Work Text:
The fluorescent lights of the QuikMart hummed at a frequency that had been slowly driving Dick insane for the past three weeks.
"You're going to work real cases someday, Grayson. But first, you're going to learn what real Bludhaven looks like from the ground floor."
Sergeant Alvarez had said it like it was profound. Dick had bitten his tongue so hard he tasted copper. He'd grown up running across Gotham's rooftops at thirteen years old, dodging bullets and breaking bones. He knew what cities looked like from every angle. Rooftop, street level, and the dark places in between.
But sure. The ground floor. Real police work. Except real police work, apparently, meant pulling overnight security at a twenty-four-hour grocery store in Crime Alley. Not even Bludhaven. Allied Security Services held contracts across both cities, and Dick – newest trainee, lowest seniority – had drawn a Gotham rotation. Three weeks of overnight shifts forty minutes from his apartment, like the universe had run out of subtler ways to remind him where he came from.
The night shifts were part of some cooperation between the Bludhaven Police Department and Allied Security Services. Nobody had explained the arrangement to Dick's satisfaction. Officially, it was framed as "field exposure." Getting trainees out of the classroom and into the rhythm of shift work, learning to stay alert when the world went quiet. Unofficially, Dick suspected it was a filter. The hours were brutal, the work was mind-numbing, and between the drunks looking for a fight and the people crashing in the parking lot who needed an ambulance more than a security guard, you found out pretty fast who could keep their head when things got ugly. The kind of person who couldn't hack that wasn't going to hack it in a patrol car either. Only the ones who stuck it out would continue.
His fellow guards on the security rotation were a mixed bag, and that was being generous. Kowalski had a drinking problem he thought nobody noticed. Ferrara talked about "cleaning up the streets" with the kind of enthusiasm that made Dick's skin crawl. Briggs was fine until you got two beers into him and the racial slurs started. Dick didn't like any of them, but he supposed it was better to have them here, watching empty grocery stores for minimum wage, than working private security for any of Bludhaven's (or Gotham's) more enterprising citizens. Assuming they weren't cashing double checks already.
He leaned against the checkout counter and let his eyes trace the aisles. Fluorescent light on linoleum. The freezer humming. The faint smell of floor cleaner that never quite covered whatever was underneath. That dead stretch between two and four a.m. when even Crime Alley held its breath. The only other sound was some talk radio murmuring from the breakroom, where Dave, the night manager, had passed out forty minutes ago with his feet on the desk.
Dick's phone sat dark on the counter. No messages. Not from Alfred, not from Bruce. Almost five months since he'd packed his bags and walked out of the Manor and it was like he'd stepped through a door that locked behind him. He told himself he didn't care. He'd told Bruce the same thing, louder, with his hands shaking. He'd finally started to establish himself as Nightwing since then. A name that belonged to him and no one else. Though juggling academy training during the day and patrol at night was grinding him down faster than he wanted to admit.
He almost didn't notice the kid.
That was the thing. The kid was good. Quick hands, quiet feet, a stained red hoodie two sizes too big that swallowed him whole. He'd come through the side entrance, the one with the broken chime that Dave kept saying he'd fix. Dick only caught the movement because he'd shifted his weight and the angle of the security mirror above aisle four caught a blur of red fabric.
He watched for a moment. The kid moved through the store like he'd done this before. Not hesitating. Straight to the canned goods, then the bread aisle, then the granola bars. Each item disappeared under the hoodie with a practiced flick of the wrist. Fast. Efficient.
Dick didn't care about the shoplifting. Eight dollars worth of canned soup and crackers from a chain store that wrote off more in "shrinkage" per quarter than this kid could steal in a year. If it had been daylight, if the kid had been a teenager, Dick might have looked the other way entirely.
But it was three in the morning. And this wasn't a teenager. This was a child. Small, underfed, alone in a Crime Alley grocery store in the dead of night.
Dick sighed and pushed off the counter.
