Chapter Text

It is very, very early Friday morning, and Dick is tired, and he would like nothing more in the world than to take off his uniform, crawl into bed, and sleep for around fourteen hours.

Instead, he is sitting in his dark bedroom, mask off but Nightwing suit still on, staring down at the screen of his phone. The harsh light is the only thing cutting through the dark of his room, and squinting at it is hurting his eyes a little.

What's on the screen, though, is giving his brain a lot more trouble than his eyes.

The text, now a few hours old, is innocent enough.

Can you make it back to the manor tomorrow? By dinner?

Well, it ought to be innocent. If it was coming from anyone but Bruce, it would be. But Bruce, despite being an enthusiastic early adopter of texting – it's efficient, and Bruce loves efficient – does not usually send messages with so many words. This one even sounds vaguely polite, and contains one whole full sentence, even if it is interrogatory. Dick can count on one hand the number of times he's gotten a text from Bruce containing any message much more expressive than, say, Cave 0200.

If Bruce has something of any substance to say, he either does it in a phone call or in person.

But what's even stranger than the message itself is the fact that it's a group text, sent to both Dick and a phone number he wouldn't recognize if it weren't for the fact that Jason had called him from it yesterday. It's the latest in a series of burner phones that Jason (in what Dick thinks is a strikingly Bruce-like variety of paranoia) has been using lately.

His phone chirps with another message, this one from the number he recognizes as Jason's - sent only to him, and not to Bruce.

wtf? something going on that I should know about? since when do we do family dinner?

Dick rubs at his eyes – and ouch, there's going to be a bruise by the right one tomorrow – and texts Jason back.

search me, I have no idea what's going on you going?

It's a while before he gets a response, in which time he strips off the rest of his uniform, texts Bruce an affirmative, and wriggles under the rumpled sheets on his bed, where he spends a full three minutes debating with himself about whether or not he ought to get up and try and brush the taste of harbor water out of his mouth before going to sleep. He's just about decided on yes when his phone chirps again.

fuck me, I guess so

Dick tries to throw his phone onto his nightstand, misses, groans, buries his face in his pillow, and promptly falls asleep with the faint taste of the Blüdhaven harbor – fish and tin and sour salt – still lingering in his mouth.

-

Fourteen hours is, of course, a pipe dream; Dick can't remember the last time he slept that long without drugs or magic involved. Six hours is sort of his upper limit, a habit born from necessity.

His apartment's empty right now, and his cupboards are bare. Dick closes his eyes, standing in front of his open refrigerator – which currently contains a gallon of milk, two cartons of leftover Chinese food, and one single, solitary egg – and thinks fondly of Alfred's muffins, of black coffee in a mug that's actually clean, of the little chip in the marble kitchen countertops that he'd accidentally put there when he was fourteen.

Gotham's not that far of a drive.

Instead of showing up at the manor for dinner, Dick arrives somewhere in the neighborhood of nine-thirty in the morning. He leaves his bike parked on the front driveway and meanders around the back of the manor, towards the door in the gardens that opens into the kitchen, and is just about to let himself in when the door pops open all on its own.

Dick's expecting Alfred, this early and at the kitchen door, but instead it's Damian – Damian, who he's pretty sure is supposed to be in San Francisco this week, not standing in the kitchen at the manor, wearing plaid-checked pajama pants and a ratty old Gotham Knights hoodie that looks like it's actually getting too small for him.

"I heard you coming up the drive," Damian says, in lieu of an actual greeting. "Thank God you're here. There's an interloper in our midst."

"Good morning to you too, D," he replies, with as much obnoxious good cheer as he possibly can. "Didn't know you were back from San Francisco yet." Damian just scowls and lets go of the kitchen door; Dick only just catches it before it slams shut in his face.

He half-expects to see Jason just inside, given Damian's chosen pejorative. He does not expect who is actually sitting there.

