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cetaceans-pls · 2 years

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A Chips And Dips Kind Of Night

Bruce is working undercover at a 7/11.

Dick does not know this.

Gen fic with Bruce and Dick, written for @brucewayneweek for the prompt ‘midnight snacks’. why do i love writing them grocery shopping so much??

Bruce mutters a dishonest “Welcome” when the door swings open, and assertively does not look up from some Facebook video on hot rods on his phone. Trying to distill the average convenience store worker had been both very hard and very easy; hard, because there’s an undercurrent of wincing dissatisfaction at working a full shift for not enough wages and it isn’t a feeling he can ever truly feel, and easy, because if you’re working the graveyard shift of a convenience store neither your co-workers nor your patrons expect you be in the least bit Regular.

There’s the quiet shuffling and rustling of a customer trying to decide the undecidable (which flavour of potato chips to go for tonight), and Brucec doesn’t lift his gaze. If there’s shrinkage because someone needs or frankly even wants a snack for the night, it’s 7/11′s problem, not his. He had to draw the line at the kid trying to steal an entire magazine rack, but only because it was too obvious and halfway through he’d been so entranced by the boy trying to fit a rack taller and wider than he was into his jacket that he’d be culpable on the CCTV.

So he leaves them to their own devices, switches to another video, this time about 1970s carburetors, and idly wonders if it really will take the full 2 weeks he’s expecting for Bulgar to finally show his face outside his safehouse on the other side of the road. Two weeks with minimal patrolling is not a very appealing prospect, but Bruce likes to treat himself to long, low-risk undercover missions once or twice a year.

Outside the armour and outside the tux he sometimes feels liminal, like 2/3rds of a man at best. Being a nondescript civvie doing something regular is an excuse to not be a whole person, but because it’s near impossible to describe this to his family, he tends to keep his more nondescript covers quiet.

A treat, just a quiet little thing that belongs just to him.

Unfortunately, the thing about being a parent is that very, very few things end up being just your own.

The customer plonks a selection of breakfast bars, a fistful of popsicles, and a half gallon of chocolate milk on the counter, and Bruce finally tears his sight away from a disembodied hand meticulously scrubbing a choke plate to finally do his job.

He feels like he earns his spot on the Justice League twelve times over, when he’s able to play it cool as he meets Dick’s eyes, and realises that the man absolutely does not realise it’s him.

Dick smiles jovially, even though it’s 3 AM and there’s a bruise right over one eye from unknown origin. “Hey,” he says, cheerful as all fuck. “Are you new? Is Marsha okay? I know I haven’t been in for a couple of weeks, but she’s been here years.”

Bruce starts scanning the items, and is glad that he’d foregone most of his tech, and had sprung for some dark brown lenses. All of them have handy little gadgets that are designed to give them a quiet little buzz if they register too much electrical activity, but all Bruce has is his phone and a comm piece shoved into the toe of one boot.

Bruce looks at Dick’s cheerful face, though, and is instantly confident that he doesn’t have one of those gadgets, or any of the thousand others Bruce has precision designed to keep them safe. Just walked literally 15 blocks over to some shitty 7/11 so familiar to him he’s friends with the cashier.

“I am new,” Bruce replies, voice a little higher than his usual speaking voice. “But I’m temporary. Marsha was training me all of last week, but she’s going to be away till the end of September. Said she won a trip, some weird trivia thing on a radio show.” He shrugs. “It’s just me on nights now.”

Dick, if anything, is even more cheery. “Oh wow, that’s great news! Hope she’s on a tropical beach somewhere, drinking a piña colada and living her best life.” He laughs to himself, but then starts to frown. “Also, this is totally my bad, but you 100% should not be telling random guys where your co-workers are or aren’t. You definitely shouldn’t be telling random guys that you’re the only one working the graveyard shift. It’s dangerous, big guy.”

Bruce makes an effort to very obviously look Dick up and down, before snorting. “I think I’m gonna be okay; you got kind eyes.” He scans 3 popsicles back to back, and worries for his son’s teeth. “And maybe I’m lying too. Maybe I’ve already killed everyone else on staff, shoved their bodies into the ice box, and I’m pretending I’m a new hire so I can cut off the faces of full-grown men who buy chocolate milk and wear it as a hat.”

A regular person, someone who hasn’t had a lifetime of violence and rescues, likely would have been pretty freaked out to hear all of that come out the mouth of an emotionless 6′3 man who’s almost as wide as the magazine rack, but Dick just bursts out laughing.

“Is being funnny and kinda weird a requirement for hiring here?” he says, a little breathless. “I don’t smell blood and I don’t see any signs of a scuffle. That shirt actually fits you, so it’s not like you KO’d a 45-year-old lady and then miraculously fit in her uniform. You didn’t have to look where to reach for the plastic bag, which I don’t need anyways, and,” and Dick looks so, so smug here, “you got kind eyes too. So I know you’re good, uh,” he squints at Bruce’s name tag. “Barty?”