He came up the aisle quietly. He didn't want to spook the kid into running, because the last thing he needed was a foot chase through Crime Alley at three in the morning. The kid had his back turned, trying to fit a jar of peanut butter into whatever pocket dimension he'd created inside that hoodie.
"Hey." Calm, unhurried, pitched in that low voice he'd perfected over years. I'm not a threat. "Hold up a second."
The kid bolted.
He made it exactly four steps before Dick caught the back of his hood. The kid twisted and thrashed with a ferocity that startled him. An elbow caught Dick in the ribs and a heel stamped down hard on his foot. Not bad technique, actually. Feral, undisciplined, but mean.
"Easy. Easy. I'm not gonna hurt you. Stop."
The kid didn't stop. A can of SpaghettiOs fell out of his hoodie and rolled across the linoleum. Then a sleeve of crackers. Then a bruised apple.
Dick got both hands on the kid's shoulders and turned him around.
He was small. That was the first thing. Not just young. Small, in the way that meant not enough meals for too many years. Sharp cheekbones under dirty skin. A split lip that was healing wrong. Eyes that were enormous and furious and terrified all at once, darting between Dick's face and the exit like he was calculating the odds.
Eleven, maybe. Twelve at the most.
"Let me go." The kid's voice cracked. "I wasn't doing anything."
"You were stuffing your hoodie with half the store, kid."
"I was browsing."
Despite everything, Dick almost laughed. He didn't. Something in the kid's face told him that laughing would be exactly the wrong move.
"Come on." He nodded toward the back. "Let's talk."
The backoffice of the QuikMart Plus smelled like burnt coffee and old paper. Dick closed the door behind them – not locked, he was careful about that – and gestured to the folding chair next to the desk. The kid didn't sit. He stood with his back against the wall, arms crossed over the lumpy hoodie, vibrating with the kind of tension that looked like it might snap into violence or collapse at any second.
Dick leaned against the desk, one ankle crossed over the other. Relaxed. Or at least performing relaxed well enough that it might count. Kept his hands visible.
"What's your name?"
"Why?"
"Because I'd like to call you something other than 'kid.'"
A long pause. The kid's jaw worked like he was chewing on the decision.
"Peter."
Too fast. A name grabbed off a shelf. Dick noted it, filed it away, and let it go.
"Peter. Okay. I'm Dick."
The kid snorted and for the first time he actually looked Dick in the face.
"That's not a real name."
"It's short for Richard. And I've heard every joke, so don't bother."
No smile. The kid's eyes flicked to the door again, then back.
"Look." Dick kept his voice level. "I'm not calling the cops."
"You are a cop."
"I'm a trainee pulling a security shift at a grocery store. I don't even have a badge yet." He paused. "I'm not going to report you. I'm not going to have you arrested over some peanut butter and SpaghettiOs. Okay?"
Nothing. The kid just watched him, jaw tight.
"I just want to make sure you're okay. You out here alone? It's three in the morning."
"I can take care of myself."
"I didn't say you couldn't. I asked if you're alone."
The kid's mouth thinned. "What's it to you, huh?"
"Where are your parents?"
The flinch was so fast that Dick almost missed it.
"Don't have any," the kid spat.
"Okay. Is there a shelter, or–"
"I'm not going to a shelter."
"–or a group home, or someone–"
"I said no."
The force of it surprised them both. The kid's hands had come up, fists balled, and his breathing had changed. Quicker, shallower.
"Okay." Dick held up both hands, palms out. "Okay. No shelters. I hear you."
The kid's breathing didn't slow. His eyes were too wide now, darting between Dick's face and the closed door and the desk and back, and Dick could almost see the thoughts processing in real time behind those eyes.
Then something shifted in the kid's face.
The fear didn't leave. It just reorganized. All the fire, the spite, the scrappy defiance that had carried him through aisle four and the back office and the interrogation drained out of him like someone had pulled a plug. His shoulders dropped. His fists uncurled. His chin dipped and his eyes went flat and distant, fixed on a point somewhere past Dick's left shoulder.
"Okay," the kid whispered. "Okay, fine."
