findingmysanity

Ridoc fucking Gamlyn. The bane of your existence. It started the day you crossed the parapet, you were determined to get across if only to spare your family from seeing your dead body on day one. The first rider of the family meant you were already dead to them, no one was there to prepare you for the onslaught you would face. And that day on the parapet was too close, the wind and rain caught you off guard, but it was your stupid long hair that was almost the death of you.

Your arms were out at your side to keep your balance while the wind whipped around you. You could hear the soon-to-be cadet behind you cursing with every step he took, his nervous laughs filling the air. It was hard to keep your balance though with your hair flying into your eyes every five seconds, and moving it away from your face took away precious time, the boy was getting closer. In a swipe of your hair, you glanced behind you quickly catching the dark-haired boy's eye, and he fucking grinned at you. Was it meant to be intimidating? No. But with how much adrenaline was coursing through your body the only thought you had was that he wanted to throw you off the edge to get rid of you early. You tried to pick up your pace but it only caused the wet strands of your hair to fly back in your face quicker resulting in you momentarily losing your balance. You crouch closer to the rocky surface trying to regain your balance slowly, a shaky breath leaving you as you hear the boy approaching closer.

"Better chop off that pretty hair when we get across or you're as good as gone when challenges start!" he shouted over the wind, his voice was teasing but you couldn't help the fear that was still running through your veins.

"Shut. Up." you grit out. You'd recovered your pace but he was still behind you.

"Hey, just trying to help. Or you can fall and I'd have one less cute girl to talk to and that would be a shame," he was so close to you you could feel his laugh on the back of your neck. But you ignored him, trying to focus on getting across the last quarter of the parapet. "You excited?" you give no response, again tucking your hair behind your ears, "can't say I'm thrilled with being potentially killed but hey, the lives we choose to live." You roll your eyes your pace now quickening with being so close to the confined walls of Basgiath once more. "Wait up! Don't want you running off without your new friend!" you were so close, ten more steps.

A deep exhale leaves you as you jump the short distance from the parapet to the grounds, a girl sits at a table with a sheet of paper and a pen waiting to take names. She jots down your name and gives you a tight-lipped smile before calling the next person.

"Ridoc Gamlyn," that gods-damned voice again. You try to speed away before he can get to you after giving his name but you don't make it. "Hey!" he calls to you. That's it. Better to get him off of you now before it becomes a habit.

"Hey?" you turn on your heel and stare him down causing him to almost run into you with the stride he was going at, "What the fuck was that back there?"

"Uhm I'm sorry?" he questions confusion taking hold of his face.

"I said, what the fuck was that? You were right behind me shouting in my ear! I know we're not supposed to root for each other but you're trying to kill me already?" you knew your face was going red with the anger consuming you. Gods, you couldn't wait for this guy to be gone.

"Woah, princess, I was just helping. Your hair is going to get in the way, take a look around, who else here has that long of hair?" you don't want to but you look around anyway. Every person, male, female, or otherwise had either short, cropped hair or it was tied back tightly. He gives you an I told you so look before speaking again. "That's because they're all at the bottom of the river, I was just there in case you lost your sight again. Whatever I'm done with this shit." He rolls his eyes before turning away and walking elsewhere.

You sigh to yourself. This was going to be a long three years and you've already made an enemy. With your luck, he would try to kill you that night.

Your first night as Basgiath started better than you expected. You'd managed some small talk with some other first years and the two girls invited you to sit with them at supper that night. One of them was the Sorrengail girl you'd heard everyone talking about, she was slight but with her stubborn determination you had no doubt she would try to cheat death in here. The other girl was taller, her hair braided back in dark cornrows, Violet was also smart enough to have her long, silver ends tied up. Shit. Maybe Gamlyn was right. You did your best to keep your eyes on him throughout supper, he sat a few tables away from you with some other first years, but clearly, you weren't being very discreet with your wandering gaze.

"Already found someone worth sleeping with?" Rhiannon questioned teasingly, turning to look at who you were staring at, "He's cute."

"No. He's a fucking asshole is what he is." You grumble, stabbing some lettuce with your fork.

"Ridoc, I talked to him earlier," Violet speaks up, "he was nice to me. Bit of a smart-ass but he's funny. What happened with you two?"

"He tried to kill me up on the parapet!" you say, definitely louder than you wanted to, and shit of course he looked up right as you said that. He excused himself from his table and made his way over to you guys. You swear your eyes nearly rolled into the back of your head. His stride was confident, a smirk playing on his lips as he brushed his dark curls away from his forehead. No. You internally scold yourself, he may be attractive with his lean frame but he was annoying as hell.

"Is the princess telling lies about me?" he smoothly slides between Rhiannon and Violet throwing his arms around their shoulders a grin eating up his face.

"You tried to kill her?!" Violet shoves his arm away from her, looking at him incredulously.

"Of course not!" rage consumes you, "I was just staying close to her, her hair kept flying in her face, was just there in case she lost sight completely and fell," he says as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

"No. You were fucking distracting me!" your utensils clatter on your plate, "telling me to 'chop off my pretty hair'" You lower your voice to imitate him and he dares to laugh at you.

"Well...what do you girls think?" he says looking between the other two, their minds processing.

"I hate to say it...but Ridoc is right, it'll probably make it easier if you cut it, or at least tie it back like Violet," Rhiannon gives you an apologetic look and a shrug.

"That settles it then princess, just trying to help," Ridoc shoves himself away from the table before walking back to his seat, turning around halfway to meet your gaze, and winks at you. You roll your eyes in response before turning back to the girls. They share a look before going back to their meals.

The next morning in the barracks Violet had offered to braid your hair back for you and you begrudgingly agreed. You hated Ridoc being right. Zihnal was not with you because when first years began being added to squads you were thrilled to be with Rhiannon and Violet, but your excitement was short-lived as Ridoc was the next name called to Second Squad, Flame Section, Fourth Wing. He takes his place behind you and you do your best to ignore him as he talks to Sawyer–another member of your squad.

"Ah, look who took my advice!" you feel a tug on one of the two plaits Violet had done on you and you turn with fury.

"Take your hands off me Gamlyn," Rhiannon turns from where she stands next to you, grabbing your hand in an attempt to calm you.

"Someone's fiery this morning," he laughs, "looks good on you princess," he winks again, and before you or anyone else can stop you, the hand Rhiannon didn't have a hold on flew and slapped Ridoc straight on the cheek. He raises his hand to hold his face as you hear a shout a couple of rows ahead of you. "What the fuck?!" Ridoc shouts the shock evident on his face.

"Cadets!" your new squad leader–Dain Aetos–approaches the two of you, "You're a part of a squad now! Act like it. There will be plenty of time to fight during sparring, now behave yourselves." You turn back into formation hearing Ridoc grumbling behind you. Holy shit. What've you just done...? You hit your squadmate! You'd unknowingly unlocked months of intense rivalry between the two of you, all because you couldn't hold your temper.

The weeks went by slower than you thought, days of intense training and studying. Being a rider was a hell of a lot more difficult than you imagined it to be. But the most difficult part was trying to keep your temper around the man who was trying to make your life a living hell. Your other squadmates were fed up with your bickering. It ranged everywhere from trivial arguments about homework to betting who would make it up the gauntlet first when the training was to start. Challenges were going to start soon too, no longer assigned fighting partners and you knew Ridoc would challenge you only to bring revenge on the slap you'd landed on him the first day. But you were smart, you'd started studying his fighting style the moment he stepped onto the mat during the assessment. He held up alright, eventually knocking a tooth out of Aurelie's mouth, but that was before the daily training. As annoying of a squad leader that Dain was, he worked you all hard, and with gauntlet practice approaching too, he ensured you were all eating more than your share of food. Ridoc had gone from a lean floppy-haired boy who teased you on the parapet, to a now filled-out man beating most of his opponents in challenges.

But the most annoying part about Ridoc is that you didn't mind him...he was kind to the people he cared about and there had been more than one occurrence where you had to hold back your laughter from one of his jokes. But it was already over, you'd already hit him and he'd already decided that he would get his retaliation. So now every morning at breakfast you'd have to hear his taunting voice tease you.

"Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?"

"Does that scowl hurt your pretty face?"

"Seems like the princess hasn't gotten any this week, she's grumpy."

Day after day. Thank the gods when it came to serious moments he seemed to hold back. You were halfway up the gauntlet, about to cross the shaking posts. Only moments earlier Ridoc had been arguing with Tynan about Barlowe, you and Violet had shared a glance, never seeing him lose his temper and it was...kind of hot. He was taunting Tynan from the ground, and you'd expected the same when you began, but he stayed oddly silent. You'd surprised yourself after making it to the top, the training was paying off.

The next week, challenges began, and you were ready. Just as you'd expected Ridoc challenged you. Rhiannon gave you a nervous look as Sawyer tried to talk him out of it.

"Are you sure?" Rhi asked you as you stripped off your flight jacket, leaving you only in your training top and pants with half of your daggers strapped to your belt.

"It's fine, Rhi. We all knew that this was going to happen. Maybe after this, he'll give up and stop annoying the shit out of me." You approach the mat, Ridoc already standing ready, his arms swinging at his sides to pump himself up. Did his shirt get tighter somehow? No. Not the time for that. You shove the thoughts to the back of your mind, trying to bring all the memories of the times he irritated you to the forefront. You take your stance, a dagger in each hand just like he did.

"Ready, princess?" He teased, that gods-damned annoying smirk splayed across his face.

"Begin," Emmeterio announced, and Ridoc pounced. You'd been watching him, he always skirted around his opponents waiting for them to make the first move, but not this time. It caught you off guard but you were able to move away in time, moving around him before throwing out a leg to knock him off balance. It worked for a moment but he was on you again in no time. He was moving fast, but you could move fast too. You hit each other with a series of blocks before you were able to knock a dagger out of one of his hands. He cursed, but that only freed up his hand to be able to grab your wrist, twisting until you dropped a dagger of your own. A gasp left your lips from the pain, and he eased up with the sound. He was going easy on you. Well fuck that. With his guard down you pull him closer, close enough that you could smell his sweat. Damn, why did he have to smell good too? You used that closeness to wrap a leg behind his knee to take you both down to the ground. You were on top of him now, his face contorted in frustration, only the second time you'd seen him lose his temper. He grunted and cursed.

"Fuck!" he shouted from between his teeth. Did you really get him this worked up? You grappled with each other, both of your remaining daggers lost somewhere on the mat, you tried to reach for your belt to grab another one while you were still on top but it made you lose your leverage. He was still stronger than you and you roll so that he now has the advantage above you. All these months he'd been preparing just so he could beat you. He grabs your wrists and pins them above your head. You've lost all semblance of control and tactic, now just thrashing to get out of his hold. He holds your wrists with one of his hands, his other shooting out with the speed of light to grab the dagger closest to him and bring it to your throat, "Yield!" he shouts louder than necessary. You stared into his eyes above you, his gaze was concentrated, and he knew he'd won. But you continue to stare at him before swallowing thickly, your eyes burned, tears threatened to spill over and his gaze softened, and the pressure of the dagger at your throat lightened significantly. You could use his moment of softness to try to gain back control but it was over, you'd already been humiliated.

"I yield," it was barely a whisper, only enough for him to hear. He gathered himself quickly and reached his hand down to help you up but you ignored it and picked up your daggers from the mat. You were missing one and you knew it was in Ridoc's hands. You turn to him, your gaze still low to the ground refusing to make eye contact. He mutters your name quietly, gently, and holds your dagger out to you, but you just push it back to him before rushing off the mat and gathering your things, leaving the training room. He'd won it, fair and square. You lost all control in that match, what was happening?

The next few days were awkward, to say the least. The rest of the squad tried their best to keep things normal, but nothing was normal without the banter between you and Ridoc. Slowly he seemed to regain some confidence in teasing you, it started light with you just rolling your eye in response, but by presentation day the two of you were in full-on arguments again.

"So how many of us do you think are going to be dragon lunch today?" Ridoc asks as you and the rest of the first years in your squad are waiting for your turn on the gauntlet.

"That's cruel, Ridoc," you reply, not in the place for humor this morning with how nervous you were, and you were sure you were not the most nervous, Violet still couldn't get up the wall.

"We live in a cruel world, princess," he mutters shaking his head. You groan in annoyance, trying your best to hold your temper instead of retorting, instead turning your attention to Violet.

"How are you doing Vi? Is there anything we can do to help?" you weren't much taller than her but those couple of inches were enough for you to bridge the gap to get up the wall.

"I'll be okay," she takes a deep breath, strangely calm for the situation you were about to enter. Luca was behind you two beginning her rant on the dragon she would be choosing. As if. Presentation was for the dragons to decide who was worthy and who would be torched. The past months had all led up to this. Every breath you took was shallow the entire way up the gauntlet, so aware of every step you were making and how fast you were making them. You released a breath once you reached the top, the rest of your squad cheering for you. Ridoc was right behind you breeching the top of the sloped wall, he whoops and gathered Rhiannon and Sawyer into hugs, the three of them laughing before he turned to you, a huge smile still on his face.

"Nice work Gamlyn," you say giving him a forced smile.

"Ah, a compliment, that's the first one I've received from you, I could get used to this!" He throws an arm around you squeezing you close.

"Way to ruin it," you grumble removing his arm from you before turning your attention back to Violet on the course. Oddly, you miss the warmth of his arm on you. He's always been touchy with the rest of your little crew, often embracing them or keeping an arm on them during meals or classes. You'd even see him press a kiss to Rhi's head after she'd helped him with physics. But with you, he didn't cross that line. Did he hate you that much? Or was it just because he knew how you would react? Your thoughts race as you watch Violet do the same, right before she grabs a rope from the side of the course and hauls herself up. Then using her daggers to climb her way up. This girl was something special. You grin and clap your hands as the rest of your squad cheers.

"That's our girl!" Ridoc shouts, obviously proud of his friend. Some of the other wings began groaning complaining that she cheated but all the noise falls into the background as the rest of your squad huddles up. That was the easy part. Now the next could very well mean your death. You try to calm yourself, hold it together, and keep all semblance of control before the dragons can sense you.

Now at the top, you waited for the other squad to finish before you entered the flight field. One of the other wingleaders stood before you preparing you to enter, instructing you to make small talk so the dragons would get a feel for you as well as recommending staying at least seven feet apart in case another squad member got torched.

"Nice day for presentation," Ridoc jokes 'small talking' with the senior wingleader.

"Not with me, with them," she rolls her eyes at his antics, and gods of course Ridoc will be right behind you annoying you the whole way. You knew you'd have to try your best to be in control or else you'd lose your temper in front of the dragons.

"Lucky me I have a wonderful view to distract me from our impending dooms," Ridoc laughs, anger swelled in your chest. You hear Rhiannon scold him and smack him upside the head, a smirk grows on your face but you stay facing forward.

Your senses feel heightened as you make your way onto the flight field, dragons surrounding the edges, a smile gracing your face at the pure wonder that these creatures held.

"They're pretty incredible aren't they?" you hear the awe in Ridoc's voice behind you, no humor or teasing, just... Ridoc.

"They really are," you respond to him and turn to face him, he was grinning, clearly he was made to be a rider. He turned slightly and met your gaze, his smile not faltering. His eyes shined in the sunlight this high atop the cliffs and you turn back to watch where you're walking before you get caught up in staring at him any longer. Why did this keep happening to you? As you neared the end of the field before turning back you caught sight of the illustrious feathertail, Violet was enthralled, her eyes not moving away from the creature. But your eyes wandered to something else going on only feet away.

