Work Text:
“Bruce!”
Bruce looks up, his eyesight blurry. It takes a moment for his vision to clear from the strain they were put under, staring at the endless pile of paperwork on his desk.
“Dick?”
In front of him, Dick frowns. His arms are crossed over his chest, fang poking out and pressing into his bottom lip. “I’m hungry.” The collar around his throat stays still despite the bell. Dick’s getting scarily good at moving wihout disturbing the bell - enough so that Bruce couldn’t hear him entering at all.
Bruce frowns. “There should be food in the kitchen.” He’d made sure of it, had stocked some of it himself after deep research on the diet of cat shifters.
Dick just looks at him like he’s stupid. His tail flicks behind him irritated at Bruce’s apparent slowness. “I know,” he says, in a tone that implied a heavy disapproval.
Bruce is not understanding. “Ah. Is there…anything stopping you from eating?”
Dick sighs. It’s a loud, dramatic sigh, exaggerated for disapproval. His ears flatten across his head as he crosses the room to pull Bruce’s hand.
Bruce could crush him easily. He lets his much larger hand close around Dick’s smaller hand, and lets Dick drag him across the room to the kitchen.
Once arriving at their destination, Dick lets go. He jumps over the table, because try as they might, Dick always prefers leaping across objects as opposed to walking around them. Bruce isn’t sure how much this has to do with his shifter genes or just because it’s Dick.
He waits until Bruce sits down. Then without another word, he begins eating. Some kind of conditioning? Bruce wonders as he stares in poorly hidden bafflement. Dick seems pretty happy. His tail flicks in lazy patterns behind him as he smiles at Bruce, fangs pointing out.
“Don’t worry,” he says confidently. “I’ll watch over you, so you can eat too.”
“Ah,” Bruce said, in the tone of a man who did not understand. “I understand.”
Dick is still looking at him, so Bruce pulls some bread across the table to break apart into pieces, eating the edges first before making his way into the centre. Dick watches him intently, blue eyes trained on his movements until he’s finished the entire piece.
Dick gives him a smile again, something reassuring.
Bruce just feels more confused than ever.
He searches it up later. Cat’s need someone to be there lookout while they eat, the intent tells him. For safety and security.
Bruce glances across at the mound buried beneath blankets on his bed, curled right in the centre. He’d have to contort himself awkwardly to fit in the bed, later. Somehow he can’t bring himself to mind that much.
Safety and security, huh?
He could do that.
“Bruce!”
“Coming, coming.”
Dick huffs as Bruce arrives in the kitchen before fulling shifting to his animal form. Bruce watches on in wonder - it’s always a delight when Dick deigns to do so. He rarely does it in the manor.
The fluffy cat licks his paws and mrows angrily when he notices Bruce is out of his direct line of sight. Gracefully, it jumps onto the table and nudges his bowl over to where Bruce is sitting.
It’s terrible table manners. Alfred would be beside himself. Bruce just smiles fondly and watches over Dick eat, knowing that Dick would return the favour when Bruce began eating, too.
“Master Bruce,” Alfred says.
“Yes?”
“You must eat.”
“Huh. Okay.”
Bruce picks up his utensils as Alfred leaves the room. Once he’s left, Bruce pauses, auddenly discomfited. Something’s off.
Never one to ignore his gut instinct, he stands up to search the room surreptitiously. Nothing. All clear. Dick is at school, Alfred is cleaning. Nothing in his study has been disturbed. Still, there’s something off here, an alarm bell in the back of his head that tells him unsafe, not secure.
He decides to spend the rest of the time curled up in his chair, distrustfully eyeing the furniture around him as he waits for - for. Something.
Alfred knocks again. “Sir?” comes his voice from outside.
“Ah - Alfred. Come in.”
“Sir. You have not eaten.”
“I will,” Bruce says. He feels his appetite come back and the feeling of insecurity disappear. Perhaps it was worry for Alfred in his old age. “Something’s off,” he confesses to Alfred. “Don’t you feel it?”
“Nothing of that sort, Sir.”
“Hm.” Bruce keeps spooning mouthful after mouthful before Alfred decides to leave again, satisfied after seeing physical proof of him eat. Immediately, Bruce is discomfited again.
A sudden, wild connection makes itself present in his mind.
Surely not - but it was undeniable. Lack of safety and security, needing company while eating. Bruce blinked. Surely he didn’t need someone to watch him while he ate.
He tried again, hesitant as he picked up the food. Set it down again.
No. Too unsafe. Not secure enough.
Bruce groaned.
One day, Dick smiles at him pleased.
“What?”
“You’ve been willingly eating with me,” he says to Bruce.
“I always eat willingly with you.”
“But I have to call you first.” He worries his lips, eyes downcast. “I was worried you didn’t like me, at first.”
“Never, Dick.” Bruce keeps his eyes on Dick, even as they both stop eating. “I will never not like you,” he vows. He can’t imagine any world where he doesn’t like Dick.
Dick, who swings and breaks all his chandeliers to wreak havoc and ruin the rugs and curtains. Dick, whip smart and constant motion. Dick, who was irrevocably associated with safety and food and comfort.
Dick’s eyes brighten, and he smiles. “You too, Bruce,” he says, suddenly jubilant. He ignores his food and jumps up, transforming to his creature form in midair. A bundle of fur lands in Bruce’s arms, claws digging into the meat of his shoulder as Dick scrambles for purchase.
He meows, content. Bruce can’t meow back, because he doesn’t know how to speak Cat.
He’s pretty sure he can guess what Dick’s sentiments are, anyways.