Chapter Text
Dick was silent the entire ride back to the bunker. He had to be or he knew he’d end up saying the wrong thing. Even now, even furious, the last thing Dick wanted to do was hurt Damian. Any words that he might say right now would cut because that’s how Dick was. When he was angry his words could dig and dig at someone until they found just the right place to stab.
He'd heard that having kids was supposed to make someone less selfish. Dick was still terribly selfish. He wanted his family safe, happy, and whole and he’d do anything to make that happen. He refused to budge on that. What caring for a child had changed about him was his temper. He'd reigned himself in on more than one occasion for the kid. He couldn’t have a short fuse around Damian, not if he wanted him to take any of his lessons seriously. Not if he wanted Damian to believe him when he said he cared, that he loved him, and that he’d never hurt him for making a mistake.
Even if that mistake had almost gotten Damian killed and had ruined months of work.
He was just shy of slamming the car door shut when he jumped out of the batmobile. He was beginning to understand why Bruce would pour himself into work when a night went bad. His whole body felt tightly coiled, and ready to snap at a moment's provocation, and he needed something to distract and help calm him down. As a kid, Dick had hated it when Bruce dismissed him and sat there, staring at the computer for hours, stony and silent. Dick had thought he was fuming, now he wondered if it was Bruce’s way of controlling his anger, and of keeping himself from yelling at Dick.
He found himself moving to the computer, ready to pull up the night’s file and delete everything, to burn the whole case he’d been building against Grover Davenport. Damian had all but done it tonight. He sighed, feeling his whole chest expand and contract with the breath, and turned his thoughts away from blaming his brother. He knew exactly what Damian had been trying to do, even if he wouldn’t say it himself.
The chair slid out with a scratch, and Dick tried to ignore the small angry presence beside him as he sat and pulled himself towards the sanctity of work. Damian understood that, didn’t he? Getting a case's information down as quickly as possible when it was still fresh was important. He'd told Dick as much many times.
“I had it under control.” Each word from his Robin's mouth was precisely measured and weighted for full emphasis.
Dick focused just a little harder on the files he was pulling up.
“I had Davenport, he was ready to spill everything.” Damian continued. “I didn’t need you.”
He was needling Dick, trying to get him to respond, to yell at him. Dick had done the same thing when he was Robin and he felt like Bruce hadn’t punished him properly for a mistake. Except instead of being upset Bruce hadn’t grounded him Damian was upset Dick hadn’t lashed out or hurt him either with actions or words. Damian didn't have to tell him that, Dick knew it. He'd gleaned the knowledge from countless conversations about how things were different in Gotham, how Damian didn't have to expect some kind of physical rebuke for a mistake.
It killed Dick, knowing that this kid, as prickly and insufferable as he could be, had been hurt physically and verbally for making even small mistakes. Navigating the minefield that was teaching Damian that had all been wrong was difficult at best. Every day was a balancing act, and a lesson to Dick in how to respond best to Damian. The last thing Dick wanted to do was hurt him more than he'd been hurt before.
He pressed his lips closer and tamped down the anger bubbling inside him at everything. He wasn't going to snap or yell or give into Damian's needling. He would not give Damian the satisfaction he was looking for. Dick would not be everything Damian had left. He focused on the screen and kept his fingers tapping on the keyboard.
There were five blissful minutes of silence before, “You can’t do this, Grayson. You can’t just ignore me. I am your partner, you told me as much, so look at me and tell me what I did was wrong.”
The words were shakier now, not as full of pomp as they’d been minutes earlier. Dick took in another deep breath and kept working.
“Stop it!” Damian shouted, “Don’t you dare shut me out like this, Grayson! Talk to me! Yell! Do something, anything but this silence!”
Dick spun in the chair, angry words on his lips as he stood. All Dick saw in the next second was Damian’s flinch. The painful jerk his brother made at Dick’s movement, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment, his shoulders tensing, hands clenching for reasons beyond anger.
