How To Balance Your Daytime and Nighttime Activities So That You Don't Burn Yourself Out More Than You Already Have
It had been a long few minutes since he'd opened the door and there were a lot of questions running through Dick's head. Most pressing of which was how this kid seems to have information he should not have.
"How did you..?" he asked, but the words wouldn't leave completely. There's so much he wants to know, so much he wants to ask.
"How do I what?" Danny tilted his head like the child he seems to be is.
"How do you know?" Dick knows he sounds weak. There's no hiding that, but there are a lot of implications in what the kid has said so far and none of it is painting a very happy picture for him.
"Oh!" Danny had the audacity to smile, "You want to know how I know you moonlight as a vigilante!" And of course he knows. Dick knows he knows, but he'd held a little bit of hope that the child Danny was mistaken. Danny's smile softened a bit as he explained, "Your hair and voice match up in both jobs almost perfectly. Not to mention your build and how you hold yourself. There's also the matter of your overall vibes, but that's not something living beings can normally pick up on." Excuse him? "Well, not living humans, at least, so no worries on that end!"
"Excuse me?" Dick was fairly sure his heart just stopped beating for a moment there.
"Anyway, I was a hero back home for a while, too. I know what it's like to have to walk the tightrope between maintaining a civilian cover and a hero persona. I know how it feels to have to keep secrets from everyone because anyone who knows will be in danger." he rambled, Though, admittedly, our circumstances are quite different. I was working as a hero all hours of the day as well as going to school. You only have to worry about properly balancing between day and night jobs. Either way, me having more to bounce between just makes me al the more qualified to help you!"
Oh. Oh he did not like that. He didn't like a single thing that just came out of the kid's mouth. Because that's what he is, a kid. "Are you...Are you alright?"
"Not in the slightest," Danny admitted with an even smaller smile. Then, it brightened, not quite to a grin, but to something similar, "But I'm here to make sure you are."
He gets points for being honest, but Dick felt his heart shatter. He knew for a fact that he'd never worked with this kid before. He also knew that the Justice League didn't know about him. If they did, he would've been picked up and dropped with either the Young Justice team or the Titans.
Dick wasn't going to ask why he became a hero because that's not his place. It's more of a 'third mission with the team' kind of questions, anyway. Most of the heroes didn't have many options when they took up the mantle. Asking what Danny can do is a more appropriate question, but he wasn't going to ask that, either.
"Now that that's out of the way," Danny turned a few pages from the table of contents to another one that was topped with 'Why Sleep Scheduling Is Important' in the blue glitter pen that Dick was starting to suspect he favored. "You're not getting enough sleep. Following you around - no one's been able to find me for a while, so don't worry about that - for the last two weeks has given me some really worrisome information on you."
Dick was worrying. He was worrying a lot and even more questions were coming to the forefront of his mind.
"Your dayjob is as an officer on the Bludhaven Police Force, or BPD for short." He was looking over the page he'd turned to very aptly and Dick realized that the kid had notes written on him. "The average hours per week for police across the country is forty hours. Gotham and Bludhaven are the exceptions. As a member of the BPD, you work a solid two days and two hours. Six nights a week, you work as Nightwing from eight in the evening to three in the morning. The last day, you take off, which is good. No deserable pattern, so good on you for that. Regardless, that's seven hour nights and ten hour days, with one day off and one day on call as an officer. Seven hours are now left in your day for personal time, eating, and sleeping. That's not a healthy way to live."
Oh, god, the kid had honest to god notes on him! What the hell!
Danny didn't even skip a beat as he pulled Dick's attention back to him and his binder. "I've drawn up a schedule for you to follow." The back of the page had a meticulously drawn schedule, complete with blocks of time to eat, sleep, work both jobs, travel, personal time, and still have a bit extra left over. It was titled 'Ideal End Result' in green marker. "Drastic changes right away will only affect you negatively, so we're starting off smaller." The next page over had another schedule titled 'Where To Begin'. "I've only pulled one hour from your Nightwing hours because I know important that time is to you and the city. I am, however, going to be having you submit an appeal to your boss to cut back your hours from fifty a week to forty a week. That way, you'll only be working eight hours a day and not ten. You'll still be on call for one day, and you'll have that last day off. Altogether, you'll be going be going from working seventeen hours a day to fourteen hours a day. Nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, and eight in the evening to two in the morning. Not including breaks at work or travel time. It opens up a few more hours for you to sleep!"
"You really think the chief is going to pull back my hours?" Dick raised an eyebrow in question.
"He will if he knows what's good for him."
"You know I can arrest you for that threat, right?"
"Yeah, but you won't." And, damn it, he's right.
Although, there was now another thing he had to know. "How to you plan on enforcing this schedule of yours?"