A red scorpiontail on the smaller side was sitting peacefully in the sun, she was practically glowing. But what caught your attention was the brown swordtail a little larger than her that approached where she sat. He nudged her with his nose, seeming to almost mutter things at her before he rolled on top of her putting what seemed to be his entire weight on her. The red reared up, a deep growl leaving her throat, drawing the rest of your squad's attention to the two dragons. The brown stood again, circling the red while making grunting sounds to her, right before she swung her neck and snapped her massive teeth at the swordtail.

"Hey, princess," Ridoc is right beside you now, his voice hot on your neck from where he leans down close to your ear. "That red looks like you during math lessons, so grumpy," he's whispering to not draw attention to the two dragons, but you make the deadly mistake of reacting.

"Well if you helped me like you did everyone else maybe I'd be fine!" you turn to face him, a scowl traced between your brow, unbeknownst to you two it drew the attention of the two dragons.

"Woah now you look even more like her!" he laughs quietly before reaching out a finger to poke right between your eyebrows where your scowl formed.

"Ugh! You're insufferable!" you turn on your heel expecting to walk ahead of him again before coming face to face with the red scorpiontail. Your breath stopped and fear coursed through you. You heard Ridoc gasp your name.

"Don't fucking move," his words are seethed between his teeth but you barely resonate them. You feel the dragon's hot breath on your face, the smell of sulfur strong. "Please don't die, please don't die," Ridoc repeats the mantra as if it will help seal your fate. You keep your eyes low to the ground not daring to make eye contact, knowing that would be your death sentence. The dragon's gaze moves from you and you take the opportunity to look at her face. She was incredible. And her eyes were locked on Ridoc. Shit. But you didn't have time to assess your feelings before the massive creature was tackled to the ground by the brown swordtail.

You released your breath staring at the creatures fighting in front of you. Their roars echoed through the field as the chuffs of other dragons were heard from the edges as if they were egging the two on. You felt someone grab your hand and you were tugged to the beginning of the field again. You meet up with your squad about 20 feet ahead where Rhiannon is standing in front of the burnt corpse of Pryor, you hear Luca start to say something about him right before she gets torched right in front of your eyes. You gasp holding on tighter to the hand in yours, Ridoc's hand. Once you realize you dropped it immediately, but not before Violet could notice. You risk a glance behind you to look for the red scorpiontail again, praying she is alive. But the sight you were fixed with was not one you were expecting to see. The two dragons were still on the ground fighting, but they were both still alive, the brown was a bit bigger, you had expected him to take the red down fast, but there they still were.

"Come on, let's go!" Ridoc urges you, pulling on your arm yet again.

"Wait, Ridoc, watch them!" You were captivated, and surprisingly, Ridoc stopped pulling and watched the dragons with you. "They're playing."

"No, they're fighting, let's go," he tugs again, and this time you comply. His hand doesn't release yours until you're off the flight field.

The mess hall that night seemed a hell of a lot smaller after having lost so many first years in one day. You were sure there would be even less after threshing. Your squad was down two more people now. You sat with Rhi, Violet, Sawyer, and Ridoc who were all discussing the dragons you'd seen today. Rhiannon talks about a green that had been all up in Violet's business while you and Ridoc were being intimidated by the red scorpiontail, while Violet says she didn't feel a connection to any of them.

"What about you?" Rhiannon says your name, drawing you into the conversation. You open your mouth to speak but before you could Ridoc interjects.

"Well, I for one think that red scorpiontail already loves you. You two even have the same frown and grumpy demeanor!"

"Shut up, Ridoc," you turn your attention to Rhi. "But yeah, I did feel drawn to her..." your voice went quieter.

"Well you might as well go for that brown then, Ridoc," Sawyer speaks up. "with how annoying he was being to that red those two dragons are practically you guys already." He laughs, the girls nodding in agreement.

"You wound me," Ridoc puts a hand to his heart, "but unfortunately I think that guy took down the red so the princess is gonna have to find another dragon." No. He didn't, you knew that both of the dragons were still alive, and it pissed you off that Ridoc decided to taunt you about it when you'd just said you were drawn to that red.

"They were just playing Ridoc!" you shout, sounding almost childish with your insistence.

"Yeah right," his words muffled by the food in his mouth.

"They were! Don't you think one of them would've already been dead by the time we turned around? And neither of them were going for death blows, it was almost like they were sparring or something..." you mumble out the end, brows knitting as you think about it.

"Maybe it's their form of flirting then," Ridoc jokes, earning him a groan from Rhiannon. "What? If I were a dragon that's how I'd try to get a girl, relentless teasing, tackling her to the ground, you know that sort of thing." Ridoc shrugs and the wheels in my brain start turning.

"And that's why you mostly sleep with men..." Violet says under her breath, she and Rhiannon start to giggle.

"Hey! I'll have you know I can pleasure a woman just as well as I can a man. The women at Basgiath are just too controlling, I like to be in control," Ridoc smirks, leaning back in his seat. Why did he have to talk about this... now that's all you could think about. Your memory shifts to when he challenged you, his hands pinning your wrists, his body on top of you. You shake your head to try to clear the thoughts, this was your rival for god's sake! Why were you thinking like this?

"Really? You're the controlling one in bed?" Sawyer scoffs in disbelief.

"Don't sound so shocked. From my experience, everyone needs to give up control every once in a while, and the bedroom is an excellent place to do it when you have someone like me to be in charge." Oh. Fuck. You try to take a drink of water to cool your burning nerves but all it does is cause you to choke on it. You sputter trying to catch your breath, "You okay there, princess? Not scaring you off am I?" Ridoc winks at you. Okay. That's enough. Time for a cold shower and bedtime, surely you wouldn't feel like this in the morning. You ignore his comment and excuse yourself from supper before rushing to the showers.

It was late when Violet and Rhiannon returned to the barracks, you lay there pretending to be asleep. Even when Violet brought up the fact that you seemed off at dinner. Fuck, you really had to pull yourself together before threshing next week, or Ridoc was going to make your life miserable with his teasing.

You managed to make it through the week without drawing too much attention to yourself, though Ridoc was still relentless when it came to teasing you. But the morning of threshing was...rough to say the least. Everyone's nerves were on fire, even the ever-confident Ridoc was vomiting behind a tree. You grimaced feeling sorry for him, he might not show it but he wanted to succeed, just as you all did. Professor Kaori advised on what to do when approaching a dragon, he also said that if a dragon had already chosen you they'd be calling you. Okay, what is that supposed to feel like? You snark internally. You had no idea what to expect when entering the valley. It was happening too fast, you heard Ridoc instruct the rest of your squad to stay alive and you all went your separate ways.

You'd been walking through the valley for hours now, and the sun was falling low on the horizon giving you one maybe two hours maximum. If you were any other person you'd be wondering if there were even any dragons left out here, but you felt in your bones that your dragon was still out here, you just had to find them fast enough. You neared the ends of the boundaries only a few miles left within them, you'd managed to avoid other dragons thus far and only ran into one other cadet–a girl from Third wing–who looked so frightened that you would kill her that she ran off right away, like a dragon would choose that. The further you walked the stronger the hum in your body felt, you were getting close. The setting sun shone through the trees illuminating the path and if it weren't for the sun, you would've entirely missed the glint to your right side. You turned, hand ready on your dagger, but once you met her gaze you knew the beautiful creature wouldn't hurt you.

The red scorpiontail stepped out of the shadows of the forest, the sun glinting off her scales making them look like rubies. It was the dragon from presentation. You couldn't help the smile that grew on your face as she walked closer to you, she was alive. You stood, watching her in awe as she circled you sniffing you and feeling you out before a warm grumble sounded in her throat.

"Will you come with me?" her voice echoed in your head, elegant but firm, she was not asking you, she was telling you to come with her, or you would not return.

"If you’ll have me…" You didn't want to scare her off so you held your palm out to her, letting her run her face along you, the warm scales felt so naturally under your hand. She turned to the side in a silent order to climb on her back. You made the movements and took your seat. This was unlike anything you'd felt, you were a rider.

"Now hold on, squeeze your legs, and keep your grip," you don't know if you'd ever get used to hearing her voice in your head. You do as she says, you keep your grip and hold on. The wind through your hair is like nothing you've felt before, tears sting your eye from the brightness of the setting sun. As you climb higher into the sky you look around you, you're a good five miles from the field where all the new riders are landing their dragons. Over the wind, you're able to hear the loud shouts of someone all too familiar. You look to your left and see Ridoc on the top of a brown swordtail, again the same one from presentation. What are the fucking odds?

"Look at us, princess! We're riders!" the joy in his tone is infectious and you can't help but smile as he risks throwing one of his hands in the air to feel the wind. Despite your joy, you feel grumbles beneath you and look down to see your dragon shooting sideways glances at Ridoc's dragon.

"Are you alright?" you shout over the wind, "Do you not like that dragon? We saw you two the other day!"

"Not so loud girl, I can hear your thoughts just fine. I know you saw me, dragons remember much better than humans," Her tone is short, clearly she's irritated.

"That's Ridoc, he hates me." you give the whole 'mental talking thing' a go.

"Don't be stupid, girl, I said I saw you two that day, he was begging for me not to kill you."

"Well I saw you two that day too, you're practically shooting fire through your eyes at his dragon now but the two of you were rolling around in the grass together the other day..." Shit. Maybe you shouldn't have said that, red dragons are known for being notoriously angsty. A grumble reverberates through her chest as she flies faster, and out of range from Ridoc and his dragon.

"Aotrom has been trying to mate with me since we were adolescents, we're both still too young to mate but he doesn't seem to give up,"

"Oh so he likes you, that's what this is about."

"Yes but he's insufferable about it, you saw him, he laid on top of me!" her body seemed to grow even hotter with the annoyance running through her. This conversation was all too familiar.

The two of you continued talking until you landed most of the cadets already back. It was odd but strangely comforting talking to Cairistìona, the two of you feeling the same things.

Ridoc had landed just after you, running over and pulling you in a hug before spotting Rhiannon and doing the same to her. He was too excitable, you don't even know if he noticed it was you he was hugging. Rhiannon came over to you and gathered you in her strong arms.

"I'm so happy!" She squealed. "Fierge told me that's the same red you saw in the field the other day."

"Yeah, Cairis," You return her embrace and turn your head to look where you left her. Aotrom–Ridoc's dragon–was rubbing against her like a cat and chortling, she whipped her head around and blew a small cloud of fire at the brown dragon.

"Hey!" you hear Ridoc shout, running over to Aotrom. "Tell her to back off!"

"Oh he's fine," you defend Cairis walking to where she bares her teeth at Ridoc. "Dragons are fireproof, and besides, he was in her personal space."

"He likes her, can't you tell her that!" he cries, Aotrom lowering his nose to receive attention from Ridoc, gods these boys were going to be menaces.

"Tell the boy I already know and don't want to talk about it." Cairis turns her head in a pout.

"She knows Ridoc, and she doesn't care, maybe you should tell him to leave her alone!" you fold your arms across your chest, watching Ridoc as he walks closer to you.

"Oh please, he's not going to give her up, she's his mate!" your voices arguing carried across the field, and out of the corner of your eye, you see Sawyer and Rhiannon approaching and you briefly worry about Violet.

"Not yet she's not! And I pray to Amari they never do mate because that means I'll have to spend the rest of my life miserable!" the two of you are inches apart now his warm brown eyes staring into yours.

"Woah, woah, calm down guys," Sawyer says as Rhiannon pulls you back.

"You have no idea, princess I'd rock your world," he smirks and you're sure your face blooms red, out of anger or because he flirted. You had not a clue.

"Want me to torch him? He reminds me of a certain dragon, maybe they can burn together..." you hear Cairis' voice in the back of your head.

"NO." Your response is too quick and you know it.

"Oh...you don't like him do you?"

"No, I just...he's still my friend...I think. He just annoys the ever-loving shit out of me. And don't pretend you'd kill Aotrom too, we both know you could've killed him already."

"Don't forget your place little one," Cairis' voice looms louder before she turns with a whip of her tail, the poison barb inches from Aotrom's face. "Now go to your friend she just returned, the Empyrean has much to talk about now."

Violet was certainly a force to be reckoned with, you'd learned that early on. But bonding two dragons? And one of them being one of the most powerful...gods, she was something. The Empyrean discussed while the rest of your squad sat in the grass and waited. Rhiannon and Sawyer separated you and Ridoc before you got into any more arguments. This was good because Ridoc was going on and on about how hard he was going to be celebrating tonight with the rest of the new rider cadets, as well as deciding who he wanted to take to bed. You couldn't help the annoyance (jealousy?) that came from it.

"Yeah right, Gamlyn, like anyone wants to go to bed with you after the long day we've had," you scoff, not able to hold back your comment.

"I can be relaxing, want me to show you, princess?" He retorts. How does he always have something to say back?!

"Down boy," Rhi jokes, "she already has to deal with you and now she has to deal with your dragon too, give it a rest." You throw Rhiannon a thankful gaze before your dragons approach you again.

"Time for you to sleep girl, we start flight maneuvers this week, rest up." You stand to greet Cairis and her head nestles in your hands. She seemed to have a bit of a temper but you knew she would do anything to protect you now. You were bonded. So you watched her launch into the sky before heading back to the caves of the Vale, Aotrom following behind her like a love-sick puppy.

The next few weeks grew harder, all your free time thrown into school work and flight maneuvers, and since Violet was attacked Dain has ordered squad hand-to-hand combats every Tuesday night. You could tell that even Ridoc was getting weary, his comments to you had just turned to eye rolls. He would still throw one in now and again during flight, Cairis and Aotrom's petty snaps at each other made it difficult for you not to fight with one another. You'd managed to talk Cairis into being gentler with Aotrom–at least when you were around–if only to give you a slight sense of peace. But just like his rider, Aotrom was untamable.

It was a Tuesday night, you were in the training room and everyone began to spar with one another. Ridoc had tried to convince Liam to join him but Liam refused now that he was Violet's guardian so Imogen stepped in. You and Sawyer worked on your blocks with one another when Xaden and Garrick walked in. The two stripped their shirts off and began to spar with one another. You hear a low whistle as Violet and Rhiannon, even Imogen from where she held Ridoc in a headlock had their heads turned to watch the bulky, chiseled men fighting each other. To be fair it was boiling in the training room that night, the heat was cranked due to the cold December snows, and nearly every man had his shirt removed, including Sawyer across from you and the girls all in their training vests. Ridoc taps in fast succession before Imogen releases him and you're all dismissed by Dain for a water break. You chug from your bottle as Rhiannon approaches next to you.

"Did you see those two?" she asks you, talking about Xaden and Garrick. They were sure something to look at, their winding rebellion relics and dragon relics covering them. "Makes me feel way too straight looking at them..." she draws off and you giggle at her, looking over to see Violet who is practically drooling at Xaden.

"I don't know if I want to be them or be with them," you hear Ridoc speak from the other side of you. You turn to see him drinking his water, small dribbles falling down his chest–his now bare chest–as he pants heavily. You thought Xaden and Garrick were something sure... but Ridoc...holy Dunne. You knew he'd gained some muscle since he'd gotten here, but you didn't know he was fully jacked now! His body was fully carved by the gods. Maybe he wasn't as chiseled as Xaden or built like an ox like Garrick but he was...perfect. Your body grows hotter than it already was your mind racing. Why were you reacting like this to Ridoc of all people? Sawyer was just as attractive and way nicer. It had been happening way too often for this to just be a one-time thought.

