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The connection worked perfectly.
The image on the screen in front of him was crystal clear, the audio transmitted by the tiny microphone in Dick’s front pocket better than that of most professional radio shows. The van was parked two streets down from the sleazy teen club Dick was investigating tonight. It was a non-committal shade of black with enough dents and scratches in the paint job to make it unappealing to steal.
Not that Gotham’s car thieves would have a good time trying to attempt it, considering that Batman was holding silent vigil inside.
The cowl fit tighter today than it usually did.
Bruce had to suppress the urge to scratch his forehead along the edges of the reinforced kevlar. Sweat irritated his skin, nervous ticks he had trained himself out of years ago suddenly resurfacing. The chair he was sitting on was uncomfortable, the van not tall enough for his hulking frame. He had to hunch to see the security footage on the screen to his left from a good angle, and if Dick were with him right now, he would surely be laughing about Bruce’s pathetic attempt to appear smaller for the rest of the night.
But that was the problem.
Dick wasn’t with him tonight.
Dick was down two streets, around a corner, behind the doors to a club that smelled of illegal alcohol and teenaged body odor. Just a few minutes ago, Dick had assured him that the stink of Axe body spray was so strong that he feared he would never stop smelling it.
Bruce had wanted to laugh at Dick’s silly antics to ease his panic, but the fear had turned the appreciation of his partner’s wit into a deep grunt. On the other end of their connection, Bruce had actually heard Dick roll his eyes.
It couldn’t be helped.
Considering the mission they were on, there was no chance in hell that Bruce would do anything but silently fret. He should be in there with Dick mixing with the teenage crowd, trying to move to the unshapen sounds of what today’s youth liked to call music. But unlike his partner – unlike his Robin – Bruce wasn’t 5 ft 1” and slender. Instead, he stood at a hulking 6 ft 4” with shoulders so broad Dick liked to use them in his acrobatics training – as a warm up before advancing to the more precarious holds and ledges dotting the Cave.
Unlike Dick, Bruce also wasn’t thirteen years old and in the prime age range of interest to their current target.
Malcolm “Panther” McCoy was a low-life, and a drug dealer, and a human trafficker.
He was also infuriatingly good at what he did.
They had watched him snatch up young boys and girls multiple times now, only to lose sight of him not moments after witnessing him commit a crime. Whenever the police – or they – tried to move in on him, he was suddenly gone, vanished like a gust of cold air. And so was his human merchandise.
Last month, a classmate of Dick’s had disappeared. The tiny girl that Dick had been on the mathletes with – Bruce mostly just remembered her parents for being horribly exhausting during PTA meetings.
After that, the case turned personal.
Watching Dick move through the crowd with the practiced ease of a born performer, Bruce wished he had remained strong against Dick’s demands. Using Robin as bait sounded good in theory – they had superior tech, Superman on standby, and unlike the countless kids who had fallen prey to Malcolm so far, Dick was actually trained in closed combat (and more than ten martial arts).
Bruce wanted to throw up. The leather of his gloves creaked when he clenched his fists.
Dick was only thirteen. Yes, he might be Robin and highly trained, skilled beyond most adult heroes, but—
On screen, a girl a few years older bumped into Dick. Bruce immediately noticed the change in her microexpressions when her eyes (dark brown, framed by thick eyelashes) fell onto Dick: her pupils dilated, her cheeks flushed, her tongue darted out to lick her lips. That was another reason Dick demanded it had to be him: he was pretty. For a kid.
Midnight black hair, hauntingly pretty blue eyes, and a face that could morph from strange to familiar and lovely in a matter of seconds.
Dick had been trained in how to be beautiful long before Bruce first met him. His years under Batman’s care had only perfected the craft. When they’d first met – Bruce awkwardly into his second year as Batman, Dick grief-stricken and smiling through it – Dick had been the one who’d taught him how to effortlessly switch between the truth and the things strangers wanted to see in you.
Sometimes Bruce wondered if he should have put a stop to it, back when it was still possible to.
If he should have taken Dick aside and told him that there was no one worth grinning for when the pain was big enough to swallow him whole. Not that it mattered now. Instead of doing the responsible thing – the fatherly thing – Bruce had asked a child how to get better at it.
