wingedfreak | days in the circus

days in the circus

Gotham City is in standing water. It laps up in basements and first floors, gnawing steadily at the foundations of the city. He acknowledges how lucky he is that the Wayne Tower was built industrial, as he's reminded every day that he comes back to the cave and peels out of the wet suit after long hours of pulling people out of rotted buildings. Still, the stone floors still boast up to four inches of water when it rains. He's lost a databank that will need to be rebuilt from the ground up. The set up has been moved upstairs, where light mold is already nipping into the plaster. It will have to go somewhere else soon, so that the scheduled maintenance crew doesn't trip over it.

He can't think of where it will go yet. He's tired. His self-preservational instincts were long gone weeks ago, and now that Alfred is home (easily winded and heavily medicated, yes, but home), Bruce finds he can't be bothered to decide what needs doing for his own good. At least, not till Dory wakes him up fussily, yanking curtains open and chittering about the mess in the master suite. He strains to puzzle out what she's talking about (it's dusty, just dust it, who cares?) until she mutters something about Satanica and he realizes what mess she means.

Riddler's mess. Renewal's mess. He feels more tired for realizing.

His parents' room had been untouched for years. The memory of it feels like a dream, as does most of the long week that led Bruce to vandalizing it with his research. All the fanatical zeal that had come with him into the room then is gone, though, and he can't help feeling silly when he goes in just before sun down and sees just what Dory complained of. It looks like a klatch of cooler-tipsy teenagers has been here. Bruce leaves only a few seconds after he enters, opting to prepare first with coffee with Alfred in the kitchen, a few pointers on how to scrub spray paint off of the wood floors, and the appropriate cleaning supplies.

The crew isn't supposed to come yet, Bruce notes to himself as he applies a paste along the paint marks. It must be later than he thought, and the crew is coming tomorrow. Maybe he's lost track of the days. Maybe he's more of a mess than he thought just yesterday. Two days ago? Earlier today? Bruce fumes over collecting his documents and sorting them on his parents bed--but the annoyance sharpens to alertness when he hears an unfamiliar footfall echo up the hall. Heavy, quick, steady--young and probably male. Not the snappy sound of his quiet staff or Dory's shuffle, not Alfred's cane-assisted lumber. It can't be tomorrow already...

A glance out the window tells him that he's right: it's only mid-evening, well past the time anyone should be stopping by for work. Drifting into the door frame, Bruce bends his head down the dark hall to listen. The steps meet Dory's a floor lower, a corridor down. He can't pick out the words, but the voice is distinct and strange to this house. At this time of night, after all of this mess, the idea of strangeness in his house is unacceptable. Bruce doesn't bother with the lights as he slips (silent, shoeless under his sweatpants) into the hall. He wants eyes on the interloper before they get eyes on him.

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"You don't need to call me that." He's not an unaware, boarding school jerk. "If that's what Bruce needs, sure." He folds his hands into the pockets of the zipped up hoodie, turning to face Bruce fully and keeping Dory half behind him. Does Bruce mean to make her so nervous?

"Look, you're gonna have to put up with me, alright?" Frank, with no room for ifs and buts. "I can help, and I can't have Alfred suffering alone. That's not what he's here for." Here, in Gotham, married to his post in the Wayne family, to this dark house and man.

He shields Dory. Bruce doesn't quite see her until Dick blocks his view. What is he protecting her from? Is she really that nervous? He's still working through the why when Dick layers on more: Alfred is suffering, Alfred is alone, Dick is here and Bruce has to put up with him, Bruce apparently needs him here. Brow scrunched tight, eyes narrow with peering at Dick, he starts to recognize what remains of the bold, sure-footed boy that spent a season in Bruce's house and on Bruce's nerves.

He thinks to contest the sideways accusations, but a look to Dory again (longer this time, assessing) tells him she won't react well to bickering. Instead, he shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head slackly, a perfect recreation of a concession that Dick saw any number of times all those years ago: "Fine." No one asked, but he steps in and takes the linens out of Dick's arms. "C'mon. I'll help you out. Dinner's almost ready, right, Dory?"

"Last I checked." She agrees warily, but there's no subtlety to Bruce's meaning. Her hand nexts neatly in Dick's elbow. Pat pat. "I'll make sure the table is set. Don't be too long, or it'll go cold. Again."

Bruce "smiles" for the next moment until she's a solid twenty feet down the hall--then he's back to peering and puzzling at Dick. "You're coming on really strong for a guest."

The pats help, partly tamping down the irritation that’s bubbling to the surface. Dick watches Dory’s retreating figure, gaze sliding over to Bruce’s expression to catch the moment that smile drops.

He doesn’t really know why the shrug had been so irritating, or why the way Bruce concedes grates on his patience. The memories surfacing aren’t good ones, but that was then, and this is now. Now, Bruce grasps his linens and calls him out.

