Chapter Text
Dick stretches, eyes still gritty from sleep. Alfred had woken him up early for what Bruce had called said was morning training. He'd grumbled while he dressed. Saturdays are for sleeping in, and usually Bruce respected that even if he thought it was lazy.
This early in the morning, the bats hidden in the crevices of the Cave's high ceiling are still active from their night's activities and are extra chittery. He expects to find Bruce at the training mats, warming up while he waits for Dick. Instead, he's leaned against the hood of the Batmobile, reading the morning paper. He's dressed down in jeans and a black t-shirt instead of clothes suitable for working out. Dick approaches slowly, confused.
"Morning," Bruce greets, not looking up.
"Morning. I though Alfred said we were training?"
Bruce straightens, folding his paper and tucking it under his arm. "We are, in a manner of speaking. Just not combat training."
He looks down at his basketball shorts and tank top. "Should I go change…?"
"No, you're fine." Bruce opens the driver's side door of the Batmobile and climbs in. Which is extra confusing, because since when do they go out in the Batmobile in civvies? "Get in."
Shaking his head in exasperation, Dick gets in on the passenger side, clicking his seatbelt in place just before the Batmobile shoots off down the tunnel. The speed and the winding curves are familiar. A moment later, they tear through the hidden entrance and onto an old dirt service road.
Instead of following the usual route toward the city, Bruce turns off onto a different road and winds through the countryside. "Where are we going, B?" he wonders.
"You'll see." When Dick glances over, he swears Bruce is fighting back a smirk. You would think Dick would be used to this kind of thing by now, after six years, but he still finds himself bewildered by the man sometimes.
He lets it drop for the time being, watching the blur of the countryside pass by. When Bruce starts to slow, he perks up a little. Bruce turns onto a small gravel road, nearly swallowed up from sight by dense undergrowth. Dick can't see what lies down the road through tight-packed trees. A fence rises up as if out of nowhere. Bruce barely slows down, pressing a button that makes the gate blocking entry swing open. Like some kind of Batmobile garage opener.
They follow a winding path, slowly descending, but the woods are still too dense for Dick to figure out what lies beyond. He almost asks, but he knows Bruce will just say something like you'll see again and holds his tongue.
Eventually, though, the trees break. Dick leans forward in his seat. They drive along the outer edge of a huge quarry, a narrow road switching back and forth down to the bottom of the excavation site. It's what's at the bottom, though, that confuses Dick.
"Is that a… racetrack?"
"Something like that," Bruce dismisses, but he looks a little too pleased with himself.
Dick stares at the track. It looks like something out of Super Mario Kart. There are some long straight-aways, and there are sharp hairpin turns, and everything in between. The outer edges are lined with padded barriers.
At the bottom, Bruce pulls onto the smooth paved course and slows to a stop on what Dick guesses is supposed to be the main straight-away. He puts the Batmobile in park and turns to Dick. There's a gleam in his eyes. "So. Think you're ready to learn how to drive it?"
Dick blinks at him. He'd only just gotten his learner's permit a couple months ago, but he's only driven with Alfred and the driving school he was signed up for. Never with Bruce. He must look like a child, gaping at Bruce with wide eyes. Bruce just grins and climbs out. After a moment, Dick scrambles out too.
He rounds the car with lead feet and slides into the driver's side. He's driven the Batmobile before, in that he's sat in the driver's seat while it auto-piloted itself back to the Cave. But now, sitting on this side of the cab with Bruce in the other seat, knowing he's going to actually be in control of what is basically a two ton tank…
Okay, it's a little nerve-wracking.
Dick doesn't get scared easy. He runs into gunfights with a laugh. He jumps from twenty-story buildings for fun. Driving a car around a few turns should be a piece of cake, right…?
Have there always been so many buttons, though?
Bruce looks amused as he buckles in. "Press the button on the side of the seat to adjust it."
"Oh, yeah." He fumbles for it. It's not like a normal car where you have to manually adjust. Once he presses it in, the seat smoothly starts moving up and forward to where Dick's feet perfectly reach the pedals and he can see over the steering wheel. He puts his hands on wheel like he's clinging on for dear life, knuckles white.
"Relax, Dick," Bruce laughs lightly. "You look like you're gearing up to disarm a bomb."
He takes in a deep breath, willing the tension in his muscles to ease. "Do you… really think I'm ready for this?" He swallows hard. "What if I…?" Crash? Roll it? Blow it up?
"You'll do fine," he insists. "This course is designed for beginning training. The Batmobile is built to for combat and there are about a dozen different fail-safes in place. Nothing you do here is going to hurt us, or it." He squeezes Dick's shoulder, reassuring. "I think you're ready."
"Okay," he says, nodding. "Okay, yeah."
"Tell me the different modes it has."
That's an easy one. "Patrol mode, stealth mode, pursuit mode, and combat mode." He points at a series of buttons on the console. "You switch using these buttons."
"Right. For the purposes of teaching you, I added training mode." Dick blinks, surprised. "Biometrics in the steering wheel activate it. It will adapt to how you're driving and enable and disable different functions based on your progress. For right now, we're going to focus on acceleration, braking, and steering. Top speed is limited."
"Easy enough," Dick jokes. Bruce's lips curl up the slightest bit.
"Then go ahead and give it some gas."
Dick sits up straight, hands at ten and two. He taps the gas pedal and the Batmobile lurches forward like a bullet shot from a gun. His back slams against the seat, and the wheel jerks in his hand. "Shit," he swears as they swerve, yanking his foot off the pedal and letting it coast to a stop.
Bruce laughs, unfazed. "I said top speed was limited, not slow."
Dick's heart is in his throat. "I— I bared touched it!"
"I know," he assures, face softening. "The pedals are very sensitive and responsive. In training mode, it can go from zero to sixty in three seconds."
