn’t have to count on you all the time. Besides, no one’s as—’ face scrunching up at the effort, ‘—met-ti-cu-lous as you are. They’ll just dump me in the tank and forget all about it.’

‘That’s far from a reliable assumption.’

‘B, man, give over.’

‘Alright,’ Bruce relents, ‘it was clever. How did you manage to sneak into the belt anyway?’

Dick frowns like the impossibility of such feat only just dawned on him. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘you’re easy to distract.’ Then, when the silence has stretched a tad too long, ‘Chains?’

‘If you’re not thoroughly drained.’

‘I’m fine.’

Bruce clears his throat. ‘In that case—’ He opts for a moderate design. Nothing too life-threatening, yet efficient in its simplicity. Finally, an actual challenge.

‘Arms?’

‘Parallel,’ Bruce decides, ‘to your sides.’

Dick keeps patiently, perfectly still throughout the process. Tied up like this, of course, it’s impossible for him to climb into the tank unaided. Something Bruce utterly forgot to factor in.

‘I’ll have to lift you.’

‘Oh, goody,’ Dick drawls, ever impudent, ‘and here I thought playtime was over.’

In lieu of a snarky comeback that will inevitably fall short, Bruce picks him up over his shoulder and places him, seated, on the rim of the open tank. Dick balances for a moment, then slides beautifully down. Bruce knocks a knuckle against the wall to get his attention.

‘Just the restraints this time. Lid stays open.’

Dick shrugs his indifference through the chains. ‘Time me?’

Bruce gives him a nod. ‘When you’re ready.’

It takes Dick two minutes and six seconds of wriggling and writhing till the chains clatter to the floor with a deafening clang, which is exactly twelve seconds short of where Bruce’s calculations ranked him, and at least a fifty-odd seconds longer than Dick can hold his breath. For all intents and purposes, Dick’s a goner.

His scowl, when he emerges from the tank, indicates awareness. He stays perched atop the rim, legs dangling. He hands Bruce the chains. ‘Again?’

Bruce considers that for a beat. The breaking-free time has already exceeded his most hopeful expectations, and even so, the margin between the time Dick’s oxygen will run out and the chains are off is lethal. Unless Dick improves his breathing, his escaping skills are virtually pointless.

‘No,’ he decides. ‘Turn around. Hands behind your back.’ Chains discarded, Bruce once again reaches for the rope. He opts for the same knot, even though Dick can undo it before his feet have even grazed the bottom of the tank. This time they’re leveling up, though. ‘Let’s add the water, shall we?’

Only by virtue of holding on to Dick’s wrists does Bruce sense the way he freezes. ‘Oh. Sure. How does it—?’

‘A system of tubes runs through the framing. Once I twist the crank, it’ll start filling up.’

Still rigid but for what has to be intentionally steady breathing, ‘Alright,’ Dick mumbles, then pushes off the ledge and into the tank. He’s not trembling, but it’s a near thing.

‘Dick,’ Bruce tries, then again, ‘Dick.’

‘I’m fine. Fill it up.’

Bruce forces softness into his tone. ‘Dick. Climb back up.’

With only a couple of seconds of hesitation, Dick pulls the knot loose and pushes out of the tank. He stands before Bruce. Defiant.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s stupid.’

‘Nothing regarding you is.’ It’s verging on dangerous honesty Bruce customarily goes to great lengths to avoid, but the occasion calls for it. Dick’s eyes snap up to him, two moons of misplaced worship.

‘I just—’ he mutters, ‘I don’t know how to swim. I never learned, I mean. And now you wanna lock me in a tub full of water and I—I can’t—’

Whatever elaborate explanation Bruce was expecting, this falls far from it. A memory flashes through his mind, well-buried. The impossible choice between saving a drowning child and letting the murderer of the kid’s parents go. The searing, unbridled fury directed at him once all the water had drained from Dick’s lungs. The years of atonement, chasing Zucco’s shadow all over the coast, to finally give Dick the reckoning Bruce himself was never granted.

The realization that the choice was never impossible. Given the chance, Bruce would pick Dick over—well, anything.

‘I see,’ he rasps. ‘No part of this requires the knowledge of swimming techniques.’

Dick bristles. ‘I know that.’

‘Would it augment your sense of security?’

‘B,’ Dick drawls, ‘in english.’

It’s that, more than any physical sign, that clues Bruce in to the panic abating. Dick’s snark is proportionate to his level of safety. Makes it impossible to begrudge him the insolence.

To suppress the beginnings of a smile, Bruce sighs. ‘Will it make you feel safer?’

Dick gives a clipped nod. ‘’m sorry.’

‘Whatever for? No one is a natural born swimmer, Dick. Besides, it’s an indisputably useful skill. Maybe not in this case, but it’s sure to come handy at some point. I’m surprised your parents never taught you.’

Dick’s eyes get cloudy at the mention. ‘Circus rules. The divers never learn how to walk a tightrope, why should the acrobats learn to swim?’

‘That sounds awfully restricting.’

‘It’s a system,’ Dick shrugs, ‘it works. When would they find the time anyhow? We were always on the move. The caravan didn’t exactly come with an indoor pool.’

‘Must’ve been an older model,’ Bruce remarks, for the sole purpose of making Dick’s face light up. ‘I’ll see about arranging lessons with an instructor.’

‘Can’t you do it?’

‘There’s a chasm between being adept at a skill and conveying its principles, Dick.’

‘It can’t be that hard. Once I get floating out of the way, the rest is simple, right?’

‘Well, yes, theoretically—’

‘So, will you?’

His resolve gives Bruce pause. ‘Would you prefer that?’

Dick gives him the expression Bruce has regrettably come to recognize as his trademark well, duh look. ‘You over anyone, B, you know that.’

‘Very well,’ Bruce concedes, any and all arguments disintegrated in the face of such unfiltered, undeserved devotion. ‘As you wish.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

A sigh. ‘That was not my intention.’

‘B. I’m fourteen. You are not carrying me in.’

Second consecutive sigh and obligatory birthday calculations out of the way, ‘March is still two months away, Dick,’ Bruce amends, ‘and carrying you wasn’t my intention, either.’

‘Quit waving your arms all over the place, then, jeez. Raising up a storm won’t convince me to get in any sooner.’

Bruce hides a smirk by dunking his head underwater. What a treat, this ephemeral moment of peace. Coming up to find Dick still toeing the water like it wills it to solidify, he allows amusement to morph into warmth and settle on his face. ‘Getting into the water is a prerequisite for learning how to stay afloat, as I’m sure you’re aware.’

Dick’s staring, mesmerized, at the chemical clearness of the pool. Bottom lip between his teeth, gnawed to rawness. ‘It’s too deep,’ he says, small in ways he rarely allows his voice to sound, or is allowed to. ‘My feet won’t reach.’

‘Thus,’ Bruce indulges, ‘my arms. Come on in, now. I’ve got you.’

