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Dick gulped in air, stepping out of the steaming shower. The air even out the shower had a moist quality to it that made him cringe.
Mildly, he wondered if Bruce had always been suicidal.The thought surprised him as he shimmied into his clothes. His skin, still damp, stuck to the fabric in an uncomfortable way.
It had always been unsaid, even unthought, before this. It lingered, the barrier that separated Bruce from everyone else. When someone doesn’t mind passing their life away, it shows. In the way he allowed himself to feel fleetingly, in little outbursts. Then, when those feelings grounded him too much in this life, he shut them off.
It was a part of him Dick never wanted to adopt.
“Grayson. I have completed the report.”
Dick opened the door with a neat little click. He always liked that particular door for the noise it made. Bruce always wanted everything silent and stealthy in the batcave. It was easier to forget you’re there in the middle of that silence - which had its pros, sure, but Dick was aware enough of his identity issues to hate it.
“Thanks Damian, I’ll have a look at it in a minute,” he said absentmindedly. In the breath after he finished his sentence, he knew he’d said something wrong. Damian corrected his posture, trying to seem unbothered even as his face flushed.
“My reports are always perfect. There is no need for you to review it.”
Dick stopped himself from sighing. The problem wasn’t that the boy was difficult, but that Dick needed to hold himself together in every regard so he wouldn’t traumatise the kid. He’d been through enough already without Dicks inevitable bullshit.
He really needed someone here. Anyone, really, to take the weight off, just for a while. Every part of him felt strained, like he’d been holding a pose too long.
“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” he said, trying to go for casually affectionate. “It’s more like B used to look over mine so I assumed it was the same system with every robin. Does he-” Dick broke off and took a breath. “Did he not keep that up with you?”
Damian’s face twitched at the change in tenses.
“No. He must have recognised I do not need such guidance.”
He spat out guidance like the concept was a great insult. Dick took another breath. He wasn’t ready to look after a kid, let alone one that was this traumatised.
“Maybe. I never really knew what was going on in his mind,” he said, more to himself. He wondered if Damian’s breath hitched at the praise or the obvious lie.
—-
So Bruce came back. And Dick teetered on the edge, looking B in the eyes while he did it.
How does it feel, he wanted to ask. To see me like I see you.
Another night, in another club. God he was lucky B was a billionaire. This kind of breakdown was the luxury kind; endless drink for him.
He loved clubs. The music was so loud, and people were everywhere, too drunk to truly give a shit. So Dick could happily shout out his problems in the middle of a crowd, even sing them if he liked the tune of a particular song. He could say things then that he would never say knowing the syllables could slip in someone’s ears.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.
“It’s not that I wish you stayed dead, but I wish you’d stop hovering when you have no intention whatsoever of staying alive!”
His phone buzzed again. And again. Groaning, he answered it.
“HELLO?” he yelled.
“Dude, you’ve got issues.”
“UH?”
Dick turned to see Connor wave at him. Oh. Right. Super-hearing. Whoops.
Even with a concerned look on his face, he had that smugness about him that Dick loved to see. It reminded him that Connor did want to live. He is here. And wants to be here.
“Are you gonna keep doing uh,” he imagined Connor would make a circular gesture with his hand in the pause. “Whatever you’re doing, or do you wanna come over?”
Dick paused. As fun as hanging out with his friend was, he had something that simmered inside him that just wasn’t done. Hanging out with a friend was too safe, too composed. It wasn’t what he needed.
“No, m’stayin,” he said, forgetting to yell. Connor nodded anyway.
“I’m here when you want me dude.”
The call ended before Dick could thank him. He was kind of glad. It felt ingenuine to thank someone for an offer he was never gonna take them up on.
—-
“Dick.”
“Bruce.”
The standoff had lasted three minutes and twenty nine seconds. Bruce wanted to know what was wrong with Dick but wouldn’t ask, and Dick wasn’t gonna say anything until Bruce asked.
Dick bit into an apple, the crunch being the loudest thing in the room. Jason sighed.
“What are they doing?” Damian asked, eyes narrowed as he entered the room.
“They’re doing the standoff thing again,” Jason responded, head still in hands.
“Again?”
Jason hummed. When he didn’t elaborate, Damian, frustrated, began to fidget.
“Did I miss something?”
“No?” Jason said, raising his eyebrows. “Oh!” he continued, clicking his fingers. “I forgot Dick got his shit together after me.”
Dick swallowed his bite and went for another, pausing with his mouth right over the apple after Jason spoke.
“It seems he hasn’t,” Bruce said.
“Oh, he speaks,” Dick said. For a second he debated putting the apple down on the counter, but then saw Bruce’s eyebrow twitch. He took another loud bite.
“Father, what is happening?”
Dick determinedly did not look in Damian’s direction. He had scheduled this breakdown when he could be away from Damian for a reason.
“Nothing, Da-”
“Dick has been acting out of control recently.”
Damian blinked, glancing between the two.
“Is this about the club event? I thought Grayson was scheduled to do that for his civilian persona.”
Bruce’s expression darkened at the mention. He seemed to be bubbling up, not able to get the words out.
“Ah, well, there’s protecting your civillian identity, and then there’s whatever the fuck Dickie was doing,” Jason quipped, sending Bruce a quick glance.
Dick gritted his teeth.
“Let’s have this conversation elsewhere, B.”
—----
Dick had always craved having the last word in their arguments. It gave him such a wonderful affirmation of his identity - someone who always wins in the end. A victor even in domestic spaces.
“You always acted like everything would kill you. Like, you’d sigh like it was like your last breath when anyone would ask anything of you. It’s not my fault I stopped believing in last breaths.”
He was shaking as he said it, furious with himself, furious with Bruce. Furious that he could become like that.
“You passed on Batman, whether you like it or not. You passed it on. And now I have to give everything, everything to it!” He took a staggered inhale, knuckles in the soil. “Oh god. I’m gonna end up like you,” he realised with horror.
Digging his nails into the dirt, he tried to ground himself. The dirt was moist, even the gravestone looked damp to the touch.
Breath coming quicker, a thought came into Dick’s head that the dirt in his nails was a part of Bruce. That he was tearing that part away.
Clawing at the inside of his nails, he tried to pat it back into the earth.
Why wasn’t Bruce yelling at him? He should’ve been in Dick’s face by now, condescending and cold, shouting about giving it all. What giving it all meant.
It didn’t mean shit to Dick. At least, he didn’t want it to mean anything to him.
“People like you don’t die,” he whispered. “You want to so bad that death is disgusted with you. You…”
He trailed off. He hated that there wasn’t another voice to bounce off, nowhere to direct this hopeless feeling.
—-
“Dick, we have moved elsewhere.”
Dick sighed.
“Do I have to start this conversation?”
“Why are you acting like you are a teenager again?” Bruce asked, voice carefully blank.
Dick swallowed.
“‘Cos someone died and left me with all their problems,” he whispered, heart aching even as he said it. Bruce got blurry as tears started to fall. “B why can’t you be alive?”
“I’m here, chum. I’m here.”
“I know,” Dick said. “But you don’t want to be.”