Thinking about Bruce’s relationship with Dick gives me chest pain, but can we just. Think about them. For a moment.
Because Dick Grayson meets Bruce Wayne at 10.
Before he’s 10, he’s a Flying Grayson. He moves like gravity is optional, like the ground is a suggestion, and like his parents were too good to die in Gotham.
And Bruce Wayne, — orphan, knight, shadow and hope,violence and love, — doesn’t expect to be anyone’s better option.
And Dick is little and he’s angry and justice tastes like a knife in Zucco’s neck.
And then he’s 13, and 15, and older, and Dick will never thank Bruce for keeping him. And Bruce will never need it.
Because if Bruce wasn’t Dick’s father, he would want to be.
Bruce loves him, teaches him, fires him, and yet. And yet.
They’re still on a roof, with a salted fast food bag, soggy with greasy burgers and a terribly mangled Batman Ice cream bar.
“I can’t believe you haven’t had candy since you were 8.”
Bruce shrugs, cowl folded neatly to neck, where the cape begins. Not quite Bruce, not quite Batman, but the blurry puzzle of both.
“I only liked my mother’s muffins. Anything else after that didn’t taste right.”
Dick huffs. “You didn’t like my Father’s Day muffins?! Wow. My 13 year old self is crushed, B. “
“Actually, you make them exactly like her. But yours taste better,” Bruce doesn’t exactly smile, — his face isn’t exactly built for it.
But there’s always a twitch there. Dick kinda hates how hard he’s chasing it, even now.
Then, like nothing, Bruce asks, “What was your father like?”
It’s curious. It’s not a test. It’s not even malicious.
Dick thinks. Thinks how dare you and you’ll never know what it took me to love you and you ARE my dad.
Finally, after a soft click of silence and chewing and pretending patrol is still going on, Dick says,
“He was good enough. For me.”
They don’t say anything else, but when Bruce returns to the manor, when he makes Alfred his night tea, when he tucks Damian in, the next day, there’s a batch of blueberry muffins on the counter and a scribbled bluejay next to it.
He gets it framed.
