thank boygenius for this one

i guess if this was on ao3 i'd say it's dialogue heavy and a character study but we're on wattpad so I'm just gonna throw it at your door like I'm egging your house

Damian was self-aware. People thought he wasn't because he was blunt and appeared childish despite how mature he considered himself to be but he was very self-aware. He knew he lashed out at the wrong people and he knew he often gave people who tried their hardest to be patient with him the hardest time. 

He knew most of the arguments he had with Dick were unfounded. Dick just handled it better. He was a great punching bag, never expecting an apology and always there even after what had been said. It had to come from a place of care but that was too hard to reckon with. He could come up with other excuses to cover the truth which he did thoroughly to stop himself from saying sorry. Sometimes though, he knew his remarks were far too cutting for someone to bear.

Whatever sparked this fight, he'd long forgotten by the time he started trading verbal blows. It was probably something silly like messing up a move on patrol or overshading his drawing and making the graphite turn muddy. Dick could've been humming too loud or energetically explaining the latest plot of Grey's Anatomy despite how he hated the show as soon as Christina left. 

"I never wanted you to look after me," Damian spat. "Why would I want someone like you to be my mentor? A cowardly man like you has nothing to teach me other than to run in the opposite direction."

"Yet I'm still here," the older replied.

"For now. I know your history, you run. You ran from Robin, you ran from the Titans, you ran from Bruce. You. Run." He shook his head, maintaining his composure. He knew this was just a hurt kid lashing out. He knew that things seemed unstable so Damian fought back before he could be beaten. "You're a coward."

"I'm never running from you no matter how hard you try to push me away," Dick stated. He could've run the moment Bruce went missing but he didn't. He could've turned a blind eye to both Gotham and Damian when Bruce was declared dead but he didn't. He didn't have to do everything he'd done until now but he did. Dick wished that someone would acknowledge that but he knew not to expect it from the younger.

"Will you get it through your head that I do not want you here? For once in your life, you are being given the opportunity to act like the coward you are."

"You're angry, I get that," Dick began. The teen knew his words were getting underneath his skin. His body was tense like a bowstring before firing. "You're just looking at ways to get me angry so you can get the same energy but I'm not matching it." He sounded like he was talking himself down too especially with how he traced the outlines of his fingers to match his breathing. "Take ten and then figure out if what you're saying is something you want on the record." Naturally, Damian did nothing of the sort.

"I'm speaking my mind, Grayson. You want to play out some fantasy that we're some sort of family and you're my big brother coming to help me but I lost my father and you lost nothing."

"Bruce was my father too."

"He may have been to you, you may think you lost a father, but you were no son to him. I've found attempts at adoption for the others but never one for you. You are an overgrown stray he thought he got rid of but then you came crawling back to his door."

"Bruce didn't want to replace my dad. There was never a good time to talk about adoption after I'd been here a few years," Dick argued weakly.

"He didn't want to be your dad. He didn't want you and neither do I. I don't think many people do." The acrobat stared at him for a moment and the air around them seemed to drop in temperature. 

"This is done," he stated firmly, a great contrast to his voice prior. A contrast so stark that the ex-assassin was stunned into silence. "You can go work out, you can draw, you can scream in the cave for all I care but I can't- I can't keep doing this. If you want a proper conversation then you're welcome to find me but we're not having these one-sided arguments. Not for now at least."

"I-"

"We both know what you're going to say isn't an apology so don't. I'm done." He walked away before Damian got another word in. The teenager watched him carefully before he stormed off too with the goal of breaking at least four training dummies. 

Dick didn't attend dinner so Damian ate alone at the table. He noticed Alfred had prepared a plate and initially put it on the table but after returning from going upstairs, he put it in the fridge instead. 

"Is he not hungry?" he asked the butler. 

"I think it would be wise to use the silence to reflect, Master Damian," Alfred replied in a frosty tone, avoiding the question entirely. "Then I suggest you ponder why exactly Master Richard may be tired of being a human stress ball."

"I said nothing I haven't said before."