Danny seemed to have been waiting for this. He got a gleam in his eye as he pulled a black folder from his bag, not breaking eye contact with Dick. He placed it on the table and pushed it across. "Congratulations, it's a boy."
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With interest, Grian watches Scar heave breaths and clutch at his chest. The surrounding caves full of lava pops and hissing mobs fall away, bringing them somewhere dark and misty instead. The ground is smooth and pitch black, some blocks of it gently floating away in a way that’s entirely disturbing; a picture of a quiet and broken world. Glancing appraisingly around, Grian takes a step away from Scar, swishing his tail impatiently as he waits for him to calm down.
“Gee, Grian. Can’t you bring us somewhere nice for once?” Scar huffs out breathlessly, still slightly bent forward. His messy brown hair falls into his eyes, partially covering up his expression.
Grian itches to step closer and push Scar’s hair away, so he can see his face in full. “I can’t,” he lies, a hint of sulkiness in his voice. His nose scrunches up a little as he wrangles the strange urges nestled in his heart, and he takes one more step decidedly away from Scar.
Taking a final deep breath, Scar straightens up. “Can’t or won’t?” he presses.
“Can’t,” Grian insists, even though the words feel like gravel in his throat under the scrutiny of Scar’s gaze. There’s something in Scar’s eyes as he looks back at Grian, and Grian can’t quite identify it—something veering on expectant. Something hopeful, maybe. Something strange. His tail sharply swishes again, agitated, and he blurts out: “What are you the most afraid of?”
“What?” Scar startles, visibly flinching under the abrupt ambush.
“What are you the most afraid of?” Grian repeats, pinning him down with his gaze. “We went through plenty things. You scare easily. But what is The Big Bad Scary Thing for you? I can’t quite figure it out.”
Scar feels his heartbeat in his throat. He purses his lips and stays silent.
They stare at each other.
Swish, swish, swish. Grian’s tail flicks from side to side as he waits.
Scar thinks Grian might explode if he won’t give him something. He releases a breath, wilfully loses the staring match and stammers out: “I—I’m not telling you that!”
Grian’s tail droops, suddenly weighted as he pouts. “Aw, why not?”
It’s a display of innocence, but Scar knows he’d be barking up the wrong tree if he wanted to find a shred of innocence in the demon that stands in front of him. (And yet a part of him wants him to willingly let himself get deceived. A part of him wants to think that it’s not as impossible as the rest of him makes it out to be.) Gritting his teeth, he pulls up every defence he can muster; unease sings in his veins, ready to be called upon once again in this dreamscape, always so, so very close to surface here. “You’ll use it! You’ll use it against me!” he accuses.
“I’d never,” Grian says simply, his lips twitching into a toothy grin.
“Pfhshs, you would, you absolutely would, you menace!” Scar protests, taking a stumbling half-a-step back, as if having physical distance ever helped him in here. (It never helps. Sometimes he feels like closer is the only right place to be. Like the further he runs, the more danger he’s in.)
The familiar sound of giggles bubbles out of Grian; his eyes are bright when they meet Scar’s again.
Running on some faulty setting, Scar’s heart skips a beat at the sight. He blames it on adrenaline—on the constant looming feeling of awaiting terror; on the lingering fear that so stickily clings to him whenever he dreams—but somewhere deep down in the pit of his stomach he knows that’s not it.
He watches Grian quiet down again, eyes grazing the surrounding dreamscape almost contemplatively. There’s a small tilt to Grian’s head as he thinks, a curve to his throat and jaw that makes Scar’s fingers twitch. He pries his gaze away and forces himself still, instead watching the world slowly float away around him and get swallowed by the void.
Is that what’s going to happen to him if he keeps standing here?
Dread curls through the spaces between his ribs at the thought, even though he’s aware it’s better than most alternatives.
Grian’s hum interrupts his thoughts, and the dread in Scar’s chest grows thicker and more insistent.
“I noticed,” Grian starts musingly, “that you don’t usually dream about other people.”
Scar blinks, trying to regain his footing in the seeming randomness of the topic. “So?”
“Well, most people dream about other people in their lives now and then,” Grian notes. His dark eyes hold Scar hostage. “Bad dreams, you know. Them getting hurt? Or getting hurt by them? Things like that.” His tail swishes. There’s something both grim and intrigued in his expression as he continues hungrily watching Scar. “But you don’t.”
There’s a flash image rushing through Scar at those words: Mumbo, drenched in blood, sobbing helplessly as he collapses on the floor and curls up on himself. Scar, hovering around him, not knowing how to help.
He tries to cover up the shakiness of his breath with false bravado. He isn’t going to let Grian have that. “I don’t see anything wrong with that,” he retorts, his voice carrying only a hint of his fraying nerves. He doesn’t think he could bear that kind of nightmares.