The unwavering truth of such a statement demolishes the last of Dick’s resolve, evidenced both by the unadulterated irritation infused into the eye-roll he graciously throws Bruce’s way, and his slow, but sure, descent into the water. Bruce is, of course, there to—not catch him, not truly, but prop him up, rather, arms threaded under Dick’s armpits, hoisting his upper body above the surface, while his legs dog-paddle adorably. A good two inches of water have already been splashed out onto the pool edge. Dick is decidedly not aquatic. A dash of water, and all that acrobat’s grace turns to panicked floundering.

It’s endearing in ways neither of Bruce’s selves can afford.

‘First item,’ he starts, residual fondness helplessly seeping through, ‘learn how to stay upright.’

‘How—’

‘Stop moving your legs, for a start.’

Dick shakes, violently. ‘I’ll sink.’

Bruce gives him an answering shake of his head. ‘Not a chance,’ he lies, even though, statistically, pool drowning is extremely likely. The Alfred-sounding inner voice of reason mutes that specific channel of information. The circle of his arms weaves tighter, hemming the kid in. The only thing keeping Bruce from touching is the certainty of getting away with it.

Reluctantly, eyes fixed on Bruce’s for any sign, encouraging or otherwise, Dick goes still from the waist down. His fingers are flexing on the surface, grazing Bruce’s arms, his shoulders, his chest. He’s trembling, well on the way to hyperventilating.

‘What now?’

‘Well,’ Bruce says, ‘breathing is always a good idea.’ Inside the circle of his arms, he can feel Dick’s ribs expanding and collapsing in steady, forcibly measured breaths. ‘Good, that’s good. Now, try walking.’

‘Walking.’

‘Small movements, like steps. Wading.’

Through the haze of fear, Dick manages a single, poignantly raised eyebrow. He moves, first hesitatingly, then with a pretended ease that quickly turns genuine. For a few minutes, they stay in this—this private, minute space. Not touching in any deliberate, significant manner, but inevitably brushing against each other. The pinched expression on Dick’s features gradually evaporates, a proud sheen settling in. He barely needs propping up anymore. Any second now, all excuses for proximity will run out.

Bruce pushes away. ‘Circle your arms to stay afloat,’ he says, justifying the expanding stretch between them. ‘Keep moving your legs, just like that. Find a rhythm.’

In this, as in anything, Dick’s a quick learner. Once each act is translated into precise, measured movements, it’s only a matter of moments before it becomes a natural part of his routine. He beams up at Bruce, floating closer. Already moved onto lesson #2.

‘What’s next?’

‘Don’t rush,’ Bruce admonishes, belatedly, vainly, and splashes a two-finger jet towards Dick, effectively stumping his impetus. It offers the double benefit of preserved distance, and teenage excitement in the face of a challenge.

‘Oh, you—’

‘Language, kid.’

‘I didn’t say a word.’

Bruce splashes more water his way. Not nearly enough to snuff out Dick’s fire. ‘But you wanted to,’ he says, drifting further away. ‘Now, let’s try some freestyle.’

An hour and thirty-odd minutes later finds them starfished on their backs, skillfully avoiding bumping against each other. The low ceiling, rather than closing in claustrophobically, envelops them in muted silence.

Bruce is floating languidly. With his eyes closed, all other senses are heightened to an acute, almost unbearably sharp degree. Dick’s breathing is reverberating in his own lungs. The last hour can be measured in idle rounds, up and down the pool, as if water has always been their natural habitat. Bruce makes sure to ripple Dick away whenever he gets too close, but otherwise leaves him be. Practice, after all, is practice.

Once Dick’s settled down, though, remaining in the water serves nothing but a leisure neither of them can excuse. Bruce, pruney and content and definitely late for at least a couple of meetings, is surprised to detect in himself an unwillingness to renounce this perfect, unrestrained listlessness in the name of practicality. It’s not often they’re allowed pockets of obligation-free time, and there’s almost something confessional in the absolute silence of the room.

‘You weren’t expecting a tank yesterday, were you?’

Dick, as if summoned by the conversational disposition of the question, appears near. If the pool was laned, he’d be trespassing. ‘When I said breathing practice,’ he drawls, undoubtedly rolling his eyes, ‘I was thinking more, y’know, dunking. ‘xcept I forgot I was talking to mr. Extra.’

In search of a voice much too close, Bruce turns his neck to find Dick right there, eyes brimming with mischief. ‘That’s hardly the jab you take it for. One can never be too prepared, least of all when you find yourself in captivity.’

Dick seems to be mulling that over. ‘Did that escape artist teach you those tricks? That girl’s father, I mean.’

‘Zatanna’s hardly a girl, Dick.’ Bruce sighs, giving up all hope for tranquility. Shifting all weight on his lower body, he lets his legs anchor him vertically. Their orbits are converging, legs and forearms only barely avoiding collision. Bruce can feel the phantom warmth emanating off Dick’s body. How he misses the limitlessness of a teenage-young circulatory system. ‘But yes, it was my absolute privilege to be trained under Zatara. His extensive—and constantly evolving—depository of escape methods have proved invaluable, time and time again.’

The absent-minded hum Dick buzzes out signifies that, somewhere along the road, perhaps even from the very beginning, this conversation turned forked, and they’re walking down different paths. Bruce, endowed with the experience exclusively acquirable through near-three glorious years of wardship, braces for impact.

‘Are you still in love with her?’

Bruce can feel his eyebrows shooting up. All that mental preparation, all this proverbial foot-planting, torn to shreds. No villain scheme has ever befuddled Batman the way one single teenage curveball bewilders Bruce Wayne.

‘Have I ever made any allusions to that?’

It’s hardly a trick question, but Dick shakes his head as if faced with one. ‘It’s just the way you—talk about her, sometimes. And you did spend all that time working together.’

Bruce considers the validity of that claim through the lens of a relationship-illiterate teenager. ‘I see,’ he says, earnestly. ‘I am fond of her. Her vanishing skills are enviable. And you’re not wrong, two people in close quarters learn to—rely on one another. They form a bond that can’t be replicated.’ All of a sudden, he’s aware of the applicability of his statement. Of the absolute silence surrounding them, the world narrowed down to its last two inhabitants. It’s just them, and no one else. ‘But,’ he goes on, voice grainy to his own ears, ‘there’s a difference between this type of tunnel-visioned infatuation that crumbles with distance, and an affection that persists, regardless of the circumstances.’

Dick, when Bruce dares look at him, is regarding Bruce with a portentous tilt of his head. He stares, and stares, and, ‘If you say so,’ he says, and abandons Bruce asea.

Pushing out of the water, he goes straight for the pile of towels stacked neatly in a cupboard Bruce doesn’t remember buying, or requesting to be filled. Haphazardly, Dick grabs one from the middle of the stack, leaving the ones above slightly rumpled.

‘It can’t always be your fault, you know,’ he’s saying, effectively drawing Bruce’s attention from an infuriatingly protruding terrycloth edge to Dick’s arms, bulging as he towels off. ‘The other night, I mean. It wasn’t on you.’

‘How do you mean?’

Dick blows out a small, frustrated huff that, but for the stillness of the room, might’ve gotten sacrificed to the ether. ‘Look,’ he says, facing forward so Bruce can heed the order, ‘it’s impossible to train me for every scenario imaginable. Our lives are crazy, okay? Something’s bound to slip through the cracks, even for you. And my mistakes are mine.’

