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When their would-be thief rounds the corner, barreling down the back alley in which a recently-be-whiskered Dick has taken shelter, Dick recognizes him instantly. He starts growling.
“Grayson?” Even facing away from his comm, Dick’s new, sensitive ears can pick up Damian’s tinny voice. “Is everything alright?”
The growl becomes a low sound in the back of his throat, a vocalization that – like many things that have happened in the past few hours, ever since Dick was blasted in the face by the strange energy of their would-be thief's unknown and ill-begotten tech – Dick feels he has no control over. The angry, animalistic sound happens to him - an expression of his emotional state that he does not choose but that exits his throat regardless.
Likewise, when he coils his muscles in preparation to leap it's not because he doesn't know he’s supposed to be hiding, waiting for a pickup by someone with opposable thumbs and who ideally weighs more than – a generous estimate – fourteen or so pounds. He's well aware that he doesn’t have any of his tools, his bulk, nor a prayer of a chance at taking down a man who had a good four inches and twenty pounds on him even before Dick was abruptly and unceremoniously transformed into a cat.
He knows, he's aware, but also he remembers: he remembers the indignity of twisting out of his Nightwing suit on unfamiliar paws, the annoyance and frustration of hiding behind a dumpster in a back alley, paw on his comm as he yowled his injustice out to an extremely confused collection of Gothamite vigilantes. He remembers the thrill of the chase, stalking this very same man through the streets of Gotham, waiting to pounce; the sentiment resonates just a little too well in Dick’s new sharp-clawed body, and his tail lashes without him thinking about it.
“Does anyone have an ETA for Nightwing’s loc-”
Tim’s voice, urgent, cuts off abruptly as Dick’s paw leaves the comm.
Dick collides with the thief mid-stride, claws tangling into his jeans. With a startled curse, the thief kicks out, losing momentum as his energy is redirected from running to doing a little “what the fuck” dance, legs flailing, jarring Dick but never quite dislodging him. He digs his claws in deeper against the violent up-and-down and then against the pulling and hitting of the thief’s hands.
Then the thief grabs Dick by the back of his neck, the pinching of his skin causing him to unlatch. The weird, uncomfortable sensation of the skin at the back of his neck being pulled and stretched dumbfounds him, and then he’s being lifted into the air, all of the weight of his body suspended by the thief’s bruising grip and his own taut skin.
“Fucking cat,” the thief spits.
Dick starts yowling and thrashing his head, furious, paws flailing uselessly. When the thief raises him up, up, up to eye level, it occurs to Dick just how much bigger the man is than him. Dick is uncomfortably familiar with helplessness, but he somehow didn’t expect to be quite this helpless in quite this particular situation, face to face with this unarmed, no-name thief. Dick yowls louder, furious, the sound coming from deep in his throat.
The thief sneers, bashes him against the cement.
The pain stuns Dick for a moment – the deep ache in his neck, the sharp pain in his ribs, the sudden throb of his head. He realizes he’s making a low, pathetic noise, he realizes he’s being lifted into the air again in anticipation of a second strike, he realizes he may well die in this in this stupid, small body, in this stupid, small situation – all of it out of his control.
And then -
“Put down the cat.”
The thief steps back, pauses. Dick swings limply with the motion, still moaning. “Robin,” the thief says.
“Put down the cat,” Damian says again, low and dangerous. “Before I do something we both regret.”
Another pause, considering. “You want the cat?” the thief says. “Catch.”
And then all of a sudden Dick is weightless, catapulting through the through the air. He twists mid-air in spite of the pain, seeking Damian, and Damian’s there to greet him, hands and a warm chest catching him mid-air, mid-stride as Damian leaps forward, staff extended.
Damian doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t have to, Dick closing his eyes against the whirling of the outside world, trusting Damian to deal with the things Dick doesn't have the capacity to deal with right now.
Damian tries and mostly succeeds at being gentle with Dick as he takes down the thief, Dick’s head cradled in the warm cavity underneath Damian’s chin. Nevertheless, every movement jars Dick’s bruises and scrapes and all of the broken parts of him. By the time Damian’s done with the thief Dick is aching, taking shallow breaths and digging his claws into the thick, familiar material of Damian’s Robin suit.
“I have them,” Damian says into his comm, throat vibrating against the whiskers on Dick’s face. “The thief and Nightwing, both. I’m picking up his comm now.”
Then, to Dick – “Are you alright, Nightwing?”
Hell no, Dick thinks. He aches all over, his ribs hurt, and he’ll probably have to go to an actual, for real veterinarian for that, and the veterinarian will probably recommend neutering him, which Dick may never live down. He can’t talk and doesn’t have thumbs and is so much smaller than he wants to be.
It churns in Dick’s stomach, Damian being so big and Dick being so small. There will probably always be some part of Dick worrying how am I supposed to take care of him like this?
But he can’t say any of that, and wouldn’t even if he could, so instead Dick meows, butts his head up under Damian’s chin. He curls into Damian's arms and against his clavicle, by his neck, and when Damian reaches a tentative hand up in order to scratch behind his ears he surprises both of them by purring.
When Damian’s fingers brush against Dick’s bruised temple, though, Dick flinches, ears flicking back.
“You’re injured,” Damian says, brows furrowed.
Dick meows back.
Damian nods. “We must find you medical attention, then. Come,” Damian declares, giving Dick’s ears one final scratch, careful to avoid the tender spot he’d brushed against before. “Let’s go home.”