Grian cocks his head, eyes still lingering on him in that scrutinising way. “Is it because you don’t have anyone? Is that what you’re secretly afraid of? That you’ll die completely alone?”
Scar’s brows pull into a bemused frown. “Are you insulting me?”
“What?” A genuine confusion disrupts the intensity of Grian’s gaze.
“I have friends!” Scar huffs out defensively.
“Wait,” Grian shakes his head, feeling like he’s suddenly two steps behind Scar in this conversation. “Why would that be an insult?”
This whole time, Grian thought there’s simplicity in fears. Everyone was scared of something. And Grian did so very much enjoy putting his hands in that particular jar of honey, so tantalising and rich and sweet. There was fascination in watching it all unfold, so raw and terrible. Seeing the frantic urgency, the rising swell of overwhelming emotions ready to consume. Yet at the end of it, there was nothing. Always, always. Inevitably, it’d end. They’d all wake up.
All but him.
They’d wake up and none of it would ever be real.
He was just playing. It didn’t mean anything.
Scar is looking at him as if maybe it meant something.
“Well, you’re—” Scar starts, a baffled edge to his voice. Wasn’t it obvious? He thought it was obvious. But Grian keeps looking at him with that same confusion etched into his features, and so Scar fumbles for a way to put his knee-jerk thought into coherent words. “You’re saying I might die alone. Isn’t that kind of like suggesting that I’m unlovable?”
There’s a beat of silence when Grian parses through his words, slots them somewhere within himself.
Scar can’t tell where Grian’s slotting them. He just wants to be understood, and for them to move on.
But Grian doesn’t swiftly move from it quite like Scar hopes.
His tail once again gravitates straight down; his wings droop and his bat-like ears twitch and pull back. “Oh.” It’s a small sound, timid and fractured and just a little bit guarded.
Scar watches Grian’s face scrunch up again, in a way that’d be completely endearing if it wasn’t so alarming. Because Grian doesn’t usually make a face like this. He’s sulky, sure, and he’s chaotic. He cackles and sighs and swishes his damn tail and—
He shouldn’t look timid. He shouldn’t look like he’s about to get hurt.
“Grian…?”
When Grian speaks, his voice is even quieter, cracking with something unsure. “I didn’t know it’s…” He stops, the words hitting some dam within him. I didn’t know it’s bad, is what he almost says. His frown deepens, and he’s not looking at Scar anymore; he’s staring at the ground, as if it held the answers he so desperately needed. “I didn’t…” He trails off again, sheepish. I didn’t mean that you’re unlovable hovers on the tip of his tongue, but he bites at it until it dies in his throat.
A sharp urge to step closer and lift Grian’s chin sears through Scar.
Before he can do anything, Grian lifts his head on his own accord and meets Scar’s gaze.
Grian’s dark eyes are full of some deep pitfall, a ravaging emotion that Scar fails to identify.
“Am I?” Grian asks, words imbued with painful desperation. Am I unlovable? echoes through him, thrums through every part of him with the wild force of his heartbeat.
He shouldn’t be asking this. Why is he asking this?
It shouldn’t matter.
Why does it hurt to think it?
He should be coating the words in sharp edges. He should be using them as knives. He should be digging his claws into Scar, mocking him that yes, maybe Scar is unlovable. He should be trying to see if that scares him. If it hurts.
Isn’t that what nightmares should be about?
But instead, Grian’s the one in pain.
And yet.
And yet it looks like Scar is hurt too, somehow, anyway. There’s a faint fragrance of fear in the air, an unfamiliar tinge to it that Grian can’t quite pinpoint.
A part of Grian wants to stay and figure it out. It wants to indulge in the way Scar looks right now; it wants to step closer, to put his sharp, clawed fingers against Scar’s pulse point and find out what makes it beat like that.
The other part of him is cacophonic and loud, ringing alarm bells and frantically trying to get him to run away.
Run away from what? Run where?
This is his world. This is his place.
He isn’t supposed to hurt here.
He isn’t supposed to hurt here.
He doesn’t realise his breaths are turning rapid and shallow; his heart is throwing a tantrum, causing havoc within him. All he knows is that he has a strong urge to hide. To protect himself. To stay safe. Deeper, deeper in the dreamscape. That’s where he should be. That’s where he needs to go.
He steps away from Scar and with wide eyes and too-loud heartbeat, he watches Scar follow.
“I’m done playing for today,” he lets him know, the words raspy and wrong as they barely make it past the lump in his throat. He doesn’t wait, doesn’t give out any more chances; he turns around and runs.
The ground rumbles in the wake of his footsteps, walls pulling up behind him, blocking Scar’s path to him and rendering him unable to follow.
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