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“So this is just supposed to go away on its own?” Dick asked, glaring at Superman and Wonder Woman. He loved them both, he really did — what he did not love was the Justice League dropping B off after something had gone capital W Wrong and leaving the family to deal with the consequences.
“The spell will end at sunrise,” Wonder Woman confirmed, regal as ever.
“We could stay if you need... back up,” Superman — Clark, really — offered.
“No,” Dick said, looking over at Bruce where he sat, still and silent, on one of the cots in the cave’s small medical area, making fists of the crisp white bed linens Alfred always kept fresh on each one. “Alfred and I have got this.” The others were covering B’s patrol routes — and Dick’s too, ever since the call from the League came in. He gave Clark a weak smile. “Go.”
They went.
Dick sighed. Alfred was puttering around with medical equipment — staying in Bruce’s periphery without hovering as he took everything in. Adjusted. That was what he had suggested Dick do as well, no matter how loudly Dick's instincts screamed to do otherwise. Sometimes it felt like giving Bruce space was as much a part of being Dick Grayson as flying, so he had obeyed. So far.
After all, Alfred would know what Bruce needed. He was the last one to see him like this.
It wasn’t, Diana had explained, a de-aging spell. Rather, it was meant to return the subject to a particularly profound moment in their history — not even a bad one, necessarily, though Bruce being Bruce it was little surprise what age he had ended up. Luckily, he wasn’t stuck immediately after his parents’ death, according to Alfred’s estimate — and Dick was taking every bit of good luck where he could find it — but —
Bruce was so tiny, and his grave expression was so at odds with his sweet little face —
It was close enough.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Dick thought with a grim kind of humor. The date was bad enough for someone in a secret relationship with his former guardian. It certainly wasn’t improved by the guardian in question getting turned into a child — no matter how cute. And no matter how much —
Well. How much some part of Dick had always wanted to protect that child — this child — from the world. How much he wanted to hug him and tell him that someday, somehow, it would all be all right.
But he was giving Bruce space. Well, he was — until he wasn't anymore. He drifted over to perch on the cot across from Bruce, offering what was probably still a very weak smile. “This is probably pretty weird for you, isn’t it?”
Bruce eyed him seriously. “Yes.”
When the other two leaders of the League had arrived with him, Bruce had been swimming in the Batsuit. Alfred had given him a change of clothes — pajamas Dick suspected were actually Bruce’s own, kept this long for some mysterious Alfred reason. Between the suit, the costumed companions, the cave, and Dick himself — he had changed into the workout clothes B kept in the cave for him, but he was still pretty obviously not a normal guy — baby Bruce was certainly putting together an interesting picture of the life he now led.
“It’s okay if you’re—” Dick hesitated. “Scared?”
“I’m not scared.” And that could have been childish bravado, but it didn’t look that way to Dick, and he liked to think he was pretty good at reading Bruce — even this Bruce.
“Well. Alfred’s here.”
“You’re here.”
Dick couldn’t help staring a little. “You don’t know me.”
“No,” Bruce agreed. “But — those other two—”
“Superman and Wonder Woman.”
“Yes. They talked about... profound moments. I had... recently decided to use the cave — this cave — for... training. And now I see that it is... so much more. And you’re here. I had thought I — well, that I would have to be...”
“Alone in this?”
Bruce nodded.
Alfred had been there, of course. He always had been and hopefully always would be. But he was... family and not quite family at the same time, because of a barrier that Alfred was too proper, and Bruce too solitary, to ever properly cross.
Dick resisted the urge to look at him now.
Instead, he held Bruce's gaze seriously. “Well, you’re not. We’ve been partners for a long time.” The details — how they met, Dick’s age when he became Robin, the sexual tension and resentment of his teen years and their subsequent breaking apart and coming back together, their relationship now, fulfilling and wonderful and so, so complicated — didn’t need discussion. They were partners, first and forever.
Bruce smiled. It was tiny and a bit pained, but it was real.
