Batfic: Lost in Translation (Bruce/Dick)

[lady_bug_kay]

Title: Lost in Translation (Five Misunderstandings Between Bruce and Dick)
Author: ladybugkay
Fandom: DCU
Pairing: Bruce/Dick (obviously)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2576
Summary: The title says it all.
Disclaimer: DC owns the boys, yes. I just make them do things for my own enjoyment.
A/N: So, this didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, and there are only 2 or 3 of them with which I am satisfied, but I figured I'd post it anyway. My Bruce/Dick muses have been too silent, lately. Please force yourself past the first one, and I promise they get better. I wrote them as 5 misunderstandings in the course of one relationship, but you can read them as five different ficlets if you so choose.

Lost in Translation (Five Misunderstandings Between Bruce and Dick)

 

ONE

 

The first birthday present Dick ever gives Bruce is a copy of The Who’s album Tommy. Bruce is already smiling and thanking Dick—even though his only knowledge of The Who is the atrocious film with Ann Margret that an old girlfriend once subjected him to—when he figures it out.

 

Dick had a screaming nightmare his first night in the Manor, so Bruce had stayed with him and talked to him until he fell asleep. He had had no idea what to say to calm Dick, so he spoke about random things, at one point mentioning his love of The Guess Who and their music. It doesn’t matter that Dick either misheard or misremembered the name of the band; Bruce is just shocked and touched that Dick had been listening so closely even half asleep and choking on grief.

 

The thoughtfulness of a little boy who remembered a virtual stranger’s music preferences and wanted to give the perfect gift overwhelms Bruce. He plays the album twice that first day and makes sure to be caught listening to it at least once a week for a month, and then every few weeks or so after that. And the next time he buys a new album, it is by The Who, even if he doesn’t have a real appreciation for their music.

 

When Dick moves out, Bruce plays Tommy obsessively for the first sixteen days. He listens to it in the Cave and the Batmobile—two places music has never been heard—and it is on repeat in his bedroom when he goes to sleep every night. Bruce won’t allow himself to be maudlin and listen to “Behind Blue Eyes.”

 

One day, Dick calls Bruce to say he has tickets to see the theatrical production of The Who’s Tommy and would Bruce like to go with him. As they sit in the audience and the opening chords of music begin, Bruce looks over at Dick smiling slightly in anticipation and realizes he has fallen in love with this band. At intermission, Bruce tells Dick honestly that he has never enjoyed music more.

 

They leave the theatre that night loaded with souvenirs, and Bruce has a new favourite band.

 

 

 

TWO

 

Dick always liked to draw, and the first time Bruce finds a sketch of Dick’s lying forgotten on the study floor, he is astonished at the skill evident in the quick lines. So when it becomes clear that eventually, Dick will be accompanying Batman at night, Bruce offers to let Dick come up with the design for his uniform, which is to be all about distraction.

 

Dick is thrilled and spends the next week wandering around with his sketchpad in hand and various pencils stuck behind his ears and in his pockets. At the end of the week, Bruce asks if Dick has finalized the design, and Dick says yes, it is on his desk, but he is just heading out to meet a friend, so Bruce offers to retrieve the sketch.

 

Looking at the piece of paper on top of Dick’s desk, Bruce is appalled. It is a garishly coloured, completely impractical costume better suited to the circus and the trapeze-artist life Dick used to lead. Bruce wants to reject this design outright, but he said it was Dick’s choice, and the design is obviously an homage to his parents. Batman knows about that. So Bruce makes a few adjustments, adding armour and gauntlets and boots to offset the frighteningly bare-legged outfit. He will make this work. For Dick.

 

Ten days later, when Dick takes the box into the changing area and opens it, he gets his first view of his new uniform. He is horrified. He knows immediately what has happened, but there is no way he is going to say anything. Sitting on top of his much more conservative and vigilante-appropriate design for his uniform must have been his random nostalgic sketches for a new Flying Graysons costume. He’d been missing his parents one night and started imagining what their next outfits might have looked like, and Bruce must have taken the wrong sketch.

 

Dick knows Bruce would have immediately realized something was seriously wrong with the design, but he doesn’t know why he didn’t say anything. Not that it matters, now. This uniform, humiliating as it will be to wear in public on the streets, is the uniform Bruce had made for him. The one Bruce developed for him to wear. And Dick has absolutely no intention of letting Bruce know his mistake and embarrassing him.

 

So Dick suffers for years wearing a uniform he designed on a whim to be worn on a trapeze under the big top. He never tells Bruce about the lewd comments and the insulting propositions the criminals make. He certainly never says anything about the time the Joker gropes him while Bruce is rescuing Catwoman. And he never asks for changes to the outfit, even when he is old enough that the uniform becomes, quite frankly, disturbing when Dick wears it.

