Yesterday, upon the stair (A Batman fic)
Title: Yesterday, upon the stair
Fandom: Batman
Summary: Dick loves people. Dick loves his little brother. So what's different? What's wrong?
Rating: PG
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Timothy Drake
Notes:I've messed around with the timeline a little, in that Tim was officially adopted by Bruce when he was a much younger child than he was in canon.
Warnings: Angst. I don't even know what happened with this. I am so sorry, idek.
This is kind of AU, in terms of Tim. He's still the same Timmers, he's just....wired a little skewed up there.
Disclaimer: I do not own Batman or any of his affiliated group of adorable family.
Dick loves people. He loves to be around them, to talk to them, sometimes to just sit and be with them. He needs to feel that little spark of whatever it is that trips up and down his spine and through his belly whenever he is around people, people that he feels drawn to, people that he wants to draw more out of.
The time he spends with the collection of people that make up the fractured and imperfect family unit that are all each of them has. The sharp, warm little pinpricks that this time sends dancing across his skin. This is what makes Dick. This is what shapes him, moulds him, pushes him to all those myriad decisions he makes in a day, be they as the trust-fund baby with the constant smile, or the creeping, silent figure that cuts through the stars at night, the shadow that flickers and moves when the wind does. The one that you’re never quite sure you did see.
This is what drives Dick. This is who Dick is; he attracts. He pulls and he clasps and he keeps. Dick doesn’t repulse, Dick doesn’t know that force, that direction.
Tim repulses Dick. And God if that doesn’t gall him to the point where he can taste a bitter, burning ash on the tip of his tongue, doesn’t make him sick with a guilt that gnaws at his belly and sends a cold and biting fluid coursing through his veins.
Because...it was Tim. Little Timmy. He was only a kid. Small, skinny, painfully shy Timmy who was probably too clever for his own good.
Timmy who didn’t understand things that every child should understand. Timmy who stood and stared up at Dick with large, blank eyes when he had tried to explain the traditions of gift-giving and Halloween and children’s parties, and...things that no child should ever have to have explained to them.
Timmy who sat and stared front and centre with glazed and empty eyes for hours at a time. Timmy who would follow docilely wherever he was led, regardless of who it was that took him by the hand.
Timmy who sprawled on the ground with limbs flung out from his body at all angles, limp, like a puppet with cut strings, gazing down vacantly at the blood of a grazed knee, a cut - and once, to Dick’s horror - a broken finger. Who didn’t pick himself up when he fell, who simply sat, staring, always staring, until he finally blinked up at whoever happened to find him. Sometimes Dick wondered how long Tim would sit and stare if nobody found him, nobody noticed him.
Dick quickly stops wondering these things.
He stops wondering about a lot of things. He doesn’t like thinking about some things.
He doesn’t like thinking about what Tim sees when he stares for hours at the sunlight glinting through the dust.
He doesn’t like thinking about what Tim sees when his eyes flicker and twitch up, up right up into the highest corners of the ceiling, the darkest spots on the floor, anywhere, anywhere but into the eyes of someone who is speaking to him.
He doesn’t like thinking about what kind of friends lurk in the shadows of the manor, and what words they must whisper, what echoes must drift through the keyholes, to draw out in the latest hours of the night, toddling little footsteps that can be heard to patter in a childish, playful rhythm. The steps to which Tim’s small, clumsy feet would not be able to retrace in the warm, solid light of day.
e doesn’t like thinking about who or what Tim’s eyes see when Dick looks out into the cold air of the hallway to see the small, immobile figure standing, frozen in perfect stillness, apart from the head that tilts up and up and up, and the hand that twitches at his side.
When Bruce comes to gently lead him back to bed, these actions, this pose, they make sense. Even Dick has to crane his neck to look up at Bruce when the man stands right beside him, and although he has far outgrown the habit, he remembers how his hand used to twitch in the larger one that engulfed his whenever Bruce stooped to hold his hand.
But when there is nobody to stand beside you, who do you look up at?
Dick wants to shake him sometimes, to ask him that. ‘What are you staring at? Who do you whisper to at night?’ Dick always feels the hot burn of shame whenever these images leap, unbidden, into his mind. Most of the time, he manages to screw the images up into a tiny ball, shred them before they have even been fully formed, but sometimes, when all his resources are drained, when he has far outrun his limit, they seep through the cracks.
At breakfast, after a difficult patrol, pale and faintly sick from tiredness, he will stare, unaware and uninterrupted, across the table at the small - too small - child sitting across from him, sitting with shoulders hunched, lips pursed tight and bloodless, large, dark eyes whispering secrets to people and places - monsters and shadows - that the rest of them will never know.