Selina Kyle is lounging – there's no other word for the way she sits – on one of the counter stools at the kitchen island. In her usual way, she somehow manages to look like she's just stepped off the cover of Vogue, even in plain black leggings and...what looks suspiciously like one of Bruce's old work-out sweatshirts. Because Bruce is built like a brick shithouse, the shirt is so big on Selina it's practically a dress.

"Um," he stutters, momentarily tongue-tied. Damian, who has retreated to the other side of the kitchen, glares at him as though the lapse is a deep personal betrayal.

"Dick," Selina says, languidly drawing out the single syllable of his name into two. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Er – yeah," he fumbles out, before recovering enough to say "Hi, Selina."

Damian, leaning up against the counter and eating a blueberry muffin with a lot more intensity than is strictly necessary, continues to glare. Selina, for her part, just takes a sip of the cup of coffee she's holding and smirks.

"Is, uh – is Bruce around?"

Selina is just opening her mouth to give an answer that Dick isn't actually sure he wants to hear when Alfred – God bless him – suddenly materializes in the doorway and replies, "He is still asleep, Master Dick."

"Really?" Bruce generally functions on only a few hours of sleep a night, and he's almost always up by nine. "Rough night, huh?"

"Something like that." It's Selina, not Alfred, who answers, and Dick just...does not want to know.

(Well, he sort of wants to know, if only so he can gossip about it with Babs later, but he also doesn't want to know.)

"Good morning, Miss Kyle. I trust the coffee is to your liking?" Alfred makes his way through the kitchen and over to the stove, giving Damian – and the pile of crumbs that he's making on the kitchen floor – an aggreived look as he does so.

"Divine, thank you." Selina gets up, then, and glides back off into the hallway with her divine cup of coffee. Damian stares daggers at Selina's retreating back at she leaves the kitchen, still angrily chewing his blueberry muffin.

"She, uh...been here long, Alfie?" It certainly looks as though she and Bruce are...on again. Selina has drifted in and out of Bruce's life – well, lives – for as long as Dick has known him, and probably longer than that. Her appearances in that life, however, are usually restricted to moonlit rooftops. Dick is pretty sure he’s never seen her at the manor during daylight hours – just at night, usually as a guest at some party Bruce had hosted.

That happened more often, when he was a kid.

Alfred, puttering around at the kitchen counter, turns around and gives Dick a sharp look. "I have neither intelligence nor comment on the matter of Miss Kyle's presence. If you insist on nosing, you may take it up with Master Bruce."

Damian, talking through a mouthful of muffin, asks, "Why are you here, Grayson?"

"Bruce asked me to come by today. Jason too, actually, though I doubt we'll see him till later."

Damian narrows his eyes to suspicious little slits. "Father summoned me back here today as well. I planned to refuse, actually, but he insisted it was important, though he declined to provide any explanation as to why."

Dick raises an eyebrow, questioning, and looks at Alfred. "You have any idea what's going on?"

"I only knew to expect the three of you today," Alfred says. "Nothing more. Once again, you'll have to take it up with Master Bruce."

Damian tsks in that particular way of his, then flips the hood of his jacket over his head, glaring out from beneath it in a way that puts Dick in mind of an angry field mouse, peeking out of a burrow. "We'll have it out of him eventually. If you're going to be here, Grayson, you may as well make yourself useful. Come spar with me."

"Dami, I just drove all the way here from Blüdhaven. I kinda want to sit for a minute and-"

He's cut off by Damian throwing a water bottle at his head. It's only because of his well-honed reflexes that he catches it before it whacks him in the nose.

Damian grins, savage, and takes off running down the hallway.

"You've been missed, Master Dick," Alfred says, with false solemnity. "Welcome home."

-

"Hey. You alive?"

Dick cracks an eye – the one not currently covered by a bag of frozen peas – open. Squinting past the little bit of dim sunlight filtering through the clouds, he can immediately make out a familiar scowl. "Technically. Are you?"

