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He should have never taken Dick in. This is always the thought Bruce’s mind returns to, whenever Dick is in the backseat of the Batmobile, bleeding out. He should have never taken Dick in.
“Hold it tighter,” Bruce sneers, turning sharply at the corner of Francavilla Avenue. The thrusters were damaged in the shoot-out. Not enough speed. ETA to the Cave: Six minutes and forty-nine seconds. Unacceptable. Bruce floods the engine.
“I know how to treat a damn exit wound,” Dick hisses. In anger, certainly. Bruce also suspects failing lung capacity. “Stop mother hen-ing me.”
Still, Dick does obey. He presses down harder on his left side, holding the wet, crimson makeshift bandage tight to his ribs. The pain of it makes Dick’s lips tremble.
Bruce watches from the rear-view mirror. How many more times will you bleed for me?
That bullet was intended for him. It should have been him.
At least, this time, Bruce won’t have to fish out the bullet with his hands. The bullet that carved straight through Dick is in an evidence bag in his belt. Bruce will find the culprit. He’ll return Dick’s pain ten-fold.
“Stop it,” Dick says, “I’m fine.”
Bruce hasn’t said anything. Delirium? Already? Dick hasn’t lost enough blood. ETA: Four minutes and twelve seconds.
“Are you hallucinating?” Bruce hears the notes of blame in his voice and hopes Dick doesn’t.
Dick does.
“No!” Dick says, aflush with anger. The vibrancy quickly fades. “You’re just brooding too loudly. Seriously, they can hear you up in space, you know.”
Dick rolls to his side and coughs. Red splatters on leather seats. He aims it deliberately at a corner, minimizing the damage to the seat. The damned fool cares more about the car than himself. Dick returns to laying on his back, the hand on his ribcage still tight against his wound. His breathing slows.
“Bet you a penny.” There’s a fading quality to Dick’s voice.
“Nightwing.”
No response. ETA: Three minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
“Dick! Don’t you dare pass out.”
“I’m not gonna.” Dick’s voice is so weak, it sounds like a memory. The boy he used to be, when he would fall asleep after a long night’s patrol. He bled for Bruce back then, too.
Dick’s left arm unfurls, his feet flop to the side.
His eyes close.
Two minutes and twenty seconds.
Bruce’s heart seizes. He activates what’s left of the boasters, damaging them beyond repair.
Like Orpheus calling out to Eurydice, Bruce bellows. “Robin!”
“Oh my god, can a man not rest his eyes for one sec–”
The Batcave’s waterfall parts open for them, a rebirth into the living world. Bruce races out of his seat with a swiftness. Nightwing will always try to stand before he asks Batman to carry him. It never concerns him that this makes his injuries worse.
Bruce reaches into the backseat and pulls Dick into his arms. The boy’s lost weight. A significant amount. He padded his costume so Bruce wouldn’t notice. And it worked. Bruce is as furious at Dick as he is himself.
“Bridal carry,” Dick wheezes, as Bruce rushes him to the medical bay, “really?”
Bruce doesn’t even tell him to stop talking. As long as Dick’s talking, he is alive.
If Alfred were still here, he would already have the cot wheeled out, sutures in hand. But his grave is full and the Cave is empty. Tim, Cassandra, Jason – they are all on other teams now. Their own missions. Even Damian belongs to Metropolis for the night. There’s no one left to watch Dick’s back but Bruce, and Bruce couldn’t even –
There isn’t time to set Dick down gently on the cot, so he doesn’t.
“Ow!” Dick says, even though it didn’t hurt him. He’ll freely voice all of his fake pain but smother his real ones.
“Stay,” Bruce commands. Adulthood has transformed the boy he once knew in many ways, but Dick’s need to fidget through injuries has never changed. Tasks are distractions from him. He responds well to structure, to commands. Bruce has pondered this knowledge too often, in the hungry darkness of his bedroom.
Under the fluorescent lights of the medical bay, Bruce’s hands tremble. His gauntlet’s blackness almost hides Dick’s blood from sight. Bruce feels it all the same. Lewd in its heavy wetness.
Even Dick’s blood on his hands, he’s pondered this, too.
Dick’s life is the stopper to his darknesses. When Dick is alive, the world is logical and bright. When Dick bleeds out, Bruce’s desires bleed with him. It stains everything he touches. He throws the gauntlets off, gathering the medical equipment needed for a patch job and blood transfusion in a blitz. He and the medical cart are by Dick’s side in seconds.
“I stayed,” Dick says, awake, almost panting with the effort. Delirium turns him young. He looks up at Bruce like a puppy waiting for head scratches.
Bruce grunts. He won’t give Dick credit for one moment of obedience when he flagrantly disregarded Bruce’s most vital order: stay alive.
“God, you Waynes. Always hrm-ing and tt-ing.” Dick’s words are disgruntled, but he’s too lightheaded from blood loss to stop his fond smile. “You could just say thank you for saving my life.”
I am not grateful, Bruce thinks, but there’s no time to verbally spar. There is a wound to mend.
Bruce gets to work, feels his father’s hand guiding him as he sews Dick up. It’s a surprising clean bullet wound. The way Dick struggled to breathe, Bruce had assumed the bullet had nicked a lung. On closest examination, it’s nowhere near his lungs. The bullet wound had bleed far more profusely than any damage Bruce finds. There must be an underlying illness here. Bruce replays Dick’s every move tonight. He kept lower to the ground, had less height to his flips. Dizziness, combined with Dick’s low oxygen levels, points to pneumonia. Cases have been rising in Gotham lately. He should start Dick on –
But one treatment at a time. Bruce sets up the blood transfusion. As gravity pulls the dark crimson liquid from the bag to Dick’s veins, something inside of Bruce unfurls. If he were a better man, it would be the soothing of a paternal ache. But he’s not. His possessiveness feeds where it can. It is his blood, flowing into Dick, replenishing him. This, Bruce can always provide. He and Dick share the same blood type. O-negative, the universal donor.
I won’t allow you to sacrifice yourself for me, Bruce vows. Protecting you was my job first.
Dick naps for an hour as the transfusion proceeds. Bruce washes up, writes up his report, and considers the merits of performing more medical testing on Dick as he rests. Dick awakens minutes after Bruce does a nasal swab.
“Hey,” says Dick, smiling up at Bruce like there’s nowhere in the world he would rather be than lying nearly dead in a dark cave with him. “Told you I’d be fine.”
You’re a fool. You mistake dumb luck with success.
He keeps the thoughts to himself. If all it took for Dick to learn this lesson was for Bruce to say it, the boy would have learned by now. After twenty-three years spent together with Dick, Bruce is more careful with his battles.
Instead, Bruce says, “I want to redress your wound.”
The desire has been itching at him. A distraction gnawing at the back of his brain for the last hour. He was in a hurry, tying the last tourniquet. There hadn’t been enough time to wrap it around as neatly as he wanted, as tightly.
“Yeah, have at it, Boss,” Dick heaves himself up by his palms and to the side, granting Bruce all the access he could desire. Dick has a long torso in proportion to the rest of his body. It’s a river of skin before him. Scarred and sallow rather than tan, from the blood loss. But beautiful to Bruce, as it is what he’s allowed to touch.