He reached for the hem of his hoodie. Stolen food tumbled out onto the floor. A can of soup rolled under the desk. Dick opened his mouth to tell him he didn't have to give it back.
The kid kept going.
He pulled the hoodie off over his head and dropped it on the linoleum. Underneath, a stained undershirt, every rib visible. A bruise on his upper arm in the unmistakable shape of fingers. His hands went to the zipper of his jeans. His fingers didn't fumble. His eyes stayed locked on the middle distance.
"Just. yougottauseprotection," the kid got out, too fast, the words tumbling over each other like they'd been dammed up and released all at once. "And no pictures or videos. You– you can't take pictures. That's the rule." His fingers worked the zipper down. His face was blank. "Not the face. You don't hit my face. And you get twenty minutes, that's it, and then I leave. I don't care about the rest but you gotta, you have to use..."
The kid trailed off. Swallowed. He was waiting.
Dick couldn't move.
His mouth was open. The fluorescent lights buzzed. The freezer hummed.
The kid's thumbs were hooked into his waistband. He hadn't looked at Dick once. His breathing was shallow and even. But his legs were shaking. Fine tremors running from his thighs down to his ankles, visible in the way the too-big jeans vibrated against his calves.
"Stop."
The word came out too loud. It cracked the silence of the room and Dick was already a step closer before he caught himself. The kid flinched so hard his teeth clicked together. Full body. Hands flew up to cover his face, elbows locked in tight against his ribs, curling inward. He stood there with his arms over his head and his bare, bruised shoulders drawn up to his ears, rigid, his whole body locked tight against what came next. His breathing came in short, wet hitches, each one catching in his chest like a hiccup. Through the gap between his elbows, one eye was visible. Fixed on Dick's hands.
Dick's vision blurred. He blinked and it didn't clear. He stepped back again. Pressed himself against the edge of the desk. The wood bit uncomfortably into his lower back. He lowered himself into a crouch, slowly, until he was below eye level with the kid. Hands on his own knees. Palms up.
"Nobody is going to touch you." His voice came out steady. He had no idea how. "Not me. Not anyone. I need you to put your clothes back on. Can you do that for me?"
The kid didn't move. His eye, the one visible through his elbows, tracked down to Dick's hands. Back to his face. To his hands again.
A long silence.
Then, slowly, one arm lowered. Then the other. His face was blotched. Tear tracks cut pale lines through the grime on his cheeks. His chin was trembling, his lips pressed into a bloodless line, and he kept swallowing, over and over, throat bobbing, fighting it down.
He grabbed the hoodie off the floor and tried to pull it back over his head. His hands wouldn't cooperate. The fabric bunched at his neck, his arms tangling in the wrong sleeves. He yanked at it. His elbow caught in the hood and he wrenched at the fabric and something broke loose from his chest, a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob, bitten off so fast his teeth snapped shut on it.
"It's okay. Leave it. It's fine."
The kid gave up on the hoodie. He sank to the floor and pressed into the corner with his knees drawn to his chest, the stained undershirt riding up to show the ladder of his spine. He wrapped his arms around his shins and pressed his face into his knees and went very, very still.
Dick stayed on the floor. Stayed still. His nails were dug into his kneecaps. He couldn't remember doing that.
The kid's shoulders hitched. Once. Twice. No sound.
When Dick spoke again, it cost him everything he had to keep his voice where it needed to be.
"What you just offered me… has anyone asked that of you before? Anyone in this store? Anyone in this city?"
The kid stared at the ground. His fingers were white where they gripped his own arms. He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
"Peter." Gently. Then, quieter: "That's not your real name, is it?"
The kid shook his head. A tiny, miserable motion, his forehead rocking against his kneecaps.
"That's okay. You don't have to tell me." Dick paused. Let the quiet settle.
His mind was already running down the list.
What this kid needed was beyond a twenty-year-old trainee on a night shift. Someone had to investigate what had happened to him. Someone had to make sure he was safe, actually safe, not the temporary kind that dissolved at sunrise. Dick couldn't do that. Not from a security desk, not from a one-bedroom in Bludhaven, not while splitting his nights between patrol and trying not to flunk out of the academy. But he knew someone who could.