"Ever occur to you maybe you like him?" Ciaris asks, listening to your thoughts.

"Not now," You reply quickly before putting up your shields and blocking her out.

"Hey, princess, want a rematch?" Ridoc asks, a grin plastered on his face. "No weapons this time?" You're sure your face was bright red at this point, your whole body at that. You just shake your head before gathering your stuff, haphazardly throwing your flight jacket on. You had to get out of here now.

"Hey where are you going?" you hear Violet call to you as you leave to ask Dain if you can leave early to finish homework.

"I have way too much homework, gonna see if Dain'll let me off 30 minutes early," you respond, still walking to your squad leader. He gives you the okay, and you go to walk past the rest of your squad before leaving the training room.

"I thought we were studying tonight for the math exam tomorrow?" Sawyer asks and you halt your steps. Oh shit, you'd forgotten, and Ridoc would have to be there, he was the best of you at math.

"Oh...um-yeah! Just wanted to shower first, just come to my room, we can study in there." Right a cold shower, would help. Then it would be fine to see Ridoc again, with his shirt on.

The cold water sprayed over you and you quickly cleaned yourself and washed your hair, rinsing away all your impure thoughts with the water. Once back to your room, you run oil through the ends of your long hair, still not having cut it since parapet, though now you'd kept it safely tied back. It was so much nicer to have your own room after being in the barracks for months. You sit at your desk and look over your workload, deciding to get some history done before the others come to study.

You hadn't realized how much time had passed before there was a knock at your door. You leap up from your chair, a smile on your face ready to greet the rest of your crew, but when you open the door your smile falls.

"Really? Are you that disappointed? I thought you were lightening up, didn't realize you were still a brat," Ridoc walks into your room and shuts the door behind him, flopping on your bed like he lived in there–at least he was clean, you could tell by his damp, tousled hair.

"Where are the others?" you ask turning from where you still stand by the door in your loose black sleep pants and a vest.

"'Hi Ridoc, hello, nice to see you' would be the appropriate response," he taunts, tossing his bag on the ground before laying back on your bed, his hands behind his head. You don't even respond to him, only giving him an annoyed look before he rolls his eyes and answers your question. "Sawyer took a fist to the face from Aetos, Rhiannon is taking him to the healers, broken nose. And Violet has whatever she has going on with Riorson...I don't even want to know. They said to go without them, that you'd need the most help with math anyway." He sits up again on your bed scooting to the edge, seemingly not able to sit still.

"Whatever, I'll just fail, you can go back to your room," you complain heading to your desk and shutting your history books.

"No, it's okay, princess. I can help you."

"I don't want your help, Ridoc, just go," You turn and face where he sat on your bed, his face unreadable.

"Seriously? You're that proud?" his words strike you across the face, his mouth turned downward in a frown as he stands and takes a step towards you.

"I'm not proud!" you fumed, "I just know you're going to tease me for being so shitty at math!"

"You think that little of me?" he takes another step forward, "Sure, I like to tease you but don't mistake me, I wouldn't tease you over something you struggle with!" this is the most serious you've seen him. But you still have some confidence left.

"Really?! Because you've already done that!" you shout back at him, thankful that you have a sound shield on your door so no one hears you seething at each other.

"When?!" he retorted, throwing his arms to the side in confusion. You wrack your brain, looking for the right words to describe how it had made you feel.

"Every-fucking-day Ridoc! It's constant taunting and I just don't know how to respond! With everyone else, you're nice and funny but you just have it out for me! I know I started it when I slapped you, and I know I don't make it easy with how I respond, but I thought at least when you humiliated me after challenging me you would let go!" tears are welled up in your eyes from the amount of anger you feel. You thought you'd get Ridoc with that, you thought he'd break and apologize like the nice guy you know he is, but a terrifyingly playful smirk grew on his lips.

"Ever take a moment and think it's cause you're always acting like a brat, princess?" he takes another step towards you and another, and another, until he's hovering over you, your back pressed against your desk, his face only inches from yours. "Yes, I tease you, I tease all our friends, but you're the only one who stays acting like I'm some sort of fucking villain when I stop." You think about it. Truly think about it. Were you the only one? He was an over-confident smart-ass he made comments to everyone, so why did it bother you so much?

"Ah, cat got your tongue?" your breath is caught in your throat and you watch as he raises a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. "Y'know, I saw you staring at me tonight, you're not nearly as sly as you ought to be..." he was fucking teasing you again. But the way he was doing this...gods your body was on fire.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you lie, your voice barely a whisper. You look up and meet his eyes, his warm eyes, pools of chocolate that you could just melt in, and he is looking at you, really looking at you. In this moment you felt as if he could read your soul on a piece of paper.

"We both know that's not true," his voice dangerously low and confident. "And I think we both know that all you need..." his hand that tucked your hair behind your ear moves and he begins to trace your neck with the backs of his fingers, "is to give up control." You know your heart is beating out of control now. His hand now moved to grasp the side of your neck tightly, his other hand braced on the desk behind you. You were trapped against his body, the same way you were trapped when he held you against the mat, and it felt so good.

Before you could ask him for more, or surge up to kiss him like you may or may not have thought of doing while you were in the shower, he moves away and your body slinks in disappointment.

"Wanna know why I tease you?" he asks, his back turned to you as he picks up the trinkets on your bedside table.

"Desperately," you sigh out, hoping for an actual answer. He turns again a smirk on his face as he looks at the absolute mess he'd made of you already. He backs up and sits on the edge of your bed again, his legs spread wide before he answers you.

"Because it riles you up."

"Well I think I gathered that," you roll your eyes and look down at your hands.

"That first day after the parapet, I couldn't get over how fucking sexy you looked with that annoyed face," Oh. You knew this was heading somewhere, but for him to flat-out call you sexy made you press your legs together, "I can't get enough of it, even now." he looked away, all of his confidence suddenly gone. "And I wanted to see if once, once, you'd lose it."

"Lose it?" you question, and he laughs at you before running a hand through his dark hair.

"It happened once when you slapped me, and I thought it was going to happen again when I challenged you, but instead, you melted in my hands like a fucking puddle," he shakes his head and you can feel the heat rising to your cheeks again, embarrassment evident on your features, "Awe, don't be embarrassed, princess." Gods, why was every fucking word he was saying making the wetness pool in your core?

"Ridoc?" You ask him, taking a step away from the desk and towards him, he hums in response, looking you over from head to toe, studying every inch of you. "You said that night, after presentation, that if you wanted to get a girl, you'd just 'tease her' and 'tackle her to the ground' like Cairis and Aotrom," you felt a bit silly saying his same words over again but continued, your voice still quiet, "is that...what you've been doing with me?" You take another step forward, "all the taunting, then challenging me...was that you trying to tell me you like me?" You were close enough to him now that he could just reach out and grab you, and he did.

Ridoc grabbed your arm and pulled you straight between his legs, the largest smile you'd ever seen from him taking up his entire face.

"Took you long enough to figure that out, princess," and there you were, in the arms of Ridoc Gamlyn, the man you'd argued with and fought with for the past several months, and it felt incredible. He seemed like a completely different person, but he wasn't. It was you and your perspective that changed, you were feeling what it felt like to just give into him, letting him tease you and taunt you for his pleasure, giving up your control.

"And do you remember what I said after that?" your breath caught in your throat at the memory. He liked to be in control, in charge. You nodded shyly from where you stood between his legs, all your confidence now lost. His hands that held your arms moved up to cradle your face, and you melted. "Look at you," he hummed, "Tell me. I want to hear you say what I said." you gathered all your courage and looked him in the eye.

"You said that everyone needs to give up control at some point..." your voice still low and quiet. "and that in the bedroom with someone like you is a good place for it."

"Seems like someone remembered well. The look on your face after I said that, gods...made me so fucking hard to see you that flustered." you couldn't help but press your legs together at his words, thinking of him getting so worked up over your reaction to him. "I knew after I challenged you just how easily you'd give in, but that was when I realized that it was me and my words that were getting you so fired up and you just don't know how to respond other than with anger." he was reading you like a damned book. How had he gathered all this when you couldn't even realize the capacity of your feelings?

"Y'know you're a lot smarter than everyone gives you credit for, Gamlyn," you smile a bit, opening yourself up.

"Yeah? I think that deserves a kiss," your instincts take over and you roll your eyes at his comment. One of his hands that held your face moved lower, his long fingers wrapping deftly around your throat and applying slight pressure, the annoyance in your face dropped and you felt your body submitting to him, a whine leaving you at the feeling of his hand on your throat. "Really, princess? I thought you were done with the attitude?" His voice is deep and raspy and he licks his lips as he watches your expression. Oh to feel that tongue on your body.

"I'm sorry...I just..." you trail off, your body practically quivering at this point in anticipation.

"'Just-just' what?" He mocks you. Fuck it. You couldn't wait any longer. You surge forward and capture his lips in yours. He's taken aback for a moment but it doesn't last long before he's devouring you. It's a mess of tongue and teeth as he pulls your body against him, his fingers tangling in the hair at the base of your neck, "Still got some fire left in you? We'll see about that..." he mumbles out between kisses.

You're desperate for more, your hands moving all along his body before he picks you up as if you weigh nothing switches places with you, and pushes you back until you're laying against your bed. Your hands reach the bottom of his shirt and you begin to tug wanting more than anything to feel his skin on yours, but he stops you. Oh. Was he upset? You thought he wanted this...

"Huh uh, princess..." he drawls out, his voice like honey. Okay, he's still turned on, what was this about?! He takes a step back from you, his eyes raking over your body that was on the precipice of convulsing. "I've wanted this for too long, and once I have you...gods, I don't think I'll ever be able to keep myself away from you." your face scrunches in confusion, was he asking you to be his girlfriend right now?

"What do you mean?" you ask, looking for clarity.

Ridoc runs his palms over his face in exasperation before raking them through his still-damp hair. He seemed almost stressed. Whatever control he held just a moment ago, he was letting go of, showing you his full, raw, emotions. "I mean that I like you. A lot. Probably more than I should. And I don't want this to be a one-time thing. I want you fully and wholly. I'll even stop teasing you if that's what it takes for you to say yes! Even though you look so damned cute with your little frown." he smiles at the end of his sentence as if remembering the specific look on your face. You couldn't help the smile that grew on your face, as if only now you'd recognize the capacity of your feelings. You'd been drawn to him before but your inability to give in to him was what was holding you back. But you were ready to let go.

"I don't want it to either..." You look him in the eye and reach out to pull him into you again, placing a small kiss on the tip of his nose before continuing. "I want you to have me, I'm done running away from you. Take me, Ridoc." You took his hands that were still nervously tangled in his hair and place them on your waist, a physical way of showing him what you just told him.

"I want you to be sure, sweetness. I don't know if I can hold myself back from you, I can get prettyyy...excited." He grips your waist harder, testing the waters.

"I want you to take charge, Ridoc, I want you to do whatever you want to me, I'm at your mercy," you're all but begging him at this point to just give you everything he's teased to you.

"Fuck..." He groans out, leaning down and burying his face in your neck causing the flesh on your arms to rise at the feeling. He places sloppy kisses there, searching for the spot that will drive you nuts. Once he hears your little moans as he kisses the spot right behind where your jaw and earlobe meet he begins to nip and suck, marking you for everyone to see. "Y'know when I pinned you to that mat, I was about certain you were going to finish right there, sadly I was mistaken. But I learned that you seem to really like being beneath me." Even then he could tell that you were lost in him, and he took this opportunity to put you in the same position he held you in that day.

You lay with your head at the top of the bed, Ridoc's hands pinning your wrists to the pillow behind you, his legs tangled in yours. You moan lightly at the sight above you as he works kisses down your chest and to your cleavage where your shirt cuts off. You try to move your hands to reach down and take off your top, but his grip on your wrists is firm. You hear him laugh at your attempt pathetically against your chest, the heat of his breath causing a shiver to run down your spine. You whine at the loss of your ability to move, your body on fire for him to touch you more, but he keeps lingering with his hot lips all over your neck and chest.

"What? Want more?" He looks up at you through his lashes, eyes glazed over and lips swollen. He looked utterly sinful.

"Please..." you beg, attempting to move your arms again to see if his grip has loosened.

"I think that's the first time you've ever used that word with me," he ignores your plea and licks down your chest, his teeth nipping the edge of your top, pulling it down slightly.

"Ridoc, please, you said you wouldn't tease!" your voice raises slightly a sliver of shame entering your body with how you were begging him.

"Well that wouldn't be as much fun," he states but removes his hands anyway and moves them to the bottom of your top moving it up inch by inch, feeling your warm skin beneath his hands, "you're so fucking hot when you beg for me." his hands reach the bottom of your unbound breasts and his fingers creep up tauntingly. Your now free hands shoot out and reach for him, you sit up your mouth going straight for his, you couldn't get enough of how good he tasted. "Slow down there, princess, mm-wanna take my time," he murmurs through your lips.

"You've made me wait long enough...please just take me," he seems to let go at your words, his hands fully enveloping your breasts and squeezing, a hum sounds from his throat at the feeling. His fingers move to pluck at your hardened peaks, and you move yours to the edges of your top, breaking the kiss to remove it.

"Oh, gods, knew you'd look this good," Ridoc says, his voice just as desperate as you felt. But you waste no time, as soon as your shirt is removed you start pawing at his to take it off. Once it's off you wrap your arms around him mouth moving to his neck to taste him just as he did to you, the feeling of your hot skin together driving you mad. He grunts at the sensation of your mouth on his neck, only giving in momentarily before grabbing you by the waist and pulling you to the edge of the bed as he stands up. As soon as he stood he reached for the waistband of his pants and removed his belt in one motion and undoing the button. He takes off his pants quickly, his painfully hard cock bouncing up to hit against his toned stomach. Wow. Ridoc talked a big talk when it came to his dick. You'd always thought it was a part of his jokes, but the evidence was here in front of you and he was not joking.

"Oh gods..." You moan out at the sight, not being able to hold back from sinking to your knees in front of him as he tugged at himself, "Please let me taste you."

"Hmph, not today," He says and reaches down to help you off your knees and shove you back onto the bed, "I'm about to finish just seeing you on your knees, and I want to cum inside you first." His words are filthy and it spurs you on more. You sigh dejectedly, your mouth watering at the sight of his leaking tip, you can't help but reach a hand out to try and feel him, but he slaps your hand away, pushing on the middle of your chest until you're lying flat against the bed. "I said, not today, or don't you want me to taste you first? Don't you think you deserve it? You've been so patient...but I can always take it back and wait till tomorrow to fuck you..."

"No! Please! I'll be good, I'll stay put!" you sit up on your elbows, an acute fear growing in your body at the thought of him leaving you here until tomorrow.

"Hm, that's more like it," Ridoc approves, removing his hand from his cock and to your pants, dragging them and your panties down far too slowly. You do your best to be patient and hold back your whines, you know that it's a test. He kneels in front of the bed and spreads your legs open his calloused fingertips running along the inside of your thighs, drawing up closer to your center. "I really did get you worked up didn't I?" Ridoc remarks before dragging a fingertip through your dripping wet core. You don't hold back your sounds knowing he's about to make you feel incredible.