Bruce works with reverence. He is not grateful to Dick, but to his Gotham, for sparing Dick again just one more night. Bruce’s palm rests so close to Dick’s lungs he can feel the way the boy holds his breath.
The old tourniquet is already ruined with blood. Dick isn’t clotting as well as he should. Bruce cleans the wound again, inspects it with clearer eyes. This, too, will scar. Bruce’s fault. It’s his mark as much as it belongs to the thug who shot Dick. Because of Bruce, Dick will have to memorize another false tale to explain his own body. Another visible symptom of the ruination Bruce has caused. Now, it is Bruce who holds his trembling breath. Dick rattles him. Bruce has a diagnosis for himself. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: a disease of long-term small concussions. That is his love for Dick Grayson.
Dick, with the coyness of a kind child approaching an alley cat, touches his hair. Bruce freezes. He cannot move away from the touch and complete his task. Dick smooths the hair down in cautious, gentle strokes.
“I’m okay,” Dick says, with so much mercy it makes Bruce hateful. There are a million refutations on his tongue.
“Bruce,” Dick repeats. His name carries the weight of a prayer in Dick’s mouth. “I’m okay.”
Bruce exhales through his nose. He ties the tourniquet tighter this time.
The reason for touch has passed and Bruce lets go.
Stay, Batman wants to say. Obey me. Be with me at all times. Let me protect you.
Leave, Bruce wants to say. Forget my name. Forget my city. Be safe away from me.
“I’ve scheduled your physical therapist,” Bruce says. “Tomorrow morning at the Penthouse, 10 a.m. sharp.”
After the words are said, Bruce anticipates being scolded for the intrusion, but none comes. He wonders if Dick is feeling woozy enough to spend the night at the Manor. He decides not to ask. Expecting two miracles in one night is selfish.
“Take the car home,” Bruce says. “Engage the autopilot. I don’t want you on that bike for a month.”
Dick grins. “Oh wow, if I’d known all it takes to get to drive the Batmobile is a little gunshot wound…”
Bruce glares. Dick, at this age, finally knows better than to push his luck. But that fond smile never leaves his face.
All these years and it’s never gotten any easier watching Dick leave, so Bruce doesn’t watch. He busies himself with work. He organizes case files in preparation for a night of research ahead. Sleep is impossible after such a close call. In a smaller window, he begins analyzing the mucus swab he got from Dick. Meanwhile, Dick stays on his cot, nibbling shelf stable cookies and apple juice to get his blood sugar up. When Bruce hears the rustling of clothes, he knows Dick means to leave him soon.
Dick heals. Bruce broods. This is how things have always worked between them.
His feelings are inconvenient. Painful and distracting from his true mission. He redoubles his efforts on deducing the cause of this gang war. But the Batmobile doesn’t roar away. Instead, the soft, nearly silent pitter-patter of Dick’s feet gets closer and closer.
The boy lingers. Bruce doesn’t turn around. Couldn’t, even if he wanted. A terrible knowing eats at his stomach. Dick is negative for all upper respiratory infections.
Bruce watches him from the reflection of the screen. Dick is standing as upright as he can, the first bloomed poppy in a field. He sways with the rhythm of a wind only he knows. Dick is far too graceful to ever appear anxious in his movements, but Bruce knows his tells too well. There’s a strangely vulnerable look on his face, one that Bruce most associates with his earliest years as Robin, when the boy would watch him work for hours in wait of the right moment to interrupt.
The outer layers of himself, those that control Bruce’s body, tear. A plucked stem. This scene is familiar to him. Yet he cannot understand it. Cannot fathom it.
“Hey, before I go.” Dick’s voice is a windchime. Delicate, musical. Fragile. “It’s, um, that time of year again.”
Bruce’s eyes slam shut. All the pieces of the puzzle arrange themselves. It hadn’t been a bad stretch before they went out for patrol that had left Dick wheezing, he’d been choking down the evidence. Dick hadn’t been caught surprised by a two-bit gangster; he had been swallowing down an attack and a thug took advantage of it. Bruce is certain that if he were to check the Batmobile now, he would find more flowers than blood.
Dick is suffering from stage three Hanahaki Disease. A cosmic punishment of a disease. The first concrete historical mentions of it are in The Tale of Genji, hence the Japanese name that persists even into English. But there are suspected allusions to the disease even earlier than the 11th century worldwide. It’s a curse that’s been with humanity for a long, long time. After Dick first came down with it all those years ago, Bruce became an expert in the subject. As Batman, he has a far reach. The magical community blamed extraterrestrials for the disease; extraterrestrials blamed meta-humans; meta-humans blamed magicians. A frustrating loop. But Bruce cared less about the mystery of its origins and more about its eradication.
Yet, no matter how much money the Wayne Foundation pours into eliminating the disease, there is no breakthrough. Fighting for the cure is an uphill public relations battle. To the public, it just isn’t a priority. It is considered ‘romantic’ by most. The libraries upon libraries of Hanahaki Disease literature in veritably every written language speak to that. After all, it’s curable. It only requires that one confess their feelings of love to the object of their desire.
‘Only’.
Bruce’s lip twitches into a snarl.
He can name this feeling now: fury. Dick went on the field incapacitated. He endangered Bruce, as his partner, and most inexcusably, he endangered himself.
Bruce fumes. Guilt wars against his outrage. He is not blameless in this. He remembers refusing Dick’s attempts to pull him aside before patrol, too focused on catching Falcone before all Gotham becomes a battlefield. No, more cowardly than that. Deep down, he had known this was coming. The longest documented survival of untreated Hanahaki Disease is nineteen months.
It’s been sixteen since Dick’s last confession.
“I –”
Dick’s breath rattles, characteristic of the extra inhale he always takes before he makes a jump he hasn’t yet before landed. His confessions are always like this. A leaping.
“I love you,” Dick says.
Bruce shatters.
That’s not enough destruction for Dick. He continues on.
“You are the most noble, most giving, most righteous man I’ve ever known. That I’ve ever had the honor of knowing. And I love you.”
A symphony of chimes. An undeserved splendor.
Dick’s confession hangs in the air unanswered.
Bruce does not turn around.
Dick swallows. Covers the pain of rejection with a self-effacing smile. He’s used to this. Bruce has only responded to but one of Dick’s confessions. Just the first. Then, never again.
“Okay,” Dick says with an exhale. Already his breathing has improved. His voice is clearer, more robust. “Good talk.”
The words are remarkably unbitter for the amount of suffering Dick’s endured. The suffering that Bruce has forced upon him. He’s a talisman for that. From the moment he pulled his parents to their murder in Crime Alley, Bruce’s mark on the world has been fear and pain. He accepted that. Fear and pain would be his weapons in his war on crime. It would not be a happy life, but it would be a good one. Dick ruined that sacrifice. Dick gave him light, laughter, hope, understanding, pride. Love. So much love it Dick is sick with it. Bruce is a disease to Dick. A poison. He can still feel Dick’s blood on his hands.
The thought makes him angry. At the world. At himself.
At Dick.
The words come out before he’s fully conscious of saying them.
“When will you get over this.”
Dick reacts with his whole body, startling back on one foot.
“…What?”
It’s an out. They could ignore it. Go back to this sick pattern of theirs. But Bruce’s anger is hungry. It’s been exposed to oxygen now. It feeds.