Then, those sharp, bright images will come to him, urging him to spring up from his seat, to grab those bony, frail shoulders, to shake and to yell into that round, blank little face until something, anything, comes pouring out of it. Answers, words, words addressed to him, full words, sentences, not the fragmented, whispered half-words that flutter on the still air before presumably being snatched by the pointed claws and the clammy hands that waited in the shadows for his little brother.
He needed to ask, he could see himself asking, and he was terrified that one of these days he is going to find Bruce’s arms wrapped around him, pulling him away, because he has finally broken and asked all those questions - what’s wrong with you? Are you hungry, bored? Are you in pain? Are you shy? What are you all tensed up about? What’s wrong with you?
The idea that he has such rage, such disquiet and anger, channelled towards this helpless, broken little boy, his little brother, fills him with a deep and rushing shame.
Sometimes, he pulls the boy close to him, clasps him tightly between his arms, traps him to his chest, and simply holds on, squeezing tightly, so tightly with the hope that if he holds on long enough, the figure in his arms will relent, become warm and supple. And that Dick will stop feeling this cold, repulsive energy trickle from the boy’s skin and hair into his own bloodstream. That he will be able to feel something other than a heartbreak that is not strong enough to override the instinct inside that screams at him to let go, push away, run away. He is not like you, he is not one of you, he is strange, he is other, other, other, let go.
Dick wishes he could overcome this, throw out the voices and the oozing cold and repulsion as easily as Tim appears to. Because he loves his little brother. He just can’t stand to be near him.
***
Dick lingered outside the study door, the solid oak making him feel ten years old again, loitering anxiously, empty glass clutched tightly in hand, excuse at the tip of his tongue - I’m thirsty, can I please have a glass of water? - when really, all he wanted, all he had ever wanted, was to just sit, sit and be with this man who was everything to him, was all he had, was the only God in Dick’s life, and one whose altar Dick fervently worshipped at.
Shaking his head, sending those uneasy thoughts scattering, he raised his fist and knocked on the sturdy, ancient door.
“Come in.” It was a familiar, deep rumble; smoother than Batman, lower than Brucie and so quintessentially Bruce that it never failed to reassure him. The voice held a hint of enquiry, always somehow warm and encouraging. Like whoever you were, whatever you had to say, he was interested, he was listening. You would have his undivided attention.
Dick’s mouth quirked up into a crooked, little-boy smile, his shoulders slumped a little from where they had been held pushed back and upright. He nudged the door open and inched his head around the frame.
The crook of Dick’s lips softens into a proper smile as he sees the bent head, the broad shoulders pouring over the desk, and suddenly Dick feels himself shrink a few feet, right back to the age when this sight could have fixed anything, soothed any hurt, righted any wrongs.
The silence from the doorway lifts Bruce’s head, and when he sees Dick, his face shifts; mild surprise and open pleasure and something else that makes Dick want to go to him and clutch with his arms and hold on. Makes him want to rage and utter bitter words that are already between them and don’t ever need saying.
“Dick.” Bruce’s voice is deep, soft and low. Mellow, surprise and pleasure faint but there, underscored by wariness, anticipation. “Is everything okay?”
Dick huffs out a laugh, gentle and silent, rueful.
“Yeah, B. Everything’s good.”
There’s a moment of stillness, of hesitation on both parts, where Dick still stands on the threshold, the edge between the hallway and Bruce’s study, stepping neither back nor forwards, and oh, the symbolism, the irony.
He’s sure that if he had stuck out the whole university thing, he would have had plenty to say about the metaphorical bullshit that threatens to tip this delicately balanced thing he and Bruce are sharing, off the knife edge on which it teeters.
Bruce cocks his head, scrutinising Dick closely, and, for the world’s greatest detective, with an air of puzzlement which does not bode well, while at the same time bringing back shards of nostalgia and familiarity that are warm in their sting. Bruce was never good at this.
“Would you like to come in?” Bruce’s voice is hesitant, unsure. Uncharted territory, turn back the way you came.
Dick shrugged, immediately feeling stupid for doing so. He shouldered his way past the door, letting it click behind him with the finest cloud of dust, stale conflict and old bitterness.
