It was really easy to banter with Richie. It didn't take any real effort; the remarks and replies rolled right off the tongue without having think. Dick liked that. He liked this sort of friendship they'd developed. It'd started off as him looking out for Richie as a kid which also had come very naturally to Dick. Richie wasn't just some kid he was babysitting. He'd actually really enjoyed his company then, too. And it'd thankfully translated into a bidding friendship when Richie shifted back into adulthood. Dick still felt like he was looking out for him sometimes, but he liked that.
"You can leave the past behind, but it's still yours." No, he'd never really left Gotham. "I did leave for a while, or I guess I tried. But not for good. Gotham is kind of a part of me." He felt some kind of twisted allegiance to it. But there was also the fact that Barbara was there. Tim was there. ...Bruce was there. And so even though he'd run from it for a while, he came right back.
The ring thing, while his answer probably sounded bad, like it was a sore subject, it definitely wasn't. He didn't want Richie to feel bad. This was a good thing that they were doing. "No, man," he said. "I swear, it's fine. It was a mutual decision. I proposed to her, she said yes, but I had to leave to help someone and it was going to be for an undetermined amount of time, so we decided to put it on hold until I got back. ... Then I turned up here, but she's here too so." A different version of her but still her. "We gotta get you a ring to give to him. That's happening." He clapped Richie's shoulder. He would've ruffled his hair like he would do when Richie was a kid but he was really fucking tall now and he couldn't reach. "I don't think he'd want anything super gaudy. What if you got something engraved in the band?"