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Bruce gets full-frontal stabbed at a gala by a contract killer.
The next morning, from the other end of the hospital bed, Dick spends three hours staring silently, with his fingers pursed under his chin, at Bruce, who watches him back. Dick’s book is splayed open upside down on his thigh.
He isn’t any pages further than he was when he got here.
“Well,” says Dick at last, when the new shift nurse comes in, changes the whiteboard name, and leaves again.
Bruce says, “Thank you for coming, and I apologize for my ill-chosen words last month and forgive thee thine.” No, of course he doesn’t say that. That would be silly. He says, “Hn,” and rolls his chin so his paper gown rustles.
Dick says, “Good to see you,” and “I’m sorry it happened in public,” but he doesn’t say he’s sorry it happened. He is sorry it happened—Bruce got stabbed—last night Dick broke into GCPD’s lockup to beat down the stupid idiot who did it until his jaw hung off of his face like a clapboard because Dick’s chest couldn’t stop fritzing until Dick let out the sheer possessive insane rage that someone had done that—but Bruce does not need to know this.
Dick splays his dry fingers up over his Futrelle and climbs off the end of the hospital bed noiselessly, tucks the book under his arm and looks back. Bruce’s eternal frown is clay-baked into his face. But then it’s eternal. So that doesn’t mean much.
“Tim texted that he’s coming,” Dick says. “You know. After school lets out.”
“I,” Bruce says, and there’s word No. 1 of Dick’s three hours here, “saw.”
“Okay,” Dick says. And leaves. On the elevator down to the Gotham General parking lot, Dick picks off one side of the white Visitor sticker so that he can pull a pen out of the jacket pocket it’s covering. And pulls up his sleeve. 2 words, he writes in bleedy blue ballpoint.
He pats the sticker back down again.
New record.
—
he is sooo bitchy when he’s like this. Tim texts Dick from his calculus class two days later. Alfred must have brought him a laptop becuase he just sent me an alert for an arobbery. Im in class and now ihave to leave.
The bar is so empty that Dick has his face pressed to the cool countertop, his arms outstretched in front of him with his phone dangling from his fingertips. Last night: Lady Vic, and her stupid British fists. Today: left periorbital haematoma. An achey one.
NOW HES REVIEWING MY MASK CAM FROM LAST NIGHT HE JUST FORWRDEFD ME A VIDEO OF GETTING KNOCKED ON MY ASS BY HARLEYS HYENAS HES MICROMANAGING ME ALL THE WAY FROM GOTHEM GENRAL
The thing about getting micro—or, really, femto-managed by Bruce is that it should feel like the cool, cool gaze of a surveillance state. Or maybe even a little flattering, that someone like that is paying that much attention to someone like you. But Bruce can train with you on the mats, and know exactly how many degrees-too-far the heel of your left foot twisted to have caused your move’s failure. It’s not a labor-of-love. It’s just automatic. Bruce can’t turn his brain off. Bruce notices every misstep, because he notices everything.
It’s humbling, realizing you get exactly as much attention as the rest of the whole entire world.
Dick slips his phone back into his pocket. Tim’s texts aren’t urgent. Dick doesn’t need to reply to them right away. Plus if he opens them all at once later, he doesn’t get dunked by the laser effects Tim puts on each individual message.
Can I see the video too, Dick sends back when his shift is over, and he’s ducking outside with his gloves in one hand, phone in the other. Dick’s never been able to get into the whole gloves-in-winter thing. Never been a cold-fingers kind of guy. Human fingers have survived the cold for thousands of years. It just seems like something made up for attention, or maybe by the glove business. Temperatures under—
There is a man three steps behind him in the street. Dick turns around and slams him against the nearest shop window, holding the man’s wrists together over his head. The man’s knife sludges into the wet snow on the ground by Dick’s sneakers.
“Who the hell,” Dick says, “do you think you are?”
