Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dick’s phone was vibrating on the table across the room. It was on the edge of the table, and would fall off soon if Dick didn’t get up and take care of it. The phone would fall off and shatter, the screen broken, and Dick would need to get his phone repaired and that would involve traveling outside of his apartment. Dick needs his phone. It would be really annoying to get it fixed. Dick needs to get off this bed that he’s been laying on for hours, waiting for… something…

And the incoming call ends. 

Oh.

And it starts again.

Dick peels himself up off the bed, moving towards the table with a phone on it, defeat set in his very bones. He gathers his blanket as a cape, like… like a fake Batman. A Batman costume.  Dick never thought his life would go back to this. The phone… the phone is ringing… and Dick needs to answer it, or at least stop his phone from falling. But it might be Tim or Jason, who only just started talking to Dick again, and their relationships have all been rocky from the start, and Dick can’t risk it breaking more. 

It might be Damian. Damian, who is still in Gotham, with a new pet cat (named Alfred, for some reason), who Dick hasn’t seen in the months following Bruce’s return. Because Damian didn’t need him anymore. Bruce didn’t want him there, they would always butt heads. They tried, briefly, co-parenting. It didn’t work.

It might, horrifically, be Bruce. Bruce who would notice how long he’s been “missing” from patrols, from Blüdhaven. No one has seen him for a week. Dick can’t handle a call with Bruce, he might genuinely collapse.

…

It’s not Bruce, it’s Damian. Dick ponders which one is worse and immediately feels sick to his stomach with guilt. He can’t even fake-dad/brother right. He picks up the phone, sliding across the screen to answer the call. “This is your friendly neighborhood Nightwing speaking!” Dick says enthusiastically, his voice imbued with fake positivity.

Damian makes his weird throat noise. “ RIchard, you mustn't threaten your secret identity in this way, someone could have stolen my phone and you would be found out! ” Dick wants to see Damian’s face right now. See if his bab- if Damian’s face is as red as it used to get, when he was embarrassed over showing any emotion. Maybe Damian would even hide in Dick’s cape like he had done exactly one time. But Dick wasn’t there, and it was Dick’s fault. “ Richard, listen, I have a request that is of the utmost importance. I need information. ” Dick could feel his eyebrow raising, but remained silent, wordless. The best way to get Damian to get on with something (and doesn’t that phrase just sour Dick’s stomach, why would he try to shorten time with this boy?) was to wait him out. “ ... Father doesn’t speak the right kind of Arabi .”

Dick had forgotten about that. That, yes, Bruce had learned some League dialect, but mostly knew Arabic from the business world, working as CEO of Wayne Enterprises. 

“Do you need help with translating something, bud?” Bud was a new nickname. It wasn’t Lovebug, or Tiny D (Damian hated that one), Baby Bat. It was so informal yet so disconnected. How many people have been called bud today? How many people got called Baby Bat? “Did you forget a word in English?”

“ I didn’t forget a word in English. English is the inferior language in comparison with Arabi. No poetry within the language -” Dick is suddenly a kid again, hearing Talia argue with Bruce during a brief stint while they tried arguing/flirting during their battles, “- words in English don’t even make any sense. Are you listening, Richard?! You’ve stopped replying! You must listen to what I say! This is important! But anyways, Richard, I will forgive you for your misstep given that you swear you won’t repeat this to anyone !” Dick swears on the Super Secret Robin Promise, satisfying Damian.

“ What is the English word for nazif al'anf? Father does not know any words that are useful! He just keeps saying aldarayib and it makes no sense !” And this is the most Bruce thing he’s ever heard. Dick does not understand the second word, but when Damian was his Robin, Damian thought it was important for Dick to know the word for every injury in Arabic, along with a few other words that Damian would grunt out when it was too early for even Alfred to speak English.

Nazif al’anf.

Oh God, Damian has gotten to him.

“Damian, bud, you can’t laugh.” 

