#day 14

"It'll be okay, Dick. I promise." you soothe, your hand reaching out to squeeze the knee of your boyfriend while he drives. "Everyone might be there, but that'll be a good way to air it all out, right? Besides, you called the dinner at the manor. If anything, we should be grateful that Alfred will be there to adjudicate if a fight does break out."

Dick doesn’t look up; eyes trained on the road as he focuses straight ahead on the signs pointing for the Gotham turn off. "Yeah, I know." he mutters, his free hand coming to squeeze yours once, other hand curled tight around the steering wheel. "It's just..." he sighs out, clicking his tongue. His jaw is clenched, teeth grinding at the back as he thinks deeply. "I just need them to actually listen for once. For Bruce to listen for once, you know?" he sighs out, and his hand leaves yours to mess up his hair.

You nod and lean back in your seat, eyes looking down to your lap. You understood. In fact, you had been understanding for the last two months when Dick had started fighting with the rest of his family. You stayed up and listened to the tirades and the frustrated vents, were present for the late-night pacing and shouting at the wall while tearing his hair out. It was something new each time, and each explosion caused that rope to get short and shorter.

First it was when Jason had gone off with the Outlaws, recklessly chasing a rouge organisation of Ras' and ending himself comatose for a week, Roy being sent home to his own worried partner, hardly in a state to even walk. He had yelled in the living room, biting his knuckles as he wondered how Jason could be such an idiot, and if he thought he was immortal just because he took a dip in the pit. Dick had managed to calm down after some deep breathing, fists clenched tightly before apologising to you and reigning it in when you stood and comforted him.

The next had been a week or two later when Tim got injured in a fight against Poison Ivy, having run into a building in pursuit without checking that his regulator was on properly. "He knew she was using toxic pollen," he had stressed to you on date night, sitting in the back booth of your favourite corner bar. "And yet he didn’t check, just ran in there. Out of commission for a week with pneumonia. He's just lucky it wasn’t worse, considering it was so stupid." he had seethed. It took a hand over his to get him to snap out of it, you smiling awkwardly as you tried to bring the focus back on your date.

Yet it continued until it was an occurrence every few days, and your patience was beginning to waver. It was the latest actions of the women in the Birds of Prey, and the results of their last mission that went sour. It was about Spoiler and the twisted ankle earned on the rooftop. It was about Damian and the new pet he had sprung on Bruce.

"Dick, honey, this has to stop." you told him one night, holding up a hand when he had come home from patrol, soaking wet and swinging in through your dining room window instead of the front door or fire escape, an unfortunate habit of his that you had mentioned to him multiple times. He had been mid rant, telling you how Damian, Bruce, and Jason had come to patrol on his turf, and an argument had broken out, the criminal getting away and the other Bats leaving for home with ruffled feathers.

"But they-"

"Yeah, I know. I'm well aware of what they're like. But this? this anger? this frustration? It's not healthy for you." you said, coming to grip his hands and kiss his forehead. He bowed his head in a slight display of shame, black hair dripping water to his boots. "Trust me, I get it. But I think you're a bit burnt out, and some of these things shouldn't be making you this mad. Jason and his coma? that was valid, you should be angry and worried when something like that happens." you comfort with a smile, hand lifting his chin to meet your eyes. "But the grades of Tim in college? In little accidents that could happen to anyone? " You stress. "That's not normal. That's not good for you."

He nods along when you finish speaking, chin turning out from your fingers grip.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess." he sighs out, before wrapping you in a hug. You don’t even mind that he's flicking water into your hair, or that the cold dampness has already begun seeping into your shirt. Not if it meant making Dick feel a bit better, because when you said you knew his family, you knew his family.

You both had started dating while he was still in the red and green, a teenage romance that had continued even when he had shed his feathers into the black and blue he currently wore. You held him back when he lost Jason, when he had to hear the news through a message instead of in person. You had been there to experience ever member of his ever-growing family, and they in turn had gotten to know you and your role as a vigilante just as much. You liked to consider yourself part of the family, God knows you felt like it, and no one had ever doubted your place beside Dick. Alfred called you his child every time you visited the manor, giving you a warm hug and a smile ready at the door.

There was no one more qualified to be by Dick. you knew him deeper than you knew yourself. You knew his rage like the back of your hand, a blazing inferno that he used to fight with after losing his parents, that still flickered when you had met him, yet the white hot heat of the flames tempered a little under the guidance of Bruce. You knew what he was like when he mourned, when he was at his happiest and his smile stretched from cheek to cheek.

It was only because you knew him so well, that you knew he was hiding something from you. You watched him keep his eyes on the road, eyes looking forward but lost in his own thoughts as he turned off the freeway. You knew the crinkle at the corner of his eye when he was stressed, when something was weighing on him heavily and he was committed to dealing with it himself (you had Alfred to thank you cluing you in to that one). So, you had begun playing the quiet game to yourself, trying to figure out what had him so stressed he was snapping over the smallest things.

