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It’s at the onset of his training—a late night on patrol where he’s mostly hanging out in the shadows, watching Batman take down warehouse operations and stop convenience store robberies—when Duke gets injured for the first time. It’s nothing serious, just a wrong place, wrong time mishap. It only really hurts as it happened, when the bullet grazes his thigh. It's his shocked cry that makes Batman snap around, letting go of his hold on one robber who gratefully scampers off into the shadows with his armed friend, sans cash register money.
“Duke,” he mutters, his voice stretched tighter than the teenager had ever heard it, even under the growl of the voice modulator.
“I’m okay,” Duke assures, trying to stand up, but his leg twinges when he puts weight on it. Bruce catches him under the arms before he can collapse back onto the dirty concrete. “Fuck.”
“Penny-One, requesting the Batmobile immediately. And have the surgery ready.”
Duke frowns. “It’s seriously not that bad-”
Alfred’s assenting hum crackles through the comms, and then Duke is being laid gently in the backseat of the Batmobile. He rotates his leg, trying not to spill blood on the upholstered leather when he catches sight of it oozing out in a flash of light from a streetlamp. It’s starting to burn a bit, he’ll admit, but he swallows his sounds down when he notices how hard they make Bruce grip the steering wheel, how much harder he presses on the accelerator.
It doesn’t take them long to pull through the hidden, armored doors of the Cave, and Duke’s unloaded from the car onto a gurney. He keeps his eyes closed, the bright lights in the med bay making his head swim worse. “Fuck,” he mutters again, bringing up a hand to cover his eyes.
Cold fingers press into the skin around his wound, pulling up the fabric of his pants, but it’s the sharp growl that Bruce lets out that makes Duke flinch, going stiff on the table. The hand disappears off of his leg.
“Master Wayne,” Alfred admonishes, voice flat but dropping lower at the end.
Duke opens his eyes, then, blinking until he can focus on the two bent over him. Alfred has his hands raised, and Bruce’s teeth are bared at him, perfectly straight and gleaming white. Alfred doesn’t look particularly moved, but his eyes are flicking over Bruce, examining his body language and waiting for him to pounce.
“The boy needs medical attention, and the only way I can administer that to him is if I touch him.”
Bruce growls again but with less force behind it. His hand, though, tightens possessively around Duke’s thigh, and Duke cries out, gritting his teeth against the searing pain that shoots up his body. Bruce lets go immediately, and the whimper he lets out is so sad it has Duke’s stomach curling, bile rising up his throat.
“Bruce, go upstairs.”
“I can-”
“No, you can not. You need to go upstairs. Prepare Master Duke’s room if you require something to do, but I have to be left to work, or his condition is going to worsen.”
Bruce postures for a moment more before he deflates, throwing one last look at Duke and then disappearing into the dark, his cape swooshing behind him.
Alfred stares after him, shaking his head, and then he turns to Duke, as sunny as he ever is. “Alright. Now where were we?”
It doesn’t take long for Alfred to clean up the wound and stitch him back up, working methodically and disconnected, evident that he’s done this thousands of times before. Duke’s not the only child he’s had under his hands, and he no doubt will not be the last. It’s that thought that has him relaxing despite the solid metal under him as his wound is dressed, feeling safe under the beta’s adept touch. He drifts as Alfred moves around him, presumably putting things away.
“How do you feel?” he asks, and Duke can only nod, drowsy. “Excellent. Let's get you upstairs before Bruce does something drastic.”
Alfred helps him into a wheelchair, and they take the elevator up, emerging from behind the grandfather clock in Bruce's study. The man in question is sitting, rod straight, on the antique couch, but he's immediately on his feet when he catches sight of Duke, eyes dark and slightly crazed like the teenager's never seen before.
“He needs to go to his room,” Alfred tries, but he's quickly ushered out of the way, Bruce taking over the handles of the wheelchair Duke believes is very unnecessary.