“ Richard? ” Damian sounds confused, and maybe upset, and maybe something else. A preemptive laugh.

“I don’t remember what language this is in, but in some language that means liú bíxiě.” Dick walks over to his desk, scanning case files to try to remember what languages had been required of him this week, there was a total of 27. “Tim would know, I can cal-”

“ Absolutely not! I will not allow for Drake to humiliate me- ” 

“- Tim might be nicer to you if you stop calling him Dra-”

“- His name is DRAGON why would I call him Timothy . Oh hello Drake, how are you? Apologies, Richard, Drake has stepped in -”

“Ask him if he knows what liú bíxiě means! Ask him if he knows what liú bíxiě menas!” Dick can hear Damian and Tim arguing over the phone until Damian chases Tim off. Dick didn’t even know Tim had returned to the manor. He’s so out of the loop, it’s a wonder any of them even consider him family anymore. 

“ He said it means hanadji. Is that the English word ?” Dick grimaces, putting the phone on speaker, opening Google Translate, something that they had actually used while Bruce was… gone. Dick scrunches his nose, confused. 

“Why are you trying to find the word for nose bleed?” Dick heard Damian mutter a few things to himself. 

“ Are you sure the word is nose bleed?” Dick can perfectly visualize Damian scrunching his nose, a habit he picked up while living with Dick. “ Father and I are texting right now, I need the word. ”

“... can you expand on why you need the word?”

“ Blood is in my nose. ”

“Accurate.” Dick nods, confused and concerned.

“... but not right now.” Dick takes a deep breath in and then sighs.

“Is the blood out of your nose?”

“ Yes, obviously , Richard. Why would I be asking for the word for… nose bleed if the blood was in my nose? ” Dick pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath in. 

“Why do you need to text Bruce about a nose bleed?” Dick asks, exasperated, maybe exhausted. 

“ Well, Richard, I simply was hoping to… avoid going to school today. ” And that was right, Damian had just started going to elementary school. Dick and Alfred had tried, school wise, with Damian. It was just- Dick couldn’t trust Damian back then, couldn’t trust him to make the right decisions, to be nonviolent and in the background. Dick’s stomach curdles even more. How could he have looked at a child who had just been abandoned in a new country and then had their only relative die and assume that the kid would constantly be violent. Though Damian didn’t have the best start, and it was violent at the beginning, Damian was just a kid, even if he wouldn’t admit it. “ Mother said I was the smartest boy in the world, and she only made me talk to tutors. Why can’t father just do what you did and have Pennyworth aid me in my studies? ” Heat rises in Dick’s chest, a sinking feeling about something being revealed soon.

“For starters, Damian, you have to remember that not everything that happened in the League can be translated perfectly to Gotham, and some of it shouldn’t have happened at all,” Dick feels like a cassette tape, this has been said so many times, in so many ways,”For seconders-“ 

“ That’s not a real word, Richard! No one says for seconders -“

“How would you know that? You didn’t know the word for noseble-“

“ Well I am perfectly aware that for seconders isn’t an actual phrase! Just as I know that no one says whelmed , Richard! It was a very cruel joke for you to play when I had just came to this country-“

“Get traught, Dami-“ Dick’s phone beeps and he pulls it back to see that Damian had hung up on him. Oh. Maybe he was being to much. Dick had enjoyed chatting on the phone more than he thought he would, but now it’s been fifteen minutes and he’s just standing in front of his desk and Damian hung up probably because he’s annoyed with him. Everyone gets annoyed eventually. 

Then his phone starts to ring with a video call, caller: DAMIAN <3, Dick slides his finger again, picking up the call to see Damian standing over the lit stove, a set of files in his hands. There’s blood on his face, crusted and old, likely from his earlier nosebleed. There’s a secondary texture to his face, cakey, like someone had applied foundation or concealer and it didn’t lay down just right. Dick’s eyebrows furrow, Damian had been benched from patrol this past week due to him getting into a small altercation at school on last Monday. It meant that Damian couldn’t come work on cases with him. Dick opens him mouth to speak but Damian gets there first. “ I am going to set these on fire unless you admit that you were very cruel to me when I first arrived in Gotham! ” Damian’s voice still has the robotic twinge to it from the phone call, despite Dick being able to see everything so clearly, so reminiscent of when they first started cohabiting the Wayne properties. 