He finds himself standing in front of the huge oak monstrosity that passes for a desk -
and of all the patches of worn carpet and faded memories, his feet had to pull him to rest on this particular spot of threadbare, sun-bleached weave, the one that makes his skin itch and his bones ache until he’s a child again, much smaller than he ever was in this place, staring up at the great wooden obelisk before him, with Bruce’s smooth, inscrutable, ageless and weary face peering down at him over its edge. Those deep, dark pools of eyes forbidding and fearless and promising things that only he ever could; a safety, a stability - a family and meaning that would forever ensure that Dick could never look into those eyes or stand in this spot without feeling his heart race and his palms tingle and his chest ache in a fever of devotion.
Dick swallowed, feeling suddenly tired and weak, overwhelmed by a sickly passion that never stopped beating at the windows.
“Dick?”
Dick looks up, and Bruce’s face, haggard, exhausted and horrifyingly open in a concern for him, just for Dick, just for Richard Grayson, Richard Wayne, that he almost chokes on the words that kick and tear at his lips.
“Everything’s good, Bruce.” His voice rasps through the thickness that suddenly cloys at his throat, and his smile, when he manages one, is elastic and real and refuses to stop growing.
“Just thought I’d...stop by.” And he swallows down all the jabbing claws and sharp elbows of all the words that are howling to be free, to dance in the air - so soft and warm between them - to stamp and tread shimmering trails doubt that would pollute this golden, sunbathed time between them, the first in weeks that has been fresh and untainted by winter’s first and sparkling snap of frost.
He swallows down the little brother shaped puffs of air and listens as their whispering words and wide, empty eyes dissipate into the wonderful silence between him and the man who gave him the world.
“How’s it going, B?” He sits down in the chair, ever-present, on the other side of the desk, feeling his feet firmly grounded on the floor, an adult son at last.
Bruce’s voice, when it comes, folds itself through the air like the favourite childhood blanket that Alfred still launders freshly for him whenever he visits. He feels only gladness, welcomes the soft touches of the warm, familiar vowels. Child. Yes, he is Bruce Wayne’s child, and he is proud, he is grateful, he is Nightwing and Dick Grayson. He is Nightwing and Dick Wayne; nothing needs to fall to the wayside here, nothing needs more room than the others can stand for, and he revels in the childish feeling of finally being able to have his cake and eat it.
There is a small sound that twines its way through the keyhole and gets tangled up in the warmth of Bruce’s voice. A small, scratching sound.
They both turn to stare at the door, and a familiar, seeping cold begins to feather its creeping fingers along the back of Dick’s neck.
Dick shuddered, and he tried, god how he tried, to shrug those fingers off, to snap the twig-like claws and the trickling, oozing frost that trailed in the wake of those icy digits.
He tried to shrug them off in favour of the warm hands and strong arms that he felt at the very best of times, when the manor is warm and the corners aren’t filled with cold and perfectly preserved memories. When he and Bruce can smile and talk without trembling, dew-heavy threads bowing ever nearer to their heads, the frail, glistening strands threatening to drench their skin with the toxic weight of whispers and things not forgotten.
But the sounds, they vaporise through the key hole, disperse in the cold air of the study for Dick’s eyes to attempt to frantically trace, even though everyone knows that the deadliest poisons are colourless, odourless.
He looks over to Bruce, who has no need of gas masks that may have kept Dick from drowning - drowning in gas, in sound, in things that aren’t really there, things that snap with dripping teeth at the heels of sense - is this what Tim feels, is this compassion, is this what makes your brother cold and damp and so repulsive, is this the thing that will dry the venom from his skin, is this the thing that will make you able to touch, is this, is this , is this?
Dick hopes against all the sickness that is rising in his gut as Bruce opens the door, and his fearlessness, his compassion, his terrible gentleness as he approaches the small figure drowning in the cavernous hallway angers Dick, sparks a new and horrifying jealousy that he, the golden boy, the favourite son, the first, has never tasted,
But that compassion, that sudden ease with which his shoulders settle into some brave new shape which, outside of this shadow world of monsters and midnight, Bruce can never quite seem to find comfortable. That soothing strand of rightness that suddenly seems to pierce his skin and saturate his whole being, making sure that he talks to the boy, the son, standing in front of him, with sounds and words that are always the right ones, that are never on the same frequency as the creatures waiting in the corner.
That ease with children - you’re welcome, kiddo; do you have any idea how long it took me to shape that lump of cold, well-meaning clay-man into a father? - the ease with victims who will never quite get free - that’s supposed to be Dick’s thing
Dick loves people. Dick knows how to speak to them, how to soothe them. Dick needs them, loves them, is easy with them.