“It’s been more than a decade.” The force of his snarl compels him to stand. He whips around, striking Dick down with his stare. Dick flinches, struck. “When will you learn.”
“I’m not –” Dick, witty, silver-tongued Dick, stutters. He looks so small. “I’m not asking you for anything. It’s super obvious that you –” Dick’s body stutters now, fidgeting from side to side. He can’t look Bruce in the eyes. “You know Hanahaki only affects the unrequited.”
Thirty-five percent of the population, at some point in their life, will contract Hanahaki Disease. Of those thirty-five, only fifteen percent will ever contract it again. Only six percent of that fifteen will ever contract the disease twice over the same person. By Bruce’s count, he’s infected Dick fourteen times. Fifteen now.
Such weakness. It’s unacceptable. Bruce will always demand more of Dick. He’s better than this.
“Handle this!” Bruce roars. “You waste my time–”
“Your time?” Dick’s anger is just as incendiary as Bruce’s own. It blows away any of Dick’s fragility. He is a fountain of motion, limbs cascading in big sweeping gestures.
“Well, I’m sorry, Bruce, I really am. I’m sorry it’s such a burden to you that once a year I say I love you. That must be so difficult for you. You know what I go through? Every year. Every year! Every year I have to wait to see whether you’ll be a dismissive asshole or an angry bastard about this and this year – lucky me! – you’ve chosen both!”
It’s been a long time since Bruce has seen Dick this angry. The satisfaction of that only goads his own anger further. This is a truer version of Dick. The other one is too docile in his love confessions. In his anger, Dick is expressive and free. This ‘love’ that Dick carries for him. It’s an infection. Bruce wants to rip that love out of Dick, root and stem.
He says the only thing he knows that can cleave Dick that deep.
“Get out.” Bruce’s voice is lower than a snarl. As deep as a grave. “Get out and don’t come back.”
Dick stills. For the first time in their whole conversation, he stills completely. Then, the rage comes, melting over his face, scalding his beauty into something fierce and cold to look upon. He waits for Bruce to take it back. Bruce doesn’t.
Dick’s retreat is quick.
“Already gone,” he says, flipping on to the bike he shouldn’t be driving. One arm cradles his bandaged side and the other pulls at the clutch. The engine thunders and a streak of blue light cracks the darkness of the Cave, a lightning.
Dick is delivered from Bruce.
The universe provides Bruce with one half of his wish. Six weeks go by and Dick doesn’t return to Gotham. Distance doesn’t keep him safe. Chicago is terrorized by a violent hacker named Prankster, besieged by the return of Roulette, and attacked by a sea-serpent uprising from the depths of Lake Michigan. Dick fights them all alone.
Dick is never without company, but no one stays beside him long enough to watch his back. The Titans help him move but New York is the city they claim. The Lane-Kents take a working vacation there to cover the Democratic National Convention and leave a week later. In time, Dick becomes close with his roommates (he refuses to use his trust fund and Alfred’s inheritance has long ago been donated away), but they create more problems than they solve. Michael Conrad and Joey Higgins may be decent people, but they cannot suture Dick’s bullet wounds.
Damian is Dick’s only consistent visitor of any merit. Bruce’s son takes the train and leaves Gotham every three weeks for a long weekend. When Damian returns, Bruce is always disappointed. In both Damian and Dick. He wishes Dick would be selfish enough to take back his Robin. He wishes that, beneath Damian’s disdain and criticism, he did not look on Bruce with so much pity. Indeed, it seems as if Dick’s departure has brought the rest of his children home. They flock to him. Watching over him with cautious eyes, the scrutiny faced by those on suicide watch.
No one watches over Dick.
That’s how Bruce justifies it. The invasion of Dick’s privacy. Dick’s vigilant about his own room and the entrances, but he cannot check his roommates’ property with the same studiousness. Joey is a prodigious hacker in her own right. Her ego makes her vulnerable. From her credentials, it is easy to infiltrate hers and Michael’s devices. She would never suspect a bugging on her own technology and Dick puts too much trust in her skills. Bruce watches Dick this way: filtered through the eyes of another. Snatches of audio from a phone in a pocket, glimpses of Dick from a laptop’s camera in the kitchen, the occasional CCTV sighting in the subway. It’s pathetic. But Bruce is so past nobility, when it comes to Dick.
His children expect rage. They anticipate violence from him like people wait for the dark clouds to turn to rain. He is rarely left alone. Tim hovers the most, diving back into Wayne Enterprises and routine patrolling with Batman. He does not give a reason for this behavior and Bruce does not ask. Cassandra and Stephanie break away from the Birds of Prey to focus solely on “Gotham”. Barbara does not leave her team, but she spends more time prioritizing “Gotham’” and “mentorship”. The subtext is loud enough to be text. Jason is direct. Crime Alley is once again under Red Hood’s protection until Batman and Nightwing “kiss and make-up”. Damian questions Bruce’s judgment about every decision, from the strategies of a weapons shipment bust to what tie Bruce chooses to wear to a board meeting. His sentences always start out, “If Richard were here…” Bruce has spent his life cultivating a persona of strength. Those closest to him treat him as if he were made of glass. The question hangs over them all, the suffocating smug of early morning Gotham. What will Bruce do without Dick?
Yet, it is an unspoken tension. No one attempts to encourage Bruce to reach out. Damian is the only one bold enough to mention Dick casually at all and even he never demands that Bruce apologize. Though Bruce doubts they know of Dick’s reoccurring Hanahaki infections, he is certain they know about the banishment. It’s just Dick they’ve decided to pester, not him. Tim the most aggressively. One of Tim and Dick’s arguments is so loud that it awakes Michael from his sleep, phone used as a flashlight in his hand. Bruce has a front row seat for the whole explosive finale. Bruce witnesses no other argument, but from the dejected way Cass and Steph return from a ‘girl’s trip’ to Chicago, he suspects that everyone in his orbit has tried at least once.
It doesn’t work. For weeks, Bruce lives in fear that Dick will return. Will give him absolution as he always does, though Bruce has never deserved it once. He lies awake at night, knowing that if Dick were to knock on his bedroom door, Bruce would never refuse him entry again. Then, they would return to the lopsided equilibrium they always have, and in ten months’ time Dick would cough up flowers. Bruce stops going to bed entirely.
His family doesn’t understand. Bruce doesn’t want Dick gone as much as he doesn’t want Dick to come back. He wants Dick decontaminated; healed. Is it too much to ask that he be allowed to care for his boy and that Dick not sink so low as to love him for it?
Weeks stretch into months. Slowly, it dawns on them all that Dick isn’t coming back. His family retreats from Chicago, but they never stop watching Bruce.
Summer comes despite everything. Dick doesn’t even return to lay flowers on his parents’ grave.
Bruce does it for him. He forgoes the traditional Rosa Chrysler Imperials in favor of the dark, velvety Rosa Black Baccara. He mourns all the Graysons that day. A dozen red roses for John. A dozen red roses for Mary. A dozen red roses for Dick, for keeping him away from them.
That night, Bruce coughs for the first time. He blames it on indigestion; the meal service he subscribes to in the absence of Alfred has not and never will master his tastes. It’s a light cough, only appearing every few days, which Bruce mistakenly correlates with the acidic tomato-based meals. Bruce is very good at deceiving himself.
