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It was dawn by the time he got back from patrol, the sun making its tentative return to chase Gotham's darkness back into its corners and alleyways to rest up for another night. His climb out of the Batmobile was weary, and even once he was on his feet, he wavered, staring down at the cowl in the passenger's seat. He'd taken it off once he'd hit Bristol, as he always did when he was alone. Now that Bruce was alive again - god, his heart still jumped in relief at the thought - wearing the suit no longer felt like dressing himself in his - his… in Bruce's skin. Now it just felt like putting on a costume, one that didn't fit, for a role he wasn’t prepared - didn’t want - to assume.
What was it the Joker had said? I smell feathers?
“No,” Dick said the word out loud, a sharp rebuke to the wanderings of his own mind. The Joker was back in Arkham, where he belonged, and Dick wasn’t giving him real estate in his head. Not now, not ever.
He retrieved the cowl and carried it into the main part of the Cave, setting it down on one of the rolling metal tables. Then he stripped out of the armor piece by piece until he was down to the thin Kevlar-fabric body suit. Even at its best, its most thin, it wasn’t nearly as flexible as the Nightwing suit, but it at least felt a little closer to being in his own body again.
Bruce would have done the computer reports in full uniform, including the cowl.
The thought came without prompting, as it always did; and, as he always did, Dick tried to let it run over him before it could sink its claws in, even as its skittering nails scrambled for purchase against prickling flesh. Having Damian with him had made it easier, in many ways: Dames was, well, a miniature version of Bruce a lot of the time, but he was also ten, and something about having comparisons to Bruce put to him in the kid’s trademark imperious tone had declawed them, even before the two of them had worked out a rhythm that had made Damian’s remarks more like (extremely veiled but no less sincere) compliments. It was always worse coming from his own head, where there was no ignorance of any kind to plead. Damian hadn’t even known Bruce, really, only the mythos, the shadow of him. Dick -
Well.
He rotated the cowl on the table so that its lenses were facing the car, away from the computer, before he went to sit down.
The report he had to type up tonight was grim. James Gordon Jr. - Babs’ brother - had left a trail of bodies around Gotham, ranging from old classmates he’d spent years hating to waitresses he must have known for only a few minutes before deciding to end their lives. The work was slow, retracing his steps to find each of his victims. Tonight, he’d spent hours examining the evidence of James’ extended time with Ben Wolff before phoning it in, delaying in part because he knew who would come to collect the evidence, knew the ridges and lines it would etch more deeply into the Commissioner’s face.
It was time to detach, he reminded himself. Emotion had no part to play in recording facts, even when those facts were that Ben Wolff had died slowly and painfully, the pieces of himself gathered around him in measured increments, until finally all that had really been left to him was his tongue, and that probably just so that his captor could hear him beg.
Or scream.
Dick’s fingers stuttered on the keyboard; he’d just written, victim’s left eye appeared to have been removed some time before the right, and his stomach, in turn, had done a tight little flip. And then it did another, and Dick pushed back away from the computer and to his feet, because it was always better when he was on his feet, when he could move. But it didn't help this time and, instinctively, his right hand moved to his left wrist, to the pressure point there, and he shoved his thumb into it.
Breathe, Dickie, he could hear his dad saying, only Bruce's voice overlaid his father's in his brain, and for a moment he could almost feel Bruce's thumb brushing against his forearm, right where it had rested when they'd sat together after the first time Dick ever saw a dead body as Robin.
Obviously he was too fucking tired for this.
He turned back to the computer, saving his report without looking and closing the program. Sometime tomorrow, Bruce - fastidious no matter where he was or what he was doing - would comm him to lecture him about the importance of not leaving reports to sit any longer than was absolutely necessary, but.
Well.
Bruce was alive to do that, so.
He didn’t look back at the cowl, just headed straight to the showers. The water pressure in the Cave was divine, and Dick stood under it for a long time, motionless, letting it pummel against his muscles. Usually he closed his eyes, but he knew what waited for him on the inside of his eyelids; instead, he stared at the tile, letting his vision go in and out of focus, letting his mind drift. Bruce had tried to teach him centering techniques and, sometimes, if the situation was really dire, he could conjure up the willpower. But the situation wasn’t dire now, and he didn’t really know if he had the right to let himself off the hook anyway, when Ben’s blood was still staining his hands.
He got out of the shower not long after that encouraging thought.