“Did you get into a fight? Like, yesterday?” Dick brings his phone closer to his face, trying to see better. There’s a purple-ish tone to Damian’s jaw. 

“ We fight people every night!” Dick continues to frown. 

“B told me you had been benched- is this why you don’t want to go to school? Is someone hurting you?” Dick takes a quick screenshot of the call to text Bruce over with later. Damian scrunches his nose (again) and turns his camera off. “Squirt,-“

“ I am not a chil- “

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I figured out peak a boo years ago. I do still remember what you look like even though I’m not looking right at you.” Dick takes the chance to message Jason, who recently took Damian on a motorcycle ride, and is therefore the current favorite brother. 

>>Me: did dami mention smth happening at school yesterday?

>>jaybird: one of his friends said they knew more birds than him, he won

>>Me: oh got

>>Me: god*

>>jaybird: he’s not helping the allegations

>>Me: don’t say that! 

“ And now Todd is messaging me. Congratulations Richard, your files are on fire. ”

“Dami, buddy, you have to know I have electronic backups.” Damian’s camera flips back on, showing a confused face. 

“ Of course I know that, I would never risk the mission over your pettiness. ” Dick raises an eyebrow. 

“Dami, baby, that is so not your shade.” Damian touches where he applied the concealer, now suddenly visible in comparison with his typical skin tone. “Jason says you didn’t mention anything about getting in a fight.”

“Todd is a snitch, and snitches get stitches-“, “Absolutely not, we’re not doing that-“, “‘Tis a joke, Richard. Pennyworth asked me to stop stabbing my quote unquote siblings as it adds more laundry to his list of chores.” Dick rolls his eyes, grabbing his keys off the wall. 

“I’m coming to Gotham, be there in 20 minutes, okay?” Damian sighs over the phone before hanging up. 

Chapter Text

The ride to Gotham is short and sweet. The car Dick was driving a relic from his days as Damian’s guardian, older yet still a nice car. Leather seats but more than just the driver and passenger seats. Unlike the car Bruce would drive him in, sometimes not even making Dick wear a seatbelt, only using his arm as a restraint at sudden stops. Bruce and him would drive around for hours when Dick had first moved into the manor, both of them too insomniatic to have a normal sleeping pattern. They would stay out driving until Dick would fall asleep to 80s rock music, the summer heat keeping him warm juxtaposed with the fresh and cooling AC Bruce demanded to be put on so he wouldn’t melt in the heat, along with the ice cream cones that came out on particularly bad nights.

Dick had been so paranoid when he had to drive Damian around, first that the press would see and have a field day, then that Dick would either crash the car or get hit by another driver. Most of the time Alfred would be the one to drive the boy around, but sometimes Dick would be the one to take him. Damian would sit in the backseat (Dick would not be having this child sit in the front seat, no sir), seatbelt on (Dick’s second requirement, easily agreed to after Damian saw his first car crash victim), seat heater on in the dead of winter. Heat on full blast, despite Dick sweating through every single ride. But Damian would be too cold otherwise. Damian would steal the aux cord half the time, playing a mixture of Arab pop, modern classic, and grunge music. His music taste was not Dick’s style, but he could get into some of the more upbeat Arab pop. 

Dick didn’t play any music right now. He was playing a podcast called The Dry Guys , recommended to him by Barbara. The current topic of the podcast being fossilized wood. Dick typically loved music, just not right as he was focused on the long drive between Blüdhaven and Gotham. Typically Dick would listen to American pop music, delving to other genres as he rides with the siblings he's collected over the years. 