Slowly, placatingly, Bruce lifts himself out of the water. ‘It doesn’t work that way.’

‘Yes, it does. If I can’t breathe underwater, it’s my fault for not training harder, not yours for lack of guessing.’

‘Dick,’ Bruce says, stepping closer, ‘you’re my responsibility. Something happens to you on the field, it’s on me for not anticipating it, and my fault for allowing you out there in the first place.’

‘Allowing me? God, when will you—’ Dick throws the towel, mid-drying off, on a pool chair, one of a set that Bruce doesn’t remember approving, either. He fists a hand in his hair and leaves strands jutting out comically, residual droplets trailing down to pool in the groove above his clavicle. ‘What’s the point,’ he says, to the beat of Bruce’s pulse thumping in his ears, ‘if you can’t even get it through your head that I can make my own decisions?’

‘The two arguments are not mutually excl—’

‘Stop lecturing me. This will never work if you won’t stop treating me like a brainless kid.’

It’s the steel in his voice, unflinching beyond his years, that shatters Bruce’s resolve. Makes it impossible to resist a palm, cupped around Dick’s shoulder, thumb dipping into the small pond. He dreads to imagine what this might be referring to. If it can be stretched wide enough to fit the glide of Bruce’s fingers on skin humid, rubbed raw. The novelty of it. The familiarity. The wrongness.

This, all-encompassing, larger than life. Than either of them, in any case.

‘Not a child,’ he hears himself saying, ‘I’m aware of that, believe me.’ With every circle he’s tracing, Dick’s muscles slacken under his grip, shoulders deflating. ‘There’s still so much to learn, though.’

The fondness in Dick’s eyes is scorching. Unendurable. Underneath, defiance still shines through. Won’t budge an inch, that kid. He tilts his head and bumps his jaw against Bruce’s knuckles, something neither of them will ever term nuzzling.

‘For you and I both, B.’

‘I just don’t understand,’ Dick is saying, for what must surely be the six, possibly the ninth time, ‘what I’m being punished for.’

The coastal road is, naturally, deserted. At 8am on a Friday February morning, the reason isn’t hard to guess at. The wind is—not howling, exactly, but certainly establishing its dominion. Even the car walls can’t silence him. Though, it is to be said, Bruce opted for the less-than-cutting-edge 1963 DB5, to Dick’s roguish contentment. The bouts of whining are interspersed with surprisingly historically accurate taunting regarding Bruce’s attempts at going full Bond, and the subsequent failure thereof. The gibes fall on deaf ears, though. If nothing, they only add to the resplendence of the day ahead. Very little could ruin Bruce’s jubilant mood.

‘Most boys your age would jump at the chance of skipping school.’

‘Yeah, well, blame it on my good upbringing for making me so con—conscien—’

‘Conscientious.’

Accepting the challenge, ‘Yes,’ Dick hums, ‘diligent, right?’

It would be ignoble to let this go by without reward, so Bruce reaches to the side, ruffles Dick’s unruly hair. ‘Very good.’

‘Good enough to be let in on the big secret?’

‘I’m an open book.’

Dick snorts, gracelessly. Provocatively. ‘Yeah, right, keep joking. I just wanna know where you’re taking me, man.’

Before Bruce can start expounding on the virtues of patience, the road unfurls, and the landscape turns vast. Sand is stretching out for miles in every direction, converging, some ways ahead on the horizon, with an ocean white and frothy in all its hiemal glory.

‘You cannot be serious.’

Bruce swivels in his chair, but the source of protest has already climbed out, slamming the door of the—outrageously expensive, even by Wayne standards—car with aborted momentum Bruce can’t help but parallel to a slingshot before it snaps.

‘No?’

‘It’s the middle of winter,’ Dick points out, redundantly. The blinding whiteness of the skyline bounces off his eyes. He’s haloed in light.

In lieu of any unnecessary verbal confirmation, Bruce clicks open the trunk and reaches for a bag that betrays premeditation. He casts about, past the towels and matching thermoses and a truly worrying amount of foil-wrapped sandwiches that speak to Alfred’s usually well-hidden streak of fussiness, for the custom-made thermal swimsuits he hastily threw in last night. Dick catches his mid-air with an only mildly puzzled look, then proceeds to strip wordlessly. On the other side of the car, Bruce wrenches his eyes away and mimics him.

Dick emerges, teeth already chattering. ‘’s freezing,’ he hisses, reaching out to help Bruce with his right sleeve.

‘Thus, the suits.’ Bruce, absent-mindedly, smoothes out the creased fabric around Dick’s neck, hooking two fingers under the hemline to test the stretch. ‘They’re specifically designed to maintain body temperature. I trust the fit is good.’

‘Perfect.’ There’s hardly a need for a twirl, but Dick gives him one anyway. ‘We’re actually going in?’

Contrary to Alfred’s numerous attempts to label him implacable, Bruce considers himself anything but. He’s thoroughly attuned to the boy’s every response. If there was even a hint of trepidation, they’d be on the road back ten minutes ago, but. There’s nothing on Dick’s face but barely-contained exhilaration. The thrill of a challenge turns him radiant.

‘Naturally,’ Bruce tells him, ‘you’ll hardly be consulted about the water temperature before you’re thrown in. Criminals tend to be discourteous.’

‘Not my fault if I get pneumatics—’

‘Pneumonia.’

‘—and have to stay home all next week, though. Alfred will have your head.’

‘Duly noted,’ Bruce says, smiling all the way to the ocean.

The sun deigns to peek through twenty minutes into their truly glacial swim, so, by the time they dry off, shivering all the way, and lay their towels down, the sand is pleasantly warm against their backs. On Bruce’s left, Dick sighs, content and drained and plastered against his side. The ebb and flow of his breath is a beautiful, precious thing.

‘Swimming’s not so bad, after all,’ he decides.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ Bruce says, vastly amused, ‘I enjoy it too.’

Dick brings a hand to his mouth, licks salt off his fingers. ‘Can we do it more often? We can call it practice, if you want.’

‘No need for that.’ Bruce shuts his eyes and laps at his lips. Salt lingers under his tongue, on his gums. Is this what Dick is tasting too? ‘Even we’re allowed a bit of fun sometimes.’

Behind his eyelids, he can feel Dick rotating till he’s on his side, right arm pinned between their bodies. Bruce forces his eyes open to find, on Dick’s face, the preliminary stages of disquietude, in all its wide-eyed, lip-chewing glory.

‘Will you—will I go in the tank again?’

Bruce weighs the benefits of honesty against a future betrayal. ‘Eventually,’ he says, only mildly apologetic, ‘not until you feel ready, though. It’s on you to set the pace.’

Dick nods, pondering. ‘I am,’ he says then, daring Bruce to defy him, ‘I am ready.’

‘Alright then. We’ll try again this week. Provided you’re not bedridden with pneumonia.’

