Dick nodded, lazily lounging in the chair in the most comfortable position. Ah, he loved everything familiar about Wayne Manor.
"I just feel that the family eting planned for the weekend might be a bit too formal, and Theodore might get nervous—I heard he doesn't know about the vigilante stuff yet."
"So I thought it would be better to co back today and et Theodore earlier." Tim's hand, holding a cookie, paused in mid-air.
Looking at Dick's enthusiastic and relaxed deanor, Tim inexplicably felt that this eting might have so unexpected developnts.
As Theodore's classmate, the first Robin to notice sothing was off with Theodore, and soone who might even share a nasake with Theodore, Tim felt it was his duty to give his elder brother a heads-up.
"Then you need to be prepared. Theodore's personality… well, it might be a bit strange."
Dick let out a carefree "Ha" and ruffled his younger brother's hair. "Everyone in this family is strange; we're all a bunch of freaks."
Tim emphasized, "Not the kind of strange you're thinking of."
Dick recalled the broadcast he'd heard earlier in the Batcave. "It's not the 'young Voldemort' kind of strange, is it?"
"Not that either. It's hard for to explain it clearly in words. How should I put it, Theodore always catches you off guard with sothing… "
This ti, Dick actually laughed. "I know, a boy who can praise Batman for being talkative must have his unique qualities, right? — Hey, Theodore!"
Looking at the other boy walking down the stairs, Dick flashed a charming, brilliant smile.
When Nightwing showed that sa smile, the female villains of Brudhaven would even lose their composure because of his handsoness.
Dick gestured, pushing the plate of cookies in front of him. "I was just wondering why you weren't coming down for cookies. How about it, want so coffee, or milk?"
Theodore stopped moving on the stairs.
His gaze cautiously swept over the plate of freshly baked, sweet cookies on the table, then over Dick's bright smile, which was completely out of place with the manor's atmosphere.
Then, under Dick's warm and expectant gaze, Theodore began backing up the stairs.
Tim: "…
He knew it.
Dick: "???
What happened?
Tim promptly called out to Theodore.
This was a little secret he had discovered recently about getting along with Theodore.
If you wanted Theodore to do sothing, you had to be clear and direct (like, please, stop adding peanut butter to maple syrup pancakes!).
Otherwise, Theodore would deliberately pretend not to understand, like a brainless zombie such as Solomon Grundy, one of Gotham's villains, grunting and floating past you.
Tim pointed at Dick and introduced, "This is Dick, he's back to see us." Dick greeted Theodore cheerfully. In contrast to his enthusiastic and happy reaction, Theodore's deanor was much colder.
With that strange, observing gaze, as if trying to deduce an answer to a problem, Theodore scanned Dick from head to toe before slowly speaking.
"Hello, Richard."
Nightwing didn't mind the cold reception from his new brother. He smiled, showing his teeth, his expression natural and open. "No need to be so formal, you can just call Dick."
As soon as he spoke, Dick had a feeling.
Although the physical distance between him and Theodore hadn't changed, Theodore's spirit seed to have retreated more than thirty steps away from him in an instant.
"Oh, I've heard about that," Theodore said softly, in a tone as if afraid of startling the other person's nerves, "You like it when people call you that."
From the first mont he saw Richard, Theodore had roughly guessed his identity. It was just that until Richard admitted it himself, Theodore had been unwilling to believe it.
Richard's smile was too bright and warm, completely out of place with this ancient manor, whose walls held countless silent eyes in their murals and harbored sinful secrets.
And the way he happily pushed the cookie plate towards him… how to describe it?
B
It was like in an R18 horror gore film, the protagonist rescues a cute, pale pink, long-eared little fluffy creature from a pile of zombies—it was too incongruous, too bizarre.
For a mont, Theodore even suspected that Dick's infectious smile was because the cookies had been injected with concentrated laughing gas.
And when Richard generously nodded and admitted that Dick was indeed his preferred nickna, Theodore was speechless.
The ominous thought that had arisen the mont he saw Richard was finally confird.
He had already lost the objective hardware needed for betrayal. And that was… his brain!
—This handso, well-proportioned, blue-eyed young man, who should have had a bright future, had beco ntally deranged under Wayne's tornt!
Please, only this answer could explain it, right?
Otherwise, what normal person would have such a fetish: happily stating that their nickna is "Dick" and loving to be called that by others?
Even if it wasn't ntal derangent, at least there was a cognitive problem, right?
Theodore closed his eyes in distress.
Last night, when facing the exploding kitchen, he had felt a slight stirring of emotion after Wayne pulled him to safety.
But at this mont, facing Richard's bloody, twisted ntal state, those tiny stirrings had unknowingly shattered into pieces on the floor.
Theodore slowly said, "I thought you wouldn't be back until the weekend."
Dick laughed when he heard that. "You and Tim have great chemistry; he just asked the sa thing."
Theodore's fingers, resting on the stair railing, silently tightened. "Did Mr. Wayne ask you to co back?"
Now, he had an ominous suspicion. Theodore suspected that Richard might have been implicated because of him.
Because he hadn't been able to satisfy Wayne yesterday, and Tim had been too exhausted recently. So, Wayne rembered his old dessert from another city.
Richard might have received Wayne's order and had no choice but to return and face his adoptive father.
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