 

After Bruce fires him, the only consolation is that Dick won’t have to wear the hideous monstrosity of a uniform, anymore. Nightwing’s look is a lot closer to Dick’s original design than the Robin uniform ever was. When Jason shows up, Dick doesn’t envy him the outfit, even if he does envy him the job.

 

And no matter how much time passes, how many different people become Robin, and how much the design changes, Dick never tells Bruce that he used the wrong sketch to develop Robin’s uniform.

 

 

 

THREE

 

Batman makes his first patrol after firing Dick, and it feels like Robin has died. Bruce spends the entire night trying not to call Dick to reassure himself Dick is still alive. It has never felt so wrong to be Batman.

 

When he catches the boy trying to steal the hubcaps off the Batmobile, Batman has an epiphany: Robin should never die. Dick put too many years and too much effort and training into creating and being Robin. Batman is no longer Batman without Robin, and Robin deserves more than to be abandoned in the Batcave simply because Dick can’t be Robin anymore.

 

So Bruce will train a new Robin. Someone to take up the cape and make Robin live again. Fly again. This will be a tribute to Robin and to Dick. Something to tell Dick that no matter what happens, Batman and Robin will always be together. A part of Bruce and Dick will always be together.

 

Bruce never tells Dick this, of course. It is all self-explanatory.

 

*          *         *

 

Dick sees someone else in the Robin uniform and has to force himself to breathe. Bruce has replaced him. He feels like a first wife, thrown over for a newer, younger, better model. He wonders if all those reasons Bruce gave for firing him were just excuses to get rid of Dick and find someone else to be Robin. Someone not Dick. Apparently, all those years at Batman’s side, all those years being Robin, didn’t really matter.

 

Robin, it turns out, is not a person. Robin is not Dick, not who Dick is allowed to be, anymore. Robin is a job, a title. A role that must be played by a young boy and not a grown man. Dick understands now that he was never supposed to be Batman’s partner on a permanent basis; Bruce never intended to keep Dick. Bruce wanted Robin. The persona, even if it was one Dick had given birth to, was what was important.

 

Yes, Dick understands, now. Batman has always been more real, more important than the playboy façade Bruce Wayne. Dick just never realized Robin was more real, more important than Dick Grayson.

 

Dick never tells Bruce he knows this, of course; it is all self-explanatory. It just took Dick a little while to understand.

 

 

 

FOUR

 

One.

 

It is forty-three steps from Dick’s old bedroom door to Bruce’s. Dick is well-aware of this fact, having made the journey countless times in his mind over the years. When he still lived at the Manor, Dick had frequently entertained the idea of traversing that inconsequential distance one night, and long before he had imagined actually going inside, he had wanted to take those forty-three steps merely to stand outside Bruce’s door and know that he was inside the room and breathing. Comfort had been the objective, initially.

 

Eleven.

 

But even before the whole issue of sex had consumed his mind and clouded his judgment, Dick had known better than to allow himself to make that walk in more than theory. Bruce would have heard him, sensed him in a dozen different ways and wanted to know why he was there. Batman is a difficult person to stalk, and sometimes Dick wonders just how Tim managed to follow them undetected and with impunity for so many years.

 

So despite knowing that Bruce’s door was exactly forty-three steps away, Dick had always held back and stayed within the confines of his own room, never quite daring to follow his own inclinations. Too afraid of rejection.

 

Twenty-two.

 

Time has passed, however, and back at the Manor for an impromptu visit after being wounded in a battle with several of Poison Ivy’s more vicious plants, Dick decides to risk it all and steps outside his bedroom in the wee hours of the morning. He is unspeakably tired of the strange, undefined nature of his relationship with Bruce, and he chooses to ignore for tonight the absurd adoption papers Bruce had foisted upon him.

 

Thirty.

 

It’s not as if Bruce will ever completely shut him out, no matter what happens. If their somewhat unconventional relationship has weathered Bruce firing him and Dick striking out on his own, Dick is sure that even should his decision tonight prove utterly disastrous, given time, things should settle back into a semblance of normality between them. Eventually. After many months of estrangement and stubborn silence and awkward avoidance. Damn.

 

Twenty-eight.

 

There are times, however, when Dick thinks this might not be all one-sided, and those times are what he holds onto right now. Moments when Bruce looks at him with unguarded eyes or smiles when he thinks Dick can’t see him. They have been few and very far between, but Dick cannot deny that there have been such moments. And tonight, he will gamble everything on these small shreds of evidence.

 

Thirty-six.

 

It would be easy to keep walking, now. Simply pass Bruce’s door and pretend, tomorrow, when Bruce asks—and he will ask—that he was simply restless. Everyone who has ever met Dick knows his propensity for movement, and this tendency has always been aggravated by stress. But Dick has smothered his feelings for far too long, and he thinks if he bites back the words for even one more day, they will remain unsaid forever. So he’ll stop here at Bruce’s door and go inside and hope like hell things will be different when he walks out.

