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When the Justice League was first founded, Dick was already Robin. Had been Robin for a year. And no one else had a sidekick yet. And Bruce used to bring him to meetings a lot – mostly because no one got mad at the ten year-old with ADHD for complaining about how long it sometimes took them to get to the point, but still. Dick was there, and small, and very aware of how cute he was.
So it's not a surprise, when the knock at his door turns out to be Ollie, holding a paper bag from the bakery just down the street and looking sheepish. Ollie, just like Barry and, to a lesser extent, Diana and Arthur, is all too comfortable acting like it was actually the whole damn League who got custody of Dick.
Not a surprise. Still really annoying.
"Yeah, okay," Dick sighs, stepping back to let Ollie in. It's been a couple weeks since he sicced Bruce on him, but Dick doesn't exactly spend a lot of time alone. He's only at his own place this morning because of this goddamn Penguin case. He wasn't trying to avoid being ambushed by overbearing pseudo parents, but it's a nice side effect.
"Y'know," Ollie says, as he follows Dick into this kitchen, "I get you think it's not your place, but I am capable of talking things out. You don't have to immediately resort to passive aggressive power plays."
There's several quips Dick could make, about passive aggressive power plays basically being his love language, about shitty role models, about– Well. He doesn't make any of them.
Instead, he hops up onto the kitchen counter, takes the donut Ollie offers him, and says, "If I apologise, can we just skip the heart to heart bit?"
"Absolutely not."
"See, this is why I don't like talking to you."
Ollie pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot – a perfect microcosm of the problem, that Ollie knows him well enough to bring food but not coffee, because Dick doesn't generally ascribe to the idea that expensive is always better but when it comes to coffee he's a snob through and through. Because Ollie bought him that mug, too.
"No," Ollie says, lightly, "You don't like talking to me because I'm not repressed enough."
Dick takes a bite of the donut. It's bright outside, sun streaming through the windows in that way that always makes him want to check his building didn't get picked up and moved to another city while he was asleep. He wonders, briefly, if Ollie checked the weather in Gotham before he left. Sunshine always puts Dick in a good mood.
Ollie leans against the counter opposite Dick, free hand in his pocket, because Dick has something of a pathological response to male authority figures crossing their arms at him.
When a full minute passes without Dick saying anything, Ollie sighs. "Look," he says, "I get it, okay? You're gonna hold a bit of a grudge against me your whole life. That's your right, I'm not saying it isn't. But, kid–"
"Not your kid."
Ollie quirks an eyebrow. "If you get to project your bullshit onto me, I get to parent you. Swings and roundabouts, kid." Dick huffs, and doesn't argue. "I'm just saying, if you can yell at Bruce, you can yell at me."
There's a fire escape just a bit below his kitchen window. There's a long, long history of Bats walking away from Oliver Queen mid-conversation.
Once, in the last few months Dick was Robin, when Dick was spending all his time anywhere except the Manor and so was having dinner at the Queen residence, Ollie pulled him aside and promised to adopt him instead, if Bruce didn't get his shit together. Wouldn't even make things weird, he'd said, because he hadn't legally adopted Roy.
Dick had walked away then, so Ollie wouldn't notice how he'd teared up. Ollie hadn't brought it up again.
Sometimes, Dick still thinks about it. When he's particularly angry at Bruce.
"If I yell at Bruce," Dick says now, still looking out the window, "He yells back. Maybe he does something petty, but then I do something petty back. I can't– There's nothing I could say to him, that he wouldn't get over."
Dick had thought, stupidly, that they'd scraped the bottom of that barrel the last year he was Robin. That they'd run out of knives to twist.
And then Jason died.
So he's sure, now. There will always be new terrible things to spit at Bruce, and he'll likely always spit them. And it won't change anything, because it can't change anything, because Dick could start a bonfire in the Manor with all Martha and Thomas's things but he'll still be alive to do it. That's the bar, now.
"Sorry," Ollie says, incredulous, dragging Dick out his thoughts, "Are you seriously telling me you think with Roy there is?"
'Of course there is', is the automatic response Dick has to bite back. Of course there is. It's Roy that Dick's actually fought with. Actually screamed at, exactly the way he screams at Bruce, exactly the way he'd promised himself he'd never scream at anyone else. They're too much alike. They bring out the worst in each other.
When Roy first started using, Dick was the first to notice. To confront him.
Roy hadn't talked to him for two months.
That was years ago, though. They're better, he knows they're better, he knows. But it's a good reason, one Ollie will believe.
So Dick starts, "I'm not saying it's rational, okay." But he looks at Ollie to say it, and seeing him standing there, holding himself so carefully, face open and caring, ten in the morning on Dick's day off, Dick very abruptly runs out of patience. "Fine. You really wanna do this? It freaks me the fuck out, how good of a dad you are. I think–"
He laughs, bitter, looks away again. "God, I think me and Bruce are dysfunctional on purpose. This way, we can still think well, if my real dad was here, he'd be better. No one's being replaced. Fucking compulsive self-harm bullshit, the story of our damn lives. I've no goddamn clue what I would've done, if I screamed at him and he didn't scream back. I–"
He snaps his mouth shut. Pours himself a cup of coffee as a flimsy excuse to turn away, hide his face. He's not sure he's ever articulated that aloud, before.