"I suppose not. Then again, you haven't said all this prior to him giving up his life to care for you." Damian broke eye contact to stare at the contents of his plate. He wasn't stupid or naive. He knew that Dick had been fairly happy in Bludhaven and was more than reluctant to become Batman. He knew that it was all done for him. He could've very easily been sent away to boarding school again but he hadn't been. He could've continued fighting for the Robin title with Tim had Dick not outright given it to him. With a sigh, he began to eat.

They're supposed to be on patrol now, Damian thought as he sat in the cave like a seething mother waiting for her daughter to come home long after curfew. There was no warning that they wouldn't go out. The fight didn't count as a warning. They still worked together after arguments. He huffed as the minutes ticked by and he was left alone. He could just go out as Robin. That'd teach Dick a lesson for being late. The only issue was he couldn't bring himself to get suited up. The only thing he felt strongly about was finding the acrobat. Maybe he'd apologize, maybe he wouldn't. He just didn't like that they hadn't interacted with each other since the argument. 

When it got to midnight, he decided that Dick wasn't going to greet him with a smile and some half-hearted apology he knew the teen wasn't listening to. He pulled up the cameras in the manor to see if Dick had even thought about going to the cave but was held up in conversation or making one of his ludicrously sugary coffees. The only person he saw was Alfred going about the kitchen cleaning with a bit more vigour than necessary. Dick had to be in his room. Well, a bedroom to be pedantic. Bedrooms didn't have cameras for obvious reasons. Perhaps he'd slept through his alarms. He'll just have to wake the acrobat up himself. 

Damian didn't make it to Dick's room. On the way over, he heard a sniffling coming from the bedroom prior. Bruce's bedroom. His heart stuttered at the thought of someone occupying a space meant to be left empty but he soon got a hold of himself and thought logically. Dick was in there for some unknown reason. 

"Grayson?" Damian whispered. He couldn't see anything in the pitch black but he was certain the sniffling he heard was from Dick. Alfred never allowed himself to shed tears in a place anyone could walk in. The butler never really entered Bruce's room. Only he and Dick dared to. No response greeted him so he slowly stepped into the room and turned the light on. The acrobat was sitting on Bruce's bed, his eyes red and his hair messy. His expression was blank but in his eyes were a storm of anger and sorrow that Damian could easily recognise in his own. 

It was weird. 

Dick had expressed sadness, of course, but he never looked truly wrecked like this. He didn't wear grief on his sleeve like most. Damian couldn't be sure how long he'd sat there in the dark or if he'd begun in the dark in the first place though he was sure it had to be for some time. He could make a guess that it was after their argument. Well, it wasn't really an argument. Damian was looking for a fight and received reassurances that drove him to fury faster than it did comfort.

"I did everything for him, more than I was supposed to do," Dick said, talking to the wall rather than the young hero. He gripped a picture frame in his hands so hard that it was about to break under his fingers. "I'm still here when everyone left and he didn't even want me in the first place."

"I," the apology got stuck in his throat. He didn't know if this was the right time. 

"Even when he's dead, I'm still doing it. I don't want to be Batman. I'm a shitty mentor. You hate me, Alfred didn't have a say in bringing me here." As Damian carefully walked closer, he could see the curls of Dick's hair sticking out from between his fingers. He'd been tearing his hair out. Pulling on it at the very least. A habit he must've never grown out of.

Damian didn't like to eavesdrop but when his name was overheard, he couldn't exactly leave without knowing the context.

"Kids with our life don't grow up like the others," Dick stated, stirring his coffee. "He's going to act childish sometimes and other times not."

"He can't have tantrums when he doesn't get his way."

"His dad just died."

"As did yours," Alfred replied. There was a moment of silence. "How are you faring?"

"I'm okay." It was obvious he was lying. "Let's just focus on Damian. He can't go back to his mother's and I don't think that school will help much. It's good at discipline but I think he's had a little too much tough love for one life."

"But I can't raise him. I don't use my age as an excuse often but I'm not the man I was when you were his age." Damian felt rage build up at the thought of being sent out of a house that was rightfully his. Why should some old butler have a say in his inheritance? He was the heir. He was the only biological Wayne left. "You have more patience than others. Than even myself at times."