Every bit of anger in Dick was gone with that flinch. If any was left, the tear tracks on Damian’s cheeks would have been all Dick needed to let go of his fury at the boy’s mistake. The person he was looking at wasn’t a haughty prince or an angry vigilante, he was a terrified child. One Dick had frightened, despite his attempts not to.
He dropped to a knee and reached out slowly for his brother’s shoulders. Damian was like a brick, his body stiff and unmoving. He wouldn’t even look at him.
“I’m sorry.” Dick said.
He didn’t have to force the words to be gentle, they were. It was easy, the soft tone one that slipped out when he was faced with scared kids in a dark alley or frightened kidnap victims. It was wrong, Damian shouldn’t be a frightened child. He especially shouldn’t be afraid because of Dick.
Why couldn’t he get things right with Damian? He'd failed his balancing again, Damian's reaction was proof enough. Silence had been worse than biting words. Damian wouldn't even look him in the eye, and Dick was struck with a memory from his own childhood. He'd botched a case, worse than Damian's rash actions had tonight, and Bruce hadn't spoken to him the rest of the night. Dick had no idea what Bruce had been thinking. By the next morning he was convinced Bruce was going to strip Robin from him and send him away. He didn't, and Bruce hadn't even been angry that long, but none of that had been communicated to Dick.
Here he was, terrifying Damian in that same way. He'd been trying so hard not to hurt him with words, he'd done it in a totally different way. Even when he was trying to do the right thing he messed up. He’d wanted to protect Damian from the fury of the league and forced him to face a different brand of fury, the quiet unknowable kind Dick himself had faced from Bruce. That was far more scary than loud words and screaming voices.
“I am so sorry, Damian.” Dick told him, “I’m so terribly sorry. I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“I wasn’t scared.” Damian mumbled.
Dick pulled him into a hug that Damian didn’t fight. That alone told the truth to Damian’s lie.
“Well I was.” He said. “When I found your stuff gone I was afraid. When I found you with a gun to your head in that alley I was terrified. That fear turned to anger, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say some of it wasn’t directed at you.”
In his arms Damian stiffened again, but Dick let a hand rub his brother’s back to ease the anxiety out of him.
“I was mad that you left on your own without telling me, but I was angrier at the situation, and myself for putting you in the position where you thought you had to prove yourself to me.”
Now Damian pulled away from him, a hand furiously rubbing at his face. “I didn’t think I had to prove myself.” There was a defensive lilt to his tone.
“Really?” Dick asked. “Then why did you run off tonight when you knew we were working on the case?”
Damian bit his lower lip.
Dick tilted Damian’s head up to look him in the eyes, “Did it have anything to do with the fight you and Tim had earlier today?”
His brother didn’t answer him, and Dick nodded. “You know he just said that because you two were fighting? And that nothing said during that fight would change how I feel about you?”
“I was not a model of good behavior during that fight either.” Damian admitted. “I felt that it might have impacted your view on my skills and I was hoping to make it up to you before we spoke again.”
Dick smiled and shook his head. “Of course, you did.” He took his brother’s hand and rubbed his thumb atop it, “Listen, Damian, you don’t have to make anything up to me. I would love it if you and Tim could get along, but you can’t run off and try to fix something you haven’t even talked to me about.”
Damian nodded then looked Dick in the eye. “You also cannot block me out when you’re angry. Communication must go both ways. Even if you do not want to yell, you also shouldn’t be silent when you are angry either. It is,” he paused. “Unsettling.”
That was as much an admittance to Damian’s earlier fear as Dick was going to get so he nodded.
“I think I can agree to that.” He said. “Now, I’m going to hug you again, and to appease me and make up for tonight’s scare you’ll let me.”
Damian rolled his eyes, but opened his arms for the second hug. Dick took it before the offer could be rescinded and pulled his brother into a warm hug.