Ridoc's mouth on your pussy is unlike anything you'd felt, he meant it when he said he knew how to pleasure a woman just as well as a man. Your hands moved and threaded through his mop of hair as he licked and sucked, hardly letting up at all. One of the hands that held your thighs tightly moved to your lower stomach and pressed down to keep you from squirming, a hard grunt coming from his throat in warning. The other hand moved lower and rubbed at your clit in slow motions. It was all too much, the pleasure coursing through your veins, the realization that Ridoc was the one making you feel that good. You were a mess.

The fingers on your clit slipped lower and teased at your entrance a finger slipping in at a slow pace. You whine, trying to buck your hips forward in an attempt for it to go deeper.

"Ah ah, what did I say?" Your whines echo through the room at his words but you comply anyway, stopping your squirming. He makes a noise in approval before continuing his ministrations, adding another finger and pumping them gently, all while switching between long strokes and little licks with his tongue on your clit. Your body convulses when he curls his fingers into a spot that makes you see stars. Ridoc doesn't move fast in this process and doesn't try to bring you to your peak immediately. His strokes are consistent and thoughtful, he notices your reactions to every single one of his movements and plays to them. He's deliberate with his motions and brings you to peak gently, continuing his gestures throughout.

"Please, fuck me now, Ridoc, I don't want to wait," You tug at his hair trying to bring him up to kiss you. But he stays, lapping up your release before pressing kisses to the insides of your thighs. Then your stomach. All along your hips. No place is untouched by his lips. "Ridoc!" you beg louder, pulling harder at his hair. His hands grip your waist tighter, fingers digging with a pressure that you were sure to feel tomorrow. But he doesn't stop peppering your body with kisses, ignoring your words. "Baby please..."

"That's enough," he scolds, pulling on your hips and flipping you onto your stomach. He grabs your ass roughly before bringing his other hand down on it in a slap. You squeal at the act but pleasure runs through your core all the same. "You want to be fucked? Hm?" His voice degrading. "Let's see how you handle it then." He says before slapping his hand on your ass again and plunging into you in succession.

"Fuck!" your voice pitches at the feeling of his cock stretching you out.

"Yeah? You begged for it, princess. Now take it," Ridoc's voice was rough and demanding, the sound of it made your mind reel. You let your body and mind give in to the feeling. The sound of his hips slapping your ass and the feeling of his balls hitting your clit with the angle made your head go foggy. All it was was you and Ridoc. Your bodies were one as he pounded into you. He fucked you hard, a contrast from just minutes ago when he was gently licking into your cunt, and you couldn't get enough of it.

You lean back and face Ridoc, watching the fucked out look on his face took you to a new level. You reached back to grab the back of his neck and bring his lips to yours. You needed him everywhere. "Please," you risk your words, "I want to look at you." His controlling guise fell for a moment as he gave in to your plea.

"Alright, sweetness" he listens, pulling out momentarily to turn you onto your front before plunging back into you. Moans tumble out of your mouth as you revel in the new angle, his cock pushing deeper into you. His head falls to the crook of your neck and he presses sloppy kisses all along you. You grasp at his face, needing to feel his lips on yours as you feel the resistance at your core pulling tighter. Your sounds get louder as you get closer and Ridoc's hand reaches down to play with your clit. "That's it, you're taking me so well." He groans out, his face turning up in pleasure. He was just as close as you were. It reaches you faster than it did the first time, the orgasm peaking quickly and hard. Ridoc fucks you through it, his thrusts growing sloppier as he gets closer. He looks at you with a questioning gaze.

"Fill me up, Ridoc, please," you answer his unasked question, knowing you were both on the fertility supplement that Basgiath provided. That was all the permission he needed before he thrust a few more times and spilled inside of you. The warm feeling almost brings you to finish a third time. His head falls to your chest as he breathes deeply, trying to catch his breath. You comb your fingers through his hair and press a kiss to the top of his head, a smile gently growing on your face.

He catches his breath for another moment before pulling out and standing. He picked through his clothes on the ground and slipped on his boxers and loose pants.

"Are you leaving?" you as suddenly, your voice tinged with fear. You sit up and try to cover yourself with your hands. Ridoc stands up straight, his long-sleeved shirt in hand.

"No, princess, don't worry," He smiles and hands you his shirt to put on before taking a tissue from your desk and moving closer to you. He gently pushes you to lay back again and brings the tissue to clean between your thighs. A soft gasp escapes you from the sensitivity, "Shh, sh, it's okay." Ridoc's voice was so soft, so thoughtful. Your heart melted as you thought of his earlier comments. He's liked you for so long now, more than he should in his words. You let him finish cleaning you and lay back in your bed, finding the covers and crawling under them, holding out the edge for Ridoc to come under as he walks back from turning off the light.

The moonlight that shined through the window barely illuminated your room as you lay next to Ridoc, he lay against your chest, arms wrapped around your waist. You rest your head atop his as your fingers trace the relic that Aotrom left him on the top of his muscular arm. He buries his head deeper into you before speaking.

"I don't think Cairis will be very happy about this," You laugh at his comment but know it's true, you let your shields down just slightly letting her presence flow through you.

"I'm not," her voice deadpan and sharp. Well, you can deal with it later.

"She'll get over it," You respond, letting your eye drift closed.

"Maybe, she'll learn from you and let Aotrom in," Ridoc thinks aloud, "He's very convinced that she's his mate and that she's going to give in soon enough. You did with me..." You smile, thinking of your dragons and the similarities you all share. You'd noticed it before, everyone had. Maybe it was just a matter of time before Cairis would give into Aotrom's relentlessness. You sort of hoped that she would if her feelings were anything like yours.

"Don't get your hopes up..." Cairis enters your head again, clearly annoyed.

You woke the next morning far too late, the early morning sun was shining through your window. Fuck. Your math exam. You sit up out of your bed quickly, noticing that Ridoc had already gone and you briefly remember him kissing you on the forehead before he left for his early watch duty before classes. You smile to yourself at the memories of last night, but only give yourself a second before rushing up and gathering all of your things for class and running straight there, knowing you'd already missed breakfast.

At least the math exam was first thing this morning so you could get it over with, but unfortunately, you were most definitely failing after not studying last night. The class was about to start as you entered and Violet waved a hand over to where she and the rest of the first years of your squad were sitting. Ridoc smirks at you and scoots over to make room for you. Your friends could tell by your panicked look that something was off.

"You okay?" Rhiannon asks from the other side of Ridoc.

"Yeah, you look tired. How was studying last night?" Sawyer says, turning from his seat in front of you to join the conversation, his nose only healed and not mended telling from the bruises. Before you had the chance to respond Ridoc interjects.

"We uh...didn't get much studying done last night if you know what I mean," he swings his arm over your shoulder and draws you close, planting a kiss on your cheek. You push him away out of annoyance.

"Ridoc!" you chide. "We didn't even talk about if we were going to tell anyone!" you say lower talking only to him.

"What the fuck?!" Rhi shouts, gaining the attention of the rest of the class before grimacing and quieting down.

"They were gonna find out sooner or later, princess, I can't keep my fucking hands off you," he explains, diving in again and pressing another kiss to your neck this time. Shivers run down your spine at the feeling before you remember where you are and push him off of you again.

"What happened?" Violet asks leaning in on the other side of you, Ridoc's hand now moving to grab at your thigh, she looks away in disgust at the sight, "Never mind, I don't want to know..." she fakes a gag, and Rhi and Sawyer look to each other with a mass of confusion before breaking out in laughter.

"They fucked, obviously," Liam says casually from the other side of Violet where he's working on a wood carving.

"Thanks, Liam, like they hadn't gathered that already..." you say sarcastically and bury your head in your hands.

"I'm scarred," Sawyer says, barely able to contain his laughs. You groan in embarrassment as the professor walks in and starts giving directions on the exam. Yep. You were failing. Ridoc caught the worry in your face and he leaned into you.

New romantics The press is chasing the alleged new couple everywhere, here are some headlines

Doble date truth A double date brings back some confusing memories

your mom is such a mil- You didn't want to attract attention, you just wanted to spend a few minutes with your oldest son.

in all timelines. When the Justice League ends up in another timeline, they wonder what each of their lives will be like, but something surprises and traumatized Barry. (part one)

⤷in all the timelines, or not After passing through the portal to return home, everything apparently worked out fine, apparently... (parte two)

baby on board The entire League is invited to a dinner at Wayne Manor, but no one knows what it's about, so they start plotting until Bruce and you finally announce it.

⤷Why did your dad do that? League members already know the Wayne family is getting bigger soon, but your oldest son's friends are about to find out.

⤷he's such a dilf Bruce's wife is already four months pregnant, and her hormones aren't letting her live in peace. She can't stop seeing her husband for what he is: a hot DILF.

welcome to wayne Manor After a round of Gotham City, Bruce finds a lonely boy, and his paternal instincts are triggered by the impending birth of his little girl.

Mom, how do you met Bruce? Being close to giving birth, the boys Jason and Dick spend time around her, and on a rainy day, both are curious about their mother's past, and how Bruce could have had her.

⤷crawling back to you Even though everything was going great, the appearance of a person from their past disrupts everything they had achieved as a couple, but someone is willing to prevent their new happiness from collapsing.

interview interrupted Just a few weeks before your little girl is part of this world, you two decide to give Clark an interview for the Daily Planet so he'll stop interviewing himself for his news.

my little Vivian After Vivian's birth, Bruce begins to see life differently and just wants to be present with his little girl.

sweet horny wife Only Bruce Wayne knows both sides of his charming wife, and he loves both.

oh, it's... gold bruce buying reader gold jewelry when she’s a silver girlie and everyone tells him off about it even though the reader insists it’s okay

"It's weird" she had said.

"It's Bruce Wayne" Hal replied. "Weird is normal."

So they decided to act. Better safe than sorry. In less than a minute, they were in Gotham, standing at the entrance to the mansion.

"And Alfred?" Hal asked, ringing the bell again. "He always opens quickly."

"Maybe he's on vacation? Seeing the Caribbean?" Barry offered. Hal glared at him.

Diana, standing with her arms crossed, said nothing. Her expression was serene but alert.

Soft footsteps echoed behind the door until it opened, was this heaven?

You opened the door. You were barefoot, wearing a black silk robe loosely tied at the waist, the fine fabric leaving little to the imagination. Your hair was loose, a little messy compared to how they usually see you, and it fell over your shoulders. Your eyes were a little glossy, as were your lips, and you had that soft voice they'd already known... but never so closely.

"Is something wrong?" you asked, tilting your head slightly, as if the sight of two League members at your door wasn't at all strange.

It took Hal three seconds to blink. Barry made a sound that didn't sound human. Diana, thankfully, took back control. "Is Bruce available? There was a glitch in the Batcomputer signal. We're trying to contact him."

"Ah... yeah, I guess," you said, reaching up to straighten your robe, which clearly didn't help anyone's concentration. "I was using the Batcomputer... Bruce wanted to get me a present, and the computer there is really fast. Luckily, I was able to buy the lingerie I wanted."

Barry rolled his eyes at the ceiling as if that would save him. Hal blinked twice. Nothing changed. You were still there. In that robe. In that voice. With that damn confidence that made everything feel even worse. How could you talk about lingerie shopping in front of them so casually?

"And you shut down the system?" Diana asked, with the calmness of someone already accustomed to these situations.

"Maybe" you acknowledged with a half smile, lowering your gaze for just a second. "I'm not a big fan of Bruce's operating system. I shut everything down, and well... apparently I blocked an entire global surveillance network."

"And Bruce?" Diana asked, just as calmly.

"He went back to sleep" you replied. "He was up late... work stuff. You guys understand."

"Work, for sure" Hal repeated, without thinking.

You raised an eyebrow. "What else would we do until late, Hal?"

Hal opened his mouth to reply, but Barry jabbed him with an elbow so hard he nearly knocked him off balance. “Nothing! Nothing! You were probably working. You guys… do that. Work. A lot. All the time,” Barry said, his smile strained, his ears red to the roots.

Diana sighed with a hint of resignation and began to enter the house without waiting for further authorization. "We better check quickly. We don't want to interrupt... Bruce's rest."

"Oh, don't worry," you said sweetly as you moved away from the door frame. "He doesn't sleep much."

Just then, Bruce appeared at the top of the stairs. Shirtless. Hair all messed up. And a glare straight at Barry and Hal. "What are you doing here?"

“We thought you were in danger,” Barry said, seeming to evaporate.

Bruce stepped down slowly, crossing his arms. "I'm not in danger. What's in danger is your continued presence in this house."

You giggled, walking casually toward him. You stopped beside him and smoothed his hair, not caring about any witnesses.

"Sorry, love, I opened the door for you. I thought it was Alfred."

Diana, flawless as ever, continued, “The Batcomputer showed a signal of interference. You weren’t responding. We came to make sure you were okay.”

Bruce took another step down. His eyes slid toward you. “Was that you?”

"I'm sorry, love. I accidentally locked everything" you said, your voice so sweet any other man on the planet would have melted.

"So you've decided, what did you buy?" Bruce asked, before his brain could intercept the impulse.

You turned your head slowly, with a lethal smile. "Lingerie. Do you want to see?"

Bruce simply raised an eyebrow. “Jordan, Allen. Three seconds.”

"We're leaving now!" Hal said, pushing Barry toward the door with a desperation unworthy of a Green Lantern.

"Thank you for your hospitality! Sorry for existing!" Barry said, tripping over a rug.

The door slammed shut. The echoes in the hallway hadn't yet died away when Bruce let out a deep sigh, tired but clearly resigned to his fate.

You laughed softly, and before you could say anything, he had already taken you by the waist and lifted you up in his arms with that naturalness that always left you breathless. "Shall we go back to bed, Mr. Wayne?"

•───────•°•𓄧•°•───────•

“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my to-”

The shake of your doorknob sobers you completely. No longer immersed in the book, but staring doom in the face. You weren’t expecting anyone. No one was supposed to be here, not at this time anyway. It was a little after one in the morning, which only meant one thing in Gotham.

Trouble.

The handle on your front door kept jangling, and you could hear the lot of them outside messing with the lock. Practically shooting off the sage couch, you dart toward your bedroom. The door shuts behind you as quickly and quietly as possible. Flipping the silver notch to lock you inside, adrenaline starts pumping through your veins. Your eyes are frantically examining all your furniture to fins the most feasible piece to block the door. In a desperate attempt at survival, you muster all the strength you can manage at 1 a.m. to push your dresser.

The dresser was ancient and colored with a faded spruce stain. Your brother had gifted it to you as one of his legendary Facebook marketplace finds.

He loved to play this game to see how much he could lowball the sellers and get away with it. After each buy, he would call you to tell you how much he managed to get discounted off. You could always hear the smirk in his voice, proud of himself and his bargaining skills. As you reminisce on the memory while pathetically shoving the dresser, you think of him.

This is exactly why he didn’t want you to get your masters at GothamU.

There was a whispering voice in your head that wanted to put off telling him about this as long as you could. You knew exactly what the phone call would sound like. The first thing he would do would be to tell you “I told you so” and the next would be him packing your bags to move you back to Central City.