The man’s eyes are wide. “I don’t—I didn’t—you were—you—you—”
“I didn’t ask about me.” Dick’s fingers tighten. The man’s head knocks back against the window as he writhes.
When he starts crying, Dick huffs. Lets go. The man accordions to the ground, knees planting in the slush. “I’m sorr-rr-rr-y,” he hyperventilates. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just—you—I heard—”
Dick waits a couple more seconds. The man doesn’t manage to get anything else out. Mostly it’s sad. There’s not a crowd, people aren’t exactly gathering around—this is Bludhaven, it’s not that unusual—but they’re giving them a wide berth, over-the-shoulder glances.
“Stupid,” Dick says. “Go home.” Then he pauses, bending, and grabs the knife. “I’m taking this. Don’t—stab people with things. Weirdo.”
—
It’s a nice knife.
Dick spins it between his fingers idly. He’s lying back on some washing machines, his denim jacket scrunched up under his head, and staring at the ceiling.
It’s cracked.
Dick’s phone buzzes. The noise is hard to hear over the sound of the washing machines, but humming, he slides his cell out to check, and goes still, his breath hitching.
He quickly slides the phone back into his pocket. And returns. To the greatest show on earth—the coin laundry’s ceiling.
It’s almost nine p.m., dark out. Dick balances the blade on his thumb. All Dick has left to do tonight is get his jackets out of the dryer, head back home, and patrol. The O’Connell suspect is supposed to be downtown this evening, and Dick’s going to surveil him.
Dick pauses. Grabs his phone.
Bruce, it says again, vibrating in his palm.
“Dick, I checked the footage. Your fight with Lady Vic was an abomination. Do you always let your enemies get hits in on your head? Is this how you operate in Bludhaven? If it is, you won’t last much longer. Your brain will be orange juice in no time,” Bruce will probably say, and Dick will be like, “I know, okay!” so instead of answering, Dick growls and turns the phone back over again.
When Dick still doesn’t pick up, the buzzing stops. Dick counts the seconds. Of which there are five. Before Bruce calls again.
Fine.
“I hope this is important,” Dick says.
“You are not answering your comm.”
“I’m not wearing it,” Dick says. “I’m doing laundry.”
“Dick.”
Dick smiles, burying his grin in his shoulder. “It’s in the wash, oh, no!”
“Dick.”
“You-calling-me, that doesn’t normally happen. I would ask if we’re back to normal, but that act in itself is not-normal. So I guess I’m sort of at a loss. But I won’t talk about it if you won’t talk about it.” Dick tosses the knife lightly up in the air, and sighs. “That’s the Dick Grayson promise.”
Albeit not one that Dick Grayson is very good at keeping. Historically speaking.
“Dick,” Bruce says, and his voice is not breathless, but there is a tension, a tautness, a pulled-ripcord-digging-into-your-skinness to it, “there is a bounty on your head.”
“Oh.”
Dick blinks.
“Is that all?”
That maybe explains the knifey guy outside of work. Dick pretends to stab the air.
“How much this time?” Dick says. “My going rate’s a-cool-mill as you-know-who. If it’s less than that for me proper, I’m going to be hurt.”
There is a hitching noise. Dick sits up and squints around at the dryer machines across the way before he realizes the hitch of air came from Bruce.
“This has happened,” Bruce says, or asks, very stilly, “before.”
“Happened loads,” Dick says. Bruce is acting weird. Dick’s eyes narrow more. “How much?”
“Dick,” chokes Bruce, which—sure, sometimes, Dick takes a pickaxe to Bruce’s obnoxious, impenetrable marble exterior to see if there’s an actual human with blood and words and feelings inside, but that doesn’t mean that it’s something that feels good to catch on display. Everytime Dick’s managed to carve Bruce’s walls down, it hasn’t felt like a victory; it just left him feeling disturbed, the insectile fear of a little kid who doesn’t know what he’s done but knows it was something bad. Knows he ought to back away, and avert thine eyes. “Dick—”
This must be a lot of money.