"Can I tell you something about me?"
No response. But the kid's breathing had slowed, just slightly, and his eyes had shifted from the floor to somewhere near Dick's shoes. Listening, even if he didn't want to admit it.
"I'm a foster kid. Was, I mean. I grew up in the system. For about five minutes, until someone took me in. I was nine. My parents had just died and I had nowhere to go and the system was–" He stopped. "Well. You know what the system is. They placed me in juvie because there wasn't a bed anywhere else."
The kid's eyes flicked up. Just for a second. A flash of something. Recognition, maybe. Or suspicion. Both, probably.
"The man who took me in." Dick paused, weighing the words. "My foster – my dad. Adopted me, eventually. He's… look, he's… he's terrible at talking about feelings. The emotional range of a brick wall. It's not always easy with him." His throat tightened. "But he has never hurt me. Not once. Not ever. And he has resources: a house, more rooms than anyone needs, connections to get you into the best school, whatever you need. If I brought you to him tonight and told him this kid needs help, he would help. No conditions. No catch."
The kid stared at him. Those enormous, wary eyes.
"You want to take me to some rich guy's house." Slowly, each word deliberate. "In the middle of the night."
Dick heard it, of course. The implication.
"I know how that sounds. I know exactly how that sounds. And the fact that you're thinking it tells me you're smart, and you should keep being smart." He took a breath. "I'll stay with you. We go together, we stay the night, and in the morning we talk. Figure things out. And if you don't like it – if anything feels wrong – I'll drive you wherever you want to go. No questions."
The kid chewed on that. Quiet for a long moment.
"He'd actually just… let me stay there?"
"He'd insist on it. There's a bed. There's food. Alfred, that's the man who actually runs the house, he's the best cook you'll ever meet. And in the morning, we figure out the rest. School. Paperwork. Whatever. One step at a time."
"I don't need charity."
"It's not charity. It's just a bed for one night."
The kid looked at him for a long time. Dick could almost see the math happening behind those eyes. Then the kid's stomach growled and a flush of color crept up his neck.
"If you're lying," the kid murmured, "I'll kill you."
A statement of fact.
"Fair enough," Dick replied, and meant it.
Dick paid for the food. Dropped a twenty on the counter next to Dave's still-sleeping form and wrote FOOD — PAID on a Post-it note because Dave would definitely not remember any of this in the morning. Then he walked out to his car with a kid he'd known for thirty minutes.
In the car, he pulled out his phone. The kid, folded into the passenger seat with his knees drawn up, watched him with sharp eyes.
"I'm calling ahead. So no one's surprised. Okay?"
A nod.
Alfred picked up on the second ring, because Alfred always picked up, regardless of the hour, as if sleep were an optional inconvenience he'd long since dispensed with.
"Master Dick." The warmth in Alfred's voice was a relief so sharp it almost hurt. Five months of silence, and the man sounded like Dick had called yesterday. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Is everything alright?"
"Alfred. I'm bringing a guest. A kid. He needs a place to stay tonight." Dick glanced at the passenger seat. The kid was watching him, jaw tight, ready to bolt at the first wrong word. "He hasn't eaten properly in a while. Could you maybe put together something light? And, uhm… prepare one of the guest rooms?"
A pause. "Of course. I'll have something ready. And Master Dick: it's very good to hear your voice."
Dick's throat closed. "Yeah," he managed. "You too, Alfie. See you soon."
He hung up and started the car.
They were ten minutes into the drive when the kid unscrewed the peanut butter jar. No spoon, no knife. Just two fingers scooping peanut butter straight from the jar. He found the crackers in his hoodie pocket and ate those too, using the broken halves to scoop up more peanut butter, crumbs falling into his lap.
Dick kept his eyes on the road. Kept his hands steady on the wheel. Did not comment. Did not do anything that might make the kid stop eating, because the sound of this child feeding himself in the passenger seat of Dick's car was simultaneously the most normal and the most devastating thing he'd ever heard.