The ricochet of your front door off the wall halts you in your tracks. The vibrations of the insane  force are felt through the foundations of your shitty apartment. You say a silent prayer to any deity listening when you finally manage to get your dresser to block some of the door. Your lamp next to the couch was still on and you hope their stupid enough to think that you didn’t really acre about your electric bill.

It’s only a matter of time until they realize that someone was in fact home.

Your phone lights up from your nightstand with a notification from your brother highlighting the lockscreen. That development springs you into action, finally making an attempt to ask for help. From what you could hear, there were about three of them out there. The drawers in your kitchen were being pulled off the rails, cabinets were being thrown open, books were being fanned out for extra cash.

It was a lost cause really, you were a broke master’s student who worked at the campus bookstore. They weren’t going to find much except frozen meals and too many annotations in between pages.

Tip-toeing to your phone, you hear them outside talking to themselves. What saves you is that you have a million little containers and trinkets that they’ll busy themselves with. It’ll take them at least ten minutes to rifle through and guess how valuable each of them are.

“Of course” you can’t help but mumble with shaking hands when you see the notification from him. Only Wally West would be up at 12:14 a.m. (Central City time) sending you an Instagram reel of Zuko in the leaked Avatar movie with a message that says “I can take him.”

I’ll take him in between the legs, you think to yourself as the edit plays.

Your guardian angel must have been tired of working overtime because something shatters in your kitchen, which catalyzes your self-preservation to kick in again. In spite of the fact you’re about to drop the phone with how much you’re shaking, your fingers manage to type out a message.

As much as I’d love to discuss how you cannot in fact “take him” I need your help

I totally can thank you very much But what’s up?

Someone broke into my apartment and I’m hiding out in my room

WHAT!?!?!?!

He instantly starts calling you. In any other circumstance an Instagram call would make you laugh, but right now you hit the decline button as fast as you can. The second it ends, another call comes through and you decline that one too.

Pick up the phone right now.

I can’t They’ll hear me talking Can you call 911 for me?

I mean I would love too but they’re not going to do anything You’re in GOTHAM. They’re probably dealing with a psychotic lion or something.

Your head falls back after reading the text. He’s not exactly wrong, but a very small part of you is trying to overpower the stressed one and stay calm. Tears are threatening your water line from terror, you’re positive that your heart is about to beat out of your chest. One of them keeps walking past the door as they tear apart your bookshelf and entertainment center, each footstep feels like a countdown.

You stare at your door with your heart in your throat when another text form Wally comes through.

I just texted Dick, someone’s going to be there soon For now go to your bathroom and barricade yourself inside This time when I call, you ARE going to PICK UP and sit with me in silence until someone gets there okay?

You barely finish reading the text when the green and red buttons appear on the screen again.

Instantly, your fingers go to the side of the phone to lower the volume. The only sound coming from either of you are heavy anxious breaths.

If it wasn’t for the no meta rule, you know he would already be halfway here. He’d threatened to break it multiple times on the grounds of you just having a bad day. You knew him not being here right now with this absolute disaster happening was killing him.

The quiet padding of your feet on the way to your bathroom sounded like bombs dropping to your ears.

Realistically, you knew they couldn’t hear it, but all your senses were at 110%. Every noise that came from outside of your bedroom felt like a crescendo to the climax of your worst nightmare. In a really strange and fucked up way, you were lucky. You’d been living in Gotham for a year and a half without having any real problems. It was about time to pay the piper.

Entering the bathroom, you delicately place your phone on the counter and shut the door behind you. The lights remain off while you slide down the wall. The timer of your call with Wally was the only source of light in the claustrophobic wash room. When it hits 2:07, they start trying your bedroom door. Wally hears it, the hitch in his breath obvious even on the lowest volume setting.

It’s going to be okay, I promise. They’ll be there soon.

His text only causes the tears to fall faster on your face. You just wanted tonight to be over.

Then you hear it.

The shatter of your living room window. It’s followed by a heavy set of footsteps that land on the floor. A few punches are thrown, some gunshots, and then you count three bodies falling to the floor.

The ringing in your ear is louder than you’re comfortable with and Wally speaks for the first time.

“Are you okay?”

It’s a miracle that you heard or even understood him. The broken speaker of your phone paired with his small whisper was almost impossible to make out.

“I think.” Is all you can say back.

Then there are three knock on your bedroom door that sends you flying to your feet. Phone in one hand and white-knuckling the counter with the other, every limb is shaking and your breathing hadn’t been coming out evenly for minutes. The room is spinning, and the aftershock is starting to sink in.

“Hey it’s me,” the voice comes out slightly awkward and you freeze. Recognition travels with a chill down your spine. “I took care of the them, you uh- you can come out now.”

There was like a million of the bats and bat-adjacent vigilantes in Gotham, and they sent him. Deep down when you heard the gunshots, you knew who it was. There was only one vigilante in that family that dared to go against the Batman’s gun ban. You were hoping that fate was going to give you a break, but that didn’t seem like it was in the cards tonight.

Once upon a time, this would’ve had relief washing over your body.

Wally used to bring you to some of the get togethers that the Titans held when you were younger. Then, thinking like a true older brother, Dick used to drag Jason along with him.

Safe to say, you both became fast friends.

You would talk about everything that came to your mind. Books, games, shoes, stuff going on in your lives, anything you could think of. Sometimes when you both got bored, you would sneak away to play video games in Wally’s room at the tower. Jason would always help you beat the levels you were stuck on in your latest save.

But, nothing perfect lasts forever.

Everything dampened when he died. It was awful to put it plainly. When he came back, it was almost worse. He changed so drastically, you almost didn’t believe that this was the same boy who gave you a forty five minute rant on why Jo was never meant for Laurie.

You couldn’t blame him for what he became, the experience was horrifyingly unique. Yet, you don’t think you’ll ever forget the last time you spoke.

It was a stupid argument in hindsight.

Dick had come to you one night, begging for you to try to get through to him. Apparently they all had given their best efforts into attempting to talk to him, and you were the last line of offense.

That was a year and a half ago.

A hesitant call of your name through the door takes you out of the memory flashing behind your eyes.

“Yeah,” your voice squeaks out with a cringe following. You didn’t realize how small it was going to sound. “I-I’ll be out, just give me a sec.”

Turning back to your phone, your throat bobs with a heavy swallow. “I’m all good Wall,” there’s a sound of relief coming through the speakers. It was almost as if he had been holding his breath for the entire three minutes of the phone call.

“Who’s with you?” The question was immediate. He heard the gunshots, he knew as well as you did who was here.

“Um,” your eyes dart up from his horrific contact photo to the door and then back down to the picture again, “Jason’s here.”

The silence from the other end of the phone was palpable. Wally knew how bad the last argument you and Jason had stung. He was the one who sat on the phone with you after. Blinking back the emotions, you steel yourself for what’s awaiting in your apartment.

You’re a big girl, you can handle this. You’ve handled worse than a shitty ex-best friend.

“I’m going to hang up now, okay?” Your hands are starting to shake again. “I gotta figure out how bad the damage is, I’ll text you with the updates.”

He could hear the words rushing to leave your mouth, a pathetic attempt at convincing yourself this was fine.

“Do you want me to come? I will, give me like ten minutes- fifteen tops, and I’ll be there. All you have to do is ask.”

You knew he would do it too, the reassurance was unnecessary. The gravity in his tone almost made you fall into the temptation. There was nothing you wanted more right now than for your brother to be here. He would know how to handle this. He would know how to wrangle Gotham vigilante’s and tell them to go to Hell.

Your strive for independence was going to be the death of you one day.

“I think I’m okay for now, but I’ll call if I need backup.”

“Okay,” a hint of defeat is mixed in with the sigh. “Well I doubt I’ll be sleeping much after this, so please just text me with what ends up happening.”

“I promise,” and because you know he’ll lose his mind all night you ask him for a different type of help. “If you want to make yourself useful, go back to scrolling on reels and send me some that I can watch later.”

“Aye Aye boss,” You can almost hear his smug grin when he gets a snort out of you. “I love you, I’ll talk to you later.”

“I love you too Wally.” When the line goes dead you hold the phone to your chest for a moment. Even with the levels of annoying you’re sure only Wally could reach, you truly could not have asked for a better brother. He always dropped whatever he was doing if you needed him.

Savoring the last moment of peace you had from the rest of the world, you lean against the counter and try to catch your breath. You were going to have to confront the disaster that was your apartment. The devil on your shoulder was contemplating to just leave it for tomorrow, but the angel reminded you that your book was out there.

Mustering up the final ounces of courage left in your stomach, you unlock the door to the bathroom. Thankfully the sanctuary that was your bedroom remained untouched, except for the dresser propped against your door.

The dresser was heavier than you remember it being a few minutes ago. Adrenaline strength truly unlocks a version of potential you didn’t know you had. The effort it takes to give you a clearing, leaves red imprints of the design on your palms. Your hand hovers over the doorknob, hesitation plain on your fingers. You were going to have to see him, you were going to have to confront him after seventeen months of no contact.

Left hand at your side, you crack each knuckle with your thumb before opening the door. Not letting yourself think too hard, it swings wide open. And there he is.

He was on one knee flipping the coffee table back over. His hands were filled with a bunch of the trinkets that made their home on it. When he hears the door open, his head whips in your direction. The air in the room depletes when the white slits of the mask meet your eyes. Both of you frozen, staring at each other with a decade of history lingering in a glance.

Uncomfortable with the silence, you start cracking the knuckles of your right hand.

You might as well have activated a sleeper agent with the movement. He suddenly remembers where he is, and shoots to his feet. Carefully cupping his hands, he moves to drop your belongings back on the table.

Peeling your eyes off his devastatingly gorgeous frame, you find the three robbers tied together hanging off your fire escape.

“I’m waiting on Dick.” His voice is gravelly and a bit panicked. In the back of your mind, you note that he turned off the modulator. “He’s on his way to pick them up and take them to the station.”

You don’t trust yourself to speak, so you hum in reply.

Examining your apartment, it wasn’t as bad as you expected. Despite the few broken pieces of decor, the glass littered all over your living room from where Jason made his dramatically grand entrance, and your stuff being thrown everywhere, you were pretty lucky.

Noticing the way your eyes caught on the glimmering pieces of glass off the floor, he starts anxiously adjusting the cuffs of his jacket.

“I’m sorry about the window.” He’s rolled and unrolled the cuff of his left sleeve three times by the time he manages to speal. “I was in a rush and it seemed the fastest way in, I’ll pay for someone to fix it tomorrow.”

“I would hope so.” The answer came out like a reflex. You bite back the grimace fighting your features. You hadn’t even thanked him for the help before pouring gasoline on the fire.

He doesn’t say anything, yet his shoulders tense. Somewhere deep in places his pride won’t let him admit, he knew he deserved it, and that was enough of a punishment for you. He had to live with himself at the end of the day, what more could you ask for?

A clang on your fire escape steals your attention. Next thing you know, you’re being tackled in a bone crushing hug. If the blur of blue and black spandex didn’t’ give it away, the hints of Tom Ford cologne certainly did.

The hug is merely a second long before he pulls back and holds you at your shoulders.

“Good to see that you’re doing alright kid.” A grin is pulling at his face, but you can see the tension in his build. Wally had trusted Dick with this- with his family. That wasn’t an easy thing for anyone to do. He wouldn’t have forgiven himself if something happened.

“Yeah I’m fine,” You try to laugh but it comes out weak. “I was overdue on my Gotham initiation anyway.”

 The dominos mask hides it, but by the subtle shake of his head you can tell there was an eyeroll that went along with it.

He lets go of your shoulders and you look back at the dump that was now your apartment. Jason and Dick hold each other’s gazes silently. They were speaking in the silence with movements you pretended to ignore.

You’re scratching your eyebrow when Dick starts, “Hey um, where are you staying tonight?”

Hand falling from your face, you turn to him. “What do you mean?”

Confused, he looks from you to Jason, then back to you.

“You know you can’t stay here for a few days right?” His head cocks to the side. “The cops have to come, investigate, tape it off, and we need to get someone to fix your window.”

Your eyelids blink slowly. You weren’t tired by any means, but tonight just got a hell of a lot longer. None of your friends were going to be awake and you would rather sleep under the bridge than try a hotel in Gotham you could afford.

“Fuck.” The curse barely audible when it leaves falls off your tongue.

“I mean,” Dick starts with a shrug of the shoulders. “You’re more than welcome to stay at the manor. Bruce won’t mind”

Jason’s neck snaps to Dick, the white slits of the hood widen a bit before narrowing again.

“I mean this with the upmost respect.” Your hand lays flat against your heart. “I would rather chew rocks.”

You weren’t sure how long you would need to try and find somewhere to stay, but you wanted to avoid the manor at all costs. You’d had the luxury of visiting a few times, but it always felt awkward. It was too big for you, and you really didn’t want to feel like an imposition.

Dick and Jason both snort at your reply. Both of them knew how you felt about the manor. It was breath taking, but it wasn’t somewhere you wanted to sleep in, especially for multiple nights.

“I’ll figure something out,” you sound unsure even to yourself. “I’ll just find some couches to surf for a while.”

“Yeah no, try again West.” Jason finally decides to speak for the first time since his brother’s arrival.

Your neck snaps in his direction and a fire lights behind your eyes, daring him to repeat himself. He had no right to tell you what you could, and couldn’t do. His opinions meant jack shit to you.

“Sorry kiddo,” Dick’s domino mask expands a miniscule amount, but still enough to notice. He looks like he’s been tasked to negotiate the terms of a peace treaty before World War 3 breaks out. “Wally entrusted us with your safety, which means we have to know that where you’re staying is at least somewhat protected.”

Understanding dawns on you in a cruel shiver up your spine. The second option about to be presented to you was dangling like a rotten carrot on a stick.

“It’s the manor or Jason’s place.”

Your jaw drops and you meet the latter’s gaze. The damn mask betraying no emotion, you however, don’t miss the little fidget of his foot. Your eyes narrow in between the boys.

“So what? My choices are the fourth or fifth circle of Hell?”

“C’mon the manor’s not that bad.” Dick tries to reason with you.

“Jason’s place is.”

He doesn’t deny it. No one does.

You should’ve chosen the manor, every nerve in your body was telling you that was the reasonable choice. Dick would be there for a few days, there was other life there. Yet, It was just too much and it was too far. Your commute to class would double and you liked your alone time too much to give it up.

Swallowing your pride, you turn to the boy you longer knew with a deadpan. “When do we leave?”

•───────•°•𓄧•°•───────•

Jason’s apartment was surprisingly clean.

His apartment was embracing the minimalist aesthetic. He had never been one for many material goods because of how he was raised. That never changed, even after all the years he lived with Bruce.

The living room, where you were currently sitting, had barely anything inhabiting the space. The couch was dark and worn with some cracks in the leather, the entertainment center was a simple stand made of oak with a glass cabinet on the bottom, the TV was rested on top of it, a floor lamp next to the couch, and the last piece was by far the liveliest- his bookshelf.

It took up about half the wall. Every shelf littered with different genres. It was almost too personal to examine. Some books you recognized and some you didn’t. An odd wave of sadness washes over you when you see some books you’d never heard him talk about. It was still strange to you on some days that you were no longer in each other’s lives.

You knew he was out and about in Gotham, but your paths never crossed. Whether that was by design or some level of mercy, you never knew.

He was on the news at least once a week. It felt like cheating no contact, but you couldn’t help yourself. It was the one indulgence you allowed yourself, to know that he was still alive and working with the bats. This way you didn’t feel guilty about holding the grudge for as long as you did.