“Hey,” Dick says, gentler. “How much?”
“T—” stammering is not a good sign. Dick’s eyes narrow even more. “10,000 for Richard Grayson.”
There is a short beat.
“Bis bald, Herr Wayne,” Dick laughs, laughs hard, and hangs up. Dick’s dryer buzzer goes off. Dick folds his jackets (which are warm, how great), and goes home with a smile.
John Law’s sitting on the steps of Dick’s walkup, fumbling around his khaki pockets, a cigarette edged between his shaky red fingers. Propping his laundry on his hip, Dick happily proffers his Superman lighter and bounces on his toes. “Mr. Law?”
“Ah. Hn.” Law takes it, lights his cigarette, and hands it back. “Hn. Beautiful night.”
“Beautiful night,” Dick agrees, grinning. “Full of—bloodthirsty killers. Killers for hire. Killers for pay.”
“Oh, don’t I know it, young man.” Law shakes his head. “You ever had someone try to kill you? Well, I have. Back in the war. Have you ever killed anybody? I did. Back—”
“Back in the war,” Dick finishes, and Law nods, pleased. His watery black old-person-eyes glint behind his glasses as he looks straight at Dick. He points, with two crooked fingers.
“You’re a good boy, Grayson,” Law says. “Anybody ever tell you that.”
“Not so much. People have other things to say about me,” Dick says, “like…chatty. Or tall.”
“I wouldn’t say that last one,” Law interrupts. “First one, sure. Your mother must have raised you right.”
“She—” Dick begins. “...Yeah.”
“Hm,” says Law, and fishes out his pudgy cigarette box. It’s all soft and white at the limp corners. He knocks more cigarettes out into his hand.
“Here,” Dick says automatically, getting out his lighter and holding his palm out again, but Law tugs Dick’s wrist down instead, until they’re sitting next to one another on the cold wet step. The slush bleeds into Dick’s pants; Dick winces. Law holds out a cigarette. “Oh, I don’t smoke.”
“You will tonight,” Law says. “Get your lighter out.”
“I should really go inside,” Dick says, even as he lights two more, one for him and one for Law. “There’s, like, money on my head right now.”
“Money!” Law scoffs. “On you! How much?”
“10,000.”
“No,” Law laughs roughly, taking a drag. “No, no, you’ll be fine. The good ones don’t get out of bed for less than 50.” So true. Law chuckles again. “That’s funny. 10,000. What kind of killer does that kind of money buy?”
Dick grins, fiddling with the cigarette, holding it over his knee. He bangs the glowing end against the icy stone of the side of the steps. Law’s fingers are wrinkly, tremoring, and grape-colored, now, at the tips. “Can I walk you in? It’s late. It’s cold.” Law lets him. “Good night, Mr. Law.” Would sweet dreams be saccharine? Or would it be old-guy cool? “Um, крепких снов.”
Dick gets back to his own door. His lock’s intact, so anyone who’s broken in didn’t use the front door—or at least any particularly doorknob-and-lock-mutilatory entrance techniques. Gut feeling—no one’s there. Hind-and-forebrain feeling—no one’s there. But the powers of deduction and reasonality and intuition have failed someone somewhere at least once. Probably. So Dick opens the door with care, and kicks it shut behind him without it.
No one is there. 10,000. Dick shakes his head and laughs again.
Dick puts his laundry away and eats a protein bar and listens to the police radio and fucks with the wires in his old set of escrima sticks, which got waterlogged during last month’s Arkham breakout—Killer Croc, sewers, and self-electrocution—who would have ever guessed that Gotham sewage water, with all of its minerals and salt and everything else, was not just non-insulatory but exceptionally conductive. As a result Dick got fried. And as a result of that, Dick got yelled at. The latter was a lot harder to grit his teeth and bear than electrocution, and so he didn’t bear it. Dick is really good at yelling back.