"You're asking me to raise him, aren't you?" It isn't reluctance in Dick's voice, it's something else. Something that can't be placed but can be appreciated.

"You have a mantle to take. With that comes a secondary mantle that you must care for. It would be easier if you were to live here and give him the training."

"He won't take that well."

"He'll learn to deal with it." He wouldn't.

Dick glanced over at him for a second before his gaze refocused on the wall. 

"You should go to bed. We can skip patrol tonight."

"I'm not a child in need of a bedtime. In any case, you have piqued my interest," he replied. He didn't know how to say he wanted to be there. He just hoped that the acrobat would do what he always did and translate it. 

"Thought I was just a stray that got too old?"

"I said you were an overgrown stray to be precise."

"Because that's so much different," he huffed. "You're not wrong though, I guess. Good observations. You take after Bruce with that one."

"No, those weren't observations of reality. Those were observations of your emotions. I know how to make you upset. I go for the throat every time," he replied. "I bite the hand that feeds me."

"Sometimes they deserved it," Dick countered. It wasn't fair that he was still trying to understand him. "When I was Robin, I was Bruce's successful project. Something he could show off to other heroes. He helped me manage my anger or I thought he did. I wasn't cussing out his parents as often as I used to and I didn't punch walls when I saw red."

"I've heard stories of it," Damian muttered. "There's a chipped tile in the showers downstairs. Father said you did that when first started training and hit the mat every time." He mulled on the thought for a few minutes. "Is that why you tolerate me?"

"I don't tolerate you. I love you like family. When you love people like that, you put up with a lot of their bullshit."

"I don't think you should," he stated. 

"Damian-"

"No, let me speak," he interrupted. "I have spoken to you in a manner I would be ashamed of using towards my previous mentors because I knew, unlike them, your punishment would be understanding. I used you."

"You're not the first."

"I doubt I will be the last but I don't want to do that anymore. I don't like seeing the consequences and perhaps that's selfish of me but I seem to be rather awful at doing things for others," he explained. "You did something before. It was a breathing technique I believe."

"I learned it ages ago. You trace around your fingers and when you go up you breathe in and then breathe out when you go down. I hated counting. The whole 4, 5, 6 thing never really stuck. Plus after inhaling fifteen years worth of weird chemicals, your lungs get weird," Dick answered. "It works sometimes. Sometimes things get too loud."

"What do you do then?"

"I come in here. It might be horrible to say but I come in here and say to myself that at least I'm not as bad as this as Bruce was. Tonight though? I feel like I did worse. He'd be able to stand there and take it but what do I do? Run out. Like you said I do when things get worse." Damian cringed. He didn't mean it. He never meant much when he was starting arguments for the sake of it. 

"Why did you leave?"

"I didn't want to do something I would regret. I'd never hit you, let me get that straight, but I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't start giving you the same energy. I may not like Talia or how you were brought up but she's your mother. I needed to calm down before we spoke again. Then I got in here and just... I broke down." It would be well within his right to trade blows but Damian could respect the fact he walked away and didn't try to return before he was ready. "I don't even know if I wanted to be adopted. I think I would've just appreciated the offer. Everyone else got their chance to accept or reject it and I didn't even get a second thought."

"Father was proud to have you as a son," Damian told him sincerely. They spoke about Dick a few times and it was always with a pride he wished to have. "I'm sorry for making you doubt that."

"I've always doubted it," he admitted. "From the moment I was brought here. I don't think I'll ever believe he was proud after all we went through. I appreciate the sentiment though."

"Then I will say that I'm proud of you."

"Why?"

"Because you have stayed despite what I've put you through. You have the will to walk away rather than hurt me. You have entertained a conversation with me after our argument." Dick huffed out a laugh and dragged him into a side hug he would later say he was reluctant to return. "Don't," he paused briefly, unsure if he was comfortable with this vulnerability. He pressed on though. "Don't leave me. I'm sorry."

"Dami, you could kill me and I still wouldn't leave your sorry ass. I'd find a way to resurrect myself."

"I'm sure you would."