The Cave was always stocked in a way that accommodated visitors, expected and otherwise, although refreshing the supply of downtime clothes hadn’t exactly been anybody’s priority in the last year. The clothing on Dick’s shelf smelled musty, but it wasn’t the end of the world. He pulled on a pair of sweats and, foregoing the shirt entirely, a loose-fitting hoodie that he could shed once he got up to his room. It was a hoodie he’d gotten in Aspen, on a ski trip with Jason a hundred years ago, and it brought a weight with it, settling hard across his shoulders. But it was soft inside, and warm, and it made the corners of Dick’s lips twitch upward anyway. He hadn’t - with Jason. He hadn’t done enough. He knew that. But the ski trip was at least something. Something that hadn’t turned sour, even now.
He climbed the steps to the Manor, came through the clock into Bruce’s study, kept moving. He’d spent enough time in the past tonight, and now what he really needed was to sleep. Or, barring that, a nature documentary. There were plenty to choose from, and Dick was content enough with whatever, as long as it didn’t have any people in it.
He’d almost made it to his room when the soft glow of light under the door tipped him off.
Tim.
It wasn’t that it was a surprise, exactly. Tim had been around: the Manor occasionally, patrol less frequently. They were all trying to adjust to the new normal Bruce was working to establish, and it was taking time, and Dick could already feel the pinch starting at the base of his spine, the one that said his time following Bruce’s lead was coming to a bitter end, although most days he could ignore it because of the sheer ecstatic joy of having Bruce here at all. Here speaking generally, of course. Here, as in alive, and there was a time - a long time - when Dick had thought that if he got that, he’d never ask Bruce for anything else ever again. It hadn’t even been that long ago.
A lot of things hadn’t really been that long ago.
He went to the door and pushed it open.
The room wasn’t his original room; nothing in the Manor was really original anymore, after the earthquake. But Bruce had taken great pains to recreate the room the way it had been when Dick had left it. Dick’s eyes caught immediately, as they always did, on the Flying Graysons poster, framed and hung over his bed: him and his parents, frozen at the top of the trapeze, grinning and waving. He’d been at most four at the time, so he didn’t remember taking the picture. But it had always seemed somehow separate from that final show, in a way that many of their other promotional materials still didn’t.
Underneath that picture, taking up an injudiciously large portion of the four-poster bed, was his little brother, still dressed in slacks and a button-up, the tie he’d been wearing hanging from the lamp next to him. Tim’s cuffs were undone, and one of his hands was buried in a bag of Cheeto Puffs. When he withdrew it, prize in tow, Dick’s eyes went unerringly to the tips of his fingers, which were coated in the cheesy powder.
“Dude,” he said, pushing the door shut behind him. “In my bed?”
Tim shrugged unrepentantly, waving the puff over the rest of the bed. “Your side’s fine.”
“My side,” Dick repeated dryly. “Of my bed.”
In answer, Tim popped the puff into his mouth whole.
Dick lunged.
He wasn’t bothering not to telegraph, and Tim knew him well enough to be prepared for retaliation, so it took Dick a solid five minutes of effort to get Tim in a headlock. By that time, the bed was a mess: pillows and blankets and, probably more urgently, Cheetos everywhere. Tim, still wiggling and not yet resigned to his fate, protested, “This is better?”
“Not yet it isn’t, you little shit,” Dick retorted, experimentally loosening his hold to try to get a hand free to impart the nuggie that would make it better.
But Tim had been waiting for the opening and, in an instant, he had Dick on his back, staring up at the ceiling, a Cheeto crunching beneath him. One pointy elbow dug into Dick's rib cage as Tim pushed triumphantly away from him.
It wasn’t that Dick couldn’t retaliate. He could; Tim was leaving him plenty of room.
But.
Shit.
He hadn’t known Tim's next move.
It sat heavy in the pit of his stomach and spread outward, shifting the moment before Dick even really understood why. Tim had spent so much time away from him, out of contact, on his own; and things had changed. It used to be he knew every move in his brother's repertoire, but he hadn’t known that trick, or even that Tim could twist his body like that. He tried to stop himself from wondering why Tim had needed to learn it, and who might have taught him and under what circumstances, but his brain was already tumbling down that path.
Tim, meanwhile, had pulled himself up and, probably sensing the change in Dick's mood, didn't say anything. Dick could see him in his peripherals, plucking loose Cheetos off the bed and returning them to the rumpled bag, leaving little spots of cheese powder all over the sheets and blankets in their wake. He stopped to dig one out of his hair, muttering a curse under his breath.