It effectively diffuses the tension invariably arising any time their nighttime activities encroach on the normalcy of their quotidian. Even after all those years, the contrast can be jarring. Dick’s smile, directed at the sky, is reflecting a life neither of them can abide by, these days. The fun in entertaining normal-life daydreams is exhausted in their impossibility.

‘You know,’ Dick’s saying, appeased now, ‘I’ve never been to the beach before. Not the swimming type, anyway.’ Then, as an afterthought, as a shared secret, adds, ‘Guess you’re a lot of my firsts.’

Breathing, Bruce finds, is suddenly impossible. On dry land, surrounded by the limitlessness of empty space, he’s drowning. He keeps so perfectly, tautly still. It doesn’t seem like Dick is expecting an acknowledgment, let alone an answer. As ever, his love is a constant, flowing thing, offered freely. Bruce clenches his fists and wonders if this particular term of their covenant, this blazing, unconditional affection, was deemed a necessity out of Dick’s fear as to the absence of Bruce’s love, or the certainty of it.

The two possibilities are equally terrifying.

Next to him, Dick huffs, writhing on his towel. He pulls one arm out of one sleeve, then the other, then shrugs the top half of his swimsuit off, till it’s folded over his hips. Torso exposed to the elements.

‘You’ll catch your death,’ Bruce grates out. Choked.

To his horror, Dick snorts. ‘How ironic would that be? Can you imagine?’

‘I’d rather not, if you wouldn’t mind.’

The solemnity, impossible to mask, doesn’t go unnoticed. Dick’s fingers flex between them. ‘It’ll be on your head, anyway,’ he pushes on, undaunted, ‘for dragging me out here on the coldest day of the year. No one can blame the poor, innocent orphan.’

Bruce breathes out a small, shaky laugh. ‘Menace,’ he mutters, twisting around to take cover into the blessed distraction of the bag. Blindly grabbing one of the sandwiches, ‘You can’t have your cake,’ he says, passing it to Dick, ‘and eat it too.’

‘Did you just,’ Dick says, pleasantly horrified, ‘make a pun?’

‘Your word against mine, kid.’

The utter delight on Dick’s face is replaced by sheer disgust the second the sandwich gets unveiled. ‘Ugh, cucumber? We can’t keep letting Alfred get away with this.’

‘It’s a British staple,’ Bruce says, or. Tries to, rather, since, halfway through, a teenager lands on him. Dick is reaching for the bag, his weight crushing Bruce’s upper body while he rummages around for a less offensively filled sandwich. Victorious, Dick withdraws, but doesn’t pull all the way back. He stays splayed atop Bruce’s chest, chin resting on his abs, digging in. Below him, Bruce keeps deadly still.

Not that Dick is paying him any attention, not really. The sandwich reveal seems to have blurred out the rest of the world. It’s only after the foil’s unwrapped and Dick, fingering the edge of the crust, gets his prize, that he looks up, smiling at Bruce like spotting him there is nothing short of a serendipitous event.

‘PBJ,’ he whispers, conspiratorially, triumphantly, chomping off an entire chunk with the urgency of transience. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that abundance hasn’t always been his natural state.

It’s his earnestness, more than anything, that tears down Bruce’s defenses. His hands come up to rest over Dick’s flanks. Cover them, really, petting encouragingly as Dick wolfs down the rest of his sandwich, till nothing but the crumbs on Bruce’s chest remain.

‘Did you, uh, want some?’

Bruce chuckles at Dick’s guilty scowl, their bodies shaking with it. ‘There’s more. Alfred evidently thought to pack for an apocalypse.’ His fingers haven’t stilled, raising a trail of goosebumps on Dick’s sides. ‘Cold?’

Eloquently, Dick grunts, ‘Nuh-uh,’ nuzzling into Bruce’s pecs. He huffs at the persistent crumbs, scooping them up on his tongue, then rests his cheek on the spit-coated fabric. A lesson in hygiene, Bruce decides, is long overdue.

Still, nothing could induce him to disturb this moment. Contentment is hardly ever this tangible, solidified in his grasp. In this, as in everything, they’re in tandem. Dick’s body rising and falling to the beat of Bruce’s lungs, Bruce’s grasp expanding and deflating around Dick’s ribcage.

They could, Bruce dares think, they could stay like this—

Restlessness is youth’s mistress, though. Before long, Dick is shifting above him, slithering upwards. Bruce’s grip turns vice-tight to put a stop to the squirming. Not quick enough to stop the spidery fingers that crawl up to comb through his hair.

Bruce keeps his eyes resolutely shut. Plausible deniability goes a long way. Right until the moment Dick whispers, ‘Hey, look,’ voice so steeped in awe Bruce can’t help but obey. A curtain of hair greets him, tugged tautly in the scant space between their faces. Judging by the stinging horizon of his hairline, Bruce wagers it’s his.

On the other side of the curtain, Dick—somehow—shuffles even closer, elbows digging bruisingly into the soft skin under Bruce’s ribs. He pulls a strand of his own alongside Bruce’s, going a bit cross-eyed. His awed exhale ghosts over Bruce’s lips, makes them tingle.

‘B, you seein’ that?’

Bruce can do nothing but nod, wincing at the sharp tug of Dick’s grip. Pressed together, the two strands are impossible to tell apart. Raven against raven.

‘It’s the same,’ Dick whispers, breath heavy and moist and sugary between them. ‘I’d never noticed.’

Ownership, as a rule, has never been on the forefront of Bruce’s mind. The nature of, that is. If pressed, he’d call it a one-way street, the way it’s sufficient to simply call something his to make it so. Mine has always been an irrevocable attribute of Dick’s. Graceful and lithe, insolent and infuriatingly wise beyond his years, and. Mine. Dick, above all else, is his.

It’s only here, now, salt in the air and Dick above him, crushing him, that Bruce understands the reciprocity of owning. There’s possessing, and then. There’s belonging. When Bruce calls Dick mine, he finds it echoed back. They belong to each other.

It’s the easiest thing to blame the elements for the shiver that racks his frame. His grip tightens around Dick’s hip bones, squeezing. The only answer he can afford to dole out. Squeezing, until Dick gets it, and lets go. Their twin strands bounce free. Dick smoothes Bruce’s hair back, then, twisting inside the clamp-tight grasp, elbows dug deep enough into Bruce’s stomach to rearrange a few vital organs, props himself up.

That’s enough, Bruce tells him, except nothing but a bitten-back grunt escapes at the first touch of Dick’s index on his face. Dick, evidently urged by this rare display of inaction, always one to take a mile, is mapping a course. Head tilted to the side, brows furrowed in concentration, he traces a path over Bruce’s features. The upside down T of his nose, the firm line of his cheekbones, the brittle skin under his eyes. The lines on his forehead, etched deeper and deeper with each passing year. The cracked skin at the corners of his mouth, that he can’t ever remember to tend to. Every inch of his face, come to life under Dick’s touch, ablaze.

It’s a total surrender. The white flag, emptied guns, arms up type. Bruce lies back and allows—it to happen. Until Dick’s pulling back, seemingly satisfied with the data collected, compelling Bruce to muster the last tatters of willpower to keep from chasing after the withdrawing touch.