Ollie says, "Alright," and the care in his voice, Christ. "Lot I could say to that, including that I've known you over half your life, it's not exactly news that you and Bruce are in a dysfunction league of your own. But what I think you need to hear," Dick is going to scream, he's going to scream, "is Dinah is the exact same. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Y'know, I've never broken up with her? Can't let go of a good thing, once I've got it. But Dinah, sometimes she gets it in her head that it's easier if she makes the break clean."
Dick pulls his knees up to his chest so he can bury his face in them and thinks about jumping out the window again.
"I don't regret not pulling you out that house by force," Ollie continues. "If it was gonna happen, it had to be your idea. And, hey, you're both in therapy now. Don't push me away, though, yeah? 'Cause it won't work."
And then he just lets the silence sit, and Dick has to concentrate on his breathing until he can manage to say, "I hate this."
"Yeah," Ollie says, wry and warm, "I know. Just out of curiosity, what was it I actually did?"
Dick laughs again. "Treated Roy like an adult who can make his own decisions. I've been yelled at already, don't worry."
"Ah. The assassin case?"
Roy had been so mad, when he'd put it together. They almost never argue, now, because they have to set a good example for Lian, because it fucks Wally's head up like little else.
'Manipulative cold-hearted fucking bastard', that's what stuck in Dick's head. 'Not everyone treats their relationships like a fucking chess game, you manipulative cold-hearted fucking bastard'. That's why arguing with Roy always hurts so much – he's never wrong.
"I really don't like it when he suits up without me, now," Dick says, forehead still pressed to his knees. "Because I have control issues. And I'm overprotective. My life is a perpetual cycle of yelling at Bruce and then later being yelled at by my partners for doing the exact same thing."
Ollie chuckles. "Well, at least you're self-aware." Dick has nothing to say to that that isn't blisteringly self-deprecative. A couple pigeons land on the windowsill, cooing quietly. Ollie finishes his coffee. "You'll throw something at me, won't you, if I ask how you're doing."
"I have an appointment with your wife tomorrow."
"Yeah, but you're paying her for that privilege. I'm here just out of the goodness in my heart."
He is, is the thing. He really, really is.
God, Dick's tired of talking. Tired of hurting people, tired of having to talk about it. Tired of hurting. So fucking tired.
He could push Ollie away. Ollie would leave, if Dick asked. Leave, and then tell Roy he stopped by, and Dick's not in Gotham because he's avoiding anyone, except for how he's very much in Gotham because he's avoiding everyone. Because he's not doing good, everyone is aware he's not doing good, and it feels like an insult to even want to do better. How dare he, when Jason's dead. When he got Jason killed.
He didn't think like this, after his parents. Bruce did, he knows – Bruce had to be tube-fed, for a while. But Dick had to get justice, and Dick had to carry their memory, and Dick had to grow up and do them proud.
If his Ma could see him now, she'd be so angry. That parent anger, born entirely of love, because all she ever wanted is for to him to survive and to thrive and here he is, passively suicidal, lashing out and pushing everyone away. 'You think I never lost anyone?' He can hear her say. 'Where would you be, huh, if I let the grief eat me whole?'
Okay. Fuck, Ma, okay.
He hops down off the counter, and Ollie follows him out the kitchen. The couch in his apartment is big enough for five people, but when Dick sits down, Ollie sits down right beside him. Curls an arm around him, then settles back and pulls Dick with him, so he's tucked into Ollie's side.
Dick takes a breath.
Takes another.
Says, like ripping off a bandaid, "They don't want to be angry at me for it." And then makes himself keep going, keep talking, "It's a great trump card, y'know? Yeah, I'm being an overprotective asshole, but my brother died. Doing exactly this. And I get mad at Roy, I say it's for Lian's sake, when I'm helping B train Tim. When I haven't quit. I don't even–" He swallows. "I don't know if he'd want me to."
"Oh, kid." The sympathy in Ollie's voice makes Dick flinch. Like he has any right to sympathy, when Jason's the one in the dirt.
"I just want him to be here." Fuck, he's crying. "He was– Fuck, he was fifteen, I can't– I can't lose anyone else. Fuck."
Both Ollie's arms are around him, now. He's probably getting Ollie's shirt wet. It's a nice shirt.
He's sobbing, shaking with it. Can't remember the last time he cried like this. Feels like he's watching himself from a surveillance camera.
It's a while before Ollie says anything.
"You have gotta talk about it," he says, once the sobbing's passed. Still holding Dick close. "You hear me, kid? You cannot just bottle it up. It's not just yours to carry, okay? You don't have a monopoly on grieving him, and I know he wouldn't want you to let it get you this fucked up. He thought you hung the fucking moon, Dick."