It takes a second, but with Bruce so close and his scent blockers removed, Duke's hit full force with Bruce's worry, the curdling, distressing scent like spilt blood clouding the air around him. Duke's alpha claws at his chest, desperate to comfort the beloved omega, but he sits silently in his chair as he's wheeled down the hall, knowing his place. He’s been taken in, given a home, but he’s not pack, no matter how much that thought makes him curl in on himself.
He only realizes they're going in the wrong direction when Alfred calls out to them, hot on their heels. They stop in front of a room that Duke's never been in before, but he knows what's inside, and his pulse jackrabbits.
“I do not believe this to be a wise idea,” Alfred suggests, but Bruce ignores him, pushing open the door and taking Duke inside. Despite his worries, the butler stops in the doorway, knowing his own place. He watches for a minute more, lips pursed, before he turns and leaves, shutting the door behind him.
Bruce's nest is delicately arranged on top of the biggest bed that Duke has ever seen, decorated with many pillows, blankets, and articles of clothing from every member of the family. It's a mix of different scents that have Duke's head spinning, but everything's steeped in one distinct one—Bruce. Something deep and rich, like crushed velvet and the setting of twilight and sweet wine poured over the tongue. It's the best thing he's ever smelt, and he wants to drown in it, to roll around and cover himself with it.
But, his mama taught him manners.
“Your nest is gorgeous,” he says because it is, and Bruce brightens a little, content under Duke's praise and acknowledgement. “May I come in?”
He’s helped into the bed, placed right where he’s supposed to be with surgical precision. It takes everything inside him not to sink into the mattress and doze off, especially when he’s tucked under blankets that smell like home, home, family, love, pack. He might already be asleep—this is his dream, really, laid out and pressed into him. If so, he doesn’t want to wake up.
Bruce lays down, then, after he makes sure everything’s in its proper place, wrapping himself around Duke and pressing the young alpha into his neck. Duke rubs his cheek against the soft sweatshirt his guardian changed into, nose brushing against Bruce’s glands, scenting himself.
Bruce’s hand comes up, cradling the back of his head, fingers thumbing through the small curls at his nape. His hand trails down his neck, leaving goosebumps in the wake of his skin pressing against Duke’s and making him shiver, until he stops on his scent blockers, thumbing at them. Duke tenses, whingeing slightly, and Bruce pulls him even closer, tangling their legs, projecting safe, safe, love. Duke tips his head back, baring his neck, letting Bruce take them off, heart pounding in his chest.
He knows what he must smell like right now, the feelings choking his throat, shoving up to be let out, and it’s not something he wants Bruce to use against him, to punish or abandon him for. He’s seen it too many times, at the homes and on the streets. It’s not something that can happen to him. This is all he has now. Bruce is all he has now. He can’t-
“Shhh, pup, you’re okay,” Bruce whispers into his hair, voice thick like syrup being dipped out of him. “You’re good. Mine. You’re mine. My sweet pup. You smell so sweet.”
Bruce’s scent blossoms around him, hints of pup, pack, protect, love, love, mine, mine, mine, so cloying that Duke has to pull his head back to breathe a little. He’s only pushed back into Bruce’s neck, wrapped tighter in his arms, kept there by the displeased whine Bruce had let out that makes his chest ache.
It’s something that hurts a little, maybe, if he thinks about it too hard. The grip on him, the suffocating, the pup of it all when he’s a fully presented alpha, when he’s yearned for an omega—this omega—late at night, sometimes, tucked into the safety of his own bed.
But the kiss pressed against his head soothes it, as does the purring that rumbles against his chest, lulling him deeper.
It reminds him of the time spent in his mama’s nest, cradled in her protective arms. Even after he presented, when he was home alone, he’d sneak into it and bury himself in the covers, saturating the fabrics with his scent. He’d always get called back at bedtime, nervously toeing at the floor until he was pulled back in, sandwiched between the two most important people in the world.
It's like that now, the nervousness plummeting into comfort, into hope, into belonging.
It's here that Duke thinks, for the first time in a while, that he isn't supposed to be anywhere else.