And now Dick was in a club, make-up distorting his features slightly, dressed in dark jeans and a t-shirt that kept slipping down his shoulder, trying to honey pot a dangerous criminal.
Bruce changed the camera angle of the security footage. The crowd was a moving, pulsing thing. So far, he hadn’t spotted their target. His hair stuck to the nape of his neck. He cracked each joint in his fingers individually. The bad feeling in his gut intensified.
“I see him.” Dick’s whisper reached him loud and clear.
Pulling up Dick’s camera (hidden in the gem of his earring), Bruce tried to see what his charge had already spotted. The flashing light switching between green, blue, and red didn’t help. Bruce methodically scanned the faces of the strangers crowding Dick. Too young, a girl, the mustache was all wrong, a child— There, by the bar. A tall man with a fedora. He looked out of place simply by being easily ten years older than even the oldest of the teens in the room with him.
“Don’t— hng.” He cut himself off before he could say something stupid.
“I’ll be careful, B. I promise.”
Dick was almost frighteningly emotionally intelligent.
Alfred always said at least one of them had to be. Bruce was forced to agree. And they all knew it wouldn’t be Bruce who suddenly learned how to express his emotions verbally.
Before he was ready, Bruce watched as Dick moved in on his target.
With more than three years out in the streets Dick carried himself with the rigid professionalism of a seasoned vigilante. Not even fear could mellow out Bruce’s pride at the sight of Dick’s pure skill. The crowd parted like butter to let Dick saunter towards the bar.
The keyboard complained when Bruce pushed down hard to change the angle of the security camera once again. Its plastic keys weren’t built to withstand the force of Bruce’s anxiety. The chair creaked when Bruce shifted in his seat. Counting to ten silently, he tried to get himself back under control.
He wasn’t used to feeling like this.
When they were sneaking across Gotham’s rooftops fighting villains in dank alleys and abandoned warehouses, Batman wasn’t afraid for Robin. He trusted his partner completely. Anything else, and their relationship wouldn’t work: if Batman couldn’t rely on Robin to take care of himself, his worry would become a hindrance. A danger to them both.
But now, with Bruce locked up in a van more than a hundred yards away from Dick, not Robin—
He swallowed. The collar of his cape bit into the skin of his neck.
Dick reached the bar. Bruce watched from three different angles. Careful not to look at Malcolm directly, Dick managed to catch the attention of the bartender. A slightly older teen herself (maybe 16 or 17), she didn’t even blink at Dick’s obvious youth. Instead, she pulled a bottle of cheap beer out from underneath the counter and pushed it towards him. He laughed when he accepted the drink, a pro at pulling open the tap and taking a sip that looked real but wasn’t.
Bruce had seen him do this trick a million times by now, had taught him how to do it during Dick’s very first Gala as his ward, yet the sight still filled him with wrongness.
The security camera showed Malcolm’s growing interest in Dick in full HD. The man pulled his fedora deeper into his face, his features hidden, before slinking towards Dick like a cat on the prowl. There was a reason they called him Panther. Bruce’s gut churned.
Exchanging small talk with the bartender, Dick didn’t turn towards Malcolm until the very last second when long fingers came to rest on Dick’s shoulder – the naked one, t-shirt once again halfway down his upper arm.
Dick didn’t flinch, but Bruce did.
“Hey.” Malcolm’s voice was pure honey, sticky and smooth. “You like beer?”
Dick turned to look at him, the camera in his earring capturing Malcolm’s elegant nose and the mole under his right eye. Bruce shuddered at the leering smile clinging to Malcolm’s lips. “You could say that, yeah.”
There was a twinge of nerves clinging to Dick’s words – theater, Bruce was well aware.
“Should I buy you another one?” Malcolm asked.
It wasn’t really a question.
“You would do that?” Dick giggled, the crack in his voice another layer to his performance. “That’s super sweet of you.”
“Of course.”
Malcolm signalled the bartender, his left hand still lingering on Dick’s shoulder.
