Dive Deep into Creativity: Discover, Share, Inspire
So they’ll be sitting next to each other on the couch eating takeout and talking about their day or things they planned to do that weekend - only for the realisation to hit him.
That Dick isn’t just a distant cousin or close friend like some of his documents like to state - but in fact, a variant of his bio dad from another universe who he’s grown accustom to and come to appreciate in his own way.
The Richard Parker he’d heard about through the nostalgic tales of his uncle - confident, fiercely loyal and charismatic - sitting beside him in shorts and a ratty tee discussing the fortune cookie that he took upon himself to open (“it can’t be my fortune if it wasn’t supposed to be my cookie..right?”)
Dick wasn't some distant figure in the albums of photos Peter owned anymore, a memory trapped in folds of his mind where the outlines of a person he once knew grew faded and worn.
He was alive - a little weird but also funny, surprisingly dorky and kind of annoying when he wanted to be. Sometimes he laughed at a joke so loud it echoed across the apartment and other times he'd nod and pat his back in silent acknowledgement.
He’d fall asleep into his cereal one morning but be up early cooking pancakes and eggs the next.
His actual bedroom was kind of a mess and he caught the man sleeping atop a pile of his own folded laundry more than once.
(and lets not even bring up his lack of boundaries when it came to belongings - for someone who was supposedly an only child, Dick was such a sharer)
Sometimes, looking at him was bittersweet too.
When the inevitable thought followed, that his dad - his real dad - had never had the chance to surpass what the world and Peter knew him to be.
That he never lived long enough for Peter to discover the human he was outside of fatherhood. Outside of the sacrifice he made for his family, for his legacy - for his son.
The realisation is fleeting and soon lost to the ebb and flow of his consciousness - but the weight of it lingers.
A thought that haunts him, in their stretches of silence.
—-
headcanons / thoughts I’ve had from my Peter in Gotham fic