So he sighs, shoulders dropping. If all he’s heard is true, then he won’t see much of Bruce anyway. This doesn’t have to be so painful. Brows lift in emphasis.

“So we call it even, then? You’re an unwelcoming host.”

Whatever umbrage he takes to the complaint, the frankness is...refreshing. Bruce hrrms as he moves past, turning the conflict around in his mouth. "Things have been chaotic here. I mean, you've seen..." The news. The city. The house. Not Alfred yet, but he's heard about the hip and the knees and the burns and the pain. "... everything. How long are you staying?"

Bruce steps around him with the bundle of sheets, and his words sizzles out the annoyance. He gets it. They’re all on edge, short on time and temper and Bruce hadn’t been expecting him. He shoves his hands in the pockets of the hoodie with a sigh.

“However long I need to,” he answers, despite bringing only bringing enough for a week. Following Bruce, his strides quicken before he falls into step. Less defensively, he elaborates, glancing at Bruce. “I don’t know yet. How long are you gonna be tied up for?”

He doesn't like that question. He doesn't have an answer, and he definitely doesn't have an answer that doesn't make him sound like a man actively neglecting his loved ones. One. Bruce scowls and steps around it. "However long you need to. Aren't you still in school?"

“Yeah,” sighed out to the side, though it does nothing for the weight settling on his chest. He’s thankful for the staircase they start to ascend and the beat it affords him as they go back to the top floor of the manor.

“I told them I had some Family stuff. They understand. I’ll defer a semester if I have to.” He’s thinking the thought out loud for the first time, but surprisingly, it doesn’t sit as horribly as he thought it might. He’s never quite belonged to any one place. Not San Francisco, where he goes to school, not Detroit, where he lived with Clay, and certainly not Gotham. He belongs to the circus and whatever pieces of it is left, like his relationship with Alfred.

They reach the top of the stairs and start down the generous corridor, lined with elaborate mahogany panels and paintings, lit only by the window at the end of it. Dick’s gaze drifts along before settling back on Bruce, who hasn’t answered his question. Who’s trying to get him to leave quick and is hammering in the point.

He pauses at the doorway to the room he’s staying in. Calling it his room still doesn’t feel right, but this is where he’ll have to be for an unforeseeable amount of time. He turns to Bruce, levelling a steady look.

“Bruce, I know we didn’t exactly part on good terms last time. Could we—start over?”

Defer a semester. Physically, Bruce doesn't give away that the suggestion rushes to his head. How is he supposed to navigate around another person in this house? Nevermind someone like Dick, who was never reserved to begin with, and who's returned with a discomforting sense of surety about him. When he turns to Bruce, Dick meets his eyes easily, sturdy and bolder than Bruce remembers him. Under the point blank question, he's taken aback.

Start over. This time with him carrying his ghosts on his shoulders, and Dick standing upright.

His jaw works, eyes hold Dick's from below his brow. Bruce straightens his shoulders gradually. "...Of course." He has to think of Alfred. Of their hands pinched together in the hospital room, noting how all the strength Alfred could muster wasn't half of what Bruce had felt from him before. He nods. "I'm not going to turn away family."

He expects the gathering up of begrudging acceptance tracing along Bruce's jaw and spine, knowing he's forcing himself here against Alfred’s wishes, against Bruce’s wishes. Possibly against everyone’s wishes besides Dory and the hospital.

However, he doesn’t expect the words that follow, and the surprise shows on his own face in lifted brows and a stare, focused on Bruce’s exhausted, sunken gaze. It’s a flaw he’s working on: that tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve. His expression softens to a smile.

“Thanks.” A beat and he reaches for the sheets Bruce holds. “I’m serious, Bruce. I’ve gotten more useful. I can handle things now.”

He can't pin down at first why Dick's reaction bothers him but it comes when Dick turns his back: it's probably been a few weeks since he saw anyone smile. The look puts claws in his chest like a clingy cat. He isn't sure what to do with the feeling, like he's peeking on something he's not supposed to see. He crosses the room, to the other side of the bed, to occupy himself. "Seems that way. Bedsheets are still a bitch, though. Here." Toss him a corner.

"Your classes, are they...college or academy? I remember Alfred saying you were thinking about the force."

Dick places the pillows aside and stacks them on the night stand, followed by their covers, the top sheet, the duvet covers, the quilt... the whole elaborate set up of something that shouldn't be a bitch, precariously balanced. Like a few other things in this manor. He flings a corner of the fitted sheet over.