But he knows. The truth is a seed inside of him; it germinates without his permission. Bruce’s body is his weapon, his closest companion. He knows when there’s something foreign in it.
Hanahaki Disease progresses in three distinct stages. An inverse of true plant growth. Bruce is certain that’s not a coincidence. He suspects that, millennia ago, the disease crossed over from plant spores to humans and merged with our mitochondria. It lives permanently in our species’ cells, waiting for the right environment to start propagating. Blooming. But no research has proven that conclusively, yet.
The first stage is marked by a cough. A normal, intermittent, usually phlegm-less cough. Onset is so gradual patients often can’t pinpoint exactly when they first were infected by the disease. Guesses are made more by romantic milestones than biology. The petals come between two to six weeks after infection. A warning sign from the heart to the body: confess now. As if it’s so easy. Especially when the symptoms are so simple to ignore. At this stage, the disease is on par with the severity of exercise-induced asthma and gastroesophageal reflux disease. After a few weeks of petals, the cough worsens. Eventually, whole buds will force their way out of the patient’s mouth. It is uncomfortable, but not life threatening.
That’s stage two. The stems. In the media, most depictions of Hanahaki Disease stop at stage one. There’s a beauty that can be celebrated in the petals. There is no beauty in the stems. Only pain. While the petals are soft and bloom in the mouth, the stems grow in the esophagus. A patient feels them traveling up through their throat and out of their mouth. The stems are not soft. They are hard, rigid, a true choking hazard. This stage can be deadly for the immunocompromised; the stems often cause microtears in the throat and mouth. It is a breeding ground for infection. Comorbidities of mononucleosis, strep throat, herpes and HIV skyrocket. Coughing is so frequent now that most patients report less than four hours sleep nightly. It’s agony. Even for the patients who most dread the love confession, it is this stage that convinces most they cannot go on.
Most, but not all. Those who continue to refuse the cure will progress into stage three: the roots. The roots take hold of the lungs. Specifically, the bronchi. They spread through every nook and cranny, stealing air. If left untreated – how does the old truism go again? – you will be strangled by love.
Bruce pretends love cannot reach him. Life continues on.
While following up on a lead for Firefly, Batman and Robin are ambushed by Black Mask’s thugs. They’re mostly new recruits from Coast City, since Sionis’ last big move led to the death of most of his men in the gang war. Batman and Robin take out the crowd handily. For a second, Bruce is transported into a different time. There’s another Robin at his side, laughing and blight. The air is thick with vanilla, citrus, all the beautiful smells of summer. Bruce goes low so Dick can go high.
Damian goes low. The disruption rattles Bruce, loosens his control over his lungs. Bruce coughs. It’s a lucky punch in the face for both him and the thug; it hides Bruce’s weakness. He turns his head with the punch. He stays on the ground, feigning a check for blood and teeth. All he finds is the damnation of rose petals. Bruce snatches them up and then returns the punch with that very same fist.
He and Damian argue the entire way home. Damian berates his focus, Bruce berates Damian’s improvisational skills and his ability to be led. The bickering continues on even back at base. Truthfully, Bruce is not fully present. He pays only the attention needed to push Damian to an early retirement to his bedroom.
Finally alone, Bruce sits at the lab and analyzes the evidence.
A lifetime ago, it feels like, Dick left three blooms and one full stem of Rony spray carnations in the Batmobile. The scent of cloves still lingers in the seats to this day. Bruce’s petal smells of a gentle raspberry. It would mean the rose it belongs to must be heavily perfumed. If not a damask, then a daughter breed of the damask. Two decades of fighting Ivy has given him the database needed to do this cross-referencing work. He narrows the rose to a type of Rosa × borboniana, a hybrid breed of Rosa × damascena and Rosa × chinensis. Most commonly referred to as a Bourbon rose. A single smushed petal isn’t enough to determine more than that.
Problem. Solution. Bruce doesn’t allow himself to think about the ramifications beyond that. It’s easier to starve off the progression of the disease at stage one, and Bruce has ample resources to do it. He’ll find a cure. One that has nothing to do with Dick. There’s still time. He can stop this.
His family is his warden, never letting him out of sight, but Bruce is well versed in hiding from the authorities. He siphons money through a series of burner corporations and pre-established grants, funding a dedicated but discrete team of Hanahaki Disease scientists.
The best drug for Hanahaki relief on the market is Floraephan. It is part cough suppressant, part pain reliever, primarily intended to tide people over until they can meet with their beloved and confess. Flosafloxacin has the most promising clinical trials. There is evidence to suggest, rather than merely masking the symptoms, it decreases the blooming by seventy-five percent.
Bruce starts the latter, unofficially. He takes detailed notes on his symptoms so he may add to the research, once this is all over. The cough is intermittent; the petals even more so. Bruce has incredible control over his body and this is no different. He simply wills himself to not succumb. Caring for this disease is added to the list of all the other seemingly impossible things he demands from his body.
Then, the deluge. The petals win. Bruce awakens choking on the taste of raspberry. He coughs petals for ten straight minutes. This attack is different. He feigns bronchitis. Benches himself for a week. Locked up in his room, his family doesn’t bother him. They hear his hacking and give him space. Bruce’s body releases all of the petals he thought the medication had eradicated. He expels more and more frequently until he starts to gag. This time, he doesn’t even make it to the toilet. Hacked over his crimson bedspread are half-opened crimson buds. Bruce recognizes the rose. Queen of Bedders. The irony isn’t lost on him.
There’s nothing he can do now but ride the attack out. Bruce switches to Floraephan. It provides minimal relief. Dick’s words provide more. You know Hanahaki only affects the unrequited. If this pain means that Dick has finally moved on from him, it’s worth it. It’s worth it.
Sleep is a hopeless endeavor. At the height of his insomnia, Bruce thinks of the famous painting The Roses of Heliogabalus and the, probably fabricated, story it depicts from Historia Augusta. As the tale goes, at the banquet of the young, decadent Roman emperor Elagabalus, guests are showered in rose petals. Flowers rain on them from the false ceiling. It never stops raining. Tons and tons of roses fall. Soon, the guests cannot make their way out of the piles. They suffocate.
This is his suffocation. The flowers are not the pain of a knife wound or a gunshot. They are worse than that. An agony Bruce’s throat is always submerged in; a persistent smothering. But that’s how his love for Dick has always felt. So plentiful, so abundant, it drowns him.
Eventually, Bruce’s body levels off. The rhythm of the petal-bloom bursts becomes predictable. He joins Damian for meals again, testing his ability to chew and swallow the roses down without notice. Bronchitis takes a long time to fully heal. Bruce makes good use of his few allowed coughs per day. He dives back into strength training, bulking up in a way he hasn’t done in years. It improves his focus and his control. Out on the streets, no one would suspect Batman is dying.
Life goes on. Bruce switches cologne to a custom blend. It marries his ever-present rose scent with stronger notes of amberwood, smoke and musk. He never goes nose blind to the raspberries. His room reeks of roses. It has always been dark and velvet but now, with the smell, it truly feels like a coffin. At least the dead are afforded some privacy. Here, in the waiting dark, Bruce watches over Dick.