Bruce is Batman, the detective with the cold, hard facts embedded beneath his fingernails, trapped between his eyelashes, forever blinkered when it comes to the warmth of living flesh and salt water tears, of loss and love and hate and all the sharp, sticky shards in between. Of people. Of children.
But it is Bruce who does not waver while Dick holds back, lingering in the doorway, staring at the darkened hallway which licked with shadow-tongues and dripping teeth at the tiny figure’s thin, egg-shell skin, seeming to be at once threatening to consume the boy and to be inky plumes that snaked from his ears, his eyes, the very pores of his skin, contorting and dancing across the air in accordance to the whims that Tim himself is at the mercy of.
And it is Bruce who is approaching the child - who is staring, always, always staring, up somewhere far above his head, and his fingers are curled around empty air, protruding from his side - and when Bruce eventually, slowly, carefully stands by the kid’s side, it is only then that Tim could ever look like a normal child. Waiting for daddy. Not for shadow men upon the stairs.
It is Bruce doing these things - stroking a gentle hand over Tim’s hair -smoothing the tousled gouges made by the last hand to rake through it - a hand with thin, tapered claws, with long, curling, crawling digits that would have been perfectly capable of engulfing Tim’s skull, of squeezing and crushing and maiming their creator.
And if it is Bruce doing these things - taking Tim’s tiny, tracing-paper hand in his own huge and clawless grip, murmuring quiet, soothing words in the delicate whorls of Tim’s ear, coaxing and cajoling and saying all the right things which Dick will never hear until the boy slowly, clumsily, begins to shuffle back towards his bedroom - if it is Bruce doing these things, then what is Dick?
Who is Dick, because people are his life, he loves them and he knows them, and he is the one that people come to, that people need, he is the one that always knows.
And if Batman is here, doing these things, then where is Dick? Dick, by necessity, must still be stuck in the doorway. Frozen and lingering, paralysed by a new and monstrous indecision. A new and monstrous lack of empathy. Sympathy and sorrow and regret are things that he feels in droves, but this boy cannot elicit the thing that he has felt for all the helpless and the broken and the dregs of humanity that they scrape from Gotham’s streets every night.
Such a small thing, such a simple thing, but when it is absent, when one tries so very hard to feel that which is not there, it becomes a gargantuan task, a mountain too high to scale, even for one you love.
And he does love the boy who walks with the silent, shuffling gait, who turns large and sluggish eyes towards his new family and their silent, whispering houseguests. He loves him like a brother does. Like a brother should.
But empathy...how can anyone empathise with what isn’t there - the man upon the stairs; does Tim feel empathy for those who whisper and howl and does he know they are not there? - how can Dick empathise with the swirling, pooling nothing in Tim’s eyes when his little brother turns them upon him?
But the men upon the stairs - and in the corners, in the ceilings, beyond our shoulders, between the lights, between the floorboards - never claimed to be there and Tim still meets them every night. He is a better man than Dick. He can empathise with shadow men, while Dick finds nothing in him for child-men. How can Dick empathise with eyes that see so much and hold so little?
How can Dick empathise when the child slows his bumbling, stilted walk; squeezes Bruce’s hand with an urgency that would have accompanied a whine in any other child - any normal child?
How can Dick empathise when Bruce realises that his charge no longer follows, turns and kneels to gaze gently at the child? How can Dick empathise when the words from the child’s mouth - not as empty as his eyes, and why, why does it have to be this way? - make his own mouth dry and numb?
“You are Bruce Wayne.” The voice is quiet, timid and seeking reassurance but not confirmation, never confirmation with this nightly ritual, as cold and absolute - best-laid plans, break in case of emergency - as they were when he first uttered them, clinging with white knuckles to Brucie’s tuxedo after it had all gone so wrong.
“Yes.” Is all Bruce says, soft and calm. Certain.
“You are Batman.” Tim’s stare over Bruce’s shoulder is hard, as intent as a child would normally look into the eyes of a parent from whom a promise was being elicited. Except, for Tim, never the eyes. And never his parents. Only Bruce. Only ever Bruce, and it made Dick’s heart ache even as his stomach turned.
“Yes.” Bruce lowers his voice to a whisper as Tim slowly reaches out - always so hesitant and stiff, the stilted movements of an automaton, which is, after all, merely a child who will always fail to thrive.
Those small, pale hands tighten into a death grip on Bruce’s shirt. Winding tiny twig-arms around a bulk that Dick knows is more reassuring than anything else to childish arms which have nothing else, and maybe - maybe - what he feels now is a tiny, weak little victory sputtering to life over that gargantuan task that previously defeated him.