‘B,’ Dick says, clearly expecting participation, ‘Do you ever think—I mean, we look so much alike. People must be mistaking us for brothers or something, right?’

‘It’s likely,’ Bruce offers, far, far steadier than he feels.

‘You don’t look nearly old enough to pass for my dad.’

‘Well, I was almost sixteen when you were born. Biologically, it’s entirely possible.’

‘But that’s almost the same age as I am now. Can you picture me with a baby? It’d be a disaster.’

The panicked urgency in his tone unknots something inside Bruce, makes him smile. ‘One can only imagine.’

‘I haven’t even—had my first kiss yet.’

‘No?’

Dick shakes his head. Embarrassed. The flush across his cheekbones is entirely kissable, doomed to remain unkissed. ‘No.’

Having squashed a truly impressive amount of impulses this morning, Bruce allows himself leniency. He lets his fingers rake through the bangs currently tickling his nose. He brushes them back against Dick’s head and marvels at the ease with which Dick’s eyes flutter at the first scratch across his scalp. It’s a small, innocuous thing. An exercise in restriction. In the grand scheme of things, it’s barely tipping the scale towards the side of seizing.

‘I didn’t have my first kiss until later, either,’ Bruce tells him, raking through Dick’s hair. ‘It’s not something you rush into. It has to be special.’

‘Special,’ Dick says, through parted lips, looking for something in Bruce’s eyes. ‘When?’

The air around them is salt-stung. When Bruce swallows, it grates all the way down. ‘Someday. Soon.’

Dick stares and stares. ‘Okay,’ he relents finally, ‘okay.’ He pushes off and lands on his back, on Bruce’s left. A sheet of paper couldn’t fit between them. Dick’s knuckles start tracing ellipses on his thigh, nails catching at the fuzz. Bruce marvels at the absent-mindedness. To him, each touch is a small unraveling.

‘You know, I keep trying,’ Dick starts, wobbly, eyes fixed to the sky, ‘to remember the color of her hair. She was blonde, I know that. The exact shade, I mean. One day I woke up and it was—gone.’

What do you see, Bruce wants to ask, when you look in the mirror? Can you remember their faces? Am I taking over?

Instead, he reaches out to cover Dick’s palm with his own, pinning it flat against his thigh. Forcing it to stillness. It’s more a measure against insanity than comfort, but Dick interprets it innocuously, flips his palm inside Bruce’s and weaves his fingers through. Innocence to the innocents.

‘The thing that bugs me the most,’ Dick goes on, ‘is all the stuff they never got to teach me. I get so mad thinking about it. They might’ve—taught me how to drive, how to swim. Whatever. But they ran out of time.’

This, at least, Bruce can—not simply understand, no. Feel in his bones. The injustice. The waste. The phantom of a life that never can be. The absolute, utter helplessness.

No, he thinks, not if I can help it.

With one final squeeze at Dick’s hand, ‘C’mon kid,’ Bruce says, pushing himself up, ‘enough sunbathing. This is supposed to be an educational trip.’ Neither of them has let go, so Bruce uses his grip to tug Dick to his feet, bodies nearly colliding. He nods towards the ocean, calmer now in the afternoon lull. ‘One last dive and then home, how’s that sound?’

Almost on instinct, Dick says, ‘Sure, B,’ and nothing else, but looks tempted. Something in Bruce’s stance, though, clearly makes him reconsider. He shakes his head, smiling a scant, private, knowing thing, then—takes off. ‘Race you,’ he shouts, halfway to the ocean.

Dick is staring up at the empty tank like he expects it to grow feet and stomp him to death. Which would, admittedly, provide a much quicker demise than the alternative. ‘I’m ready,’ he mutters, an affirmation more than anything.

‘I know you are.’

The firm conviction in Bruce’s voice seems to fortify him. ‘Clothes? On, off?’

‘On,’ Bruce replies, too fast. ‘In fact, you should probably change into the suit. It’s highly unlikely Bruce Wayne’s ward will ever find himself in such a predicament.’

‘Here’s hoping.’

Bruce graces him with a raised brow. ‘Robin, on the other hand—’

‘Yeah, yeah, got it, boss. It’s mask time.’

It’s Dick that saunters off to the locker room, but. It’s Robin that comes back, proud and colorful and magnificent. He’s taken to tights these days, instead of his trademark bare-legged look. Both out of practicality—insulation is key for Gotham nights, flying around streets the sun never smiles upon—and indignation. The criminal element, Dick has learned the wrong way, takes liberties. Show someone a pound of flesh, they’re bound to make a grab for it. Bruce is familiar with the sentiment. The addition of the tights has been—a wise, strategic decision.

As he reappears, ‘Robin,’ Bruce salutes him.

Ever the performer, Dick handsprings his way over, landing in front of Bruce with a flourish. ‘Show time?’

Bruce nods, reticently amused. It’s no game, what they’re trying today. Worry gnaws at him, analogous to the faith in Dick’s skills. Still.

‘Settle down,’ he admonishes, ‘head in the game.’

A flair of the cape is what he gets for his trouble, so he admits defeat against teenage rebellion and moves towards the chest to select the restraints. Dick is hovering, but materializes next to him when Bruce unearths his choice.

‘Manacles?’

‘If it’s alright with you. Rope knots are too easy.’

‘That’s what I was gonna go for, too.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Bruce says, half-proud, half-concerned. ‘Now, would you prefer it if the tank was already full?’

Dick throws a confused look at the tank, willing it to reveal the right answer. ‘How would it usually—I mean, how would they do it?’

‘Ordinarily, the tank usually fills up with water once someone’s inside.’

‘That’s how we’re doing it, then. No baddie’s gonna stop and ask me to chime in.’

‘Suppose you stumble upon Gotham’s most magnanimous villain,’ Bruce teases. Predictably, Dick’s face lights up, the way it always, without fail, does, whenever Bruce plays along with a joke. The look is softer now, acknowledging Bruce’s attempt at distraction. Grateful for it.

Dick fakes a theatrical shudder. ‘Don’t joke, B, it’s unsettling.’ Neither of them registers the space between them, the absence of it, forcing Dick’s elbow into an awkward angle when he reaches up to give a playful knock on Bruce’s temple. ‘Head in the game.’

Bruce levels him with a warning look. It’s the easiest thing, almost second nature, to clasp Dick’s arm and pin it behind his back, then one-eighty him to face the other way. They’re both left panting, a shortness of breath a manoeuvre as basic as that isn’t adequate to justify. Dick makes no move to slither out of Bruce’s grip, even though Escaping 101 has been mastered to perfection a couple life phases ago. Instead, he twists his other arm to let it rest against the small of his back, nudging against Bruce’s knuckles. A permission as explicit as can get.

‘C’mon, boss,’ he says, winded, ‘chain me up.’

For a split second, Bruce contemplates taking Dick up on his offer. He widens the circle of his fingers to accommodate both of Dick’s wrists and thinks about—about pressing down. Making him work for it. About—

Today’s not about that, though. The stutter in Dick’s breath spells maybe, spells soon. A lesson for another time.