Dick lifted his head enough to look at him then. His hair was long these days, down to his shoulders; another change. It was a wonder Bruce hadn’t insisted he get it cut yet. Then again, maybe there was some benefit to playing up the whole emancipated minor but still definitely a minor angle to the CEO bit, until whatever plans Bruce had in play let Tim off the hook from that role. He resolved to plant the idea of skateboarding to work into Tim’s head at the earliest opportunity.
Tim caught his gaze, held it for a few uncertain seconds, and then leaned back and snagged a remote off the bedside table, clicking the button that lowered the television from the ceiling. Dick tilted his head back to watch its descent, and then to watch Tim adjust the angle. “I found a documentary,” Tim said. “About elephants. It’s called The Elephant Queen.”
“Sounds good,” Dick said, and pulled himself up, brushing the Cheetos that had been underneath him off onto the floor. He scooted around until he and Tim were side-by-side at the head of the bed, taking up roughly the same amount of space, and then leaned backwards against the headboard as Tim scrolled through streaming services to find the documentary in question. “You got any other snacks?”
“Popcorn?” Tim asked, as he queued up the video and put the remote back down.
“Sure,” Dick said.
Tim leaned over his side of the bed and dropped the rumpled Cheetos bag to the floor, then sat back up, holding a full-sized bag of some of the sugary-sweet popcorn Dick loved. He passed it to Dick wordlessly.
“Always prepared,” Dick said lightly; it was, after all, kind of their family’s motto. Then, jokingly, “What else do you have over there, anyway?”
Tim’s face lit up in a deep flush. All at once, he was thirteen again. “Nothing,” he said.
And, well, the thing of it was, Tim just wasn’t a convincing liar. Not as far as Dick was concerned, anyway. His lies all depended on subterfuge, the kind of distortion of truth that wasn’t really a lie from a certain point of view. “Really?” he asked wryly. “So if I looked over there, there wouldn’t be anything else to see?”
“I,” Tim said, squirming once before settling back into forced stillness. “May have brought a few things up. To make things easier.”
It hit Dick then, like one of Croc's punches straight to the gut. This was Tim when he wasn’t sure of his welcome. Prepared: not just to get Dick through the wind down after a terrible case but also for the possibility of rejection.
There were words. Things Dick could say, or try to say. But in some ways, it felt like words were what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. Tim had never asked before; he’d always just shown up, curling up in Dick’s bed or on his couch or on the floor, whatever. And Dick had never addressed it, had just let it happen, settling into the routine of being a big brother. It was a routine he wasn’t quitting, not now, not ever.
“Zesti?” he asked.
Some of the tension went out of Tim’s shoulders: only a little, but enough to affirm Dick’s course of action. He leaned over the edge of the bed again, reappearing with two cans, one of which he passed to Dick with a warning: “You know this has caffeine, right?”
“It’s like six in the morning,” Dick pointed out, popping the can’s lid.
“TGIF,” Tim said wryly, opening his and taking a healthy swig.
“It’s Wednesday.”
“Any day’s Friday if you’re the boss,” Tim retorted.
“Temporary boss?”
“God, I hope,” Tim put his can down on the bedside table. “Share some of that popcorn.”
The popcorn and documentary consumed their attention for a while after that. The documentary followed the matriarch of an elephant herd as she made decisions on behalf of her herd and, more personally, her two daughters. Like any good nature documentary, there was plenty of projection, but without any human characters, it still worked well to settle Dick’s nervous system and shift the trauma of the night to the background of his mind.
Tim, who had never seen a movie that he couldn’t fall asleep to in Dick’s memory, started dozing as soon as they stopped eating. There was no tension at all to him anymore, and he didn’t even bother to move to brush free the stray popcorn kernels scattered across the front of his button-up. Dick chanced another glance at him, and was so overwhelmed by the sudden wave of affection that he could have melted under it. It caught him off-guard sometimes, how young Tim still was. So young to have to shoulder so much responsibility, to do so much by himself to get Bruce back while Dick stayed here walking around in Bruce’s proverbial skin. God. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to -
“Dick,” Tim said, without moving at all. Even his eyelids, perched at half-mast, stayed still. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t even say anything,” Dick protested.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Tim grumbled. He pointed at the television. “Elephants.”
With an amused huff, Dick returned his attention to the television, where the elephants in question were on the move again. Tim shifted minutely towards him, so that there were points of contact between them: their knees, their shoulders. Finding Dick again, slotting back into place as easily as if they’d never shifted away from each other to begin with.
The next time Dick looked over at him, he was asleep, his breathing low and even, his face turned ever-so-slightly in Dick’s direction, his lips parted just a little. Home. Safe. Here.
And by the time the credits rolled, Dick was asleep too.