You’d been staring at the same page for fifteen minutes. The first line of the chapter was permanently engraved in your mind because of how many times you’d read it.

“Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?”

For your Women in Literature class, you chose Frankenstein as the novel you were going to be analyzing in your paper. The assignment was to find a topic from a book and write fifteen pages about it in MLA format. It was an interesting class, but fifteen pages felt like overkill, it was double-spaced at the very least.

This was your third reread of the book this semester.

The first read was to familiarize yourself with the novel, the second was to piece together the paper, and this one was to find the evidence after you’d started the rough draft. It felt fitting that you were using a green highlighter for the evidence.

Sleep never came easy to you, and you had tried essentially everything. All the medicines, the teas, a warm glass of milk, counting sheep, all of it. At one point your doctors and family members suggested reading, which was probably the worst thing they could’ve said.

The last suggestion ended up with you staying awake all night with a book in hand.

Which is exactly what you were doing now. It was around four in the morning, Jason had brought you back to his apartment and then went back on patrol. He still hadn’t returned, but you weren’t complaining.

The less you had to interact with him the better.

In a pathetic attempt to finally turn the page, you start to read again. Making it to the third sentence on the page, you start to finally get immersed in the story again when-

The window slides open.

Your hands drop the book in shock and it clatters on the floor. Alarmed, Jason turns to you already prepared for a fight, forgetting that you were staying with him.

“What’re you doing awake?” He sounds truly baffled that you hadn’t managed to fall asleep. His hands move to the back of his mask and there’s a quiet hissing sound before it unlatches. He examines it for a second, checking for damage. Then his fingers slowly uncurl from the edge and it falls to the floor.

“I couldn’t sleep.” You answer with a bite that didn’t fit your current state. You had stolen one of his mugs and warmed up some milk, bundled in a blanket on the couch, and had been reading under the lamp. “What the hell is it with you and the damn window?”

“It’s my place, I can use whatever entrance I want.” He turns to you with an annoyed look now. Your attitude seemed to finally start pricking at him. “I also didn’t think you’d be waiting up on me.”

“I wasn’t waiting up on you.” The answer comes out way too defensive for your liking.

“Whatever you wanna tell yourself sweetheart,” he mumbles and you scoff at him. You were starting to miss the quiet Jason that found you in your apartment.

He bends down to pick up your copy of Frankenstein and flips it around in his hands a few times. Looking back up at you, he raises a brow and you cross your arms.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shrugs and tosses the book back in your lap.

“You obviously got something you wanna say Todd.” Rolling your eyes, you flick your left hand at him. “Go on, spit it out.”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes at you and you want to pluck them out of their eye sockets. “It’s nothing, I’m just surprised you’re reading Frankenstein.”

“Why? Because I’m ordinary, because I’m not one of you?”

The words land right where you wanted them too, right in the center of his chest. His lips thin and you can see the flex of his jaw as it tightens. It was a terrible echo of the fight you’d had all those months ago. It was petty, but you’d been waiting to throw it back in his face one day.

“No,” his voice comes out softer than you were expecting, and his throat bobs while he tries to swallow his guilt. “I was just surprised because you didn’t read classics before. You used to ask me about them because you didn’t like the writing style.”

“Yeah, well things change Jason.” Your gaze doesn’t waver from his, even when he momentarily breaks away to look at his boots in shame. “People change.”

He knew that better than anyone.

With that, he glances back up to you. All the tension, all the anger, it was bleeding into the few feet between you.

“I’m going to go shower.” The sentence sounds distant from his body, as if he was just speaking into a void instead of ending the conversation.

You nod and purse your lips before picking up your phone. He stays there for a moment watching you as you attempt to look busy with swiping through the weather and notes app.

When he finally steps away into his room to head to the bathroom, you throw your head back on the armrest of the couch.

This was going to be a long week.

Dread takes over you, when the shower shuts off. You’d been trying to watch the five million Instagram reels that Wally sent you, but there was no hope in being able to focus enough to really watch them. Your brain was hyper focused on where Jason was in the apartment. He left the door to his bedroom open, so you see him pass from the bathroom to his dresser in nothing but a towel.

Your eyes may have been on your phone, but your concentration was on him.

There’s some shuffling in his room, movement of blankets you think, before he appears in the doorframe. You refused to look up until he cleared his throat awkwardly.

By some miracle you were able to hide the way your breath caught in your throat. It was unfair how he could be such an asshole and still look like that. His hair was damp, curling at the ends in a beautiful frame of his face. He had thin rimmed glasses that hung on the bridge of his nose, highlighting the piercing green of his eyes. He was in plaid pajama pants that were a smidge too tight around his thighs and ass. There was a cotton white t-shirt on that left little room for imagination as it clung to his arms and torso from where he hadn’t dried himself off completely.

The crush you had on him at fourteen was slowly becoming more valid in this light, but you would rather die than admit that out loud.

The most damning part about the whole scene was what he was holding. Tucked under his left arm was a pillow and a blanket under the right one.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other before finally admitting. “The bed’s been made.”

Your eyebrows furrow together. What the hell was he on about? Did he think you were going to sleep in the bed with him.

“Um- okay? Do you want me to congratulate you for making your bed at the ripe age of- what 22? 23?” Your phone drops face down onto the blanket you were covering yourself with. “I mean I know Alfred used to make it for you. I’m not sure how big of a feat this is.”

“I’m 23.” His expression falls to an unimpressed expression. He licks his lips slowly for a moment as if he’s using it to ground himself, and you hate that you catch it. You were learning things you didn’t want to know about yourself tonight. When his eyes shut in that annoyed manner and his tongue swept across his lower lip, the way your stomach coiled terrified you.

“I’ve made my bed before West,” The heat in your stomach only intensified at him calling you by your last name, leading your heart to sink a second later. “I was telling you, so you could get in it.”

“And why would I do that?”

His eyebrow is mirroring yours now, raised with confusion at a lack of communication. “Because I’m sleeping on the couch.”

“Why are you sleeping on the couch?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

You blink once, twice, then, “this is your place, you remember that right?”

Frustrated with the fact you would do anything just to fight him, he tosses the blanket and pillow to the unoccupied side of the couch.

“Oh my god-” He runs a hand through his hair and your eyes linger on every line of every muscle in his bicep. Thankfully, you manage to break away from the distraction before he realizes. “I’m trying to be nice and give you the bed. Did you think I was going to offer you a place to stay and make you sleep on this shitty couch?”

“The couch isn’t shitty.”

His hand drops from his hair, and while he doesn’t say it, you can hear the deadpanned “really?” that he was defiantly thinking.

The couch was old and thoroughly used. You could feel every spring in it on the bone of your ass, the cushion was flat, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the type of sofa that would be at your grandparent house because they refused to throw it out. You’d been subjected to worse sleeping arrangements than Jason’s thrift find.

“It’s not that bad Jason.”

“I wouldn’t even subject Tim to sleeping on this couch.”

That earns him a snort. He seems to celebrate the small win as something like a bridge between you two. Noticing the crease disappearing in his eyebrows and his shoulder relaxing, you catch yourself. It was always too easy for Jason to undo you, he knew the exact weak points to hit in order to break down your walls.

It flipped a switch in you, immediately tensing up again, and he noticed. He always did. He gives up trying to fight you on getting to the bed and takes his place on the other end of the couch.

“What’re you doing…?” The sentence is dragged out of you, exhaustion from the day slowly overtaking the anxiety that was keeping you up.

“Putting on the TV.” He said it so simply while picking up the remote from the coffee table, it was as if this was normal for the both of you.

“Why?” The question escapes you before you can swallow it. A flush creeps over your face, suddenly self-aware of all the questions you’d been asking.

He doesn’t seem to notice the pink now dusting the tips of your ears- well, if he does he doesn’t comment on it. He only shrugs and logs into Dick’s streaming services that he has a profile on. “It helps me unwind after the night. Having something on in the background distracts me enough that it makes it easier to fall asleep.”

He starts scrolling through his account while you nod at his response.

“Jason?”

“Mhm.”

“Why is Sex and the City in your recently watched?”

His cheeks deepen to a color dangerously similar to the hood he dons every night, his freckles disappearing under the blush. He coughs to hide the fluster and pushes his glasses back up his nose.

“It was part of a deal I made with Steph,” he mumbles, skipping right over it. “When I started talking to them all again, she made me start watching it with her. Every Friday night I would come over after patrol and watch two episodes together. It was nicknamed as my “anger management” work for me to try and survive two episodes without getting frustrated with one of them.”

“Uh huh,” every thing you learned about his new life was more shocking than the last. “And how’d that go?”

“About as well as you’d expect.”

Who was this and what did they do with Jason Todd.

“That doesn’t explain why it’s still in your recently watched, though. You said you watched this with Steph, why are you on season three on your profile?”

He grumbles something unintelligible while looking through the other show options he has.

“Objectively… it’s an okay show.”

It takes all your strength not to break out in a laugh. “Just okay?”

He hears you smothering the giggle and meets your gaze. Despite his face drowning in pink, he still puts on a brave face. “I put it on after patrol sometimes. Is that what you wanted to hear? It doesn’t matter what fucked shit is happening to me, Carrie somehow always manages to take the cake in the shit show competition.”

“Well then, don’t let me stop you from your routine.”

His lips press together when the words leave your mouth. “I’ll pass thanks.”

“Why?” Your response came out more lighthearted than you’d planned on. This situation felt like an old normal you were no longer familiar with.

“You’re laughing at me that’s why.”

“I’m going to laugh either way.” You tease. “Might as well commit to the bit now.”

He stares at you for a few seconds. You don’t think anything of it, but he’s drinking in this version of you. A version that he thought no longer existed anymore. The version of you that trusted him.

He knows it’s not completely there, but this brought him hope. He didn’t think you were going to be doing much speaking through the week. Just this interaction was more than he could’ve dreamed for. He knew now that there was something he could work toward, that maybe there could be a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe the sun would shine on you both again.

So, not taking advantage of the smile pulling at your lips, he turns on the show. He’d turn himself into the biggest idiot if it meant you would look at him like that again. He would embarrass himself in every lifetime, every universe, every dimension if it meant he got to witness your smile one more time.

And with Carrie talking about how Big is leaving his wife, your eye lids begin to flutter. Jason, acting as a protective presence opposite of you, allows you the comfort you’d been looking for. Finally, you’re able to drift into a world that wasn’t so haunted.

Once your breathing evened out, Jason acted quickly. He picked you up bridal style and carried you to the bed you seemed determined to not sleep in. He tucks you in with the blankets cascading around you. Standing up to his full height, he takes one last look at you and makes a promise.

A promise that he’ll work every day to become someone worth trusting again.

•───────•°•𓄧•°•───────•

Most nights were like the first one.

You would come home from class or work and then make a home on the squeaky couch. Jason would be out and about running on errands or at the auto shop he picked shifts up at. Neither of you spoke much through the day, he left you to have your much needed alone time.

Then at night, after patrol he’d crawl in through the window and you would sit on the couch together. Some nights it was awkward with not much talking, other nights it was a weird in-between of what normal used to mean for you two.

You hadn’t forgotten the fight, it still stung most days.

You knew it wasn’t easy for him to come back. You weren’t so naïve. He had crawled out of his grave, was dunked in the Lazarus pit, fought in the league of assassins, and was still trying to find a place in the world.

It didn’t erase all the hurt however.

On the fourth night he looked at you over the rim of his glasses.

“How’d you like it?”

Glancing up from your laptop, your eyebrows threaded together.

“How’d I like what?”

“Frankenstein,” he closes the book he was reading, Six of Crows- a recommendation from you. “You finished it the other day right?”

“Oh,” It sounded dumb but you hadn’t realized he was paying that much attention. “Yeah, I did. That’s not the first time I’ve read it though.”

“Oh,” he repeats. The vowel comes out in a breath from his mouth. “What’d ya think of it?”

“I liked it, I always liked the story. I’m reading it for a paper I’m writing for my Women in Literature class.”

He nods, accepting the answer. Still wanting specifics on your opinion, he continues to press. “What’s the paper on?”

“Basically,” you start out ready to summarize the topic in the same way you did for everyone. “It’s about how Frankenstein can be interpreted as autobiographical for Mary Shelley, and an expression of her experience as a child bleeding into the challenges she faced with motherhood.”

Your voice was robotic as you explained it to him. Countless of your classmates had asked you about your paper trying to get an idea for their own, and they all dismissed it. Despite it being a Women in Literature’s class it was a required elective, and unfortunately, you got stuck with one too many men who pitied the unreliable narrator.

Jason, however, surprised you.

He cocked his head to the side, barely shifting it to a thirty degree angle. “I… I hadn’t thought about it that way.” His face contorted together, the small dimple on his chin making an appearance as he actually thought about your analysis. “I’ll admit I don’t know much about Mary Shelley, despite that her husband seemed to be somewhat decent since he let her publish the novel, which is more than you can say for most men those days.”

“Somewhat decent is pushing it,” your tone was laced with disgust. “He was a cheater. He cheated on his first wife with Mary, and then cheated on her with her cousin.”

Jason’s eyes were wide and he shut his mouth as fast as he could. Biting his cheeks, he’s making his best effort to avoid saying something that would inadvertently piss you off. he had just managed to get civil with you and he didn’t want to waste it.

“What parts of the book are you using for the paper?” He was giving it his best effort to redirect the conversation so you would be in a good mood again.

“It’s a lot of the inner monologue for both the Creature and Victor.” You shrugged, going back to typing the outline. “In spite of there not being a lot of notable female characters, with the exception of Elizabeth, it had a lot of underlying feminine issues. Victor essentially goes through postpartum depression and rejects the creature. A lot of people also believe that the Creature remains nameless because she had a miscarriage at the time and didn’t name the baby. So the creature can be seen kind of like the child she lost, but also as herself. Since Victor went through life with a rejected creator, essentially on his own, it can be loosely interpreted as a mirror of her childhood. Her mother died when she was young and she was generally depressed like the Creature.”  

You hadn’t realized how long you had been rambling for until you finished. Your lips pressed together, almost biting them in the wake of your words running from you. Jason’s face remained a carefully crafted neutral expression, but he wasn’t as successful as he wanted to be. You didn’t miss the subtle twitches in his jaw, the way the last part cut deeper into him than anyone you knew.

Jason Todd who had an addict as a mother.

Jason Todd who gave his everything into being Robin.

Jason Todd who was failed by the world.

And in spite of it all, came back.

He could relate to this monster of a being more than anyone knew. So, when he listens to you talk about it as an innocent thing, as something who was a victim of the world that created him, something broke in him. Because now, there was hope you would look past all his wrongs, to see him as a man trying his best, instead of the monster fate was determined to make him to be.

He nods and by some miracle, makes more conversation with you about the paper and then you shift into a comfortable silence. A couple hours later when he’s transitioning to the nighttime routine, he takes you in.

He knew the week would be over soon. You would go back to your apartment and probably never look in his direction again. He wouldn’t take advantage of this- of you looking at him like the past few years hadn’t happened. That he hadn’t destroyed the only good thing in his life.

Eventually, Sex and the City comes on. It’s as if the universe finally took pity on him and gave him another miracle, letting you got comfortable in his presence. You started talking through the show, shitting on something- he wasn’t sure what.