“I am Timothy Drake. And you can't make me leave.”
Maybe.
Fandom: Batman
Summary: Dick loves people. Dick loves his little brother. So what's different? What's wrong?
Rating: PG
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Timothy Drake
Notes:I've messed around with the timeline a little, in that Tim was officially adopted by Bruce when he was a much younger child than he was in canon.
Warnings: Angst. I don't even know what happened with this. I am so sorry, idek.
This is kind of AU, in terms of Tim. He's still the same Timmers, he's just....wired a little skewed up there.
Disclaimer: I do not own Batman or any of his affiliated group of adorable family.
Dick loves people. He loves to be around them, to talk to them, sometimes to just sit and be with them. He needs to feel that little spark of whatever it is that trips up and down his spine and through his belly whenever he is around people, people that he feels drawn to, people that he wants to draw more out of.
The time he spends with the collection of people that make up the fractured and imperfect family unit that are all each of them has. The sharp, warm little pinpricks that this time sends dancing across his skin. This is what makes Dick. This is what shapes him, moulds him, pushes him to all those myriad decisions he makes in a day, be they as the trust-fund baby with the constant smile, or the creeping, silent figure that cuts through the stars at night, the shadow that flickers and moves when the wind does. The one that you’re never quite sure you did see.
This is what drives Dick. This is who Dick is; he attracts. He pulls and he clasps and he keeps. Dick doesn’t repulse, Dick doesn’t know that force, that direction.
Tim repulses Dick. And God if that doesn’t gall him to the point where he can taste a bitter, burning ash on the tip of his tongue, doesn’t make him sick with a guilt that gnaws at his belly and sends a cold and biting fluid coursing through his veins.
Because...it was Tim. Little Timmy. He was only a kid. Small, skinny, painfully shy Timmy who was probably too clever for his own good.
Timmy who didn’t understand things that every child should understand. Timmy who stood and stared up at Dick with large, blank eyes when he had tried to explain the traditions of gift-giving and Halloween and children’s parties, and...things that no child should ever have to have explained to them.
Timmy who sat and stared front and centre with glazed and empty eyes for hours at a time. Timmy who would follow docilely wherever he was led, regardless of who it was that took him by the hand.
Timmy who sprawled on the ground with limbs flung out from his body at all angles, limp, like a puppet with cut strings, gazing down vacantly at the blood of a grazed knee, a cut - and once, to Dick’s horror - a broken finger. Who didn’t pick himself up when he fell, who simply sat, staring, always staring, until he finally blinked up at whoever happened to find him. Sometimes Dick wondered how long Tim would sit and stare if nobody found him, nobody noticed him.
Dick quickly stops wondering these things.
He stops wondering about a lot of things. He doesn’t like thinking about some things.
He doesn’t like thinking about what Tim sees when he stares for hours at the sunlight glinting through the dust.
He doesn’t like thinking about what Tim sees when his eyes flicker and twitch up, up right up into the highest corners of the ceiling, the darkest spots on the floor, anywhere, anywhere but into the eyes of someone who is speaking to him.
He doesn’t like thinking about what kind of friends lurk in the shadows of the manor, and what words they must whisper, what echoes must drift through the keyholes, to draw out in the latest hours of the night, toddling little footsteps that can be heard to patter in a childish, playful rhythm. The steps to which Tim’s small, clumsy feet would not be able to retrace in the warm, solid light of day.
e doesn’t like thinking about who or what Tim’s eyes see when Dick looks out into the cold air of the hallway to see the small, immobile figure standing, frozen in perfect stillness, apart from the head that tilts up and up and up, and the hand that twitches at his side.
When Bruce comes to gently lead him back to bed, these actions, this pose, they make sense. Even Dick has to crane his neck to look up at Bruce when the man stands right beside him, and although he has far outgrown the habit, he remembers how his hand used to twitch in the larger one that engulfed his whenever Bruce stooped to hold his hand.
But when there is nobody to stand beside you, who do you look up at?
Dick wants to shake him sometimes, to ask him that. ‘What are you staring at? Who do you whisper to at night?’ Dick always feels the hot burn of shame whenever these images leap, unbidden, into his mind. Most of the time, he manages to screw the images up into a tiny ball, shred them before they have even been fully formed, but sometimes, when all his resources are drained, when he has far outrun his limit, they seep through the cracks.
At breakfast, after a difficult patrol, pale and faintly sick from tiredness, he will stare, unaware and uninterrupted, across the table at the small - too small - child sitting across from him, sitting with shoulders hunched, lips pursed tight and bloodless, large, dark eyes whispering secrets to people and places - monsters and shadows - that the rest of them will never know.