Gotham scrolled past the windows. The crumbling tenements of Crime Alley giving way to the mid-rises of downtown, then the manicured hedges of Bristol, then the long dark road that wound up through the trees to the gates. The kid watched it all with wide, unreadable eyes, licking peanut butter off his fingers.
Somewhere past the Bristol exit, the kid spoke.
"Jason."
Dick glanced over. "What?"
"My name." He was staring down at the half-empty peanut butter jar. "It's not Peter. It's Jason."
Dick nodded. "Jason. Okay. Thank you for telling me."
Jason screwed the lid back on the peanut butter jar and held it against his chest. When Dick glanced over again, the kid's eyes were closed.
Dick hadn't planned this. Hadn't woken up this morning thinking tonight I'm going to drive back to the Manor for the first time in five months with a child in my passenger seat. He'd spent those months being furious at Batman – at Bruce. Months of silence and pride and the righteous certainty that he was better off alone, that he didn't need the Manor or the mission or the man who'd raised him with one hand and held him at arm's length with the other. Months of telling himself that chapter was closed.
The gates of Wayne Manor opened automatically. Dick pulled up the long drive and parked. Cut the engine and sat for a moment, hands still on the wheel, letting himself breathe. The Manor loomed above them, dark except for one light in the study.
Jason startled awake at the silence. He blinked, disoriented, and then his eyes found the house and went wide.
"This is where your dad lives?" A whisper.
"Yeah."
"It's a goddamn castle."
Dick laughed. It came out shaky and wet and he didn't try to stop it. "Come on." He opened his door.
They climbed the stone steps together, Jason trailing half a step behind with the peanut butter jar clutched against his chest.
The front door opened before Dick could ring the bell.
Bruce stood in the doorway. He looked like he hadn't slept. But then, Bruce always looked like he hadn't slept, and it was rarely an illusion. He was in civilian clothes, sleeves rolled up, and his eyes went from Dick's face to the kid behind him and back again.
And then Bruce Wayne, the man Dick was still so angry at, stepped forward and pulled his son into a hug.
It wasn't graceful. His arms were too tight and the angle was wrong. But Bruce's hand came up to the back of Dick's head and held on, and Dick felt something in his chest crack open, like a fist that had been clenched so long the fingers had forgotten how to uncurl.
Dick hugged him back. Pressed his face into Bruce's shoulder for just a second. Months of pride and silence and pretending he was fine, and all it took was one solid, awkward, desperate hug to undo every bit of it.
"Hi, Dad," Dick mumbled against his shoulder, muffled and rough and nothing like how he'd imagined this going.
Bruce's arms tightened. "You're home."
Behind them, Jason stood frozen on the steps, watching with eyes the size of dinner plates.
Bruce let go. Turned to the kid. And Dick watched something happen on Bruce's face that he'd only seen once before.
"Hi." Quiet. Careful. Not soft, Bruce didn't really do soft, but something close. He didn't crouch down or make himself smaller. He just stood there, steady, and looked at the kid like he was the only thing in the world that mattered. "I'm Bruce. What's your name?"
"Jason." Barely audible.
"Alfred's in the kitchen, Jason. He's made soup. Are you hungry?"
Jason looked at Bruce. Looked at Dick. Looked at the warm light spilling through the open door.
"Yeah." His voice cracked. "I'm hungry."
"Then come inside."
Jason hesitated. Then he stepped over the threshold, still clutching the peanut butter jar.
Behind them, Alfred appeared in the hallway and the look he gave Dick was worth a thousand words, every one of which translated to I've already made up the guest room.
Dick watched Jason sit down at the kitchen table and wrap both hands around the bowl of soup like it was something holy. Watched Alfred set a napkin beside the bowl without comment. Watched Bruce pull out a chair and sit across from the kid, not too close, not too far, and simply be present.
Dick leaned against the kitchen doorframe and let out a breath he'd been holding for five months.