Request fic: DC

[icarus_chained]

For bradygirl_12  .

Title:  Ice-cream
Rating:  PG
Fandom:  DC
Characters/Pairings:  Bruce Wayne, wee!Dick
Summary:  How surveillance had turned into ice-cream in the park, Bruce wasn't quite sure ...
Wordcount:  668

 

They were supposed to be running surveillance on the park, in their civilian identities, to avoid detection. They were supposed to be keeping an eye out for Ivy's minions, and noting flows of civilians through the area in order to know how to clear them faster should they need to tomorrow. That's what they were supposed to be doing. That was perfectly clear in Bruce's head.

What wasn't clear at all, was how his young partner had managed to equate this to sitting in the park with a pair of truly giant ice-creams cones, focusing more on trying to avoid getting the stuff in tousled hair or on noses than on surveilling the park. He wasn't at all sure how that had managed to come about, though he strongly suspected treachery on his partner's behalf, and a certain meddling older influence.

A muffled snort interrupted his brooding, and he looked down to find Dick burying his nose in his sleeve desperately. Not impressed, Bruce brought out the full-force Bat-frown, but that seemed to only send the kid further into hysterics. Blinking a bit, Bruce watched helplessly, frozen by incomprehension, until Dick's cone started to tip in his shaking hand, and he was compelled to reach out and save the thing, if only out a determination that anything so expensive should be enjoyed to its last drop. Bringing the hand with the teetering cone up to his mouth to lick the slop off the back of his thumb, he felt his brow crease deep enough to be permanent as Dick struggled to get his breathing under control.

"Something funny?" he asked mildly, in full Bat-voice, and Dick lost his tentative control all over again, holding up a desperate hand as if begging him to stop. Which Bruce wouldn't have minded doing, if he had any clue what he was doing that needed stopping. He wasn't cut out for this kid business, and bright as Dick was, determined and fierce and everything else Bruce understood and admired about him, there were facets of the boy's character that simply baffled him, over and over again. Like this determination to get ice-cream, and just sit. Bruce couldn't ever remember doing that, not since ... well, not since. And Dick had felt that exact same loss, so Bruce had no idea what motivated this, if not childish nostalgia. And that wouldn't send the kid into gales of giggles.

"Sorr ... sorry," Dick wheezed, sounding for a second like an asthmatic old man, and nearly setting himself off all over again. "Sss ... sorry. It's just ... you just ... your eyebrow! It's in your eyebrow." Bruce blinked, and found himself reaching up instinctively, forgetting the ice-cream in each hand until he felt something drip into his hair above his eyes, followed by his face crumpling in disgust.

Dick fell off the bench.

Frowning, dripping ice-cream, Bruce glared down at his hysterical companion, a business-man in a thousand-dollar suit with a cone in his hand and ice-cream in his hair, and suddenly ... he smiled. A twitch of the lips, and then broader, and then deeper, and then he was laughing. Rich and deep and throaty, honestly laughing. A good, happy feeling flowered in his belly, a feeling he nearly didn't recognise, it had been so long since he felt it, and he almost didn't see Dick so still, didn't see the bright young face stare up at him with bemusement and humour, and the smallest hint of pride. But he did see and, shaking his head, he reached down to hand one of the cones back to its rightful owner, and let Dick brace a hand on his arm so he could help pull him up, chuckling all the while.

A wise man once said that we do not teach others to bestow wisdom. We teach others so that we might learn more ourselves, shown the wonders of the world anew by the bright curiosity and resilience of youth.

That day in the park, Bruce understood that, for the first time.