The shift key on the keyboard broke. Bruce was just glad he hadn’t given into the urge to throw the entire screen across the van. Malcolm made him want to hit things, worse, he made Bruce reconsider his own principles. How Dick could ignore the lingering touches without wanting to claw Malcolm’s eyes out—
Then again, in the name of the mission, Batman and Robin had withstood worse things.
Somehow, the distance made it harder to just be Batman – watching Dick, in civilian clothes, instead of Robin in his kevlar vest and pixie boots, didn’t help. He might be wearing the Cowl, but right now, he was Bruce Wayne.
He was Dick Grayson’s guardian, Robin’s partner was nowhere to be found.
Taking a calming breath, Bruce focused on the scene in front of him again.
Dick fiddled with the label of the beer bottle, the paper slowly disintegrating between his restless fingers. Every so often, he would shoot a coy glance in Malcolm’s direction, hidden by his long eyelashes (Dick had applied mascara before going out). Malcolm kept prattling on about the baseball game last night and the selection of music being played at the club tonight. Neither Bruce nor Dick were really listening.
Malcolm’s hand had wandered lower down Dick’s back.
Dick knew more than twenty-five different methods of breaking an assailant’s fingers – Bruce was steadily going through the forty methods he was proficient in while forced to watch.
“And you—” Dick giggled again, using the bustle of the crowd to shift closer towards Malcolm. “And you’d really take me to a baseball game? For the Gotham Knights? They’re my favorite team, I would love to—”
Alcohol a cover Bruce himself had used more than once, Dick imitated lowered inhibitions to press his face against the paisley print of Malcolm’s shirt. On one of the smaller screens to his right, blinking lights indicated that the trackers had been placed.
The base objective of their mission had been fulfilled.
“If you want an extraction, Robin, you can use the code word at any point.” Bruce used his best Batman growl. After years of working together, it was not enough to hide the worry in his voice.
On screen, Dick didn’t react. Instead, he leaned harder onto Malcolm. “It’s like— so loud in here.”
There was a slur to his voice.
Bruce’s heart stopped.
Dick wasn’t actually drunk. He knew how to fake drinking, and he knew how to fake intoxication. But what if Malcolm had drugged him while Bruce was busy checking the security footage? What if Dick was actually in danger, not just because of a lingering hand but because Bruce had willingly let him walk into the den of a known human trafficker?
“Robin.” Batman asked, “Do you need extraction?”
“If you want, we can get out of here.” Malcolm leaned closer towards Dick. The earring cam showed exclusively Malcolm’s lower face and neck as he brushed his lips over the edge of Dick’s earlobe.
The worry in Bruce’s gut turned into a tight ball. His teeth hurt, the clench of his jaw painful.
“Robin. Answer me.”
“I—” Dick giggled again, Bruce unsure if the nervous edge was real or not. “Can we really leave together? Just like that?”
It wasn’t the code phrase.
It wasn’t what Bruce wanted to hear.
“Just like that,” Malcolm reassured. “I have so many baseball cards at my apartment. Some of them even signed. I’d love to show them to you.”
It was crude as far as kidnapping covers went, but if he drugged his victims beforehand, the excuse didn’t have to be good.
“Then let’s go.”
Bruce couldn’t see Dick’s face, none of the cameras angled in a way that allowed for him to catch a glimpse of his charges’ expression, and yet he knew Dick was grinning. Dick always grinned to hide his fear and anxiety. It was big and shiny, and it showed teeth.
He followed them on the security cameras as Malcolm guided Dick towards the back exit of the club. The bastard had his filthy hand on Dick’s hip, the rage cursing through Bruce’s body indistinguishable from fear. Only a word from Dick, and Bruce would be bursting through the doors of the club, ready to save him.
Dick remained stubbornly silent even as they moved through the crowd.
Instead, Bruce watched as Dick stumbled, his head lolling slightly. Malcolm caught him, none of the teens on the dancefloor noticing anything amiss. They were almost at the door.
Chair forcefully pushed back, Bruce ignored the clank of metal hitting metal as it crashed against the back wall of the van. His entire focus was on the screens in front of him, on the lack of feedback from Robin directly. He had a bad feeling about this – no, he was sure something had gone horribly wrong.
