"Damian!" Dick called frantically when he heard the boy walking down the hall.

"What?" Damian, sticking his head into the bedroom and looking at Dick suspiciously.

"Come talk to me, give me something to do, please, throw things at me, whatever you want. I'm so bored," Dick begged. Breakfast had been about three hours ago and with the exception of the short nap he'd taken, every single second had been torture.

"You're pathetic," Damian said.

"I know," Dick agreed. "I just hate sitting around. It makes me crazy."

"You're always crazy," he said. "Why are you at the wrong end of the bed?"

"Long story," Dick muttered. "How was patrol last night? Tell me everything that happened."

"Nothing particularly interesting happened," Damian said, sitting down next to him. "Dr Hurt left the streets too messy for anything organized to start up for at least a week or two. It was mostly just muggings and assaults, a few murders, that kind of thing."

"Sorry I'm missing it," Dick said. Damian glared at him. Oh that kid could glare like this daddy. "Look, anything's better than this."

"Grayson," Damian said after a minute. "You tell me that it's a good thing to follow my gut." Dick nodded and waited for him to finish. After about a minute of silence, Dick concluded that he wasn't going to.

"What's your gut saying?" he prompted.

"That something was strange about two of the murders last night," he said thoughtfully. "They didn't seem as random as they look."

Dick sat up, even though that did make his brain knock against the inside of his skull like it was a big base drum. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"There was a messy death," Damian said. "Rich man, alley. I've seen him before – I think he has a favourite pimp there but something about his death wasn't right. He'd been sliced up really badly but I think he was dead before it happened."

"What makes you think that?"

"I thought," Damian frowned and thought about it very carefully before answering, "I thought I saw a bullet wound."

"Where?" Dick asked. There were lots of obvious answers to that. Maybe there was a gun and a knife in the fight, there were multiple injuries, that kind of thing. But he didn't say any of those things, he waited for Damian to finish observing.

"His heart," Damian said at last. "Right through it actually."

"Wait, straight though it?" Dick asked, sitting up as best he could. "Like sharp shooting straight or like lucky shot straight?"

"Straight shooting,," Damian said. "And there was another body later in the night that didn't seem right. Not slashed though. Chewed on."

It was funny, Dick thought as he squirmed a little. If he'd been there, he would have calmly looked the bodies over without batting an eye but hearing a ten year old who he loved to talk about poking around corpses made him stomach skitter just a little. "By what?" he asked, not sure he wanted the answer.

"I don't know, dogs probably," he said. "Which couldn't possibly be the cause of death."

"Why don't you ask Gordon if you can see the bodies?" Dick suggested. "Or I can call him if you want. Or we could hack into the coroners report."

"You just want to have something to do," Damian said accusingly.

"There's that," Dick agreed smiling a little. "But I also trust you Damian, and your instincts. If you think somethings up with this, then it probably is and we should check it out."

Damian turned away from him for a minute and thought. Dick wanted to drum his fingers and whistle or something but that would probably make Damian punch him. He thought he was doing pretty well with the whole recovering thing. A good punch from Damian could probably set him back like a week, so he sat as still as he could and waited for Damian to make up his mind.

"Fine," Damian said at last. "We'll do it. I will go get Drake's computer."

"Better get mine," Dick said. "It's not as good as Tim's but it'll decrease the chance of you getting murdered by Tim."

"As if," Damian snapped, jumping off the bed and scampering away.

He didn't have to wait very long before Damian came back with his laptop. "Are you sure this thing can do what we need it to do?"

"I've let Babs and Tim and Bruce upgrade that thing," Dick said happily. "It's no Batcomputer but there isn't a hell of a lot if can't do." He frowned. "Don't tell Bruce I talk like that in front of you."

"Fine," Damian said. "Let's see the coroner's report."

"You want me to do it?" Dick asked, his fingers practically twitching at the thought of having something useful to do.

"No," Damian said coldly, opening up the computer and turning it on.

"You at least need me to unlock it."

"Who says?" Damian asked.

"How long have you been able to do that?" Dick asked with a groan as Damian passed through his security easily. Suddenly he understood Bruce a lot better.. Damian shrugged. "I'm not sure if I'm pissed off at you or proud."

"Neither is relevant," Damian said, but Dick was pretty sure he'd seen him Damian sit a little straighter when the word "proud" had slipped out of his mouth.

"Let me at least see?" Dick said, whining a little. He expected Damian to make fun of him but he didn't, just moved so he was leaning his back against the foot board too. Dick watched him enthusiastically hacking into the police database. Dick had to admit, Damian might never be Tim, but he was already as good as Dick. He'd probably be better by the time he was Dick's age.

"Here it is," he said after only a few moments.

"You're right," Dick said, pointing to the picture of the man's chest. "Right there," he said. "That's too clean a wound for a knife. Where's the other one?"

"Here," Damian said.

"Ouch," Dick said with a grimace. "You're right. No one could possibly have held still while that was done to them. He must have died first but it's going to be brutally hard to find what actually killed him. We might need to see the body to figure this one out."

"I'll go see it tonight," Damian said.

"Where'd you find the first body?" Dick asked. "I'll get Tim to help me down to the Cave, we can see if we can find any security camera footage. Did you investigate the scene?"

"Only a little," Damian said. "It was raining last night and there was hardly any blood at all."

"So either the rain washed it all away or..." he started.

"He wasn't killed there."

"Exactly," Dick agreed. He grinned. He felt a little guilty about being so gleeful when two men where dead, but this was something he could do. This would break up the tedium. "Can you go and find Tim for me?" he asked. "I need him to help me downstairs."

Damian glared again.