 

Forty-three.

 

He doesn’t even make it across the room.

 

“Dick. Nightmares?”

 

And Dick can’t say anything.

 

He stands there and looks at the shadowy figure sitting upright in bed, and his mouth is so dry he can’t say anything.

 

“I think Alfred baked a pie, today. We could go downstairs for awhile; I can sit with you.”

 

It is a generous offer, and on any other night, Dick would be grateful for the company, especially if it were a bad night for him, as Bruce obviously assumes it is. But tonight, it’s not enough. “No, thanks. I just… I needed… I don’t know. I guess I just needed to know you were here.” Coward, he thinks, as the wrong words come out of his mouth. Bloody coward.

 

Bruce nods, understanding and accepting Dick’s explanation without catching the lie, and Dick sees him adjust the covers. “Goodnight.”

 

“’Night.” Dick steps back into the hallway, pausing for a moment as he does not lean his forehead against the closed door. Then he turns and walks back to his room.

 

Thirty-nine.

 

Not tonight.

 

 

FIVE

 

In the middle of patrol one night, Batman observes Nightwing in a triple somersault off a fire escape and thinks, He has a great ass, before promptly stumbling and almost forgetting to launch his jumpline.

 

It isn’t that he is unaware of how attractive Dick is; he’s known for years Dick is beautiful, but it’s always been an objective assessment, an observable fact of which Batman is cognizant. He’s never found Dick desirable before, never felt the attraction of a specific part of Dick’s anatomy like a knife to the ribs. Dick has always been just…Dick. First Robin, now Nightwing. And Bruce doesn’t know when that changed or how. Or why. He raised this boy who is suddenly no longer a boy, and the knowledge of time passing shouldn’t be as much of a shock as it is.

 

Dick is not a beautiful boy. Dick is a gorgeous man. And Bruce wants Dick.

 

Bruce might even be a little in love with Dick.

 

As unexpected as this development is, it changes nothing about his methods; he is Batman, and he can handle any crisis. He spends the last two hours of patrol devising a plan of attack to accomplish his objective.

 

Except that something goes wrong.

 

Back in the Cave, Batman shuts the door of the Batmobile and turns to Nightwing. “You looked good tonight.”

 

Dick looks back over his shoulder and seems surprised. “Thanks, Bruce.” He continues on his way toward the showers, and Bruce experiences an unaccustomed sense of failure.

 

Not to be deterred, Bruce tries again the following night. Stepping out of the showers, he tells Dick, “You move well out there.” It’s more of a compliment on street performance than Bruce remembers ever giving Dick before.

 

Dick pauses in the midst of toweling off and takes a moment before he replies, “Oh. Thank you, Bruce. I’ve been trying some new combinations.”

 

“Good. It’s best to keep yourself flexible.” Oh, my god, Bruce thinks as Dick heads upstairs. What the hell is wrong with me? He is Bruce Wayne, playboy extraordinaire. Women have stood in line to meet him and flaunted their cleavage in his face and hung off his arm. He is famous for his clever quips and flirtatious smiles, and his outrageous come-ons have never failed.

 

But he cannot seem to seduce Dick Grayson.

 

It shouldn’t be this difficult. He’s known Dick for years, knows almost everything about him. But he opens his mouth and the elaborate words of praise and admiration, the earnest declarations of affection, all turn into inane comments on Nightwing’s performance. Bruce is starting to panic.

 

It takes him three more days of awkward, graceless remarks following each patrol before Bruce is finally able to communicate his feelings to Dick. And in the end, Bruce goes for the direct approach. Dick is half out of his uniform when Bruce stalks over to him, yanks the cowl back off his head, and kisses Dick as if they have thirty seconds to live. When he finally pulls back to let Dick breathe, he hears a whimpered protest and knows he has finally gotten his point across. Dick looks at him through heavy-lidded eyes, but his mouth twitches like he’s trying not to laugh.

 

“That’s what this has been about? Maybe I should be the one to tell Tim and Alfred.”

 

 

 

 

A/N2: If you aren’t familiar with Tommy, it’s the story of a boy who witnesses a murder when he is very young, but his parents try to hide it and tell him he saw nothing, heard nothing, and will say nothing. The trauma is such that he retreats into his mind and grows up unable to see, speak, or hear, but with an astonishing talent at, well, pinball. Years later, he is finally able to break free from this imposed state of isolation, and the cessation of sensory deprivation makes him overwhelmingly grateful for everyday sensations. It’s not necessary to know this, but it provides an interesting point of comparison for Bruce, especially with regard to Dick.

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