Dick has put on a little more weight, but not enough yet to gain back what he lost during his last bout of Hanahaki Disease. Outside of the one fight with Tim, he does not speak about Bruce in his apartment or over any of his phones or computers. The only exception is Damian, and then to only say things such as: “Well, you know your dad.”; “Ask your dad.”; and the infrequent “Maybe don’t tell your dad.”. He goes on seven first dates, three second dates, and no third dates.
Bruce waits for confirmation of Dick’s new love. He wants to see this suitor. Prays they are a strong love. If Bruce could trust that a confession from him would not sway Dick back to bad habits, perhaps he could….
Bruce coughs again. Out spits a bloom nearly the size of his palm, double-petaled and a deep crimson. Bruce rests against the headboard, exhausted. He misses the old capacity of his lungs. But he is stronger than his base selfishness. This is still just stage one. He can endure. He can endure.
A week later, while Joey’s phone is charging, it captures her kissing Dick. Bruce slams his laptop shut. With his next cough, a stem scraps up. The thorns slice his throat. On his bed, bud and stem are dotted with his blood. The pain is a degree of magnitude worse. But Bruce has a high tolerance for pain.
He also has an incredible amount of money. His scientists show promising evidence of a surgical treatment for stage three. It has never been performed on a live patient, but lab and cadaver studies have yielded optimistic results. If not a full out cure, it would at least reset the disease back to stage one. This would be a miracle treatment. It would give humanity its agency back. As Bruce’s oxygen levels slowly but steadily decline, he becomes convinced that it is his purpose to be patient zero. He books the surgery for four months from now, what will be his sixteenth month of symptomatic Hanahaki Disease.
The family finds out that he’s scheduled for something. Bruce convinces Damian he’s hiding a hair transplant. He plants false leads for Tim and Barbara that he’s getting treated for testicular cancer, let’s them be the ones to lie to the others. They are well-intentioned in their nosiness, but if they knew the truth, they would try to stop him. Chicago made it clear: they all expect for Dick to sacrifice himself for Bruce’s sake. No more. Bruce is sick of living his life at Dick’s expense.
His disease does not stop time. It goes on. Gotham still cries out for his protection from the most mundane to the most monstrous evils alike. Tonight, it’s the latter.
Man-Bat has ‘accidentally’ created a company of hybrid mole people. Langstrom swears he had only intended it to be a thought experiment, but the sixteen moles who have been mutated with his former human DNA say otherwise. Quite literally. They vocalize their displeasure with shrill, horrible cries and then bury themselves into the ground. It is surreal, watching sixteen human-sized fingers dive into the wet dirt as if it were a swimming pool.
If that wasn’t enough of a mess, Langstrom was careless about his chemical disposal. His formula leaked into the water supply, turning half of the neighborhood of Burnside into People-moles. They, too, have taken to the soil.
Bruce is grateful, now, to be surrounded by family. Cleaning up this mess is tedious work. Oracle, Red Robin and Langstrom toil around the clock to synthesize an antidote. In pairs, Huntress and Signal, Black Bat and Robin, Red Hood and Batgirl round up the mole-people and the people-moles. The pairs are necessary. Langstorm, of course, was not merely satisfied with giving the Moles human intelligence and endurance. They had to be dangerous, too. Their characteristic second thumb of the mole has been modified to act more like a bird of prey’s talons. It is retractable and knife sharp.
Bruce knows. He’s just been skewered by one.
The mole-person-mole is just as surprised by this as Bruce. They stare at each other, both equally shocked that its thumb has ran through Batman’s Kevlar armor like butter. It hadn’t been a purposeful attack. The mole-person-mole retreats immediately, scurrying back beneath the soil. The violent disturbance of the surroundings sends heavy rocks crashing down. The tunnels of Old Gotham are full of dead ends. Bruce has just lost his one exit. He is abandoned, trapped, and bleeding out in the darkness of the Earth.
This is the price he pays for exploring the tunnels alone. He had no other options. His condition is too hard to disguise on the field anymore. Not for something more intense than routine muggings. Bruce sent them all away and this is the price he pays for it. Perhaps this is what he wanted all along. To be the sacrifice this time. The dizziness characteristic of stage three is making it hard to think. He sits down.
Bruce turns on his comm. “Oracle.”
“Batman. Did you tag ‘em and bag ‘em?”
“Negative. There was a cave in.” Bruce pauses. “I’m wounded.”
Barbara is a professional. No sympathy, no wasteful statements of worry, just, “How bad?”
Bruce inspects his left side. If Bruce is lucky, it went above not through his intestines. The blood stain grows rapidly. At this stage, Hanahaki Disease inhibits clotting.
“Need evac, but not urgently.”
“Alright. Black Bat and Robin are closest to you. Once they’ve finished mole hunting their sector, I’ll send Robin your way. Hang tight.”
Bruce shuts off his comm with a grunt. There are precious few things in this world he’s worse at than ‘hanging tight’. If he were in finer form, he would start inspecting the rockslide himself. Look for the weak points. Find a place structurally secure enough to denote and rescue himself. But his body, right before his eyes, turns to lead. He breaks protocol. He dozes.
Bruce awakes to streaks of sunlight filling his eyes.
No. A flashlight.
“Found you,” the voice he only hears in his dreams says. Melodious. Full of mirth. Beautiful.
Bruce opens his eyes to glare up at his savior. “What are you doing here?”
Nightwing’s smile cracks. It was already such a thin thing and now there’s no denying its grimace. Thorns scratch at the sides of Bruce’s throat. He swallows them down, down, down.
Dick, thankfully, is a professional, too.
“Robin and Black Bat are working on clearing the rubble further back. I squeezed through early in case you needed a field medic. Which you obviously do.” Nightwing shines the flashlight down at Bruce’s left side. “Nice stab wound, where did you get it?”
Bruce is reminded that he is in pain. He grunts. “Mole person.”
“Huh,” says Dick, genuinely bemused. “I kinda thought the kids were just pulling my leg about that.”
As the one stabbed, Bruce isn’t inclined to see much humor in the situation.
Dick crouches down with a sigh. “Alright, big guy, roll over and let me see.”
A flood of raspberries on his tongue, the moment he thinks of Dick touching him. He chews and chews. Clutching his side like this, Dick will assume his pain comes from the wound.
“I’m fine.” Bruce says, struggling to stand on his feet. “Let’s just get moving.”
“Whoa, you sit back down!” Dick pushes him back down by the shoulders. The touch sends the world spinning. “The holes not big enough for our resident Bat-tank, yet.” Dick gropes at his shoulder. “Seriously, did you put on like 50 pounds of muscle?”
Sixty-five. The increased muscle mass helped slow his deterioration from the disease. It was miserable work, bulking up in this condition, but Bruce needed a good distraction. The increased girth does pose problems for his extraction. That much he can admit. He sits back down of his own violation. The world does not stop spinning now that he’s still.
“Let me help,” Dick says, with a gentleness that makes Bruce ache. There’s no power on Earth that could refuse any request from such holy lips. Bruce turns to his side, granting Dick better access. Tenderness evaporates into accusation when Dick sees the extent of his injury. “Did you even try to patch yourself up at all?”
No. Bruce had called for Oracle and then he had passed out. He’s not inclined to share that information with Dick, so he says nothing.
