anonymous asked: Angst Prompt 4, dick + Bruce
It's been a long time since Dick's had a reaction to fear toxin like this. Where his hands shake and his breaths come in pants, and he just can't seem to focus. Bruce had administered the antidote on patrol, Dick thinks. At least, he remembers Bruce giving it to him, but he's not sure how much he can trust those memories right now.
The main thing, the thing Dick knows for sure, is that this is fear toxin that's coursing through his veins, and it's making him see things straight from his nightmares.
"Dick," Bruce says, and he's cupping Dick's face in his hands, holding him still, even when it feels like Dick can't seem to get enough air. "Dick, I need you to breathe. You're going to hyperventilate at this rate."
Good, part of Dick thinks. Because maybe if he passes out he'll be able to stop seeing his parents fall and Bruce fall and Jason and Tim and Damian all fall. Maybe he'll stop seeing Bruce tear himself apart over and over again. Maybe he'll stop seeing Bruce give him that look, the one that tells Dick exactly how much he'd screwed up this time.
(The other part of him, the part that realizes that he's in his apartment, that knows that he and Bruce really shouldn't be sitting on the floor still in full uniform sans masks—it tells Dick that hyperventilation is not something he wants to experience while he's like this.)
"Dick," Bruce says again, harsher this time. "Dick, look at me."
But Dick can't. He can barely focus on where and when he is, let alone focus on Bruce's face.
"Why are you here?" Dick croaks, eyes burning, and he wishes he could just blink his emotion away, but when he blinks, it's just Bruce's angry, fear filled face that he's looking at, and all of his emotions are still simmering underneath the surface. "I don't understand why you're here?"
"You were injected with fear toxin," Bruce reminds him, his voice just a touch gentler. "I'm here to help you because you decided to be a stubborn idiot."
But Dick doesn't really remember the fear toxin anymore. Dick remembers the constant fighting and the arguing, the months of screaming at Bruce until he was red in the face, and still. Bruce had never looked less moved. So it doesn't really add up in Dick's mind why Bruce is looking at Dick like he suddenly cares.
"You told me—" Dick chokes on his next breath, but the anger and the terror aren't enough to stop him from saying this. "You told me, 'Get out and don't come back.' That's what you told me. I don't understand why you're here!"
And with that last word, Dick pushes against Bruce's hold and scrambles back the moment Bruce is surprised enough to let him go. He pushes against the wall behind him and stares at Bruce. And he wishes that for once his emotions would just make up their damn mind. Because now that Bruce is five feet away from him, all Dick wants is for Bruce to hold him again, and it doesn't make any sense.
Nothing makes any sense.
Bruce opens his mouth to say something, but Dick cuts him off. "Get out!" he yells, too afraid what vulnerabilities he'll show if Bruce stays even a second longer. "You didn't want me to come back, so you can't come waltzing back to me like—like—"
Dick's sobbing now, his breathing getting worse, and he clutches at his own hair, trying to make the world make sense again.
But it doesn't. And in the end, Bruce doesn't leave. When Dick wakes up in the morning, he'll be happy, grateful even. But now? Now, all Dick wants Bruce to do is get the hell out and stop trying to control everything that Dick has made his own.