"Academy. Figured I'd join a different circus since the last one didn't work out." His smile's wry, still sad over Haly's collapse not long after his parents' death. He stretches the sheet down. "I did some training in Detroit but a few things sorta--" Lifting the mattress, tucking it under. "Took me to San Francisco. I've got a couple months left, then field training." His mouth tugs down. "Do you work with force here at all? With what just happened?" He wonders about all that influence attached to the Wayne name.

Tucking in tandem, he frowns--less out of disapproval than out of habit. "Not if we can help it. Rescue efforts are one things, but--" A sharp breath in through his nose as he yanks at the tricky final corner. "--I'd rather avoid endorsing the way our department operates as a whole. Maybe they're better in San Francisco."

He leaves off the fact that he very much doubts that as he reaches for the top sheet to straighten it out. Initially, he tugs a bit too much to his own side. "When you say a few things...?"

It’s hard to stop the hard grimace that pulls across his features when Bruce touches on the GCPD’s shortcomings.

The crisp white slips out of his fingers and he plants a hand on the mattress to grab it. They find a precarious balance again to lay down the sheet. Dick unfolds the duvet cover and tosses Bruce a corner.

"This girl got brought in for questioning. They wrongly accused her for her own mother’s murder and I had to help her.” Hard to keep the heated frustration out of his voice. “She knew about what happened to me. She was so much like me. Like us." He lifts his eyes, looks at Bruce, hands pausing where he's stuffing the corner of the duvet. It feels strange telling Bruce, but they're family—the closest thing to family he has. Now, he has Rachel too, who leaked hurt, who he couldn't watch get lost in the system, who hung on to him like a lifeline.

"So I went where she needed to go.” It’s a long story short. “It’s really not much better there. But you—couldn’t you do something about it here?” And if Bruce did? A shaky exhale, vulnerability shadowing his eyes.

"You know they never got to the bottom of what happened to my parents?"

It takes monumental effort to not question the concept of this girl. That she's like him. Like them, whatever that means. Bruce nearly pulls a muscle not chasing after the fact that she knew what happened. She could have been a circus fan. Or a stalker. Or a predator. But his headway on getting along is only minutes old; he isn't about to sacrifice it. Yet.

Instead, he starts to mull actively over what Dick helping her might have looked like, prepares to ask about what that work entailed--and Dick turns the light back on him. Bruce's mouth tugs to the side, brows furrow as he stuffs a pillow into a case. "...I remember. I doubt they even had a dedicated investigator." It's meant to be a dig at the department, but it sounds even to Bruce like your parents didn't matter. He tries to pivot away. "It's not a problem that can be fixed with money."

There's a lot that's happened between the last time Bruce saw him and now, and despite his belief that Bruce isn't interested in what, Bruce is asking questions. Possibly a newly-founded sense of courtesy?

Or--that's a long shot, as his gracious host's words burn him and Dick's eyes lift with a barely veiled glower. His hands pause. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that unless I want to gun for police commissioner or union rep, I'm not going to make them better." That comes quick and defensive, because he had it at the ready and, well. He's defensive. The apology comes less quickly and markedly less smoothly: "I meant they're a mess. I meant. They don't know how to prioritize things. I didn't mean no one--cared.

"That's not what I meant."

“But it’s the truth. It’s how this place is,” stated like he’s continuing Bruce’s sentence. He doesn’t need an apology from the truth, but he can’t help the frustration from bleeding into his voice, as if it’s Bruce’s fault.

His gaze falls back to the duvet in hand to yank the delicate zipper shut with a forceful zzrrpp.

“You don’t wanna do anything about it. But I’m gonna.”

Dick is so frank and unreserved that it feels volatile. For a moment, Bruce almost forgets his cool. He reaches out to grab hold of Dick's arm, halfway up to his elbow. He opens his mouth and very nearly explains: it is the truth of how this place is, and even Bruce can't escape it; no one looked close enough to see that someone was pulling the strings; maybe worse, someone did see it and didn't feel the need to do anything about it.

After that, comes the explanation that he does want to do something. That he is doing something.

It doesn't come out. His fingers flex at the inside of Dick's arm, lips sew slowly back together. "...Maybe you will. Maybe...maybe we can talk about it while you're here.

"After dinner." Maybe full stomachs will ground their mutual tempers.

He stops, stiffening, shocked that Bruce would reach out to grab him, eyes wide as he stares at the pale, strong grip on his forearm. The pause between them is so still that Dick doesn't even breathe.

The quiet feels filled with unsaid words. And has Bruce ever placed a hand on him before? Dick's eyes lift to his mouth as the words are hemmed back. What is it that Bruce wants to say? The words that come don't seem to be it, even if the promise of wanting to talk starts to prickle hopefully in his chest.

What is it? What did he say that seemed to work? Dick's inhale is slow and steady, as he drops the duvet to squeeze Bruce's grip on his arm.

"After dinner."

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days in the circus

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