“Typical,” mutters Dick, as he uses the small laser attached to the flashlight to peel away the Batsuit from the wound. Bruce holds his breath. When a cough rattles through the air around them, Bruce is certain it comes from his own traitorous throat.
But it doesn’t. Dick turns away, taking the light with him. He coughs into the pit of his elbow. Small shapes sink to the ground. The dark obscures their specificity, but not their identity. Flowers.
Bruce is more than horrified. He’s awed. In that terrible, god-fearing way.
“You’re coughing blooms.” He doesn’t mean to say it out loud.
“Yup,” says Dick, with a trained indifference. He resumes his task of cleaning off the blood to see the true extent of Bruce’s injury. “That’s how it goes.”
Bruce heart races. He needs to know. Are they still for him?
“Are you going to confess again.”
Dick levels him with an icy glare.
“Not if you’re going to be a jerk about it,” he says, with a hint of threat, “and I can clearly see that you are.”
“Dick–”
“Let’s just focus on making sure you don’t bleed out.”
Some nights, Bruce is surrounded by so many roses it feels like he’s lying in a pool of his own blood. His own death lives on the bottom of his throat. From a certain perspective, death has been Bruce’s longest companion. Even still, he has never welcomed death. Never accepted it. Not when there’s so much work to do. Sacrifice, though. That Bruce can welcome. For months now, a thought has been itching at him. He voices it.
“If I die,” Bruce explains, “you wouldn’t have to confess anymore.”
Dick stills. Only anger makes him so motionless. Bruce regrets ever giving him a mask. He misses the comforting blue of Dick’s eyes; he misses the sky. Instead, he only sees the artificial white lens, surrounded by darkness. Dick’s face doesn’t relax. It merely morphs into something more controlled.
“Repeat after me,” Dick says, as deeply as his tenor goes, “4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.”
“4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.”
“Now, do it backwards.”
“42, 23, 16, 15, 8, 4,” Bruce says, instantly, fluently, and more than a little annoyed at being given orders.
“You don’t have a concussion.” Anger ruptures Dick’s controlled blankness. The domino mask narrows into cruel slits. It’s a distortion, to see Dick being this cold. “So what the hell’s wrong with you?”
Bruce closes his eyes in defeat. Many things. He shouldn’t have said that. There’s nothing he can do to take it back – Dick would smell the lie on the air like a shark to blood – nor is there truly anything to say after that. Bruce just sits silently.
Eventually, Dick’s hands return to cleaning his wound.
“I need to sew you up before we move you,” Dick says, and even with all of his anger, there’s still a hint of apology in his voice. “I came without getting a real medical kit. I just have some codeine on me, but it’s better than nothing.” He fishes out a few pills from his wrist compartments.
Bruce knocks the hand away. Codeine will interact badly with Floraephan.
“Just do it,” Bruce says with gritted teeth. “I’ll be fine.”
He can hear Dick rolling his eyes, even if he can’t see the action beneath his mask.
“Don’t be a hero, Batman. The stitches are going to be deep and extracting you out of here isn’t going to be a stroll along the riverside, either.”
“No.”
“This isn’t about your ego! It’ll make our jobs a lot harder if you pass out from pain before we can get you out of here.”
“No,” Bruce growls, baring his teeth.
Dick reels back. Confusion and disgust wrestle for dominance on his face.
“Do you just like pain?” Dick shouts.
The shout turns into a sharp cough. Tiny, snow-white flowers fall down on Bruce’s face, close enough to be recognized. Baby’s breath.
Do you? Bruce thinks, letting the delicate blooms fall into his open hand. But he already knows the answer. Dick must, in order to love him.
Dick’s face is a sketchbook study of mortification. He watches Bruce like a dog expecting to be hit. Bruce closes his hand over the flowers, careful not to break them.
“I won’t pass out,” he promises.
Dick stares at him for a moment longer. Then, right in front of Bruce’s eyes, Dick decides to trust him.
“Take a deep breath,” Dick says and begins his suturing work.
Bruce separates himself from the pain. It’s easy to do when Dick is next to him. He focuses on Dick’s hands. How gentle they are, how they coax his skin back together. Dick has always healed him. Now is no different. Bruce sits in silence. He doesn’t want to risk doing anything that will send Dick away again.
“So, chum, how’s the Windy City been treating ya?” says Dick, in a fake baritone that sounds nothing like Bruce’s voice. “Well, gee, old pal of mine, it’s been just swell, thanks for asking!”
Clearly, he and Dick do not have a shared definition of companionable silence.
“I know how you’ve been.”
Bruce doesn’t think Dick a fool. He must know that Bruce keeps watch over him. Will always watch over him, in whatever ways he can, for as long as he breathes.
Dick pulls the stitch tight. “You might know what I’ve done, but you don’t how I’ve been.”
That is…a fair enough point. Dick spends most of his time with people talking about their concerns rather than his own. Bruce has listened to hours’ worth of overheard conversations with his roommates, friends, and brothers. Bruce knows more about their last year than he does Dick’s.
It’s an invitation. Bruce decides to risk accepting it.
“How have you –”
Fire in his chest. Like an anvil over him, pulverizing him. No. Not now. Not here. He has to cough. He has to get it out of him. It’s a full stem and bloom. He masks his cough with a cry, Dick will think it’s just the pain of the wound. Swallowing the evidence is agony. Bruce can’t hold back another groan. He is sweaty with exhaustion.
“Here,” says Dick, pulling out two capsules of Floraephan, “that sounded deep.”
Bruce refuses the pills. Humiliation burns from his cheeks to the soles of his feet. He feels unbelievably naked and exposed.
Dick’s hands never stop being gentle against his sides.
“Selina would be nice about it,” Dick says softly.
No, she wouldn’t. Even if the roses were for her, no. She wouldn’t.
Still, it’s a reasonable hypothesis. Their engagement fell through five years ago and they have not interacted romantically since then. In a relationship as on and off as theirs has always been, it isn’t unreasonable for Dick to assume that the finality of their ending is just now dawning on Bruce.
It’s a perfect out.
Yet, the idea of letting Dick think these flowers are for her disturbs him. He can’t let that be a truth, even a false one.
“It’s not Selina.”
Dick sucks a big breath through his teeth. Bruce immediately pales. Has he given the game away?
“Well, Talia’s not going to be nice about it. But she wouldn’t want you to die over it.”
Bruce just grunts. The last time he held Talia, it was to stop her from putting a poisoned dagger in a congressman’s throat. But he can’t push it again. It was an act of foolishness to deny Dick’s first guess.
When it comes to reading people, Dick’s always been too clever by half.
“It’s not her, either, is it?” Dick looks up, just for a second, to analyze Bruce’s face. It’s unnerving. Bruce has to look away. He studies the ceiling. Schist and sandstone, he expects.
“Harvey?”
Bruce whips his head back around. Just what kind of person does Dick presume he’s attracted to?
“Okay, okay, geez forgive a guy for having a theory.” Dick focuses his attention back on the stitches, suitably scolded. His pout is so sweet, Bruce’s anger mostly fades at the sight. “It’s just a short list of people you love who wouldn’t love you back.”
Bruce snorts again. Only Dick would believe that.
For a few moments, there is silence.