By ten Dick’s fixed the sticks, and finished Père Goriot, and wrapped up his old casefiles, and it’s still not time for O’Connell to have even left his house yet, much less head downtown for Dick to catch him mid-cash-handoff. Dick sighs, sprawled out on the ground with his eyes shut, and points his toes.
Bruce calls one more time. Dick doesn’t answer.
Just before he finally puts his suit on, Dick gets an alert from his laptop.
One of Bruce’s cars is in Haven.
Dick sets his gauntlets down on his couch and draws up to the counter, where the laptop is. The red dot is getting off the parkway.
Dick unlocks his front door. Which swings open, six minutes later, to reveal a stern, gaunt-faced Bruce in a long coat and leather driving gloves. “Hello, shabbat shalom,” says Dick from the counter.
There is a short quiet. Bruce stands in the doorway. Casts a long shadow from the flickery pale-greenish hallway lights outside. Dick watches Bruce swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing just out of sight of his coat’s tall collar.
“Your door,” Bruce grits out, “was open.”
“For you,” Dick says.
“For,” Bruce says.
“You,” Dick says.
“Me.”
“I like to know when people are in my town. So I do know. So I knew. You took the Porsche, yeah?”
Bruce stares at Dick darkly for several moments. Dick inclines his head, kicking his feet underneath the counter upon which he sits.
“Why don’t you take off your coat.”
“No,” says Bruce, slowly. “No, thank you.”
“I insist,” says Dick.
“I insist,” Bruce hushes, “not.”
“Why not.”
“I do not have to explain myself. To you.”
Bruce slowly closes the door behind him, with his arm outstretched behind his back, so he never takes his eyes off of Dick. As if Dick is some crafty magician, ready to roll out of an escapehatch the second Bruce looks away.
“I thought,” Dick says, and really means know, “you weren’t supposed to get out of the hospital yet.”
“I was discharged.”
“By yourself, you mean. By yourself leaving without signing out or getting approval to do so.”
Bruce doesn’t have a you-got-me face, but his scowl etches just a little deeper. There’s also, of course, the telltale “Hn.”
“I figured. I mean, you’re like communism,” Dick says, “there needs to be a containment policy for you. I don’t need to tell you how suspicious it’s—” going to look that notably-just-stabbed celebrity civilian Bruce Wayne is capable of leaving—and would even want to leave—a top-notch hospital without detection, Dick cuts off before he can say, because Dick is of course right.
He doesn’t need to tell Bruce that.
It would take some kind of theophany to find something you could tell Bruce that he didn’t already know. It takes orders of magnitude more effort for Bruce to not-notice one singular thing than it does for him to notice everything. And so Dick’s mouth clicks shut. When Dick doesn’t continue, Bruce takes a stunted step forward.
“Dick,” says Bruce. “There is a—you are not appreciating the gravity of this situation.”
“Which is.”
“There is a bounty on your head.”
“Yes.”
“You are in danger.”
“No.”
“Yes, you are.”
So maybe Bruce doesn’t know everything. Dick sits up straight. “Bruce, I get it, okay. You were stir-crazy in the hospital keeping up appearances and keeping tabs on us was all that you could do, so you found this and fixated on it. But come on. 10,000? I make people mad all the time. There’s contracts out for me all of the time.”
“This is on your head. Not—” Bruce’s eyes flicker meaningfully to Dick’s Nightwing suit, draped over the couch arm. Bruce exhales sharply. “It’s you.”
“You think I need to wear my armor all the time, or else some two-bit—one-bit—half-bit crook from Haven is going to get me? You think I’m that bad at what I do, Bruce?”
Bruce rears back. “That,” he hushes, “is not what I said.”
“Then what are you saying? Then why are you here? You can’t possibly be that worried about me.”
“I—!” Bruce starts. His eyes look ardent, and offended, and very large. His mouth opens and closes. “I—” it closes again. There’s a silence.
Bruce’s fingers spasm at his side, curling into fists, and Bruce turns his face up toward the ceiling and scoffs, almost delirious. He brings his head back down to stare bewilderingly at Dick.
