Soo yeah, I don't own anything you read here. The inaccuracy of the statement "I'm home" occurred to me in AP history and I immediately associated it with Dick+Damian instead of writing an essay, yay! Title stolen from an Emily Dickinson poem, I honestly just searched up lines about home. Written because Grayson 11 crushed my dreams and I needed fluff

Grayson was - especially for a man seemingly so open with his emotions - very difficult to understand.

His motives had to be underhanded in some way, nobody just did what Dick did out of the kindness of their own heart.

Grayson had already ensnared hundreds and hundreds of people into his web, and Damian had been determined not to become one of them. The young man was merely a master manipulator.

Or so, he'd thought when his mentor - ex mentor now, he supposed - had been starting out as Batman.

One of Grayson's favorite things to do when he returned to the penthouse was to throw open the doors and yell in his boisterous voice, "I'm home!"

There was usually a degrading nickname added to either end of the statement, like 'Little D' or even, jokingly, 'honey'.

Damian had found issues with the sentence immediately. Firstly, Grayson was a human being (although some of his habits suggested otherwise) most certainly not any form of household. It was grammatically, literarily, inaccurate. Nobody ever said 'I'm Gotham!' and Gotham was a place just as much as a penthouse or house or an apartment.

'I am home.'

Nobody was a home, not unless associating inanimate objects with personalities (like Dick often did with his - their - Batmobile).

He'd asked the older boy about it once, and Dick had smiled knowingly and said, "I'm just letting you know I'm there. Like I'll always be."

That wasn't what he'd meant at all with his question, but Dick had continued to do it and Damian found himself growing used to and even fond of knowing when his guardian was around. Not that the man wouldn't search Damian out the instant he returned. It was. . . an acceptable (perfect) arrangement.

Then, of course, his father had returned and Grayson had left (he cursed the Nightwing identity and the Kryptonian for not telling him about the 'Flamebird' legacy sooner). His father left him absolutely no time for his thoughts to wander, pushing him farther in training than even the Shadows had ever done.

There, at least, he'd gotten praised.

Scowls and frowns and capes and rasps and being alone and "again" and "you failed" and "Tim could do better" and "we'll never work together" and "you can't be Robin" were all he'd get at home-

That was to say, Wayne Manor.

He'd chosen to stay with Dick over his mother, not his father over Talia.

And now, after eight words too many - "I hate you! I wish you'd stayed dead!" - Damian was left with (almost) nowhere to go.

Mother had reciprocated him in terms of rejection. Drake detested him (he couldn't say that he didn't feel the same way), Todd would shoot him (again) before letting him 'tag along', and Damian would shoot himself before going to Brown for help. Casandra Cain's whereabouts were. . . unknown. He couldn't expect admission to Colin's orphanage, or with Katana. He would die before living with the Titans, and Pennyworth was too blindly - foolishly - dedicated to Father.

Leaving only Grayson, the sole tolerant of him.

Damian takes care to enter the way any normal person visiting their brother after being evicted at ten years old from a mansion. Through the door.

He sinks slowly into the blue couch, curling himself into the Nightwing™ blanket. It was warm and soft and Damian could just imagine Grayson stumbling into his apartment blindly, tearing off the spandex and collapsing onto the sofa, before awaking to a 'nutritious' breakfast of cereal.

There was even a box on his coffee table.

Damian squeezes his eyes shut. What if Dick didn't want him? Nobody else wanted him, what would be any different about Grayson? Why should Grayson care about him when not even his own blood would spare a glance at him?

What has he done?

"I'm home," he hears Dick's tired voice say to himself as the man climbed through the window into his loft. He hadn't intended for Damian to overhear, expecting him to be miles and miles away, with Father. Does anyone ever intend for Damian?

But then Damian stepped out of the shadows, eagerly soaking up the quickly manifesting affection on the face of his older-brother/preferred-father as they took in the sight of each other - messy black hair, winged mask, fingerstripes, smile.

Dick pulls him into a gentle hug and he lets go of the blanket, because now he has the real thing, and it's much better.

Damian forces himself not to cry but a dry sob escapes from his throat anyway, only slightly muffled against the man's abdomen. "We're good, you're good, Dami."

He shakes his head into the Kevlar, and he felt letters being rubbed into his back. Love you, they say. "N-no, nobody lo-" Damian can't even bring himself to say the word.

Pathetic, hisses a voice that sounded like Drake and Ra's and Father all at the same time.

Grayson picks up on it - of course, he picks up on it, he was Batman, and leans down to kiss his forehead. "I love you, Dami, more than you could know, more than anything, okay?"

Nightwing - 'no names in the field' - doesn't tell him to calm down, or that everything will be okay. Maybe it won't be, and Nightwing can't confirm that, but it is okay in that moment, and that was enough. It will have to be.

And Damian thinks he understands now. Dick is home.