“Robin.” Bruce switched to the camera on the other side of the door. “Robin. I am moving in.”
The security footage cut out.
“Fuck.” Bruce rarely swore, but the fear erased any other word from his mind. Tremors made his fingers shake as he switched cameras again.
Again, the feed cut out.
Heartbeat fast enough to drown out the rest of the world, Bruce could do nothing but watch as the camera connected to Dick’s earring started to fizz. The image of the dirty alley behind the club turned fuzzy, blurry, until static had overtaken the screen and everything went black.
No matter what combination of keys he pressed, the cameras wouldn’t turn back on.
The connection was dead.
Pressing down on the comm unit in his ear, silence greeted him. No background music from the club, no nonsense muttered by Malcolm, no steady breathing from Dick. Nothing.
Cold sweat ran down his back, an iron band of fear slowly constricting his chest.
He had fought Bane and the Joker, the Riddler and Cobblepot – Dick had faced Two-Face and the Mad Hatter and Harley Quinn.
Somehow this was worse.
Because Batman wasn’t at Robin’s side. Because Bruce wasn’t there to look out for his charge. His partner.
His kid.
The door of the van hit the brick wall of the alley with a dull thud. Bruce didn’t care – what was another dent in the paint job when Dick’s life was in danger? The look on his face was severe when he sprinted down the streets towards the club.
Why the hell had he parked so far away?
What if he was too late?
He couldn’t be too late.
(they still had the trackers)
(the trackers had to work, at least)
(Bruce hadn’t checked before he started to run)
Screaming teenagers jumped out of his way when he rounded the corner. Like this, Batman was a tank. A horror story shared at sleepovers. A phantom made real. Their fear was like fuel to Bruce. He ran even faster.
Dick had to be alright.
He would never forgive himself if Dick actually ended up in the clutches of a monster like Malcolm. They still didn’t know how he made his victims disappear. Dammit. How could they have been so stupid? Why had Bruce ever even considered doing this in the first place?
Each thump of his boots against the asphalt sent another agonizing question racing through his mind. Bruce knew worry, but never before had he worried like this for someone else. For Dick.
Every time he blinked, he saw Malcolm’s lingering hand on Dick’s naked shoulder.
His imagination was busy painting a horror show for him to walk in on.
The back alley behind the club came into view, two graffiti covered trash containers hiding the back door. Fists raised ready for attack, Batman jumped over them. His cape flared out in the shape of a bat. Somewhere in the distance, a police siren wailed.
Criminals had pissed themselves in fear at this sight.
Dick only blinked at him, head slightly angled as he silently judged Bruce’s dramatic entrance.
The world didn’t make sense anymore.
Heart beating painfully in his chest, throat dry as he swallowed repeatedly, Bruce could do little but stare at Dick. Dick, who was alright. Dick, who had pulled the sleeve of his t-shirt back up so his shoulder was covered. Dick, who was sitting on top of an unconscious, worse-for-wear Malcolm McCoy.
“What–” Bruce started, only to choke on the question.
“He tried to get into my pants.” Dick was mostly bravado at this point, real pride mixing with a sadness Bruce knew from himself. “So I— you know, that kick Selina taught me? Yeah, I used that one. And the nerve strike Deathstroke showed me. And— then I just hit him really hard. A few times. Just to make sure.”
He was grinning. It was filled with teeth.
Bruce still saw the tears hiding in his eyes, the exhaustion pulling at the edges of his small shoulders.
Dick was so young.
Dropping his arms out of their defensive stance, Batman turned back into Bruce. His voice was soft when he spoke, the relief real. “Come here, chum. You did good.”
Dick hit him like a freight train, thin arms strong when they hugged Bruce tight.
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Oh, you are the absolute best.”
Clutching Dick against his body, his kid couldn’t see the suspicious wetness hiding in the corners of Bruce’s eyes. Dick just felt Bruce’s strength. Meanwhile, Bruce allowed himself to sink into the bottomless well of his relief.
It was a simple truth, really: Batman and Robin were stronger together.