It’s a testament to Dick’s acrobat’s discipline that he remains in position when Bruce lets go. To his balance, that he doesn’t stumble when Bruce gives him a light shove towards the tank. God, this kid.

‘Climb up first so I can secure the restraints.’ Bruce steps around and answers Dick’s silent question with a rueful smile. ‘You’re getting big, kid. My back’s not what it was.’

Dick, somehow, manages to huff and roll his eyes simultaneously. ‘You just turned 30, dumbo, not 60.’ Intimately familiar with Bruce’s aversion towards repetition, though, he’s already scaling the small ladder, perching himself on the rim of the tank.

‘Blink of an eye,’ Bruce mutters, and grabs the chains.

Alfred walks in three minutes into the exercise. The clank of the metal latch locking in place is still reverberating around the walls.

‘Really, master Bruce,’ Alfred tries, eyes etched with worry lines, ‘is that wise?’

In the tank, Dick has broken free of his restraints, heavy metal discarded to sink towards the bottom. One-forty-four. A spectacular twenty-two second improvement from last time. His breath is rapidly running out, though. The water’s murky with breath-bubbles.

‘He can do it.’

‘Surely, this is extreme, even for—’

‘He can do it,’ Bruce snaps, tension, as always, translated into brusqueness. Thank the heavens for Alfred’s thirty-odd years of experience. Dick can do it. He has to.

The rhythmic, muted thunk of his legs against the glass is maddening. He’s aiming at the lock with the deliberate focus of someone intent on surviving. Every part of Bruce is attuned to him, goading him on. He can do it. He has to.

‘Bruce,’ Alfred says, frantic, ‘that is quite enough,’ and.

Right then, Dick kicks open the lid. With a full-body thrust, he propels himself upward and emerges gasping, clutching at the rim, splashing a small flood onto the tarp surrounding the tank.

In two strides, Bruce is there to catch him, yanking at the costume to pull Dick all the way out. The ladder nearly caves under their combined weight, Dick drenched and thrashing in his arms, but nothing registers. Only this, Dick’s body against him, instinctively curled under Bruce’s chin. Only this—Dick, alive.

Alfred is expecting them with a towel that Bruce deposits Dick into, and a tight line around his mouth that promises of reprimands to come. All else can wait, though. Bruce wraps Dick in his arms and hopes his sorry excuse of toweling him off can be stretched just a while longer. Letting go, for the time being, is out of the question.

Distantly, he realizes he’s murmuring, mouthing words against Dick’s damp hair. ‘Good,’ he’s saying, soothing Dick’s violent shivers that only partially have to do with the cold, ‘you did good. You can breathe now, Dickie. Try for me, c’mon.’

It took Dick almost four minutes to escape. It takes him twice as that, burrowed into Bruce’s chest, to let himself be talked out of a panic attack. By the time he lifts his head up to shine a flimsy, triumphant grin at Bruce, his shaking can be solely attributed to wet latex drying on his skin.

‘Told you I was ready.’

Bruce returns the smile. ‘I never doubted it,’ he says, wincing at the squelching fabric, but still unwilling to let go.

Unwilling, that is, until the moment Alfred clears his throat and buoys them back to a reality expanding beyond the confining space of their embrace. Grudgingly, Bruce steps back.

‘A warm bath, I believe, is mandatory.’

‘Make it a shower, Alfred. It’s almost time for patrol.’

Alfred’s stare turns marginally icier. ‘Surely not, after this—performance.’

Bruce turns to Dick, shaking under the towel. Ultimately, the decision is his. ‘Dick?’

‘I—’ He frowns a question at Bruce, indecipherable and hence unanswerable. ‘Patrol, yeah, of course.’

‘Very well, then,’ Alfred sighs, already herding him towards the general direction of this wing’s bathroom. ‘Though I remain adamantly against it.’

Bruce dismisses him with a Thank you, Alfred, eyeing the tidal mess on the tarp. It’s truly an apocalyptic sight.

A butler’s job, he decides.

Half an hour later, Dick tiptoes his way down the cave steps, uncharacteristically timid. Bruce keeps tinkering with a defective spring mechanism, but after a few minutes of silent hovering, he’s concerned enough to set the screwdriver down.

‘Locker room’s that way, in case you left your sense of navigation in that tank.’ His tone is teasing, though it easily could be taken for harsh. He sighs and aims for congenial this time. ‘There’s a spare suit in one of the cabinets, if Alfred hasn’t dried the other one yet.’

That, at least, shakes Dick out of the haze. ‘You really want me to come with?’

Bruce, at a loss for words, flounders. ‘Well, yes, that’s the idea. Unless you’re not feeling up to—’

‘But I was scared.’

‘In the water?’ Bruce furrows his brows, gadgets and tools forgotten. ‘It’d be alarming if you weren’t, Dick.’

‘You were right there,’ Dick snarls. Anger, on him, is a shirt a size too big, ill-fitting. Startling in its rarity. ‘If something happened, something went wrong, you were there to save me. What’s gonna happen when—’

‘That is incorrect.’

‘What?’

Sighing, Bruce walks around the table, in what he hopes comes off as a tentative approach. ‘It’s a magic trick, Dick. The whole point of it is, once the lid’s shut, the only way out is from the inside.’

To Bruce’s relief, Dick stays put. On the brink of faith, just shy of believing. ‘I don’t get it. How’s that even work?’

‘It utilizes the pressure of water. Once the tank’s full, the mechanism locks and the container is sealed tight. Can’t be opened unless pressure is applied from the inside.’

‘But you let me—’ Realization dawns on Dick like the sunrise of the world’s most glorious day. ‘You knew I could do it.’

‘I was fairly certain, yes. Breaking through the glass was the last resort, but there was no guarantee I could get to you before your oxygen ran out.’ For a second, it’s imperative to tear his eyes off Dick’s, where self-deprecating fury has been replaced by something no less intense. No less dangerous. Bruce wets his lips and imagines a fire, imagines putting it out. ‘And that, provided I could make my limbs work.’

‘You—were scared?’

‘Paralyzed.’

‘But you knew I could do it, you just said so! Why would you be—’

‘Fairly certain, is what I said. And that only serves to prove my point.’ Absently, Bruce picks up the screwdriver again, if only for a distraction. Idle hands and all that. ‘Dick, fear is not rational. It can’t be reasoned with, or explained away. Tracing it back to its source doesn’t equal rooting it out. The certainty in one’s ability to perform a task and the fear of failure can, and should, co-exist within one’s mind.’

‘Should?’

‘Fear is as much an instigator as an inhibitor. It all depends on how you decide to use it. Instead of lashing at your mind for a perfectly normal chemical response, you can embrace that fear and use it to your advantage.’

‘How can I control a reflex?’

‘It’s less about controlling and more about—’ Metaphors, Bruce remembers, always do the trick. ‘Picture yourself in the water. If you stay still and let it swallow you up, you’ll drown. If you learn how to work with it, though, allow it to become an extension of you, it’ll keep you afloat. Help you survive.’

‘Is that what you do?’

Bruce gives him a solemn nod. ‘It takes practice, but you’re already halfway there. I’d argue this evening’s excellent performance is solid proof.’