"Technically." Jason's face is covered in scratches, and there's a butterfly bandage over a cut on his right cheek. "Tired as fuck, though. There's an Amazon passed out in my bed right now, sleeping off a curse or some shit, and the floor is not comfortable."

Dick raises an eyebrow, but before he can say anything Jason cuts him off. "Don't. If you even obliquely imply, I swear to god she'll hear it, somehow, and fly halfway across the city to beat your ass into the ground."

Dick has not actually had the pleasure of meeting Jason's new Amazon friend, but if she's even a tiny bit like Donna or Diana, he absolutely believes it. Instead, he readjusts the bag of peas over his slowly swelling eye. "I don't think my ass would like that very much."

Jason snorts and flops down next to him in the grass. Dick is laying on the back lawn of the estate, under a tree, trying to convince himself to enjoy the quiet.

It's not really working. He and quiet have never gotten along particularly well. It's one of those things that's supposed to be good for you – like quinoa, or granola bars, or keeping your feet on the ground – that he just doesn't really get.

Give him Pop-Tarts and somersaults over peace and quiet, any day.

"So, any idea why we've been summoned to the royal presence today?"

Dick shrugs as best as he can while still laying on the ground. "Still no clue. Haven't even seen Bruce since I got here, and Damian and I've been in the Cave all morning." He sits up a little, resting on his elbows and taking the frozen peas off his eye. "Did see Selina doing the walk of shame in the kitchen this morning, though." He frowns. "Having the breakfast of shame? Drinking the coffee of shame? Something like that. There wasn't actually a lot of walking involved. No shame, either."

Jason makes a face. "Eugh. Things I don't want to know anything about, that's at the top of the list." He squints at Dick's pea-covered eye. "Why do you have peas on your face?"

"Damian. And Tiger Shark. Not in that order."

"Hn." Jason's acknowledgement is equal parts sympathy and amusement. "I am like, 90 percent certain that's the exact same bag of peas Alfred used to give me whenever I got shiners as a kid."

"I think he's just been re-freezing it over and over for like, decades. The best-by date on the bag is 1998."

There is a little bit of silence, after that – comfortable, almost, in a way Dick is still not used to with Jason. It's nice, but it's also still pretty new, and it feels a little bit like holding a bubble on your finger – like if you move your hand wrong, or shift into a breeze, or cough, it'll pop.

“Bruce is being weird, right?”

“Bruce is being weird,” Dick agrees. “But he’s always weird.”

Jason settles a little further into the grass and drapes an arm across his eyes. “You people are all exhausting.”

There’s no pop. Not yet.

-

Eventually, Alfred has everyone assembled in the dining room, seated or standing around the one little bit of the ridiculously long formal dining table that anyone ever actually uses.

They all sit or stand slightly apart from each other, as if the uncertainty of the situation has somehow physically separated them. Jason, awkwardly sprawled in a high-backed mahogany chair, looks like he would rather be virtually anywhere else in the world. Damian is sitting opposite him, slouching theatrically in his chair and absently running his bare feet over the back of the enormous lump of Great Dane that is Titus, sleeping under the table. Dick, for his part, is sitting on the tabletop, swinging his dangling legs a bit and trying, for the hundredth time today, to puzzle out what Bruce wants to talk to them about.

He's not having much luck. Everything about this is...weird. Since the only people here, other than himself, are Damian and Jason, it's probably something Bat-adjacent, at the very least – but obviously no one is in uniform, and they're not in the Cave, which means it's not something particularly pressing. Duke isn't present – he's out with friends, according to Alfred – which means Bruce either has looped him in separately or has some reason for not wanting him involved.

He has a feeling, from the inscrutable looks on Damian and Jason's faces, that they are running the same calculations he is and having no more luck.

(There's a sudden, sharp pang of missing as he wishes, pointlessly, for Tim – Tim, who probably would have already figured out what was going on, and who would've shared with the class).

Then Bruce comes into the room, followed by Alfred and…Selina.