Was he going to propose, or had this family dinner planned a month in advance just a dinner? Had he asked you to dress nicely tonight because he was proposing, or did he just want tonight to go over extra civilly? Did he get Tim a new camera upgrade simply 'because he wanted to make up' like he had said, or was he proposing?

Those kinds of questions rattled around in your skull and you let them, in fact you even secretly encouraged them. You had been dating Dick for so long that it didn't seem odd for them to be appearing. "I'm sure it'll be fine." you soothe again, offering a soft smile. Dick only hums, offering a fleeting one back before it dropped again.

It turns out, in fact, it was not going to be fine.

You had arrived a little late, and you spent the time walking from the driveway assuring him that five minutes was nothing. Alfred greeted the two of you at the door with a smile, informing you that everyone else had already been seated and were waiting for you. You kissed the old man on the cheek and gave him a hug, beaming and telling him it was great to see him again. The old butler waved it off, joking that it would be less of a rare occurrence if you came around to the manor more to keep him company.

When you had entered the dining room, few of the family members waved, Bruce giving you both a sullen nod.

"You're late." came Damian's deadpan quip, making the others falter slightly at the rudeness of the youngest. Dick had clenched his jaw and you locked fingers with him to try and quell it, apologising profusely and dragging Dick to the free seats. The others laughed and told you it was no big deal, Jason offering that he had barely beaten you guys here and he just lived on the outskirts of town, unlike your apartment in Bludhaven.

You weren't even sure how it had snowballed from there. Quips traded at dinner, looks that were filled with tension as 'work talk' began infiltrating the dinner table, much to the dismay of both you and Alfred. You sensed that even Bruce wasn't in the mood to talk work, but after too many mentions of missions and referring to him as 'Batman', he had undeniably been dragged into the foray too.

So now here you were, Dick leaning over the table with white shirt rolled to the sleeves, nostrils flaring so hard you were wondering when steam was going to pour out. "If you weren’t all so careless in the field, we wouldn't be having this discussion!" Dick snapped, after it was brought up Jason's latest run in with the Joker and his goons, something that had awarded him some bruises but nothing too out of place.

"What? you think I went looking for him?" Jason snarls, eyes narrowing and finger jabbing in Dicks direction. "I was on patrol. I was patrolling."

"Then you should have called it in!" He yells back, arms flying up, before flinging accusatory at Bruce. "What were you doing, huh? You just let him go off like that?"

Bruce looks up from where he's had his head in his hands for the last fifteen minutes, eye bags dark as they narrow at Dick. "Excuse me?"

"Don't treat me like a child." Jason snaps, slamming his fist down onto the table. "I don't need 'daddy's permission' to do my fucking job. I was on patrol, and I saw something sketchy, so I went to go check it out. What was I supposed to do? twiddle my thumbs outside the entrance waiting for the cavalry to arrive?"

"Well not going in is a start!" Dick cries out. "What if something worse had happened? That goes for all of you, and your dumb decisions lately." he snaps, whirling around to scowl at the rest of the table. You catch the pleading eyes of Alfred glance your way, and you decide that it's gone too far now, the tension so thick you can hardly breathe.

"Dick, I think you're projecting a little bit," you start, sheepish as his frantic eyes flick to yours. "They're not Robins anymore, you aren't Robin anymore, I think you need to-"

"Don't you dare butt into this." he snarls at you, voice dripping with a kind of anger you've never heard leave him before, for all of his months of ranting. "This is a family matter. It doesn’t concern you, so stay out of it." he hisses, malic dripping from every word. You flick your eyes back to Alfred desperately, unused to your usually kind and caring boyfriend whirling on you. The older man stands, face stern. "Master Dick, that is no way to talk to-"

"We're breaking up anyways," Dick says, narrowed eyes boring into your own with a certain sheen of cruelty you'd never seen on him before. "So, I don’t know why you're even concerned with this right now."

You feel like the floor has just collapsed out from under you, the way he had announced to the family that you were breaking up like it was common knowledge, like it was something the two of you had discussed and wasn't a bombshell just dropped on you from a simple slip of his tongue. You can feel the wide-eyed stares of the family pierce you from all sides, silently wanting a deeper explanation that you weren't even able to give them, if you didn’t even know the reason yourself.

Dick finishes the argument with Jason now that the other man is looking to you instead of picking it back up, and Dick huffs, standing from his seat and storming out of the dining room with a slam of the door. The slam shook your memories loose, and you once again played the guessing game with yourself as hot tears of shame brunt their way to the front, splashing down into your lap.

Was he stressed because he was proposing, or was he breaking up with you?