His heart stopped when he heard the same scoff you used to do when you both watched Mission Impossible. He could practically hear the mumble, ingrained in his memory.

“There’s no way they would get away with this in real life.”

He didn’t move a muscle as you spoke, save for the few encouraging grunts or hums of agreement.

Jason Todd hated when people spoke through movies. He liked to sit, digest it, then talk about after, but he never minded it when it was you.

That’s actually how Dick discovered his crush on you when you were teenagers. He walked by his room and peaked in through the door frame. You were watching some romcom and you had spoken more dialogue through the scene then the film had in general. He was expecting Jason to blow a fuse, but it never came.

Dick teased him relentlessly for days.

He couldn’t bring himself to be embarrassed, or care though. He would listen to you talk about anything and everything. Jason Todd would spend every night bleeding dry on the Gotham streets if it meant he got to come home and listen to the harmony of your voice. In those dying seconds he had left in that warehouse, his last thought was of every voicemail he’d never receive.

So now, here on this couch, he absorbs every word, carving it into stone. Every syllable from your mouth was like a recitation of the Bible to him, you were holy.

He didn’t think he’d ever be granted this luxury again. For now, he’ll take what he can get and maybe one day this could be his normal again.

•───────•°•𓄧•°•───────•

As if the past three nights were on replay, you fell asleep before him. He sighs in relief when he notices your eyes close and breath even out. Like every other night, he takes you back to the bed even if you’re determined to take the couch.

The next few nights are also the same. Small domestic moments highlighted by his flickering light bulb and uncharacteristic pleasure of 90s chick flicks.

It had become habit to wait for him to come through the window. You usually were up until this time anyway. Whether it was nightmares, small anxieties that kept you up, or just your general inability to fall asleep, you were up at all hours of the night.

It was weird. You weren’t expecting to feel any comfort in this apartment, you were prepared for the exact opposite actually. Yet, in his stupidly charming Jason way, he managed to make you smile. He got you to laugh. He cooked enough for two even when you said you weren’t hungry.

It was surprisingly peaceful.

Until the last night.

All the butterflies dropped to the pit of your stomach in seconds when he barreled in through the window.

Covered in blood.

His breath was coming out heavy and jagged. He was flat on his ass, arms and legs spread out as if he was cosplaying a starfish who had just gone to war.

“Jason-”

You’re not exactly sure how the words leave your mouth. Laptop forgotten, shoved off your lap onto the couch. Your legs carry you just far enough until you can drop to your knees next to him.

“I-” he coughs. “I’m alright.” His arm wraps around his midsection trying to press on the giant wound that went straight down from his left pectoral to waistline.

“Alright?” He winces at your incredulous tone. “Jason please, you can barely hold your head up.”

The clock had barely struck two, which was never a good sign. If he ever came home early, it was due to some catastrophic injury.

“You shouldn’t be up at this time anyway.” He somehow manages to get out in one breath, wincing again when his hand presses on his torso.

Pointedly ignoring the comment, you help him to his feet. Silence overtakes you two when you help him to the bathroom. He sits on the lid of the toilet. His head leaning against the wall behind it.

Deep, slow breaths are coming from his nose and mouth. A part of you hopes that it’s to calm himself and that he’s not fighting for his consciousness.

That is not a phone call you want to be making tonight.

He sheds the jacket, then the shirt. You’re left with a bloody bruised Jason whose red in the face. He’s staring at you with no hope, ready for you to walk away, to decide that it’s too much.

It’s quiet when you step out the bathroom to the little half closet. It’s quiet when you grab a hand towel and walk back in. The only sound now echoing through the apartment being the water pouring from the faucet onto the grey towel when you wet it.

You finally break the silence, when you sit on the edge of the bathtub. The wound getting uglier by the second, your hand hovers it, right before contact.

“This is going to hurt.” It’s barely a whisper, yet in this room, it could’ve been a scream.

He chuckles and it’s half concerning, half reassuring. “Do your worst darlin’”

The nickname does something to you, and your face flushes.

The towel makes contact with his skin and he hisses. Your hand doesn’t move, letting him adjust to the sting. Then with a small nod, you continue the first cleaning. Once all the grime is scrubbed away, you find the first aid kit in the cabinet under the sink. The antiseptic is next, then the gauze, then the tape.

It took a little longer than thirty minutes to get him patched up. He’d have to see someone to get it properly looked at tomorrow, but this would be okay for now.

You couldn’t ignore the way he was looking at you the whole time. His eyes were swimming with guilt, pain, and something else you weren’t sure you wanted to name.

When you’re finally done, you stand to your full height. He’s looking up at you now from where he’s sitting. Both of you don’t pay mind to the biohazard on the floor next to you, just simply getting lost in each other again.

So much more was said in the quiet of the bathroom than in the past week you’ve been here. It feels like you’re seeing each other again for the first time in the fluorescent bathroom light. It was as if something clicked for you two.

“You’re not fourteen anymore you know that right?” You’re still looking in between his emerald green irises when you start to mumble. “You can’t jump straight into a fight and crash through my window expecting me to patch you up.”

His eyes are half lidded, squinting in disbelief, like he isn’t sure if this is real. That you’re here and teasing him.

“But you patch me up so well.” His voice is a low rumble, words meshing together out of delirium and exhaustion. “It’s also technically my window.”

A snort comes out of your nose along with a roll of your eyes.

“Let’s get you to bed big guy.” You start to hook his arm over your shoulder and he breaks into a sly smile.

“You think I’m big?”

“Yes.”

A small pout appears on his face when you won’t play this game with him. As much as you loved a good round of teasing, you were far too stressed to try and keep up with it right now. Your goal for the evening was to get him to the bed alive and make sure he doesn’t die.

Again.

After he lies down, you sit next to him on the bed with your legs crossed. He’s bound to fall asleep any moment now, but you want to keep his eyes open a little longer. It was part in worry and part selfishness. This way you could make sure he was actually okay by the time he drifted off while also getting to stare into the eyes that you used to feel like home.

“I’m sorry.”

The apology snaps you out of your daze. It’s the first coherent sentence he’s managed since busting through the window.

“It’s alright.” Your hands shake while you try to wave it off. “This is hardly the first time you’ve shown up beaten and bruised needing a cleanup.”

He came to you as much as he could to patch him up when you were younger. You’d had enough practice patching Wally up that he trusted you.

“No, I’m sorry about what I said to you that night.” Your veins turn to ice. “I was an asshole. You were trying to be nice and I pushed you away. That wasn’t fair to you.”

He takes a deep breath.

“I was a mess when I crawled out of my grave, the pit wasn’t a big help either. I was so angry with the world, upset that it brought me back.” His eyes lay on the popcorned roof now. “I was even more pissed that the world hadn’t changed while I was gone, it was still the same shit. I was horrible to everything and everyone. I… I lost my way.”

“You were the only good thing left here.” His eyes are back on you now. “When you came to see me, it scared me. It was like you saw right through me and everything I didn’t want to deal with was rising in my chest. I couldn’t handle it. So, I said some nasty shit to get you to go away. It was disgusting of me and it’s my biggest regret in this and every life I’ll ever live. I’ll never forgive myself for it. In a way, it felt easier to stay in that angry hole than to grow.”

You weren’t sure how you kept your breath even, it was like every time you managed some oxygen, it was robbed from you.

“Eventually though, I finally started getting help and wanted to get better. I’ve been trying every day to be better than who I was. To be someone who could be something. I don’t want you to think that these are excuses, they’re not.” His eyes are so conflicted, he can’t read your reaction and it’s terrifying him. “I just wanted you to know, I guess. If you never want to talk to me again, I completely understand. I’ll never bother you and I’ll leave you to your life.”

There’s a pause and your heart sinks.

“But if there’s a chance you’d be willing to try again, I had to give it a shot. I’ll spend every day making sure you know I’m serious about this. I’ll do it all this time. I’ll take you to dinner, I’ll give you your space, I’ll bake you cookies every Sunday night just like you always wanted.” His breathing pattern is broken and it shudders when he tries to breathe in.

You couldn’t bring yourself to speak. Your hands begun tracing the web of scars on his chest. A fingernail along the constellation he had over his heart. He shuddered, the intimacy of seeing him like this was almost as difficult as the vulnerability in the apology.

Eventually your hand lays flat on his chest, feeling the warmth. Your palm was right over his heart, it was beating a little quicker than normal but it was your favorite rhythm. His thumb and pointer finger wrap around your wrist. It was a loose grip, you could break out whenever and he kept it that way, but it was still strong enough that you could feel the hope behind it when he says,

“Stay.”

Your head whips back to him and desperation is written across his forehead.

There was still so much you had to talk about, so much you needed to get through. But right now, when he’s looking at you like you’re the most important person on the planet, you can’t stop yourself from indulging.

He watches you walk to the other side of the bed. His breath catches in his throat when you pull back the covers. He starts to believe in love again when you scoot closer to him.  

His eyes are on yours when you make eye contact again, mere centimeters apart.

“I’m sorry.” He repeats again. And this time, you know it.

You know he’ll spend the rest of his life making up for seventeen months.

Your hand rests on his cheek and he leans into it. His eyes close and he breathes in the feeling. You’re not entirely shocked when his arms are pulling you into him. The rest of the night passes with him whispering sweet nothings into your ear.

And for the first time all week, you both fall asleep together.

•───────•°•𓄧•°•───────•

Bonus:

Once he’s finished his own patrol, Dick Grayson appears at his little brother’s window.

Jason had disappeared after the fight in the middle of patrol. They knew he had gotten hurt but he said he would patch himself up at home. Bruce was fighting an aneurysm, trying to keep him safe but not push him out of his comfort zone. When Jason cut his comms, Bruce almost tore the apartment door from its hinges, but Dick convinced him that he would drop by and check on him.

What he finds however, renders him speechless.

Jason was in bed with the one person he thought was going to buy him a one way ticket to his grave again. His arm was wrapped protectively around your waist, almost in fear of letting you go. Even in a state of crippling pain, you were always his priority.

At the heartwarming scene, Dick has one thought that turns his body to ice.

Wally is going to kill him.

•───────•°•𓄧•°•───────•

A/N: Sorry guys I got kind of lazy with the ending but I hope you like it anyway! I’m really tired and wanted to finally get this out lol

Your knees wanted to give out at the sight of him trying to grin. Even now, even in so much pain, he tried to reassure you. So you helped him, laying him on the couch and rummaging through the cabinet for supplies. A sharp, chemical smell wafted through the apartment. You didn’t flinch. Nor did your hands tremble when you stitched his wounds.

Once you finished, you tucked him into bed and gazed at him, checking for the rise and fall of his chest. It was then that you noticed a chain around his neck, his wedding ring looped through it. This foolish man. He should know better than to carry something so precious out there.

Instead of scolding him like you wanted to, you curled up against him, fingers carding through his hair. You didn’t dare think about what would’ve happened if you hadn’t been home. And when morning came, he would surely try to calm you.

No, you couldn’t let it go this time. You would not let him distract you with his kisses. He needed to be reminded of just how dangerous this world was.

———

When the clock struck eight the next morning, you flung the curtains open. Sunlight poured in relentlessly, making Dick groan. He threw an arm over his eyes, his beautiful features twisting in discomfort from the movement.

“Sweetheart, the absolute love of my life, could you perhaps not agonize your very amazing husband today?” His voice was low and rough with sleep.

You hummed, bustling around the room for the medication you’d prepared for him. All night, your mind had whirled with ideas of how to make sure he was properly trained. He fought to save. That was the problem. You needed him to fight to survive.

You appeared beside the bed with the pills and a bottle of water. Looking at his injuries, you steeled your resolve. “Take these,” you demanded.

He shifted, opening one eye. Slowly, he sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. The sun painted his skin in soft gold. He looked at you with half-lidded eyes and fondness.

You held out the pills and water.

He rolled his eyes and took them, letting his fingers linger against yours. When he went to swallow them without the water, you cleared your throat loudly.

He paused, eyeing you.

“Isn’t there something you need to do before taking them?” you asked.

He tilted his head. “Oh yeah,” he said with a grin, and gestured for you to come closer. You leaned in, brows furrowed. what—

He kissed your cheek. “Thank you for taking care of me, sweetheart,” he murmured, like the idiot he was. Then he swallowed the pills, and you closed your eyes in disappointment.

“This is worse than I thought,” you said gravely. “You took the poison.”

“Huh?”

“Poison, Dick. That was poison,” you explained calmly.

There was a beat of silence.

“When did my sweet wife get a sense of humor?” he chuckled, eyes crinkling in that careless way that irritated you. Most people wouldn’t describe you as sweet. Dick, though, had always been a little weird.

“Dick,” you said flatly.

He faltered slightly, scanning your face. “Hang on… have I been neglecting you? Because if this is a cry for help, I can clear my schedule.”

Heat flooded your cheeks. “What?!”

“Honey, you don’t have to go to these lengths,” he said softly, reaching for your hand. “You can have whatever you want. I’m yours, remember?”

You grumbled. How was he making you flustered with a few words? The fact that his wife had poisoned him was somehow the least of his concerns. If your dosage was right, he had about thirty minutes before he started throwing up.

You grimaced.

Dick, naturally, took that as confirmation of marital failure. “Baby—”

You shot him a look and reached into your pocket, pulling out the antidote. “Take it.”

He stared at it. “Is that poison?”

“Oh, now you hesitate?” you said sharply. It seemed that with you, he lost all sense of self-preservation.

He closed his mouth and obediently took the antidote. Embarrassment crept across your cheeks. This wasn’t for attention. You just didn’t need him to know the real reason for your worry, poorly disguised as a murder attempt.

Admitting that would only make things worse.

———

Later that evening, you forced Dick to rest, his soft snores coming from the bedroom while you begrudgingly facetimed two very annoying redheads for help.

“This is serious,” you cut through their bickering.

Roy stopped mid argument. “That’s never a good sentence coming from you.”

Wally leaned into the frame, squinting. “Is he actually dying or is this just you being weird again?”

“Neither,” you said flatly. “This is training.”

Roy’s brows furrowed. “Training for what?”

You hesitated, then decided it didn’t matter what they thought. “So he doesn’t get himself killed.”

There was silence.

Then, Wally slowly spoke. “So let me get this straight. To make sure he doesn’t die, you’re gonna try to kill him?”

Roy snorted, which turned into wheezing. “He probably thinks this is foreplay.”

You glared. “What terrible taste he would have to consider this foreplay,” you said. “There is not nearly enough blood.”

Wally closed his eyes. “Yeah, okay. We’ll help— but only so you don’t accidentally kill him.”

“Hell yeah,” Roy grinned.

You sighed. The things you did for love.

masterlist

“Oracle,” Batman rasps over the comms system.

“Gordon,” Robin calls soon after.

“Babs, me first,” Nightwing request.

“Get in line,” Red Hood barks. “Barbara, I asked first.”

“Stop!” Barbara calls into her mic. “All of you. Is anything urgent?”

Her command center in the watchtower remains quiet, none of the bats willing to lie to her about the urgency of their needs. Barbara sighs, clicking through traffic cameras as she updates the GCPD radio transcript.

“Sorry, Babs,” Jason offers softly.

“It’s okay,” Barbara assures him. “Just, there are six of you and one of me. When you all start talking over each other, I lose track of what needs to get done and what I can ignore.”

“I get it,” Dick murmurs. “We’ll be better about taking turns.”