Dick slowly brings his knees to his chest, his socked feet planting on the kitchen counter laminate. That would make Alfred yell at him. But Alfred only has power at Wayne Manor, and this is not Wayne Manor. This is Dick’s apartment, for which Dick pays with his own money, from his own job, and if Alfred doesn’t have power here, then Bruce definitely doesn’t have any power here, and that means he doesn’t have the power to make Dick feel like this. Like—like a dog creeping up to an outstretched hand, uncertain if it’s about to get hit, or petted, but approaching all the same. Like he’s holding his breath.
“...You?” Dick prompts, voice quiet.
“I,” Bruce tries helplessly.
“...Are?”
“Am.” Bruce stills, face scrunching up as in pain. “That worried.”
“Oh,” Dick says.
For several seconds the only noise comes from Dick’s loud fridge and the streets outside. “Well.” Dick swallows, blinking. “You don’t have to be. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Bruce stills, and looks at Dick, like Dick is stupid.
“You leave your door,” Bruce hushes, “unlocked.”
Dick’s mouth drops open, face burning. “For you! I did that for you! Because I knew you were on your way!”
“Hn,” Bruce says, and Dick’s blood burns, too.
“Get out,” Dick says. “Get the hell out.”
Face unchanging, Bruce shifts. Like he’s surprised.
“Dick. If a mercenary—”
“Then what? You think you’re going to fight them off for me? You? In your coat and that fucking hospital gown underneath?” Dick laughs, sharp, his blood thudding loudly in his ears. “Give me a break. You couldn’t even fight a mercenary who would take 10K right now.”
Bruce’s face darkens, and Dick scoffs.
They stare at each other in silence for a long time. Dick’s jaw is clenched so hard it feels like his face muscles are about to start vibrating. A light from outside the window passes over Bruce’s face, which is bruised and tight. There are little inch-long red scrapes from the glass window the contract-killer broke the night Bruce got stabbed. Bruce’s eyes dart.
Dick’s teeth grind until his top and bottom jaw are off their tracks, and then he scoffs out a harsh sigh, raking his fingers through his hair. Unclenched, his jaw still aches.
“What?”
Instantly Bruce points. On the coffee table is the knife. “Whose is that.”
Dick drags his gaze back up to Bruce, who is gazing intensely, unblinkingly, at Dick. With his right arm still extended to point, the upward pull of the long, long coat finally reveals Bruce’s bare ankles, calves, over his shoes.
“A guy’s,” Dick says slowly.
“A guy who.”
“A guy who tried,” Dick winces, tilting his cheek into his shoulder to mumble, “to stab me today.”
Bruce lets his arm fall back to his side. His cheeks suck in.
“If you hn me one more time tonight, Bruce.” Dick does not finish the threat. He doesn’t have to.
There are, after all, virtues to Bruce’s knowing-everything.
That thought gives Dick pause.
He looks up, catching Bruce’s gaze again, and frowns. Blinks. “Earlier, you asked me if it happened before. When you told me about the contract on my head. You said, ‘This has happened before?’” Dick narrows his eyes. “You didn’t know. How did you not know?”
There is a long pause.
“I was trying,” Bruce says, “to respect your privacy.”
Bruce has the gall to look startled, when Dick barks out an incredulous laugh, but the decency to look away in acknowledgment.
“I am not,” he admits quietly, “very good at that.” His fingers twitch. “But I was trying not to…”
“Stalk me.”
“Hm.”
“Thin ice,” Dick warns, but it’s absent and half-hearted. “That’s close.”
“I was trying not to surveil you,” Bruce finishes. “I was successful in resisting the u—in not doing that. For several months. But in the hospital, I—”
“Couldn’t do anything but look into Tim and me,” Dick fills in, and Bruce’s chin inclines. Dick slides off the counter to the ground but doesn’t move any closer.