After a second of contemplation, Dick looks up with a smile reticent, but no less bright. Pride becomes him, almost as much as anger doesn’t. To stare at him is to risk blindness. ‘I did good, didn’t I?’

‘You did,’ Bruce allows, his stance against repetition making an exception for praise where it’s due. Surely now, they can go on with their routine. Criminals are notably impervious to the importance of didactics. He recalibrates himself towards the direction of the locker room, but—

‘B?’

‘Dick,’ he says, ‘we really ought to be—’

‘How come you let it take over, then? Before, I mean. You said—paralyzed.’

It might be a mistake to face him, but very little isn’t concerning Dick. Very little is resistible, either. Bruce weighs the gravity of his words and counts himself crushed under. ‘When it comes to you,’ he tries, feeling his way through, ‘I find my reactions impossible to anticipate.’

Dick anchors him with a look brimming with devastating, bone-crushing affection. ‘I can take care of myself,’ he mutters, petulance so clearly a deflection, ‘can take care of you, too.’

‘I’m well aware. No partner of mine would be allowed on the field if they hadn’t proven themselves capable.’

At the slip of allowed, Dick rolls his eyes, but it’s a testament to the fragility of the moment that a retort doesn’t accompany it. ‘But fear isn’t rational,’ he echoes back, lesson learned. ‘Isn’t it distracting, though? Worrying about me all the time?’

Distracting, Bruce thinks, you don’t know the half of it, kid. He steadies himself with a hand around Dick’s bicep. ‘Prioritizing your safety doesn’t negate my trust in your abilities. In this case, I was caught off-guard. That’s a slip on my part, not on yours. I usually find the thought of you in danger particularly motivating.’

Dick smirks at him. ‘Maybe I should get myself kidnapped more often, then.’

‘Bi-annually is quite sufficient, master Dick,’ Alfred’s tinny, disembodied voice scolds them from a megaphone. As close to divine intervention as two doomed souls can get, Bruce assumes.

‘I’m inclined to agree,’ Bruce says, with an answering smile. Right on time, the bat-pager beeps, red light blinking out a summons. ‘Now, Gotham is expecting us. Suit up, kid.’

On the eve of Dick’s fourteenth birthday, Bruce proactively lures him to the cave a good half hour before patrol time. Halfway down the stairs, Dick leaps up to hang from the rings above, monkeying his way to where Bruce is hunched over something, facing the other way. When it’s clear the show fails to draw Bruce’s attention, he huffs. Bruce’s already wide smirk turns face-splitting.

‘B,’ Dick says, just shy of whining, ‘what’s up?’

‘Nothing to worry about. Could use some help with this, that’s all.’ Bruce steps to the side, just in time to catch the second Dick’s eyes take in the motorcycle. In another universe, they’d be cartoonishly bugging out of their sockets.

In this universe, Dick merely gives a low, appreciative whistle. ‘This new?’

Bruce hums. ‘Harold brought it in this afternoon. You don’t approve?’

‘Are you kidding? It’s badass. It’s just—’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t you already have another just like it?’

It’s an observation worth taking into consideration, and Bruce pretends to do just that. ‘Not identical, but I see your point. Still, one can always use a spare.’

‘I suppose,’ Dick shrugs, ‘you know best.’

Before facing him again, Bruce schools his features into indifference. ‘Then again,’ he says, twiddling with the keys, ‘it would be a waste to leave it here to get cobwebs.’ He tosses them to Dick, who catches them without a blink. ‘Maybe you should have it.’

It takes Dick staring at the keys, nestled in his palm, bat keyring and all, for a good minute before it settles in. ‘It’s mine?’

‘Unless there’s any objection. But I figured, since you’re all grown up now, and since, apparently, the bike is—what was it, badass?’

Dick confirms that with an extravagantly enthusiastic nod.

‘Well, then,’ Bruce drawls, ‘I don’t see a reason why it shouldn’t be yours. Do you?’

The nod turns frantically horizontal. Dick’s fingers close around the keys. ‘Just you try and take it back, old man.’

‘Careful, now.’

Dick—beams at him. It’s toeing on overwhelming. He inches closer and, after a nod of permission, he hops on the seat, mounting the bike. The sight of him, legs splayed wide, arms flexing as he tests the clutches, face flushed with excitement, it’s—overwhelming is a dot in the distance. No earthly creature should be allowed to look like this. ‘Can I take it for a spin?’

Bruce swallows dryly. ‘Later,’ he rasps, ‘it’s all yours, kid. Not going anywhere. How’s it feel?’

Dick squeezes his thighs together, then spreads them wide again. Butterfly wings that raise up a storm. ‘It’s perfect, B. Like it was made for me.’

‘It was.’

‘Oh,’ Dick breathes, blushing an even deeper red, ‘right. Y’know, for all the things people say about you, they don’t give you nearly enough credit for how sneaky you can be.’

‘Stealth is one of my most admirable traits.’

In one smooth motion, Dick swings one leg over and gets up. ‘Dork,’ he says, infinitely fond. Unbearably so. He takes one, then another step closer. ‘B, listen, can we—’

May we, Bruce thinks. May we?

‘There’s one more thing,’ he rushes out, distance almost entirely swallowed. The path to a man’s destruction, quantifiable in steps. ‘Not a gift, per se, but—well, you’ll see for yourself.’ He digs into his pocket and fishes out a USB stick, no longer than half a finger.

Dick plucks it from his grasp and eyes it suspiciously. ‘Uh, thanks, B, that’s very, uh, thoughtful. Useful, for sure.’

‘The USB isn’t the gift,’ Bruce says, clipped. It’s been a multi-week project, laborious and painstaking, buckling under the weight of its significance. Worth every hour spent on it for what it’ll mean to Dick. For what Bruce hopes it will. ‘Why don’t you take a look inside?’

With a last puzzled look, Dick walks to the console and slides the stick into a port. The device appears on the screen, and Dick clicks it open to the sight of dozens of date- and location-specific sub-folders. For a second, Dick seems to be steeling himself, pixelated arrow hovering randomly. Then, he picks one of them (1987, North American tour, RG:+1), and double-clicks.

The screen is flooded with pictures, some clearly professional, most of them candid. Snapshots of lives long gone. John and Mary, mid-practice in the air. Laughing among the rest of the performers. Gracefully poised in their costumes against a background, presumably for a circus tour announcement. On a road trip, Mary steering the wheel, against a backdrop of clear blue. A half-empty baby bottle on her lap, threads of a narrative that weaves into a story. Glimpses of toddler-sized clothes, stuffed animals, tired smiles. A bundle in John’s arms, cradled to sleep. A life of bright lights, of smiles and colors.

How it was meant to be.

Now, though—

Now, in the darkness of the cave, Dick is nothing more than a silhouette. A haloed outline, dwarfed against the screen, colors all bled out. Scrolling through a life promised, then snatched violently away. Folder (1976, Nantes/Bordeaux) after folder (1992, West Coast, RG:+6) after folder (1983, Mediterranean tour). Dick browses through it all, every single file Bruce has managed to obtain, silent but for the quaking of his breath.