“Is it Clark?”
Bruce wants to crawl out of his skin.
“Stop guessing,” Bruce orders, voice low and rumbling.
“Give me something better to talk about then. You’re still on fainting watch.”
Bruce scowls. He doesn’t have the energy to argue though. Instead, he ponders discussion topics. There’s only been one interest on his mind as of late.
“You might be the first recorded patient in the history of Hanahaki Disease to have a repeated, non-sequential, flora.”
“Neat,” Dick says, in a tone that belies his enthusiasm. “Do I get a blue ribbon?”
“I offended you.” Bruce frowns. “That wasn’t my intention.”
This is why he prefers to be silent and let Dick do the talking for both of them. It’s no burden to listen to his little songbird chirp away. Bruce’s words are not so multipurposed. They are always weapons, whether or not he’s at war.
Dick sighs. “Yeah, I know. It’s not your fault. I can’t expect it to be a bad memory for you, too. You probably don’t even remember it.”
Oh.
Yes, Bruce should have anticipated that’s where his benign comment would lead. Dick’s wrong. He does remember. How could he ever forget the first time Dick Grayson told him that he was loved?
It had been so loud. The vital signs monitor’s ever constant beeping, Dick’s haggard breaths, Bruce’s own hammering heartbeat. Dick had been shot by the Joker just two days ago. He was alive. Barely. His wound wasn’t healing at the rate Leslie expected.
Then, Dick coughed. He coughed and coughed and until a cluster of three stems of Baby’s breath burst from his mouth. Dick offered them to Bruce, shyly, coyly. Such a foreign look on his bombastic Robin. It made his stomach churn with something he refused to name desire.
I love you, Dick said, I know you don’t love me yet, but I think, someday, you could. If you gave me a chance. I’m not a boy anymore, Bruce. But even if you can’t…that’s okay, too. They mean everlasting love, you know? I’m in it with you for the long haul, partner.
Bruce has often been called spoiled. But looking back on this confession, Bruce understands this to be the pinnacle of his ingratitude. Bruce looked that beautiful confession in the eye and argued semantics. Baby’s breath also signifies purity and innocence. He told Dick that his feelings were the reflection of his own childishness and that Dick would grow out of them.
Dick, eighteen and confident he knew the world better than Bruce, argued that he would not. The answer seemed so simple to Bruce back then. If Dick could not be trusted to not love Bruce, then he couldn’t be trusted at all. Bruce fired Dick from Robin. Dick fired himself from Bruce’s life. Bruce spent seventeen agonizing months with no contact until Nightwing came to the Batcave, coughing autumn Adonis. That time, Bruce knew better than to open his mouth.
Dick’s love was a wound that never closed between them. Instead, their partnership grew around it. Bruce spent decades trying to outlast Dick’s love. When that didn’t work, he tried to rip it out of Dick. He’s succeeded only in cleaving a cavern in them both.
Everlasting love.
At thirty-six, Bruce had the strength to deny him. No such strength exists in him now.
Bruce is tired. So tired. He is so goddamned in love. And he’s so very tired.
As Dick finishes up the last stitch, Bruce takes off the cowl. He needs to say this as a man and not as the Bat.
“What are you–?”
Dick is stopped by Bruce’s hand on his cheek. Bruce peels the domino mask off. Finally, the sky.
“Dick.” Bruce wraps his beloved’s name in urgent, honeyed devotion. “I love you.”
He waits for air. Waits for his lungs to fill up with real breath. This is the moment the song’s sing for. This is the release.
None comes.
Dick crumbles. His head falls down, stealing away his beautiful eyes from Bruce yet again. His mouth is trembling with a force Bruce knows to mean that he’s holding back tears. This. This is everything he ever feared. He knew returning Dick’s love would only make him hurt worse.
Bruce, however, is a detective. That’s not just pain on Dick’s face. It’s doubt.
“You don’t have to do that,” Dick says, quiet and fragile in a way he never should be. Not his brave, bold boy.
“You don’t believe me.”
Bruce breaks in a place he thought he was resilient.
Bruce plans. It’s his nature. He runs every conceivable scenario in his mind, playing every angle out to fruition. Even the most abhorrent ends, Bruce has faced them all. He’s thought about this moment of confession. Of course he has. In a million different ways, in a million different words, Bruce has told Dick Grayson that he is loved. Yet, in all those plans, it never once occurred to him that he wouldn’t be believed.
Dick exhales, shaken. “Look, I know you care about me. I know you don’t want me to die. And I’m going to take care of it, eventually. That’s why I’m in town. I –”
This time, Bruce doesn’t swallow his cough. He gives himself over to the pain. The curved thorns nick his throat all the way up. He spits out decay. Three diseased stems. The evergreen leaves are tarnished by black spot. The tops of the crimson blooms rotted brown by Botrytis blight. His love is not beautiful. But it is his. It is all he has to offer Dick.
Dick can and should refuse such a sickly offering. But Bruce will not allow him to pretend it doesn’t exist.
“I love you,” Bruce says again, with the conviction of the evidence in his hands.
Utterly shaken, Dick takes one rose with two fingers. He stares at it like it’s an alien contraption. Something not of this Earth and beyond his comprehension.
“What the fuck,” Dick mutters to himself.
“I thought I lost you forever this time,” Bruce admits.
“You love me?” Dick repeats, the incredulity in his voice borders on hysterics.
Bruce nods.
Dick brings the ugly rotten thing to his nose. He inhales. Head bent, eyes closed, he looks to be in prayer. When Dick opens his eyes, wetness has made his eyes a brilliant azure.
“Then why…” Dick swallows, “why don’t you want me?”
Of all the answers Bruce owes Dick, he didn’t think this would be the first payment.
Want is the wrong question. Of course, Bruce wants Dick. He wants Dick’s laughter and his sweet voice, always chirping. He wants Dick’s mouth. He wants to taste, to feel. He wants to be inside Dick in every way imaginable. Wants to carve a home for himself in Dick’s body. He wants Dick to never love anyone else. He wants the sky for himself. And many, many more terrible things. Lack of want is not the issue.
Love is. Bruce must be more than his base desires. Dick is his guiding light, the manifestation of everything that makes humans worth saving, as a species. For his sake, Bruce can’t give into his own greed.
“The only thing I want more than you,” Bruce rubs his thumb against Dick’s cheekbone, his lips, “is for you to be happy. You can’t be happy with me.”
“I’m happy with you all the time!” Dick nearly shouts, startled to an explosive passion. It’s a trait he’s learned to better control over the years. But, as always, Bruce undoes him.
Bruce attempts to remove his hand, to refute him again. Dick grabs him and holds him close.
“We are happy together,” Dick says. There’s an accusation in his eyes. “When you let us be.”
“I shouldn’t have so much power,” Bruce admits. “I’m not worthy of it. I’ll always ruin things.”
“And I’ll always rebuild them!” Dick is furious in his devotion. “Why do you think I call myself Nightwing? Don’t pretend Clark never told you the story, too.”
Bruce doesn’t.
“I don’t want to be Flamebird, Dick. I don’t want you to have clean-up my destruction for the rest of time.”