Dick hadn't realized that she was still here.

Bruce stands at the head of the table while Selina, like Dick, perches on top of it.

"Thank you all for coming here today," Bruce says, in the stiff, overly formal tone he uses when he's uncomfortable – the same voice he'd used when he sat Dick down for The Talk in middle school. "There are three points of order I want to address here."

"You're not dying or something, are you?" Jason interrupts, and Dick can tell that he is only mostly joking – there is a tiny bit of real concern there, buried under sarcasm.

"I am not dying," Bruce responds, firmly, before pressing straight on with, "Point number one: I have asked Selina to marry me. She has agreed."

The chorus of astonishment following this announcement is so sudden and loud that Titus, who is usually unbothered by any noise up to and including Clark breaking the sound barrier as he flies out of the Cave, feels compelled to join in with a bark so low and booming that Dick can feel it vibrating in his chest.

Bruce tries, unsuccessfully, to bring order to the room, but his efforts are too divided to do much. Damian is shouting – Dick can't make out what, exactly, but it’s definitely rude. Jason is trying to ask a question – less rude, but still some variation of “what the hell?", peppered with a few extra expletives.

Alfred has suddenly sunk down into a chair, one hand over his mouth. Dick's only contribution to the commotion has been an aborted "What?", quickly buried in the others' much louder shouts.

The noise only quiets down when Alfred comes to himself, puts his fingers to his lips and whistles, high and long and loud enough for everyone to stop what they're doing and turn to look at him.

Titus barks again, just once, as if agreeing with Alfred's sentiment.

"You're shitting me," Jason says, into the sudden silence.

"Point number two–" Bruce attempts to go on, as if Jason hasn't spoken at all – as if none of them have spoken at all – but Damian cuts him off.

"Aren't you a convicted felon?" Damian snarls acidly, in Selina's general direction. "Father, I'd rather not have a convicted felon for a stepmother."

"Kid, you remember who your mom is, right?" Jason asks, incredulous. Damian turns his black scowl in Jason's direction instead.

Selina, for her part, just smiles beatifically at Damian. "Convicted for crimes I didn't commit, dear. I didn't actually kill anyone."

Damian begins to mutter something about that hardly being the only crime she's ever been accused of, but Jason immediately starts talking over him. "You know you can do better than him, right?" he asks Selina. "Like – way, way better."

"Oh, I know, honey," Selina purrs. Bruce, implacable as ever, doesn't look the least bit insulted.

Damian leaps up from his chair, and Titus starts barking again. "I'm leaving," the boy hisses, and then stalks dramatically from the room, dog at his heels.

"Damian–" Bruce starts to say, but Alfred stops him with a raised hand. "If I may, Master Bruce – please, allow me. And may I say, sir–" Here he peers around Bruce, to look right at Selina with a very gentle smile, "–and to you, Miss Kyle – congratulations."

Selina smiles back at him, though it's a bit weak. "Thanks, Alfred."

A nod, and something else –something unspoken – passes between Alfred and Bruce, and then he's gone, out the door after Damian.

Jason's chair screeches against the floor as he pushes it backwards and drawls, "Well, I’m really not sure why I'm here, so I'm gonna go outside for a smoke, and then I'm gonna–" He makes a vague gesture in the direction of the front of the house that's clearly meant to say go as far away from here as possible, and then promptly bolts from the room.

This leaves Dick, Bruce, and Selina standing around the dining table, staring everywhere but at each other until the silence, thick and oppressive, simply has to be cut with something.

"Well, that happened," Dick chirps. "Congratulations!"

-

Selina excuses herself by claiming she needs a drink. She vanishes into the corridor like a shadow, curling around the corner and into the dark, echoing hallway, where her feet don't even make a sound on the floor.

Bruce, on the other hand, slips out onto the balcony.