Bruce keeps his distance, out of a guilt he’ll name respect. This isn’t his grief to share, but that never stopped him from reaping its fruit. Claiming what should’ve never been his. He shuts his eyes against the clicking of the mouse, and when he opens them again, Mary Grayson is flickering on the screen, golden, angelic but for want of omnipotence.

Who will protect her son from his protector?

Dick, approaching now to stand before him, tear-studded. Everything in Bruce reaches for him, but he’s not unaccustomed, by now, to reining back. More has always been at Dick’s disposal to regulate, to limit or dispense at will.

‘It’s everything I could find,’ Bruce offers, inadequately, which, in effect, means that this is all there is. Neither of his selves is accustomed to leaving stones unturned.

‘Bruce,’ Dick says, laced with awe, ‘you gave her back to me. Both of them.’

‘I wish I could,’ Bruce says, and finds himself meaning every word. He would, he knows, give Dick the world. Even one without him in it. ‘Nothing will ever rectify the wrong, but this can be a way of keeping them alive.’ His fingers hover over the space between Dick’s brows and stop just shy of a touch. ‘In here, at least.’

Dick enters his fourteenth year with a sob. As the numbers on the clock turn 00:00, Bruce finds his hand cupped around smoothness, nudging him to pliancy. ‘Way to go,’ Dick rasps, nuzzling into him, ‘making me cry on my birthday. Who does that?’

Exhaling all air out of his lungs, Bruce accepts defeat. The heel of his hand settles against Dick’s chin, fingers extended all the way up to Dick’s temple, his hairline, his eyes. The world in the palm of his hand. ‘I’ll make a note for next year,’ he murmurs, thumbing away stalactites of tears.

When Dick trembles under the touch, Bruce trembles with him.

‘B,’ he breathes, freshly-fourteen, forlorn, ‘I wouldn’t change it.’

Bruce—freezes. The troughs of his palm are irrigated by fresh tears. There’s no going back, he thinks, from this. This isn’t merely an admission. It’s a vow.

He wipes at Dick’s eyes, coaxing them open. Aiming for soothing and missing by miles, going by the death grip of Dick’s fists on his shirt, fabric bunched irreversibly. ‘It’s okay,’ he offers inanely, as Dick does his best to claw his way into Bruce’s chest, or maybe. Maybe out. ‘Dick, it’s okay, it doesn’t—’

‘You’re not listening to me.’ Dick’s eyes fly open, twin flames that Bruce immediately needs extinguished. ‘Don’t you get it? Even if I could, I wouldn’t change it.’

There’s no going back from this. There never was.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bruce says, yielding. Relenting. He covers Dick’s hands with his own, scaling the sierra of his knuckles, tamer now under Bruce’s thumb. ‘It’s all over now. I’ve got you.’ A sorry excuse for bravery, when the ugly half of the truth is left unuttered.

Still, Dick’s face goes soft, worry lines all ironed out. ‘I know,’ he says, secret-like. Embracing it all, light and shadows alike. He sniffles then, unclenches his fists inside Bruce’s hold. Steps back. ‘I mean, look at that. Who gets a motorcycle for their 14th birthday? None of my friends, I can tell you that.’

The pretense at flippancy is a reprieve Bruce isn’t above accepting. His hands feel empty, unnaturally so. When did Dick become a part of him?

He clears his throat and flattens his palms against his sides. ‘Most of your friends can fly, Dick.’

‘They’d give it up in a second if they had a bike like that. It’s the best gift ever.’

‘That’s discouraging. Should I stop trying to surpass it, then?’

Dick gasps, affronted. ‘Don’t you dare. Where’s all that money gonna go to, anyway?’

‘Spoiling you, presumably,’ Bruce says, rewarded by the satisfied blush that settles over Dick’s cheekbones, glittering, even now, with tears. There’s so much innocence there, still. ‘Now, how about that test-drive you were so set on?’

‘You know I’m not actually old enough to drive, right?’

‘When has that ever gotten in your way? Unless, of course, you’d prefer to sit this one out tonight. Birthday treat.’

‘Are you kidding? Going out with you is the treat.’

For a beat, they stay, suspended between selves, smiling at each other. Light and shadows and everything in-between. Bruce, being the adult, being the responsible one, being aware of the concept of time, and crime, and how one doesn’t wait for the other, scowls at the clock and nudges Dick towards the lockers.

‘Go change, then. Make it snappy.’

Dick snorts brashly at that, but he’s already on one leg, pulling off a sock. Already obeying. ‘Maybe you can take me someplace fancy tonight. Stake-out at the Ritz.’

‘Will the Iceberg Lounge suffice?’

‘Fine,’ Dick shrugs, gleaming with mischief, ‘that way you’ll have two birds in one nightclub.’

Bruce tries to snuff out the ensuing eyebrow-wiggling with a Batman-adjacent look, to no avail. Nearly three years of crime-fighting will do that to a teenager, insolent to begin with. Dick is immune.

‘You’re too old for puns.’

‘You’re too old for—’ The rest gets swallowed, mouth snapping shut to trap the words in. Whatever it is Bruce is—too old for. Instead, Dick tilts his head and smiles sweetly at him. ‘No,’ he decides, ‘you’re not.’

‘We’ll be late,’ Bruce grates out, which isn’t at all what he means. What he means is, I know this. What would you have me do? How much of me do you want?

What he means is, It’s not safe here. Hop on your gift and run.

What he means is, I’d never let you.

So he says, insufficiently, Hurry up, and Dick smiles at him, just shy of mutining, and—

Neglected, the screen’s brightness dims. They, both of them, blink at it. The glass is buzzing with static, overheated from hours of use. Dick cups his hand around the mouse and gives it a shake to wake the computer up.

‘One sec,’ he says, mostly to the pixels silhouetting him, ‘best not leave this here.’

He ejects the USB and switches the console off, machine humming gratefully. His fingers close around it, this tiny thing that holds a past Bruce was never entitled to. It’s still there when Dick walks up to Bruce, one-socked, freshly-fourteen, sublime. A dream that tiptoes closer and presses, sprite-like, soft lips on the corner of Bruce’s mouth. A vermilion zone kiss, too off-target to even earn the title. A hint, more than anything. A bite of the apple.

‘I’ll go get ready,’ Dick says, pulling back to lean against the console. Shining his sweet, tentative smile, whose distance from his own lips Bruce instantly begrudges. Whose shape is now a mark, indelible.

Tonight’s mission, then, is one of atonement. Don the mask and hope to find the formula that calculates the number of saved lives it’ll take to tip back the cosmic scales. To wipe the sweetness on his lips clean off.

To dim Dick’s smile, that speaks of inevitability.

‘B,’ he’s groaning, impatient, tugging at Bruce’s sleeve, ‘come on. Let’s have some fun.’

The ring of Dick’s grasp is barely wide enough to close around his wrist. Bruce turns his body feathery, lets himself be tugged. A lifetime of good deeds won’t save him now.

Next to the keyboard, reflecting the blinking computer lights, the USB lies forgotten.