Chapter Text
The knife pushes thin along Dick’s carotid artery, cupping the indent between neck and jawline—forcing him to angle his chin. The metal is warm, pulled with execution speed from under Damian’s pillow. The blade is black obsidian.
“Okay,” Dick says quietly, tracking the intricacies of his own heartbeat—counting the space between breaths. “Guess I did need a shave.”
Damian angles the knife further into Dick’s skin. His other hand clutches Dick’s collar, pulling himself upright off his bedsheets. The whites of his eyes shine silver in the dark.
“What is the meaning of this?” he spits—like acid, like darts in the desert.
Dick notices, for the first time, that the boy had gone to bed in his street clothes. If he were to pull back the comforter, would he find green boots? Laces tight up tight?
Dick’s own weight rests on one hand and the knee he’d used to brace himself when Damian pulled him down to meet the knife.
“Speak, cur,” Damian says. “I will not ask again. Why are you here?”
“I came to check on you.” He’s careful not to swallow.
The boy scoffs.
“I did,” Dick insists. “Guess it was a wasted effort. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Or you were trying to tidy a loose end.”
It must’ve been Dick’s hand in Damian’s bangs that woke him. Or Damian had heard him enter but chose to lie in wait. He’d been clear, after all, that Dick was an untrusted interloper: a Batman undeserving of the name.
Dick chooses his words carefully. “No loose ends. I told you at the funeral, remember? I want you here. Bruce wanted you here.”
“My father’s plans have never mattered to me,” Damian says. Brazen in his lie.
Dick doesn’t call him on it. Instead he says, “I’m gonna stand up now, okay?”
Damian doesn’t loosen his hand on Dick’s shirt. His pupils are blown wide.
Dick counts through another two careful breaths. Then, very slowly, he covers Damian’s hand with his own—wraps his own fingers around the knife’s handle. Pulls it away from his neck.
Damian lets him, and releases his collar. The rise and fall of his small chest slows.
“We’re okay,” Dick says faintly. He backs up off the bed, swallowing a strange bitterness. “Message received. No waking up psychotic baby assassins after patrol.”
Damian shoves the knife back under his pillow. The muscles in his shoulders remain hard with tension: coiled and alert. The moon, setting towards the horizon, plasters light against his window.
“Why tonight?” he asks suddenly.
“Huh?”
“The funeral was two weeks ago. You claim you’re here to check on me. Why tonight?”
Dick considers. He’s never had much of an internal narrative: most decisions are images in sequence. Most memories are light and color and personality. When he chatters at his enemies, talks to his friends, he’s collapsing a cinemax full of thoughts and data into a single verbal strand. It’s no wonder he never stops speaking: words don’t come fast enough. There’s always more to say.
So the answer to Damian’s question is a kaleidoscope—a puzzle of instincts left unassembled. Damian’s perfectly-executed backward walkover to avoid gunfire on tonight’s patrol. The way the bullet had still clipped his ankle, doing no damage through his armored cape but sending him spinning towards the roof’s edge anyway. The specific angle of his upturned nose when Alfred had offered him a late dinner afterwards, and he’d clearly wanted to say yes. The way his fingers rubbed together when he said no.
Talia al Ghul’s sharp nails. Tim’s wounded anger. Bruce’s broad back as Dick had seen it again and again: as Robin, laid out on a gurney in the Batcave, watching him run the computers late into a cold night.
The sketchbook he’s seen on Damian’s person, disappearing whenever Dick gets too close.
Instead of all this, he says, “You skipped dinner after patrol.”
Damian flops back on the pillow. He turns to face the wall. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“Okay,” Dick says, thinking of the way the boy’s eyes lingered on Alfred’s pineapple upside-down cake.
He turns for the door. “If you want something later, feel free to just take anything from the kitchen. There’s half a salmon platter in the fridge.” Carefully, as though it’s an afterthought, he adds, “And there’s still cake. You should try some before I eat it all.”
The shadow of Damian’s curled body plays on the bedroom wall. Dick closes the door when he goes.
The cake’s still there in the morning. It goes untouched through the day. Then they finish a flawless patrol that night, and Damian comes home to eat three slices.
Dick lets him keep the knife.