The dining room has a set of tall, glass-paneled doors which open onto a veranda, where you can look out over the back of the estate. Dick used to do homework out here, sometimes, when he was a kid. Here, he could take breaks and do walkovers on the railing when the reading was just too dreary, or when the writing was making his fingers itch for something other than a pencil. It was less convenient than the Cave, where Bruce keeps all the really good gymnastics equipment, but considerably less depressing.

Now he's probably a bit too tall for that, and the railing is too slick besides. It's been raining off and on for the last few hours, because this is Gotham, and the pockmarked old balcony has collected rainwater in every little nook and cranny.

"I distinctly remember you once telling me," he says, as he follows Bruce outside, "that yours and Selina's relationship was none of my business."

Bruce, hunched over the balcony with his elbows on the railing, doesn't respond.

"Now it's family business?"

"Yes," Bruce answers firmly, this time.

"You really do love her, don't you?" He laughs. "I mean, I guess obviously, if you asked her to marry you, but um – wow."

Bruce glares at him, but Dick can tell his heart's not in it. "Is it really so shocking to everyone, the idea that I might love someone?"

Dick considers not dignifying that with an answer, but thinks better of it. "Bruce, twenty minutes ago I couldn't have said if the two of you have ever actually been together at all."

To his credit, Bruce does look ever so slightly chastened, and there are a few beats before he speaks again. "I am," he says, then pauses, as if searching for the right words, "not good at this."

"At what?"

Bruce makes a noise caught somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. "Life, I think."

Dick can't help but laugh a little, too. "You really did ask her, huh?"

"Yes." He looks at Dick, then, suddenly serious. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"For me? No, God no." Dick glances back towards the house. "For Damian, maybe."

Another sigh, this one without any laughter in it. "Damian will be fine."

"Damian," Dick says, gently, "is barely thirteen, and has always held on to a teeny, tiny bit of hope that someday, Talia will see the light and his parents will get back together."

Bruce's face hardens, jaw tight and eyes dark. "That is not going to happen. Damian knows that."

"Sure, but there's a big difference between abstractly knowing that and suddenly having a new stepmom." Dick still can't quite keep a laugh out of his voice, even though Bruce's face is the furthest thing from amused.

Oh, god. Abruptly, he realizes that, at least legally, Selina would sort of be his stepmother, too. That's just – that's just too weird to even contemplate right now.

"Why now?" Why ever, he wonders too, but doesn't share that. "You've been off and on again for what – a decade? At least? What changed?"

He does not, in fact, know if they have ever been off and on again for ten minutes, let alone ten years, but he's always wondered. Bruce plays pretty much all of his cards very close to the chest, but–

It was different, when he was a kid. When he was Robin. He can remember Selina and Bruce back in those days – younger, then, and without as much baggage. Before Bruce had any gray in his hair. Selina had been on the wrong side of the law more often then, but – she used to make Bruce smile.

Bruce would send him away, most of the time, whenever Selina showed up, but sometimes he’d hang back and watch them anyways. Selina would flirt and Bruce would growl and she'd laugh, completely unintimidated, and then she'd slink away and Bruce would watch her go and he’d – smile.

He hopes she still makes him smile. Bruce has never smiled enough.

Bruce is quiet for a few moments, long enough that Dick is pretty sure he's not going to answer, before he says, softly, "I‘d known her for several years, already, when you came to live here." He chuckles, and it's a hoarse, tired sort of sound. "God, I'm old, aren't I?"

"Decrepit, absolutely."

Bruce has, of course, not actually answered the question he asked. Dick gives it a minute – just lets the loose thread dangle there to see if Bruce will go back to pick it up.

"I am tired," Bruce finally says, in a voice that's much quieter than usual, "of not being happy."

It is quite possibly the last thing that Dick ever expected to hear him say.

Bruce is drawing circles in the rainwater that has pooled in an uneven spot on the balcony ledge – a distracted motion, so unlike him that Dick is a little unsettled by it. "It's not – it's not that I've never been happy. You–" He stops, for a minute, and switches the direction of his fingers in the water, clockwise to counter-clockwise. "–you boys, all of you, have been – I am so proud of you all."