Bruce is still too taken aback to be read to filth like that, and he’s too busy being proud of how good of a detective Dick is even at his most casual, to think about the words coming out his mouth.

“My parents couldn’t decide between Barry and Marty and split the difference.”

That has Dick cracking up all over again. “Oh man, wait, sorry, I’m not trying to make fun of you but that’s really, really sweet and really, really dumb. Hey, let me make this fair. Ask me my name.”

Bruce knows the set-up and the punchline to this, but Dick’s merriment is infectious even to made-up Barty who’s working nights because he’s going through a divorce and the stress has made him a bit of an insomniac. “What’s your name?”

“I’m a Dick,” Dick says proudly, chest puffed up. “Can’t even blame my parents for this one, it says Richard on my birth cert, but I’m definitely a Dick.”

Bruce doesn’t laugh, but he does roll his eyes good-naturedly. “I can tell.”

“Fighting words from my man Barty.” Dick’s still got a smile in his eyes. “Now that we’ve established you’re not a serial killer and we’ve bonded over our hilarious names, I’m gonna give you my number.”

That does make Bruce choke, and once again his brain goes offline while his mouth leans in. “Thanks, but I’m emotionally unavailable.” He listens to himself say the words, and takes a second to wonder if Dick’s somehow blasted truth serum through the AC to elicit that earnest of a statement out of him.

He expects Dick to laugh at him again, and Dick does, but it’s a lot quieter and much, much gentler. “Hey, now. Don’t we all get like that sometimes?” He reaches over the counter for an errant pen, and pulls out a crumpled up old receipt from his sweatpants. “Nah, I’d never hit on someone while they’re on shift. You guys have enough going on.” He writes down his number, and Bruce despairs to see that it’s his actual mainline. “No, it’s just that this area can get kinda sketchy. Most of the robberies are pretty chill so I always recommend you just go with it, but sometimes things can get a little violent.”

He writes D I C K in massive capital letters, and draws a smiley before passing the slip of paper over. “I live pretty close and I’m usually up late, so I’ll tell you the same thing I told Marsha. Anything happens, if you get worried or even if you just want some company, gimme a call and I’ll swing by if I can.”

Bruce looks at the crumpled bit of receipt like it’s a reliquary, and wonders how Dick came through the other side of a lifetime’s worth of interaction with Bruce to end up being this degree of unbearably good. “Why are you doing this?” he asks, uncomprehending. Has he been made?

Dick shrugs. “I’ve done it with pretty much every night-time clerk I run into, so it’s not that unusual. But also, uh, uhm.” He goes a little red in the ears. “You don’t look like him at all, but you kinda remind me of my dad. My second dad. Kind of. Uhm.” He rallies. “The point is, you remind me of him, and if he’s out working in the night and something happened to him.....” Dick smiles a little shyly. “I’d want someone to help him. And if I want that for him, I want to be that for other people, you know? No big deal.”

It is, in fact, A Very Big Deal. Bruce feels as half-melted as the long forgotten popsicles, a sticky puddle roasting in Dick’s presence. “That’s very kind of you.” He clears the frog out his throat with great effort. “Bet your dad is very proud of you.”

He’s rarely meant anything more.

Dick grins, tapping his card on the machine and shoving his wares into a shopping bag with the Superman emblem on it. “Maybe? Probably. He’s the emotionally unavailable type too, to be honest, but same for you as for him, Barty, I’m not gonna let your intense gloominess stop me from looking out for you. See, I was raised well after all.”

“I can tell. Have a good night, Dick.”

And he slips a little, in the manner and in the voice. Not enough to trip him out of Barty and back into himself, but enough for Dick to blink then blink again, before grinning and waving.

“You too, Barty. Don’t work too hard!”

Dick disappears into the dark night, and Bruce doesn’t work too hard, doesn’t work at all, because he’s too busy being bent over with his forehead to the counter, brain buzzing like a light bulb on the fritz because he’s no longer feeling detached and liminal, a fractional man.

He’s Bruce Wayne, he’s Dick’s second dad, and he’s unspeakably proud of his son.

(He’s even, just a little bit, proud of himself.)

#bruce wayne #dick grayson #brucewayneweek2022 #whale writing #would it surprise you to learn that for various reasons i have gone both bird AND bat watching (literal)#i truly was terrible at both #but this fic is a love letter to the older gentleman who manned the counter at the convenience store i used to live by #and how kind and concerned he constantly was every time i came schlepping in at 5 am buying a sandwich and hot tea #one time even treating me to a herbal drink when i came in clearly unwell but clearly still intent on going after birds #this one's for u my guy!!

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