“The criminals.” Bruce tilts his head a little further down, averting his eyes from Dick briefly. “They do fear you. Your—reputation. Is immaculate in Bludhaven. And elsewhere.”
Bruce looks up, like a little kid peeking through his fingers. Watching for Dick’s reaction. Dick exhales softly.
“Thanks,” Dick says at last. “I—thanks.” He glances up through his bangs. “All the way in elsewhere, huh?”
Bruce’s eye tics. “Yes.”
“Is that very far?”
“Elsewhere is a comprehensive term,” Bruce says. “So yes.”
Dick chews on the inside of his cheek for a long time. The counter digs into his spine. Dick’s ice maker is busted—and the light inside the fridge is loud and thrummy—and it fills the quiet space with noise. Dick shifts his arms, where they’re folded over his chest.
“I have a case,” Dick says. “I’ve got to get going.”
Bruce’s gaze flickers over to the couch, over which Dick’s costume is strewn, then back to Dick, and his mouth parts many seconds before he finally speaks, as if precisely arranging the words he is about to say in his head before he says them.
“I will,” Bruce says, “join you.”
Dick finally breaks a smile. He steps forward and flicks, with two fingers, Bruce’s tall collar, revealing the top of Bruce’s pale green hospital gown. Bruce looks down at Dick’s hand as Dick does it. “I don’t think so.”
“My suit is in the car.”
“You just broke out of the hospital with a stab wound.” Dick raises his eyebrows.
Their eyes lock. And Bruce’s mouth ticks up just slightly, just one millimeter, just two. They both know that won’t keep Bruce out. But that troubles Dick, somehow, and he frowns, and takes a step back.
“This is my city. Not yours.”
Something, finally, shifts in Bruce’s face. Bruce falters, for a second, before he nods.
Dick’s heart slams in his ears, his eyes wide. His grin widens. Without breaking Bruce’s gaze, he leans toward the couch to snag his suit and gauntlets, and points at him, bouncing on his toes.
“This is also my apartment,” Dick adds, pauses, “at which you are welcome to stay until I come back and which you are welcome to guard, should any big, bad, cheap losers come looking to kill me.” Dick’s smile sharpens as he tilts his head toward the knife on the coffee table. “Consider the knife yours. Gratis. In case you need it. Need it to protect yourself. Unless you don’t want to be around knives, which I would totally understand, given,” Dick mimes getting stabbed.
Bruce’s eyes slit, but he makes the kind of deep, vibrating hum noise in his throat that Dick used to have to plot and plan and think out jokes days in advance to get. Prying amusement out of Bruce successfully is not unlike getting electrocuted: painful, and disorienting, but you almost want to do it again. “Your apartment,” Bruce rumbles, “is in violation of several building codes, and your,” Bruce’s nose crinkles, “‘neighborhood’ is—”
“Also mine,” Dick says. “And it came with a father figure. One who’s been To War.”
“A what.”
Dick waves a hand. “Listen, I have a cash handoff to catch.” Dick shrugs off his sweatshirt and into his suittop. “‘And I do not have to explain myself. To you.’”
“I do not sound like that. I do not like it when you do that voice for me.”
By the time Bruce’s sentence is done, Dick is crouched on the windowsill. Bruce is going to be there when Dick comes back, Dick realizes, and something twists in his stomach. “Hey,” Dick begins softly, and then pauses, catching Bruce’s darting eyes. He huffs. “What? What now?”
“Your fridge is broken.”
“Thanks for noticing,” Dick huffs, not unfond—very, very not unfond—but Bruce does not need to know this—opening the window with his gloved fingers. Even through the leather, the glass is very cold, the air outside even colder. He looks back, mouth sort of achey and sort of involuntarily turned up. “Bis später,” he murmurs, cheek tilting into his shoulder.
“Hn,” Bruce says, opening Dick’s fridge and smoothly yanking out the icemaker to fix it. He pauses. “Bis bald.” But Dick is already out the window.