Dick doesn’t even get through half the episode before he enters Gotham, driving over the bridges to reach the Wayne Manor driveway, a text to Bruce informing him that he would be taking Damian to school:

>>Me: tking dami to school, tell alfred pls

>>B(ossman): Okay. Please tell him that I will be home by 7:30pm tonight. Alfred has been made aware. Duke and Tim have already driven themselves to school to purchase coffee.

>>Me: k

When Dick parks his car in the driveway a wave of deja vu washes over him, vague ideas of this exact day playing out before him in a memory he can almost grab. Entering the manor lead Dick to realize that it is mostly empty, Alfred doing his monthly Costco run. Dick calls out, “Dami? You here, bud?”

Dick heard the floors creak, Damian flying down the stairs past Dick towards the kitchen, headed for the coffee maker as Dick grabs the back of his sweatshirt hoodie. “Absolutely not! You’re going to stunt your growth!” Damian hasn’t grown much since the last time Dick saw him, a small shock to his system. He thought that Damian would have at least reached his shoulder by now, but Damian still needed to grow a few inches before reaching that milestone. Damian squints at Dick in vague disgust before using a step stool to grab the electric kettle from the cabinet, along with the teabags. Dick had always liked tea as a kid. There used to be a Sudani man in the circus who made Dick call him Amu and made the best shai with milk and too much sugar. As Damian set about grabbing teacups and heating up water, Dick pulled the sugar down from its hiding spot. Damian didn’t enjoy the taste of milk in tea, preferring a more sugary drink for sure, but still enjoying the flavor of the tea itself. Tim had a photo of Damian trying milk tea from a downtown cafe/boba spot as Damian’s contact photo. Jason had a photo of Tim taking a photo of Damian trying milk tea for the first time as a contact photo for Tim. Dick has a photo of all three of them roughhousing after Damian expressed his indignity at being photographed “without consent” and that “even though New Jersey (said with a sneer) was a one-party recording consent state” he had “higher hopes of those he was supposed to call his brothers in arms”. It quickly became a thing . Babs has the CCTV footage.

The two worked in comfortable silence to make Damian a morning cup of tea. Dick took a few moments to blend out Damian’s concealer a bit more, apparently unable to keep the worry off his face as Damian scoffs and looks away. Uncomfortable. They drink (Damian drinks and Dick watches) tea in silence as well. Dick makes several moves to speak before aborting the ship, the possible trajectory of the conversation making Damian clearly upset. The few speaking moments they did have were short and to the point, over homework and detentions being served, something Dick himself did not miss. Jason had been the one to enjoy school, Dick being too much of a “wild child” to like it and Tim being too… asleep… to experience it, his catnaps making him the bane of all of his teachers' careers. Bruce used to have to sign a letter a week, showing that he was aware that Tim kept falling asleep in class, that he was aware that Tim had a concerning relationship with Zesti soda. A quick peek inside the fridge proving this to still be true, despite everything Alfred had to say about it.

As was Wayne family tradition, they left the manor for school minutes after the last time they could leave, assuming traffic in Gotham had no insane drivers on the road that morning (aka perfect conditions, aka not in Gotham ). Damian piled into the back of the car wordlessly after a pointed look on Dick’s end after he tried to get in the front seat. “Father,” Damian starts, not very wordlessly, “Would let me sit in the front seat next to him.”

“Damian, I cannot stress how lucky you are that Firefly melted the booster seat I kept in the truck, otherwise you best believe you would be sitting in it today.” Dick makes a quick note on his phone to pick up a new one, Damian having not quite crossed the 4 foot 9 inches threshold required to move out of the booster seat. Dick starts the car up once Damian has settled down enough that it’s safe to be in a moving vehicle, his podcast picking up where it started off. Dick waits for Damian to snag 

Dick takes a silent breath in, holding it before releasing it to call Bruce. The phone rings out three times, before the click signals that Bruce had picked up. “ihay ucebray . ancay amianday aystay omehay odaytay?” Bruce sighs, thinking. Damian scrunches up his nose, left out of the conversation. Pig Latin had been too juvenile for the boy who already knew Latin.