Then, those sharp, bright images will come to him, urging him to spring up from his seat, to grab those bony, frail shoulders, to shake and to yell into that round, blank little face until something, anything, comes pouring out of it. Answers, words, words addressed to him, full words, sentences, not the fragmented, whispered half-words that flutter on the still air before presumably being snatched by the pointed claws and the clammy hands that waited in the shadows for his little brother.
He needed to ask, he could see himself asking, and he was terrified that one of these days he is going to find Bruce’s arms wrapped around him, pulling him away, because he has finally broken and asked all those questions - what’s wrong with you? Are you hungry, bored? Are you in pain? Are you shy? What are you all tensed up about? What’s wrong with you?
The idea that he has such rage, such disquiet and anger, channelled towards this helpless, broken little boy, his little brother, fills him with a deep and rushing shame.
Sometimes, he pulls the boy close to him, clasps him tightly between his arms, traps him to his chest, and simply holds on, squeezing tightly, so tightly with the hope that if he holds on long enough, the figure in his arms will relent, become warm and supple. And that Dick will stop feeling this cold, repulsive energy trickle from the boy’s skin and hair into his own bloodstream. That he will be able to feel something other than a heartbreak that is not strong enough to override the instinct inside that screams at him to let go, push away, run away. He is not like you, he is not one of you, he is strange, he is other, other, other, let go.
Dick wishes he could overcome this, throw out the voices and the oozing cold and repulsion as easily as Tim appears to. Because he loves his little brother. He just can’t stand to be near him.
***
Dick lingered outside the study door, the solid oak making him feel ten years old again, loitering anxiously, empty glass clutched tightly in hand, excuse at the tip of his tongue - I’m thirsty, can I please have a glass of water? - when really, all he wanted, all he had ever wanted, was to just sit, sit and be with this man who was everything to him, was all he had, was the only God in Dick’s life, and one whose altar Dick fervently worshipped at.
Shaking his head, sending those uneasy thoughts scattering, he raised his fist and knocked on the sturdy, ancient door.
“Come in.” It was a familiar, deep rumble; smoother than Batman, lower than Brucie and so quintessentially Bruce that it never failed to reassure him. The voice held a hint of enquiry, always somehow warm and encouraging. Like whoever you were, whatever you had to say, he was interested, he was listening. You would have his undivided attention.
Dick’s mouth quirked up into a crooked, little-boy smile, his shoulders slumped a little from where they had been held pushed back and upright. He nudged the door open and inched his head around the frame.
The crook of Dick’s lips softens into a proper smile as he sees the bent head, the broad shoulders pouring over the desk, and suddenly Dick feels himself shrink a few feet, right back to the age when this sight could have fixed anything, soothed any hurt, righted any wrongs.
The silence from the doorway lifts Bruce’s head, and when he sees Dick, his face shifts; mild surprise and open pleasure and something else that makes Dick want to go to him and clutch with his arms and hold on. Makes him want to rage and utter bitter words that are already between them and don’t ever need saying.
“Dick.” Bruce’s voice is deep, soft and low. Mellow, surprise and pleasure faint but there, underscored by wariness, anticipation. “Is everything okay?”
Dick huffs out a laugh, gentle and silent, rueful.
“Yeah, B. Everything’s good.”
There’s a moment of stillness, of hesitation on both parts, where Dick still stands on the threshold, the edge between the hallway and Bruce’s study, stepping neither back nor forwards, and oh, the symbolism, the irony.
He’s sure that if he had stuck out the whole university thing, he would have had plenty to say about the metaphorical bullshit that threatens to tip this delicately balanced thing he and Bruce are sharing, off the knife edge on which it teeters.
Bruce cocks his head, scrutinising Dick closely, and, for the world’s greatest detective, with an air of puzzlement which does not bode well, while at the same time bringing back shards of nostalgia and familiarity that are warm in their sting. Bruce was never good at this.
“Would you like to come in?” Bruce’s voice is hesitant, unsure. Uncharted territory, turn back the way you came.
Dick shrugged, immediately feeling stupid for doing so. He shouldered his way past the door, letting it click behind him with the finest cloud of dust, stale conflict and old bitterness.