It is not I love you, but from Bruce it might as well be. Dick settles in next to him on the balcony, elbows resting on the ledge as he leans over it and stretches, rocking on the balls of his feet.

"I do not often choose things that make me happy."

This is not quite true. Fast cars, the Clash, black-and-white movies. Reading obscure Eastern European novels in their original languages. Chinese food and saag paneer and Dick's bad jokes. Old episodes of The Gray Ghost. Alfred's lemon scones. Dick has known Bruce for a long time.

But those are little things, and not quite choices.

"So you're just making a choice, huh? Hell of a dramatic choice."

Bruce looks like he's about to protest, but Dick laughs and cuts him off before he can try. "It's not a criticism. You don't know any other way to do things, Bruce. You're sort of a go big or go home kind of guy."

It's true – Dick doesn't know if it's the money, the Batman, or Bruce's inherent flair for the dramatic that’s behind it, but the man does not know how to do anything in a small way. He is simultaneously the least and most demonstrative person that Dick has ever met.

"I'm really happy for you, you know."

"Thanks."

"Are you happy for you?"

Bruce pauses, for a minute, before saying, "Yes."

"You should probably talk to Damian."

"I know."

"He's probably gonna be shitty about it."

Bruce sighs, with feeling. "I know."

Dick hesitates, a moment, before asking, "Do you want me to talk to him first?"

For a minute, he thinks Bruce might say yes – but then he shakes his head, grim, and pushes back off the balcony. "No. I should do it."

"I'm going to go find Jason, then." Dick pushes off the balcony as well, and feels a few drops of water hit his face as he does. It's started to rain again, just a little.

Bruce makes a harrumphing sort of sound that Dick only knows how to interpret because of his many years of experience speaking Bruce Wayne. "Yeah, I think he's a little miffed with you too."

-

He actually finds Jason and Selina together – sitting on the step outside the back kitchen door, huddled under the awning and sharing a cigarette.

"Thought you were trying to quit," Dick says to Jason, who just shrugs.

"She's a bad influence on me," Jason mumbles around the cigarette. "All her fault."

"I am not here to be anyone's good influence," Selina bites out acidly, snatching the cigarette back from Jason and taking a long drag. "That is not what this is about."

"What is it about, then?" Jason asks, sounding genuinely, uncharacteristically curious. "I mean, it's not like I'm not used to crazy shit, but you could knock me over with a feather right now, that's how fuckin' wild this is."

Selina grits her teeth, then blows smoke up into the glow of the porch light. It's an old bulb in an antique fixture, casting slightly orange-tinted light. Dick can see dust motes floating there, for a moment, before the smoke sweeps through and scatters them. "This is not a conversation I am going to have with you. Either of you," she snaps at Dick, pointing one elegantly manicured fingernail in his direction. "I do not have to justify myself here. Bruce asked, and I answered. We are both consenting adults. That ought to be the end of it."

"Now you just sound like Bruce," Jason says, crossing his legs at the ankle and leaning back against the kitchen door, arms folded behind his head. "Was that how he pitched the little family announcement to you, before you told us?"

Selina drops her forehead into one hand, massaging it, as if to rub away stress. Jason snatches the cigarette back from her other hand, takes a drag and then grinds it out on the damp ground, underneath his boot.

"This is a bad idea," she finally mumbles, nearly inaudible. "A really, really bad idea."

"Probably," Dick agrees, cheerfully. "But so is dressing up as a bat to fight crime."

Selina's shoulders start to shake, a little muffled chuckle escaping from her mouth – and then the back door opens, making Jason fall backwards onto the tile floor of the kitchen with a muffled 'fuck.' Alfred, who's the one holding the door, nimbly side-steps him and stares down, unimpressed, at the bedraggled tableau huddled on the back step.

Selina throws her head back and laughs properly, then, and the sound is high and clear like a bell.