“... inefay” The call clicks again, Bruce hanging up, likely due to a meeting starting. Dick wouldn’t push it, grateful that Bruce had heard some of the desperation in Dick’s voice, or just didn’t care enough to actually think Damian needs to go to school.  Dick pulls off the highway between the manor and Damian’s school, instead going to a favorite cafe that Dick had made Damian go to when Damian still tried to stab civilians. A “test” he had told the kid over hot cocoa and chai. Dick pulls his car smoothly into a parallel parking spot, despite what Damian’s shrieks of fear might suggest. Unloading the car goes similarly smoothly, Damian only tries to stab him once when he unbuckles him, and that just means that Dick can take the knife from him. Before Dick corrals Damian into the coffee spot, he uses tissue to remove some crusty blood stains from an earlier nose bleed. 

“B said you could stay home with me today,” Dick murmurs softly. Damian scoffs and rolls his eyes, causing Dick to roll his eyes standing behind him. Damian bursts into the cafe with too much destructive energy, causing the glass door to smack into the wall. Dick winces before quickly checking the door over for any glass. By the time Dick has caught up to the boy, Damian has already situated himself in a corner booth, laying his head in his arms as he looks at his phone. Dick sighs again, pushing himself towards the counter to order for the two of them. A chai and hot cocoa (made with oat milk). He takes the two beverages, setting the hot cocoa in front of Damian, who scowls into the drink. Dick takes a deep breath and sip of chai, it burnt his tongue but made an effort not to relax. No need for Damian to believe that some cafe worker poisoned him (again).”How is school going? Were you able to raise your English grade?” English class with Damian was always hit or miss. He either understood the passages with more attention to detail than Dick himself would ever possess, or things like cultural references, word connotation, and common motifs would fly over his head completely. 

Damian looks like he might Dick’s hand off, as he turns petulantly away, drinking his hot cocoa. For Dick’s own safety, he did not point out that Damian had a cocoa mustache. “I do not wish to talk about school if I am not there, Richard .” Which… tracks. Dick still gets copies of report cards and teacher’s notes, still listed as a secondary guardian. Damian and school don't flush well against each other. When Damian was first enrolled by Bruce, there were countless stacks of paperwork from the school, ranging from a request to put him in an English as a Second Language class (he was not), to complaints about him getting in arguments with teachers, and one instance where Damian got into an actual fight. Bruce had shut that down so quickly, one quick well-placed bribe to the school and to the parents, and then a screaming match and grounding with Damian. Damian looks up suddenly, searching Dick’s face for something. Something he evidently does not find, as he tuts, rolling his eyes and looking away. “I wish to return home,” the boy says, voice filled with contempt and something Dick can’t identify. 

Dick sighs. “We gotta talk through some stuff first, bud. You had to have seen this coming.” Damian scrunches up his nose before turning away again, laying his head down. 

“What do you care?” Damian’s voice is wet with some emotion, unidentifiable. He pushed his hot cocoa away from himself. “You left . To Blüdhaven .” Disgust, disgust was the emotion. Dick moved from his side of the table to crouch down next to Damian. 

“Bud, I left because your dad came back. You like living with him, yeah?” It’s Dick’s turn to search Damian’s face. There’s a subtle glossiness to Damian’s eyes, and maybe it’s not disgust. “Oh, baby , what’s going on?”

Damian gets mad again at that, pulling further away from Dick. “You don’t care! You just- you just threw me away! You said I was your R-” Dick’s eyes flare, a quick glance around the cafe before he smothers the words Damian was going to say in his chest, in a quick “hug”, shushing him, reminding him to be careful . “You said I was yours ,” Damian continues, “and you left .”