Was he not tell you things because he didn't want you to worry, or to not find out the proposal planning, or was he putting off breaking up with you?

Was the late nights talking about what you wanted your futures to be like because he was proposing, or was it the reason he was breaking up with you?

When he talked about the family, the people you had known for and shared meals and bruises with for a decade, was he picturing you there too?

He loves me? he is proposing.

He loves me not? he was breaking up.

And as tears splashed onto your balled up fists, wishing you could shrink out of existence and away from the awkward silence in the room, you plucked the last petal on the imaginary flower.

I guess he loves me not.

Getting stuck in an elevator was not how you imagined your evening going.

It had already been a bad day. Your alarm hadn’t gone off, so you overslept and were late for work. The container you had put your lunch in broke, and your lunch ended up spilling into your bag. Perry chewed you out over a deadline that you had written down wrong, so you stayed late to finish the article. And to top it all off, the office had run out of coffee. Overall, your day sucked, and all you wanted was to go home, get some sleep, and try and forget about this awful day.

But no, you were stuck in an elevator. You weren’t sure if you had pissed off a god or stepped into a fairy circle and hadn’t noticed, but you must have done something since it seemed as though the universe was conspiring against you.

The only saving grace was that Clark was with you.

You watched him repeatedly hit the “open door” button, but nothing happened.

“Clark, I don’t think that’s gonna help.”

“Doesn’t hurt to try.”

You slumped against the wall, wishing you could just fly out the escape hatch at the top of the elevator…you perked.

“Clark, can’t you just fly us out of here?”

He turned to you with a stern expression, similar to one a teacher would give a student, “No, that is not a good idea.”

“Or maybe pry the doors open? Come on Superman, you’ve got a citizen in distress over here.” You were desperate, you would get down on your knees and beg if it came down to it.

“I’m pretty sure there are cameras in here.”

You let out a soft whimper then allowed yourself to crumple to the floor, “Of course there is.”

Clark took a seat next to you, “I’m sorry.”

“Why? You didn’t break the elevator.”

“I meant I’m sorry I can’t get us out of the elevator,” he rubbed your back, hoping it would provide you some comfort, “What were you doing here so late anyway?”

You groaned, the memory of Perry’s angry scowl staring at you when you tried to explain your mistake, “I was trying to finish an article.”

“Ah,” He nodded in understanding, “Is that what Perry was so upset about earlier?”

“Yes,” you buried your face in your hands, “Today has just been absolutely terrible,” you slowly lifted your head back up and released a heavy sigh, “What were you doing here so late?”

When he didn’t say anything, you turned towards Clark and noticed his cheeks were pink.

“I—I uh, I was, I was also trying to finish an article.” You could see right through him, he was clearly lying.

“Bullshit.”

It was embarrassing, really. He didn’t know how to tell you that he enjoyed seeing you out of the building at the end of the day. It had become a little tradition of his. After the day was over, he would grab his things, wait by the elevator until you got there, and then press the button to take it down the lobby with you. The two of you would talk, joke, tease each other all the way through the front doors, then you would give him a hug, and you would go your separate ways. It was silly, especially since the two of you hung out all the time, but it was one of his favorite moments of the day.

He released a sigh of his own, “I wanted to wait for you.”

“Wait for me? Why?”

“I just…I just like our little elevator rides together, well excluding this one, but that has nothing to do with you, and all to do with it being stuck.”

“Aw, Clark, that’s so sweet.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?”

“Some would find it weird, maybe,” you leaned your head against his shoulder, “but I find it endearing.”

The smile you gave him made warmth bloom in his chest. He slowly began to lean in, unsure where the confidence was coming from, but when you leaned in as well, a flutter went through his stomach.

The elevator suddenly jolted back to life with an electrical whirr causing the two of you to stumble away from each other, and the doors opened to the lobby.

You just stared at the opened doors, thankful that they finally opened, but annoyed at their timing.

Clark stood up, offered you a hand, and lifted you to your feet with ease, “Time to head home then, I guess.”

You nodded, following behind him out of the elevator, through the lobby, and out to the street.

“I’ll see you on Monday.” Clark ushered a quick goodbye, hoping it would make everything feel less awkward, before turning to walk away.

“See you,” you turned to walk towards the subway, but stopped, “Clark, wait!”

Clark immediately turned back around, walked up to you, pulled you into his arms and kissed you. You melted into the kiss, your arms snaking up his chest to his shoulders. Your hands found their way into his messy curls, allowing your fingers to get tangled in them. Clark just kept pulling you closer and closer until your feet finally lifted off of the ground. You were still tightly within his hold when you pulled your lips away from his.

“Do you want to come over for dinner?” Clark asked before you could say anything.

You looked at Clark with the smile that always took his breath away, “Yes.”

He set you down and took your hand in his, “This is shaping up to be a pretty great night.”