"Yeah," Dick huffs, heart pounding furiously, "I noticed."
"A big part of this training is going to be honing your reaction time at high speeds." Bruce presses a button on the dash and the car starts moving on its own, straightening back up on the road. "Go ahead and try again."
Prepared this time, Dick steels himself and lightly presses down on the gas pedal. Like, just a hair. It shoots off at forty immediately, but Dick's ready for it. "Keep it steady," Bruce prompts. The straight-away is long enough, but they near a turn quickly regardless. "This part of the track loops. I want you to drive a few laps to get a feel for it, alright?"
"Got it."
"Gently put on the breaks before the turn. They're just as precise as the gas, keep that in mind."
Lip clenched between his teeth, Dick prepares for the turn. He pushes it gently, trying for a gradual slow. The tires screech as he leans into the turn. The turn is jerky, narrowly avoiding the outer barrier when he doesn't cut the wheel hard enough at first. The Batmobile swerves when he comes out of the turn, over-correcting to get straightened out.
Dick glances over at Bruce. It wasn't a good turn. But if he's disappointed, he doesn't show it. "Do you know what you did wrong?" he asks, calm.
"Um… all of it, I think?"
This gets a small chuckle. "You turned too late and tried to fix it half-way," he explains. "You need to get your speed down first, before the turn. Brake, release, then turn." Dick clenches his jaw. He thought he'd tried to do that. The second turn is already coming up. "You had the right instincts, just not the right timing."
Bruce presses another button. A HUD graphic overlays the windshield. Nothing too intrusive, just a couple of white lines that show the path the car will take at the current speed and turn of the tires.
He breaks sooner this time. It's not nearly as smooth and fluid as the turns Bruce can make at breakneck speeds, but the lines on the HUD help get him through the curve without veering sharply or hitting the barrier.
"Better," Bruce praises.
Feeling more confidant, Dick relaxes in his seat a little. By the time he's gone around the track four or five times, he's gliding relatively smoothly around each turn. He smiles over at Bruce, even daring to put on a little more speed on the straight-aways before breaking into the turns, whipping quickly around them.
"Think you can try it without the HUD?" Bruce prompts?
"Sure." Dick glances at the panel of buttons. Which one had that been…? "Was it this one…?"
"Was it?"
Asshole. He knows better than to press a button unless he's absolutely sure he knows what it does, but Bruce doesn't stop him. And he wouldn't let Dick press anything dangerous. So, tentatively, Dick presses it.
And immediately realizes he pressed the wrong button.
The air around the Batmobile fills with dense smoke. "Ah, piss!" He can't see a thing. He starts to hit the break. A warning indicator blinks on the HUD, an orange exclamation point he recognizes as the proximity warning telling them they're about to have a collision.
All at once, faster than Dick can react, the vehicle lurches to a stop with a beep, a little green graphic of a traffic cone popping up in place of the exclamation point.
"That was the smoke screen button," Bruce points out as the smoke outside starts to thin.
Dick's hands are locked around the steering wheel. "Really?" he breathes, stomach on the floor. "Couldn't tell." He slumps back in the seat, willing his drumming heart to slow down. "Why didn't you stop me before I pressed it?"
"You know I'll always correct your mistakes," he says, shrugging and looking amused, "but—"
"After I make them," Dick finishes with a sigh. "Right."
"As long as your mistake isn't going to get you hurt, you'll learn better making the mistakes than having them fixed before you get the chance."
"Training mode has an anti-collision protocol, huh?"
"Not that I didn't trust you not to hit anything," he laughs, "but I thought it might be smart to have while you're still getting the hang of things."
Head leaned back against the headrest, Dick looks over at him. "You always made this look easy."
He doesn't deny it. "You should have seen me when I was first learning to drive it." Dick arches an eyebrow, curious, and Bruce rubs the back of his neck. "Let's just say a lot of the automation and safety features were added retroactively."
Dick snorts out a laugh, trying to imagine Bruce sucking at anything. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. So, trust me when I say you don't have to be perfect at this right away. It's hard, you're going to mess up… and it's going to be okay."
"Thanks, B."
He points at a button a few to the right of the smoke screen button. "For the record, this is the one you should have pressed." He gestures toward the windshield with his chin. "Now, why don't you run it a few more times?"
"Sure thing."
Bruce pulls back into the cave an hour later and cuts the engine. Dick climbs out of the passenger seat. He hasn't stopped beaming since they left the training track, and Bruce has to admit to himself that it's almost… infectious, his mood when he gets like that.
Despite the rough start, he really had started picking it up remarkably well. He was going to be a menace on the streets behind the wheel some day, when Bruce decides he's ready for city driving, but that's still a ways off yet.
Alfred is standing by the computer, dusting the control panel, but definitely waiting to hear about how it went.
Dick grins at Bruce when he climbs out himself. "When are we going to practice again?" he wonders, pure teenage enthusiasm that Bruce doesn't remember having about much of anything when he was the boy's age.
"How about twice a week?" he suggests. "Wednesdays before patrol and Saturday mornings?"
"Awesome!" He watches with a shake of his head as the boy bounds for the stairs, vaulting and flipping over some railing in his way instead of going around. Sighing in exasperation, Bruce drops into the chair in front of the computer.
"I see he took to driving practice well," Alfred notes, voice colored with amusement.
"You could say that."
"How did he do?"
Bruce doesn't answer immediately. "Well, I'm probably going to go prematurely gray before we're done, but… he did good."
Alfred fixes him with a knowing look. "I seem to remember a young man who demolished one of my topiaries when he accidentally put the car in reverse instead of drive…"
Bruce sighs heavily, rubbing his temple. "You are never going to let that go, are you?"
"I'm afraid not, sir."