He finds himself standing in front of the huge oak monstrosity that passes for a desk -
and of all the patches of worn carpet and faded memories, his feet had to pull him to rest on this particular spot of threadbare, sun-bleached weave, the one that makes his skin itch and his bones ache until he’s a child again, much smaller than he ever was in this place, staring up at the great wooden obelisk before him, with Bruce’s smooth, inscrutable, ageless and weary face peering down at him over its edge. Those deep, dark pools of eyes forbidding and fearless and promising things that only he ever could; a safety, a stability - a family and meaning that would forever ensure that Dick could never look into those eyes or stand in this spot without feeling his heart race and his palms tingle and his chest ache in a fever of devotion.
Dick swallowed, feeling suddenly tired and weak, overwhelmed by a sickly passion that never stopped beating at the windows.
“Dick?”
Dick looks up, and Bruce’s face, haggard, exhausted and horrifyingly open in a concern for him, just for Dick, just for Richard Grayson, Richard Wayne, that he almost chokes on the words that kick and tear at his lips.
“Everything’s good, Bruce.” His voice rasps through the thickness that suddenly cloys at his throat, and his smile, when he manages one, is elastic and real and refuses to stop growing.
“Just thought I’d...stop by.” And he swallows down all the jabbing claws and sharp elbows of all the words that are howling to be free, to dance in the air - so soft and warm between them - to stamp and tread shimmering trails doubt that would pollute this golden, sunbathed time between them, the first in weeks that has been fresh and untainted by winter’s first and sparkling snap of frost.
He swallows down the little brother shaped puffs of air and listens as their whispering words and wide, empty eyes dissipate into the wonderful silence between him and the man who gave him the world.
“How’s it going, B?” He sits down in the chair, ever-present, on the other side of the desk, feeling his feet firmly grounded on the floor, an adult son at last.
Bruce’s voice, when it comes, folds itself through the air like the favourite childhood blanket that Alfred still launders freshly for him whenever he visits. He feels only gladness, welcomes the soft touches of the warm, familiar vowels. Child. Yes, he is Bruce Wayne’s child, and he is proud, he is grateful, he is Nightwing and Dick Grayson. He is Nightwing and Dick Wayne; nothing needs to fall to the wayside here, nothing needs more room than the others can stand for, and he revels in the childish feeling of finally being able to have his cake and eat it.
There is a small sound that twines its way through the keyhole and gets tangled up in the warmth of Bruce’s voice. A small, scratching sound.
They both turn to stare at the door, and a familiar, seeping cold begins to feather its creeping fingers along the back of Dick’s neck.
Dick shuddered, and he tried, god how he tried, to shrug those fingers off, to snap the twig-like claws and the trickling, oozing frost that trailed in the wake of those icy digits.
He tried to shrug them off in favour of the warm hands and strong arms that he felt at the very best of times, when the manor is warm and the corners aren’t filled with cold and perfectly preserved memories. When he and Bruce can smile and talk without trembling, dew-heavy threads bowing ever nearer to their heads, the frail, glistening strands threatening to drench their skin with the toxic weight of whispers and things not forgotten.
But the sounds, they vaporise through the key hole, disperse in the cold air of the study for Dick’s eyes to attempt to frantically trace, even though everyone knows that the deadliest poisons are colourless, odourless.
He looks over to Bruce, who has no need of gas masks that may have kept Dick from drowning - drowning in gas, in sound, in things that aren’t really there, things that snap with dripping teeth at the heels of sense - is this what Tim feels, is this compassion, is this what makes your brother cold and damp and so repulsive, is this the thing that will dry the venom from his skin, is this the thing that will make you able to touch, is this, is this , is this?
Dick hopes against all the sickness that is rising in his gut as Bruce opens the door, and his fearlessness, his compassion, his terrible gentleness as he approaches the small figure drowning in the cavernous hallway angers Dick, sparks a new and horrifying jealousy that he, the golden boy, the favourite son, the first, has never tasted,
But that compassion, that sudden ease with which his shoulders settle into some brave new shape which, outside of this shadow world of monsters and midnight, Bruce can never quite seem to find comfortable. That soothing strand of rightness that suddenly seems to pierce his skin and saturate his whole being, making sure that he talks to the boy, the son, standing in front of him, with sounds and words that are always the right ones, that are never on the same frequency as the creatures waiting in the corner.
That ease with children - you’re welcome, kiddo; do you have any idea how long it took me to shape that lump of cold, well-meaning clay-man into a father? - the ease with victims who will never quite get free - that’s supposed to be Dick’s thing
Dick loves people. Dick knows how to speak to them, how to soothe them. Dick needs them, loves them, is easy with them.
Bruce is Batman, the detective with the cold, hard facts embedded beneath his fingernails, trapped between his eyelashes, forever blinkered when it comes to the warmth of living flesh and salt water tears, of loss and love and hate and all the sharp, sticky shards in between. Of people. Of children.