Dick wondered if it would help Bruce to know just how big his family had gotten since they met, but he — well. He could be jealous of Bruce’s attention. And right now Bruce was young and scared, in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar man, and just out of a life-altering tragedy. He was looking at Dick like the world began and ended with him, like he was Bruce's sole source of hope, and — if he was honest — Dick liked it.
He wondered if Bruce felt that way, when Dick was a kid.
He touched Bruce’s knee. “Think you could sleep?” It was very late, and Dick had an idea that Bruce being asleep would make the change easier — for which of them, Dick couldn’t quite say.
“Will you stay with me?” Bruce asked.
“Always,” Dick said.
Bruce’s cheeks actually flushed faintly red.
Dick looked down so Bruce wouldn’t see him grinning.
Bruce lay back and let Dick tuck sheets and blankets up around him. Then, sharing a glance with Alfred that was at least not disapproving, Dick climbed onto the side of the cot — which, being adult Bruce sized, was big enough to accommodate baby Bruce and Dick with a little contorting, something Dick was naturally very good at. He lay on his side, curled a little around Bruce, with one arm curving above Bruce’s head on the pillow, fingertips tickling his hair.
“Okay?” he asked.
Bruce nodded tightly. “I think I’m going to miss you,” Bruce said. “Is that silly?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Dick sighed. “Of course not.”
This wasn’t any kind of time travel, the League had been very clear about that. This Bruce would not be returning to live out his childhood — he would simply be gone again in the same way he had always been gone — buried beneath the years and heartaches yet to come.
“I’ll miss you, too.” It was true, even though Dick also wanted his Bruce back more than he had the words to say.
Bruce nodded again and closed his eyes.
He slept so quickly Dick would have suspected him of only pretending to drift off — except that he knew the sound of Bruce’s breathing in sleep as well as he knew anything. Dick petted his hair one last time and closed his eyes too.
He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew he was nearly pushed off the cot by a body much larger, more solid, and intimately familiar than the one he had gone to sleep next to. Dick was mostly on top of Bruce, or he would have fallen right off the edge. The linens were stretched tightly over Bruce’s now broad chest.
Dick looked around for Alfred but didn’t see him. Probably he had gone upstairs to bed once Bruce was asleep. Even Alfreds needed rest, after all — though Dick knew it was more likely Alfred left only to give them a little privacy when Bruce... came back. Dick didn't know how much Alfred knew about their relationship. He had decided a long time ago that it would be better not to ask.
He wanted to curl closer to Bruce — and not just so he wouldn’t fall off the damned cot — and Alfred or no Alfred he didn't see any reason why he shouldn't.
“Was the mission with the League a success?” Bruce asked.
Dick looked at him sharply. Bruce’s eyes were still closed and he was nearly motionless but clearly wide awake now. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember a sudden regression to childhood, if that’s what you mean,” Bruce said dryly. “But I was removed from the action quickly.” He actually sounded a touch aggrieved about that. “I don’t know what happened after.”
“Wonder Woman said they arrested the witch.”
Bruce nodded and fell silent for a while. "I suppose," he said at last, "I've missed Valentine's Day."
He had been busy with Wayne Enterprises business in the morning, and then — well. Then the League called. But — "You know I didn't expect anything."
"No," Bruce agreed. "But there are chocolates in my desk. In the library."
Dick flushed. Bruce used to do that when he was Robin. The callback to his boyhood, especially after what just happened, probably shouldn't get his blood up, but it did. "Freak," he murmured.
He wasn't sure which of them he actually meant, but it made Bruce finally crack an eye open. "That's not what you called me before," he said. "Sweetheart, wasn't it?"
"I'll call you that again if you aren't careful." Dick's fingers brushed Bruce's hair again as he whispered, a secret for them and the empty cave, "You're being very sweet."
Bruce huffed.
Dick smiled and closed his own eyes, curling in further to pillow his head on Bruce’s chest. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart. I know magic really takes it out of you.”
“Wasn’t so bad this time,” Bruce whispered.
“No. It wasn’t so bad,” Dick agreed, and they slept.