By the time Jason moved in, Dick was long gone. So it took a while, a good couple months, before he was on his way to Bruce's room in that tiny sliver of the night any of them actually slept through and he ran into Jason doing the exact same thing. Just a look, just a peek, just to be sure Bruce was still breathing.
Jason's mom hadn't quite been dead a year. His dad was another problem, a wound they didn't share, but that night, he'd looked at Dick with red-rimmed eyes and asked, 'How'd you do it? Robin, and the team, and everything?' And Dick hadn't had to ask what he meant.
'Because they'd want me to,' Dick had said. 'Because they loved me, and they'd hate to see me hurting'.
"Yeah," Dick says now. "I wish he hadn't."
That makes Ollie pull away.
Pull back, put both hands on Dick's shoulders and look at him, really look at him, and say, in a voice Dick's not sure he's ever heard before, steel blade of anger, "Don't do that. You don't get to do that. It was his choice to be Robin, it was his choice to go on that mission. You don't get to make it your fault just so you can wallow in the guilt."
Oh. Right. This, this is something Ollie understands.
"Maybe you could have done something different. Maybe he'd still be here. Maybe, maybe," Ollie's eyes are hard, his voice harder, "Maybe if pigs could fly they'd have cured cancer too. Grief's one thing, kid, but guilt's just fucking selfish."
Dick swallows again. He's given himself a headache with all the crying. "Yeah. Okay."
The grip on his shoulders, the look on Ollie's face both soften. "Roy said to tell you you're benched."
Dick can't find the energy to be angry about that, which is damning enough in itself. "Right now? Or do I get to wrap this case up?"
"I dunno, do they actually need you on this case?"
No, not really. Dick sighs, rubs at the throbbing in his temples. "I want to opt out of the mortifying deal of being known now, please."
"So you'll be at family dinner tonight, then."
Dick doesn't bother answering. They're both well-aware just how wrapped around Roy's finger he is. Ollie laughs at him, the bastard, and then reaches into a jacket pocket and pulls out a blister pack of Advil, so Dick can't even hit him.
"Y'know," Ollie adds, thoughtfully, "We never spend any time together anymore. What's with that, huh? Don't you love me?"
"I have a job, I'm training Tim, I have a kid," Dick counts the list off on his fingers, "I still patrol, I took over Jason's Crime Alley stuff, I'm technically still in charge of the Titans, Clark keeps inviting me on missions as part of his not-at-all-subtle plan to trick me into joining the League, hypothetically sometimes I see my partners– Gosh, Ollie, it must be that I'm avoiding you on purpose."
"I'm part of the League," Ollie counters, "I look after your kid–"
"Yeah, because I'm busy."
"Donna comes hiking with me. Wally joins me for monitor duty."
"Look, you want to spend time with me, you can tag along when I patrol like everyone else."
Ollie wrinkles his nose, an apparently instinctive reaction to the idea of patrolling in Gotham. Dick laughs.
"Have you got somewhere to be, then, if you're so busy?"
Dick glances at the clock, and groans. "Yeah. I promised Babs I'd help her comb through some surveillance footage, and I can't even get out of that by being benched. Hey, you wanna come try to spot one generic white guy in hours of footage of an endless number of generic white guys?"
To his surprise, Ollie shrugs and says, "Yeah, alright. Been a while since I saw Barbara outside of a crisis, too. Wanna get lunch on the way?"
"Oh, there's this new Thai place I've been meaning to try."
"Great!" He gets to his feet, and then pulls Dick up too, up and into another hug. Ollie's good at hugs. Dick kind of doesn't want to let go.
"I love you," Ollie says, "You fucked-up little bastard. Lean on your people when you need to, or Roy's gonna shoot out your knees and not leave you any choice about it. Okay?"
He squeezes Dick so tight something in Dick's chest pops. Dick smiles, feeling warm and loved. "Okay, Dad. C'mon, or we'll hit midday traffic."
"In this city? You seriously telling me any Gothamites go places before 4PM?"
"Well, I dunno if there's anyone in the cars," Dick says, casting about for absolutely any shoes at all, "But yeah, we get midday traffic. Sometimes I think Gotham hears about shit that happens in other cities and then just manifests it out of peer pressure."
Ollie stares at him. "Are you trying to imply this shithole is sentient."
"If any shithole is," there are his sneakers, "It'll be this one. Hey, you can get lunch, right? I either left my wallet at Roy's or gifted it to the fairies."
Ollie stares at him harder.
"I am taking my meds," Dick says, defensively. "Stop looking at me like that." And he walks out the apartment. Ollie heaves a great sigh, but follows him, and they don't get caught in traffic, and the Thai place does pak tod, and the sun's still out. For a day where he cried so much he got a headache, it turns out okay.
He takes a moment, when Barbara and Ollie are arguing about just how many people on the East Coast would wear the jersey of some California sports team, to think of Jason without flinching. See, kid? I'm doing alright. I'm trying to do you proud. You keep letting me know when I don't manage it, I'll keep listening.
And then he lets out a breath, shakes out all his limbs, and focuses back on the job.