Jericho

Family and Rainstorms

Warning: This chapter may not be suitable for some readers.

Dick was going to throw up. There were butterflies in his stomach and they were going to make him throw up.

Logically, he knew that Bruce and Jason had already met Joey. But seeing as the situation had been clouded by his apparent suicide attempt, Dick wasn't prepared to count that as a proper introduction. This, however, was.

He and Joey were on their way to Gotham for dinner at Wayne Manor. It was the perfect opportunity to introduce his boyfriend to his family and vice versa. He was going to be sick.

Since there were two of them, Joey had borrowed his dad's car and had driven them to Gotham. Dick wasn't about to complain, he'd spent practically the entire journey debating whether or not he should be breathing into a paper bag. Joey, on the other hand, seemed all to calm. He sat in the driver seat, looking to his side every so often and chuckling at Dick's expression.

'I don't understand how you're so chilled out.' Said Dick, causing Joey to laugh some more. 'You won't find it so funny when I meet your dad for the first time.'

'Oh, you won't be meeting him for a while.'

Dick gave him a funny look.

'Trust me, it's for your own good.' Joey's face had hardened. Dick dropped the subject.

'Well, at least I know you get on with Jason.' Dick muttered, going through his mind all the ways Joey meeting Damien could go terribly wrong. There were so many, most of them ending in bloodshed

Joey suddenly sniggered and put his hand over his mouth, laughing at his own private joke.

'What?' Asked Dick.

'Nothing...just something your brother said when he was here.'

'What did he say?' Asked Dick, suspiciously. Jason had no filter. After some prying, Joey finally shrugged.

'He asked whether we were shagging. His words, not mine.'

'And what did you tell him?' Dick exclaimed.

'Well, no.' said Joey, keeping his eyes on the road. 'Because at the time we weren't. I just find it somewhat ironic that in the two days since he asked me, we did end up having sex.' He cleared his throat. 'Lots and lots of sex.' He said with a chuckle.

'Please don't. I don't want to be thinking about that while I'm panicking about Bruce, my brothers and oh my god, Alfred.' Dick covered his face with his hands. He didn't know whether he wanted to laugh, cry or be sick at the thought of Alfred having any, ANY idea what he had spent the last two days doing.

'Babe, you really need to calm down.' Said Joey, glancing over at his boyfriend, who was verging on hyperventilating. He really didn't understand. He had seen Dick take down a thief, twice his size and high on heroin without blinking an eye. And yet, right now he was a mess. 'Do you want me to pull over?'

Dick shook his head. 'Sorry. I'm calm, I'm calm.'

'You don't...regret what we did do you?' Joey asked gently.

Dick swivelled round to look directly at him.

'God no!' He said. 'It's just, my family means a lot to me, and you mean a lot to me. I want you all to get along because I don't know what I would do if you didn't.'

'Richard, it's going to be fine. Your family and I are going to get on like a house on fire.' Joey glanced over again and saw Dick had settled back in his seat. 'And I promise I won't bring up what we did on the kitchen floor until after dessert.'