#listen if you don't think that tiny dick grayson never tried to put an unconscious bruceover his shoulder we can't be friend

[unavenged-robin]

Can you do the "why is the room spinning?" Prompt with Bruce and dick?

Crime doesn’t pay, but sometimes it gets lucky. Lucky enough to bring down the Batman, for example (which, although Bruce doesn't like to admit it, is not such an extraordinary circumstance as he would like) and sometimes even lucky enough to surprise him.

That’s what Bruce feels as he falls on his knees exactly five seconds later he steps out of the Batmobile: surprise. And, for the briefest moment, fear.

Not for himself - because god knows he’s forgot what’s like to be afraid for himself somewhere between his first and his second night wearing the costume - but for his children, for Alfred, for his friends. They already had to bury him once, and granted, sooner or later they will have to do it again, and hopefully in a more permanent way next time, but not so soon. Please, not so soon, Bruce thinks. Damian’s still only thirteen years old, he’s too young. And he needs to be in a better place with his other sons before saying goodbye to them. And hadn't Alfred promised that if Bruce ever dared to die again before him he would’ve resigned? He can’t risk that. His kids cannot survive without Alfred, just as Bruce would never have been able to.

Sound of running footsteps, a hand on his shoulder. Bruce could recognize Dick Grayson in the crowd of thousand others: his footsteps, his touch, his breathing, his heartbeat, Bruce knows all of them by heart. He knows those of all his children, but Dick’s were the first ones he’s learned after his own, and Bruce thinks he could maybe forget his own name, his own whole being, but not Dick. Never Dick.

“Batman?”, the voice comes out uncertain, like Dick thought Bruce may be playing a prank on him. Bruce did sometimes, way, way back, when he was younger and still optimistic enough to think that his children could not die, that he would always be there to protect them because that was his job, his mission, his everything. Protect the children, protect the innocents. No more Bruce Wayne in Gotham: that was the promise.

And then there was a Richard Grayson, and a Jason Todd, a Tim Drake, a Cassandra Cain. A Damian Wayne.

To fail so miserably, Bruce thinks, blind eyes behind the cowl.

“Batman!”, now there’s urgency in Dick’s yell. Good. There’s something Bruce needs to tell him, though. Something important but. Mouth and head both stuffed with cotton. Can’t think, can’t talk. He tries anyway, because fuck it, that’s why.

He grasps at every filament of consciousness that still remains to him, clenching teeth and fists and every muscle that still obeys him.

“Room”, he sighs after a flash of white pain makes him shake on the ground, and someone pushes his cowl backwards for the cold air of the batcave to caress his sweaty face.

Nightwing is yelling now, lots of words without meaning, and his hands are moving all over Bruce’s body, fingers pressing, checking, trying to find what’s wrong and how to fix it. It takes Dick a moment to stop and look down at him.

“What?”, he asks.

Bruce decides that he can put in a little more effort after all.

“Room. Spinning. Why”, he mutters with slow, careful precision, each syllable a snap of the tongue against the palate and yes, that was it, the important thing he had to say to Dick. Well, not in the right order and not with the proper tone, but his boys are all detectives, damn good detectives, and Bruce’s sure they can manage.

When he blacks out, a few seconds later, he’s not afraid anymore.

-

He wakes up to the sight of the familiar ceiling of his bedroom above him and to the noise of the constant beeping of his own electrocardiogram all around. He tilts his head to the side, certain to find the one he is looking for.

“You’re lucky I remembered”, Dick greets him, messed up hair and dark circles under his eyes. “You old, crazy bastard.”

Bruce tries to answer, ends up coughing. Dick sighs and helps him to a glass of water.

“Not lucky”, he retorts as soon as he’s sure he can speak without choking. “I knew- I knew you would remember.”

“There is literally no way you could’ve known that”, Dick objects, and he’s half amused and half pissed off by now. “I was what, nine, ten? Younger than Damian for sure.”

“Nine”, Bruce answers, because he remembers that night all too well. It was the first time he seriously got hurt on patrol with Robin in tow. It had been Ivy’s poison, just like tonight, and Bruce had been taken by surprise and collapsed on his knees in the Batcave, useless and scared for his Robin, just like tonight. In the midst of confusion and fear he’d been able to ask only one, immensely stupid question: why is the room spinning?

And Dick, nine-years-old Dick who had been patrolling with him for less than a month, who was already trying to drag him to the med-bay despite Bruce weighing four times what he did, nine-years-old Dick who was trying not to panic himself, had answered, in what Bruce had catalogued as a desperate attempt to reassure him: because we are on a carousel.

He laughs now as he’d laughed then, and Dick looks at him like he wants to swat him.

“You never let me live that one down”, he complains, but there’s a hint of a smile in the corners of his mouth.

“Because we are on a carousel”, Bruce repeats, still chuckling (must be the anaesthetics), and this time he does earn himself a swat, although a very gente one.

“Only you could use an inside joke to tell me that you were poisoned with nightshade toxins instead than, you know, actually tell me that you were poisoned with nightshade toxins.”

“Mh”, Bruce hums with a pleased smile, closing his eyes. “But it worked.”

“Yeah, it did”, Dick sighs. “But don’t tell that story to Damian, or next time I won’t save you.”

Bruce snorts and goes to sleep with the feeling of Dick’s hand in his hair.