Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dick was sitting on the floor in some room of his apartment. He didn’t open his eyes to figure out which, just kept them closed and kept breathing. For an exercise meant to reduce anger, the breathing patters sure pissed him off a lot. It was the principle of it. The “calm down” that he’s sure haven’t calmed a single person in the whole history.

But he had to calm down. The damage might have been already done, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do more. And unless Dick wanted holes in his walls and furniture, which he didn’t, he had no choice but stop being so pissed off. Not that the holes were even his biggest concern. Of course they weren’t.

Because Dick’s anger is dangerous. It ruins his relationships, it makes him lose his head, forget the rules. It made him a killer once, although he can’t ever bring himself to fully regret what he did to Joker. And if he has to live with the fact that he killed the clown, Bruce at least could have left him dead.

He gets it though, in retrospect, his dad was just trying to protect him. He understood a lot of Bruce’s decisions when he looked back on them, just never in the moment, with rage clouding his mind. Always there, always ready to ruin his life.

So he quit. He’s not sure how or when, but he got better. Maybe it was Tim entering his life, him getting a second chance at being a big brother. He was determined to do it right this time. He didn’t, he failed again. In a way he couldn’t blame on the emotion for once.

And it’s not like he stopped getting angry, he’s not sure that’s even possible. It just… showed differently and less often. But it’s always there, underneath his skin.

So he smiles and jokes and talks a lot. Raises his voice in topics he feels strongly about. He gestures a lot with his hands. It’s not ideal for some places, but it’s a good alternative to outright yelling and punching walls- both of which Dick did.

He’s not ‘fixed’. Far from it, actually, but he’s better.

And then there’s Bruce. And Dick’s a rebellious rage-filled teenager again.
He loves his das, he really does, but Batman always manages to piss him off in record time, to the point of Dick entertaining the possibility of it being Bruce’s fault.

It wasn’t, of course. Dick was the one who blew up. He was the one to start screaming.
Was it deserved sometimes? Definitely, and Dick wasn’t backing down on that, but that didn’t change the fact that Bruce didn’t start fights nearly as often as he did.

And that hurt. Because he knows Bruce loves him, cares about him. And he owns the man he lately started actually calling dad so much. And he was trying, to hold back the anger, not to snap or provoke. It had been working too, mostly.

Of course he couldn’t keep it up. Couldn’t keep his mouth shut, or think before getting pissed off. And now he’s here, hiding from Bruce like he used to, still mad despite everything.  

 Usually, he went to Jason about his fights with the bat.

Was his younger brother going to be unbiased? Hell no.
But Dick didn’t want objectivity, he wanted the reassurance that he wasn’t a complete asshole. Or at the very least wasn’t the only complete asshole in the argument.

Except he had a fight with Jason just last week and his little brother was still ghosting him. Not that Dick blames him, that one was entirely his fault. Jason didn’t even mean to be rude.

The thing was, if Dick and Bruce were bad, Dick and Jason were a catastrophe.

He was glad, so glad when his brother came back to life. He was delighted when Jason started showing up around them more often, all but officially returning to the family.

But his younger brother, his little wing, came back angry. And Dick already had the monopoly on that, didn’t he? As much as he tried to give it away.

And the rage in them, it didn’t need the trigger to make sense, all that was needed was a little spark. So Jason got pissed and all Dick really needed was for him to show it. It didn’t matter how, more often than not an annoyed sigh was enough. And The fire was started.

This was something he himself didn’t understand. Why Jason being irritated made him irritated in turn. It never led anywhere good, though. Dick got angry over Jason being angry, Jason got mad at Dick for being angry, Dick got pissed at Jason…it was a full chain or maybe a circle and ended up getting physical on multiple occasions.

It didn’t help that Jay seemed to be struggling with the same problem.

There was one crucial difference. His brother’s anger was gained, unnatural. It wasn’t Jason’s fault he got angry; it was the pit’s.
Dick was just… he didn’t control himself well enough. Didn’t always manage to keep the fire in him at bay. Took it out on people he loved.

Did they even know how much he cherished them?
Sure, he was affectionate with them too. He told them, rarely- because the whole family was emotionally constipated and most of them didn’t know how to deal with those words, but he did. And he wasn’t angry all the time.

But was that all enough, if he could yell at them so easily? After all, they had no clue how much he regretted it afterwards. He never told them, he just avoided them, because he couldn’t stand to look at them after, either still mad or just too guilty.

Dick loved his family and friends so, so much. Above anything else, even. But he just got…angry. Snappy. And it always ended the same.

With him sitting on the floor in his cold apartment, alone and ashamed.