But it is Bruce who does not waver while Dick holds back, lingering in the doorway, staring at the darkened hallway which licked with shadow-tongues and dripping teeth at the tiny figure’s thin, egg-shell skin, seeming to be at once threatening to consume the boy and to be inky plumes that snaked from his ears, his eyes, the very pores of his skin, contorting and dancing across the air in accordance to the whims that Tim himself is at the mercy of.
And it is Bruce who is approaching the child - who is staring, always, always staring, up somewhere far above his head, and his fingers are curled around empty air, protruding from his side - and when Bruce eventually, slowly, carefully stands by the kid’s side, it is only then that Tim could ever look like a normal child. Waiting for daddy. Not for shadow men upon the stairs.
It is Bruce doing these things - stroking a gentle hand over Tim’s hair -smoothing the tousled gouges made by the last hand to rake through it - a hand with thin, tapered claws, with long, curling, crawling digits that would have been perfectly capable of engulfing Tim’s skull, of squeezing and crushing and maiming their creator.
And if it is Bruce doing these things - taking Tim’s tiny, tracing-paper hand in his own huge and clawless grip, murmuring quiet, soothing words in the delicate whorls of Tim’s ear, coaxing and cajoling and saying all the right things which Dick will never hear until the boy slowly, clumsily, begins to shuffle back towards his bedroom - if it is Bruce doing these things, then what is Dick?
Who is Dick, because people are his life, he loves them and he knows them, and he is the one that people come to, that people need, he is the one that always knows.
And if Batman is here, doing these things, then where is Dick? Dick, by necessity, must still be stuck in the doorway. Frozen and lingering, paralysed by a new and monstrous indecision. A new and monstrous lack of empathy. Sympathy and sorrow and regret are things that he feels in droves, but this boy cannot elicit the thing that he has felt for all the helpless and the broken and the dregs of humanity that they scrape from Gotham’s streets every night.
Such a small thing, such a simple thing, but when it is absent, when one tries so very hard to feel that which is not there, it becomes a gargantuan task, a mountain too high to scale, even for one you love.
And he does love the boy who walks with the silent, shuffling gait, who turns large and sluggish eyes towards his new family and their silent, whispering houseguests. He loves him like a brother does. Like a brother should.
But empathy...how can anyone empathise with what isn’t there - the man upon the stairs; does Tim feel empathy for those who whisper and howl and does he know they are not there? - how can Dick empathise with the swirling, pooling nothing in Tim’s eyes when his little brother turns them upon him?
But the men upon the stairs - and in the corners, in the ceilings, beyond our shoulders, between the lights, between the floorboards - never claimed to be there and Tim still meets them every night. He is a better man than Dick. He can empathise with shadow men, while Dick finds nothing in him for child-men. How can Dick empathise with eyes that see so much and hold so little?
How can Dick empathise when the child slows his bumbling, stilted walk; squeezes Bruce’s hand with an urgency that would have accompanied a whine in any other child - any normal child?
How can Dick empathise when Bruce realises that his charge no longer follows, turns and kneels to gaze gently at the child? How can Dick empathise when the words from the child’s mouth - not as empty as his eyes, and why, why does it have to be this way? - make his own mouth dry and numb?
“You are Bruce Wayne.” The voice is quiet, timid and seeking reassurance but not confirmation, never confirmation with this nightly ritual, as cold and absolute - best-laid plans, break in case of emergency - as they were when he first uttered them, clinging with white knuckles to Brucie’s tuxedo after it had all gone so wrong.
“Yes.” Is all Bruce says, soft and calm. Certain.
“You are Batman.” Tim’s stare over Bruce’s shoulder is hard, as intent as a child would normally look into the eyes of a parent from whom a promise was being elicited. Except, for Tim, never the eyes. And never his parents. Only Bruce. Only ever Bruce, and it made Dick’s heart ache even as his stomach turned.
“Yes.” Bruce lowers his voice to a whisper as Tim slowly reaches out - always so hesitant and stiff, the stilted movements of an automaton, which is, after all, merely a child who will always fail to thrive.
Those small, pale hands tighten into a death grip on Bruce’s shirt. Winding tiny twig-arms around a bulk that Dick knows is more reassuring than anything else to childish arms which have nothing else, and maybe - maybe - what he feels now is a tiny, weak little victory sputtering to life over that gargantuan task that previously defeated him.
“I am Timothy Drake. And you can't make me leave.”
Maybe.