“Then stop destroying things! It’s really that simple!” Dick exhales out what was almost another yell. He takes Bruce’s hand off of his cheek and squeezes it between his two blue palms. “You act like you’re so doomed, Bruce. Like you’re some lost cause. Do you know how much you’ve grown since I met you? Do you even understand the life you’ve built for yourself? Twenty-years ago it would have seemed just as impossible as this.”
Dick bends down and kisses the tops of Bruce’s fingers. Shivers cascade down his whole body. Dick looks up at him, with a coyness that does belong there. A shining. Bruce has watched Dick excel in so many things. Now, he watches Dick succeed in seduction.
It’s bewildering.
“Aren’t you scared?” Bruce all but hisses.
“Of what? Getting my heart broken? I would say I’m pretty experienced in that by now, so no.” That boyish, dare-devil grin. “Not at all.”
Bruce can’t help but return the smile. But it is a sad, bitter thing.
“Not that. Aren’t you scared that I did this to you?”
“Did what?”
“Raised you to love me.”
When Bruce was a lonely child, too strange to be liked by his peers and his parents too busy to indulge his moods, Bruce used to dream about the perfect playmate. In his head, it would be an android, something Bruce could make and repair with his own hands. Instead, fate gave him a trapeze artist. Bruce fears that he’ll never have the skills needed to heal Dick. But Dick…Dick is perfect. Everything he could have wanted in a partner, in a best friend. He’s always been that for Bruce. Even though Dick was his ward, under his guardianship, it is Dick who has been the protector of Bruce’s heart.
It's unfair. Bruce loves Dick enough to want more for him.
“Oh my god,” Dick says, studying Bruce’s face. “You seriously think you brainwashed me into loving you.”
He does. So does half of the Justice League, most of the Titans, and nearly all of their family.
“Didn’t I?” Bruce challenges.
“Um, no. Believe me, I’m also an expert in being brainwashed, too.”
Bruce leans in close. So close they are sharing breath.
“I can freeze you with a single touch,” Bruce promises.
He reaches around to the tender place on the knot of Dick’s spine and squeezes. The boy obeys, falling limp like a rabbit. It makes Bruce feel like a wolf. It is not an unpleasurable feeling. For either of them, judging by Dick’s expression.
Another moment passes, and then Dick, far more gently than such a violation warranted, knocks Bruce’s hand off of him.
“Ooo, very impressive,” Dick says, rolling his eyes. “You know how to use wiles to distract me. You’ll make a great femme fatale to my hard-boiled detective.”
Bruce gives Dick a piercing stare. Stand down, boy, it says.
“You can put your eyes away, Batman. All you’ve proven is that we have compatible kinks.”
Bruce shivers.
Dick looks right through him.
“You couldn’t even brainwash me into hating you, Bruce,” Dick says with a small, pitying smile, “I think love is little outside of your paygrade.”
“And you would know?”
Dick shrugs. “Like you said, this is my first repeat flower. But it’s not my first Hanahaki outbreak over you. Not by a mile. And every time I got sick with a new flower, I had to learn a new lesson. I have spent so much of my life thinking about all the ways I love you.”
The sensation of being in the presence of so much love is indescribable. Bruce has to shut his eyes. Dick shines too brightly.
“And I do,” Dick says. “Love you. I want to love you. I want to be loved by you.”
Dick runs both his hands through Bruce’s hair. The touch forces Bruce to open his eyes. He didn't know he could have this. He didn't know he could be wanted.
“Can you do that for me?” Dick asks, sweeter than windchimes. “Can you give me that?”
Dick’s words release him. Bruce breathes, a long inhale. At last. He breathes. There’s a great eruption in his chest; a hundred caged birds finally flying free. Petals on the wind.
His beautiful boy. Dick always takes the leap.
This time, Bruce catches him.
“Yes.”
“…Yes?”
Bruce nods. “Yes.”
“What?” Dick blinks. “It’s just that easy?”
It is the opposite of easy, but Dick will learn that for himself soon enough.
Suddenly, Dick pales. “Are you dying again?”
“No more than usual,” Bruce says, too glibly based on Dick’s expression.
“I’m not dying, Dick. I’m also not insane,” Bruce reassures. “I’ve done all I can think of to stop you from loving me. I’m out of ideas.”
Perhaps Dick is cursed and Bruce is destined to be his tormentor. Perhaps Bruce is favored by a strange god and Dick is his blessed gift. Or perhaps…perhaps they are just two people in love. Perhaps it can be that simple.
A simple life with Dick. That’s his true desire. He wants to read the morning newspaper while Dick chatters on about his gymnastic students. He wants to be allowed to buy Dick flowers, just to celebrate the joy of having him in his life, just to see Dick smile. He wants Dick in his bed; he wants Dick to hog the covers.
A frenzy bubbles over.
“To hell with it,” Bruce says. “Let’s try. Do you still like jazz? There’s a club off of 8th street. Secluded, intimate. I’ve always wanted to take you dancing there.”
“Ed’s? Yeah, they have great mocktails. You know it’s a Falcone front, right?”
“Yes. I’ve been waiting to bust them until I could take you dancing.”
Dick laughs, shocked into an uninhibited sweetness. The affection in his eyes is overwhelming but this time, Bruce forces himself to witness it all. He basks in the sunshine sky.
After Dick’s laugh tapers off, the tears come. Dick rubs at his eyes, just as he did when he was a child, furious at his own crying.
“I’m still angry,” Dick whispers into his hands.
“I know.” Bruce closes his eyes and leans against the hard wall of rock. “Me too. I’d hoped you’d grow up to have more discerning tastes.”
Bruce’s honesty startles Dick into another laugh.
“Oh, fuck you. God, you’re such an asshole,” Dick says, beaming. His smile puts the sun and the sky to shame. “Everyone’s right about you.”
There’s a giddiness to Dick’s tone that is infectious. Bruce’s face breaks out into a smirk.
“Everyone’s right about you,” he says. “You’re self-sacrificing to a fault.”
“You’re a condescending know-it-all with a god complex.”
“Your need to martyr yourself hurts those you love more than it protects them.”
“You’d rather make the people you love think you hate them instead of just admitting you’re too scared to be happy.”
Hrm.
Bruce gathers their fallen flowers in his right hands. He offers them to Dick, a second oath between them in the dark underground.
“You make me believe I could be brave.”
Dick clasps his hand over Bruce’s. A complete bouquet exists between them.
“You make me believe.”
Bruce exhales. Like a medicinal balm spread across his chest, a great tranquility overcomes him. He always thought that if he ever gave into the temptation of returning Dick’s love, the torrent of desire that would follow would drown them both. But it’s not like that at all. It’s flowers floating on a calm lake. It’s peace.
“I love you,” Bruce says again. It’s all he ever wants to say now.
Dick hums. “Just fourteen more and then we’re even.”
Bruce snorts. Dick can always make him laugh. Besides him, Bruce feels the gentle shake of Dick’s shoulders. In this, like everything, Dick has never let Bruce be alone.
Bruce won’t abandon him again. He will dedicate the rest of his life to earning this love that is so freely given.
Bruce turns his head; Dick turns to watch him.
A confession as soft and beautiful as Bruce can give, one that doesn’t need to be returned: “I love you.”
Dick smiles. Now, Bruce is believed.
Hands still tightly clasped together, they rest their heads against each other and wait for rescue.