“For a week, at least,” Damian deadpans.

“Yeah, speaking of taking turns,” Barbara hums. “I have a favor I need to ask. It would affect all of you.”

“Come by the manor tomorrow?” Bruce suggests. “We’ll all be there. Anything you need.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there.” She sends Red Robin to a possible Killer Croc sighting, then asks, “Can I bring a friend?”

“No, abandon me,” you sigh, “that’s fine.”

Barbara laughs, your video call timer nearing two hours. Since you returned to Gotham after interning at a computer science conglomerate in Coast City for a while, you’ve rekindled your friendship with Barbara Gordon, and these long catch-up calls have become highlights of your week.

“We can get coffee after my meeting, if you want,” she offers.

“Sure. And this is the meeting that might help me get another job?”

“Possibly. Don’t hold me to that.”

“Oh, you can do no wrong, Barbara Gordon.”

“I like the sound of that,” she replies. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done. Coffee’s on me today.”

“Good luck at your meeting,” you offer. “I’ll talk to you later.”

After you end the call, you look around your apartment. You’re finally unpacked and have started adding little things to make it feel more like home. You were surprised to find that Gotham hasn’t lost its charm since you left, though it has gained a few more bats and birds.

“I thought team recruitment was Bruce’s thing,” Tim interjects.

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Jason jokes.

“Boys,” Bruce warns, gesturing toward Barbara.

“I’m not saying that you have to reveal your secret identities,” Barbara continues. “You don’t even have to say yes. But sooner or later, I’m going to be in desperate need of help from an Oracle standpoint. I don’t want to wait too long and watch one of you get hurt because I can’t keep up with it all by myself.”

“We would never blame that on you,” Jason reminds her. “But I understand where you’re coming from. Who did you have in mind?”

“A friend,” Barbara answers. “I don’t think you really want to know her name, not right away. She’s good. Really good. In fact, I think Hal Jordan would vouch for her as well, if you need a second opinion.”

“I trust you,” Bruce interrupts, standing from his oversized leather chair. “But I think we should meet her. No matter what you decide, if you want her on the team, she’s on the team.”

Barbara nods once, then looks at the others. “You’re all okay with this?”

“What the old man said,” Jason agrees. “If you trust her, I do too.”

“We need all the help we can get,” Dick adds.

“I won’t make such a statement until I have evidence to call upon,” Damian murmurs. “But I am open to the possibility.”

“When do we meet her?” Dick asks, reclined upside down over a chair as he smiles.

“Come by the clocktower tomorrow,” Barbara invites. “And be ready to listen to her. She won’t put up with your unique brand of shenanigans any more than I do.”

“I prefer tomfoolery,” Dick jokes, hissing when Jason slaps his leg.

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“You didn’t tell me that if I got this job, the fate of Gotham might be in my hands,” you tell Barbara, pacing the length of her desk. “Or that you work with Batman!”

“Would you have changed your mind?” Barbara asks, spinning her wheelchair to face you. “Look me in the eye and tell me that if I’d mentioned Batman, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Obviously, I would still be here,” you groan. “The point is that you didn’t tell me!”

“Well, then you’re going to be more upset with me in about thirty seconds.”

You don’t have time to ask what does that mean? before the computer behind you beeps, and the large metal door across the room creaks open. You hook your fingers together, chewing your bottom lip as you watch Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Robin, and Spoiler file in. Just before the door closes, Orphan slinks in like a shadow, the bright white eyes of her mask fixing on you.

“Hi!” Nightwing greets first, waving at you. “Welcome to the dark side.”

“Hi,” you respond softly, raising a hand. “I, uh… I’m honored to be here.”

“Gordon vouched for you and your technological inclination,” Robin scoffs as he crosses his arms. “That does not mean you have an easy path into our inner circle. You must still prove yourself.”

“Of course,” you agree. “I will do everything I can for you and for this city.”

Nightwing tips his head, watching as you introduce yourself. Beneath the mask, Dick narrows his eyes, scanning every visible feature of your face before looking at your hands. He recognizes you, but he can’t place why or where he would know you from. If you’re Barbara’s friend, it should be easy to remember.

“Nightwing?” Tim asks, nudging his side.

“Huh? What?” Dick asks, rolling his shoulders back.

“She said we can ask questions,” Tim explains. “Do you have any?”

Looking at you, Dick asks, “Can you fix a broken tracker?”

“I can try,” you answer kindly. “No promises.”

He pulls the small magnetic device from the hidden pocket on his side, grimacing when he realizes he crushed it while trying to figure out where he’s seen you before. You don’t have a forgettable face — quite the opposite, in fact — so, why can’t he remember?

“Oh,” you sigh, your fingers brushing his palm when you take it. “Yeah, I should be able to replace the fuse and get it working.”

“Cool,” Dick says quickly, nodding. “Thanks.”

The room alights when the glow of the Batsignal hits the clouds looming over Gotham. Batman turns first, his cape billowing behind him.

“Time to prove yourself,” Spoiler tells you. “Good luck. I hope it sticks because there’s way too many boys on this team.”

“I resent that,” Tim exclaims.

“I’m here for whatever you need tonight,” you promise. “Please don’t hesitate to put me to work.”

“I won’t,” Dick answers. “I mean, uh, you- we won’t. Thanks for coming- being here!”

You smile at his rambling. “Sure thing. Be careful out there.”

They exit faster than they arrived, spreading in different directions throughout the Gotham night. You pull up a chair to the desk Barbara set up for you and slide a headset over your ears. She sends you a thumbs-up, then taps into the GCPD server as the heroes you just met bicker over the radio.

“Hey, Oracle,” Red Hood calls. “What are we calling the new girl?”

“The new girl can hear you, Hood,” Barbara responds. “Maybe we should ask her what she’d like to be called.”

“Mine!” Dick yells. “Sorry, not talking about the same thing. I’ve got Condiment King.”

“Condiment King?” you repeat, holding your hand over your microphone.

“It’s Gotham,” Barbara replies with a shrug. You’re unsurprised to find that it’s enough of an answer.

“You all have better names than me,” you admit. “I’ll answer to whatever you want to call me.”

“Techy,” Red Robin mumbles.

“Little close to tachycardic,” Red Hood muses.

“Maybe we can decide this later?” Spoiler asks. “Red alert at Arkham.”

“That’s not good,” Robin says, talking to himself.

“What do you have, Robin?” you ask. “Red Robin, you’re the closest, if he needs backup.”

“I am capable of handling this,” Robin argues.

“I believe you. But it doesn’t mean you can’t accept a little help.”

“Tt. Fine.”

Barbara meets your eyes over the monitors and nods, then directs Red Hood and Nightwing to move toward Batman’s location.

“Oracle?” Dick asks. “We on a private channel?”

“Mmhmm,” she answers.

“Who’s your friend? Really.”

“What do you mean?”

“Has she been around before?”

“No, she just finished a job in Coast City. Grew up here, but I didn’t get close with her ‘til the end of high school.”

“What’s the interest?” Jason asks. He glances at Dick, then realizes, “Oh. I think that’s a rabbit hole, Wing.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in it before,” he grumbles to himself.

“Your brothers seem to like her,” Barbara says softly. “Do with that what you will.”

Jason and Dick meet each other’s gaze and demand, “Brothers?”

“Glitch!” Damian yells.

“I’m working on it,” you promise, your fingers flying across the keyboard as you try to find Arkham’s file on Oswald Cobblepot.

“Found it,” Tim alerts. “Dumpster full of money.”

“Where?”

“The dumpster?” Tim clarifies.

“No, where did Cobblepot find it? According to Harley’s files — based on stuff she got from Joker and supplemented with her own sleuthing — his parents blew most of the family’s money long before they died. He shouldn’t have inherited enough to buy that club, let alone have anything left over.”

“Sounds like a job for you,” Damian says. “I’ve incapacitated the doorman, Red Robin. You’re welcome.”

“Yeah, thanks. What are we doing about the money, Glitch?”

“Leave it,” you direct. “I’ll get eyes on it, see where they take it.”

“What are we doing tonight?” Damian wonders, grunting softly as he flips onto a fire escape.

“We?” you repeat with a smile. “Isn’t it a school night?”

“Gotham Academy is out tomorrow for parent-teacher conferences,” Tim tells you. “Which means Damian likes to house-crash someone while we take turns coming up with a reason to get out of the conference.”

“Why don’t you just stay home?” you inquire. “Take a break.”

Damian hums. “I spend enough time in the manor.”

“What are we talking about?” Nightwing asks, switching to your channel. Tim and Damian are the only ones who have entrusted you with their real identities, and you’ve made no effort to identify the others, though you assume it would be simple enough.

“Damian and his home invasion patterns,” Tim answers.

“Parent conference time already? My door’s open, Dami.”

“But Glitch and I are binging Warrior Cats before the new series starts,” Tim says, sounding far too awake for someone who hasn’t slept in nearly two days.

“I insist on coming!” Damian exclaims.

“You’re absolutely invited,” you say, chuckling. “As long as one of you gets popcorn on the way over. By which I mean the one who isn’t ten years old.”

“Almost eleven,” Damian grumbles.

“Hey, Glitch?” Nightwing interrupts. “Got anything for me to do?”

“Up for taking money from the Penguin? Just a few bills so I can run the serial numbers?” you check.

“You have no idea how much I’d enjoy it.”

You give him directions to the dumpster Tim found, then click on the closest traffic camera. Squinting, you lean closer to the screen, watching Nightwing spin into a triple kick flip before he catches a loose brick and drops to street level.

With your mic muted, you whisper, “Dick Grayson?”

Fifteen Years Ago

“Whoa!” you exclaimed, clapping as you bounced in place. “That was two flips at the same time!”

“I could probably do three,” Dick realized, beaming at you.

“Try it!”

“Don’t,” Bruce interrupted. “You might fall. Just because you already know a lot doesn’t mean you don’t have to practice to improve.”

“Of course, Mr. Wayne,” you replied politely. “But I can spot him, right? That’s practicing.”

Bruce rolled his shoulders back, his hands flexing at his sides. He looked at Dick, saw the excitement in his eyes that had been dim since his arrival.

“Be careful,” Bruce warned. “If you need a mat, I can order one.”

“Yes!” Dick cheered, puling your hands to bring you closer. “I’ll jump, and you keep your hand out like this.”

“What- what if you fall?” you checked. “I don’t think I can catch you.”

“That’s okay. I fall a lot anyway.”

You nodded slowly, then promised, “I’ll patch you up if you fall, goofball.”

“Bruce bought me elephant bandages. They’re in the bathroom by my room.”

“Got it.”

Dick showed you how to hold your arms again, then got in position. You inhaled deeply, then watched as Dick threw his arms back, bringing his legs over his head to twist into a flip, then two, then three. He brought his left leg out in a sharp kick, then landed in a low squat.

“Wow!” you yelled, crashing into him and wrapping your arms around him. “That was the coolest thing ever!”

Dick smiled at you and murmured, “Couldn’t have done it without my spotter.”

Present Day

Dick’s earpiece fizzled out in the middle of a fight in the Narrows. He pulled it out and tightened the knot, then texted you that he was on the way in. In the month since you joined the team, he’s become proficient in breaking things. Each time he carries a broken piece of tech to you, he holds his breath when your fingers move across his palm, watches in awe as you dedicate your time and talent to helping him. Yet, after all these visits, he hasn’t been able to remember where he knows you from.

“How’d that happen?” you ask, holding the tangled earpiece chord up to the light.

Barbara glances up, then looks pointedly at Dick. “Weird place for damage,” she muses knowingly.

“I think Scarecrow grabbed it,” he offers, shrugging. “Can you fix it?”

“Should be easy enough.”

You pull out a pair of pliers and a magnifying glass on a stand. Before you pull it into place, you check your computer.

“Robin, Red Robin, going dark for five,” you radio.

“If you’re eating, I’m going to be so mad,” Tim replies. “I’m starving.”

“Then get something to eat,” you suggest. “I’ll be back. Watch out for each other.”

“So,” Dick begins, leaning against the edge of your desk. “You’re pretty close with Tim and Dami.”

“I am. They’re great.”

“Just them?”

You look at Dick from the corner of your eye, smiling when you see that his attention is on you. “Well, there are some days that I feel like I adopted them without knowing about it… But I’m honored they trusted me enough to get close.”

“I trust you too,” Dick murmurs, reaching toward you.

“I know,” you hum. “Enough to fix all your broken toys, at least.”

“No, seriously,” Dick continues, shifting to be closer to you. “I trust you. I- Do you think we could be that close?”

You pull the knot loose, then work the chord back into place. As you pass it to Dick, you look at his mask and admit, “If that’s what you want, absolutely.”

You stand and offer your hand, telling him your name again. He pulls his domino mask off, his blue eyes dipping to your lips before he meets your eyes.

“Dick Grayson,” he introduces.

“Nice to meet you. I think Batman needs you back out there, though.”

Dick nods, squeezing your hand once before he replaces his mask. “I’ll be back.”

“I have no doubt about that.”

He waves, then slips out of the clocktower.

“You didn’t seem surprised,” Barbara muses, wheeling herself closer to where you’re still standing. “Something you want to tell me?”

“Dick Grayson learned how to do Nightwing’s signature triple kick flip because I offered to spot him,” you admit. “I’ve known for a week.”

“And you didn’t tell me?!” Barbara exclaims. “I didn’t know you and Dick knew each other!”

“We were childhood friends, Babs. We lost touch before high school, I think. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”

“And now?” she asks.

“Now, I have to get back to work.”

“You know what I mean.”

Putting your headset on, you murmur, “Can’t hear you, working, sorry.”

“Does he know?” Barbara asks.

You look down at your keyboard and admit, “I have no idea.”

“Well, it answers the great mystery of why Nightwing keeps breaking everything he touches.”

“Anything I can blame him for?” Red Hood asks, entering with a tray of drinks in hand.

“Not unless you’ve had a damaged piece of tech brought in so he can flirt with Glitch,” Barbara answers flatly.

“What?” Jason asks, wide-eyed as he sets the drinks down. “Oh, tell me everything.”

“Did you know they grew up together?” Barbara asks, smiling at your dramatic groan.

Jason passes you a drink and realizes, “I knew you looked familiar! Boy Wonder really didn’t recognize you right away? With the crush he had on you back then?”

“What?” you question, pushing away from the desk. “He… It wasn’t like that.”

Jason looks at Barbara and whispers, “She serious?”

“They both are,” Barbara sighs. “I’m hoping he catches up soon.”

“Let me know if he doesn’t,” Jason says.

“Why?” you wonder.

“She’s adorable,” Jason rumbles. “But I gotta go punch some people. See you later.”

“Sorry,” Dick says, cupping something in his hands.

“What did you break tonight, Mr. Grayson?” you ask, inviting him into your apartment through the window.

“Uh, my microphone,” he murmurs as he steps into your space. “Which I apparently need.”

“Whatever would we do without your dulcet tones keeping us informed?” you joke.

“See, you get it.”

You chuckle, then drop the broken mic onto your counter. “What’d you do?” you question as you open a small toolbox beside it. “You sit on it, goofball?”

Dick freezes behind you, watching your hands move.

Ten Years Ago

“That hurt,” you complained through giggles.

“It looked like it hurt,” Dick replied, failing to stifle his own laughs.

“Then why’d you jump after me, goofball?”

Dick shrugged, brushing his fingers along your forearm. “I didn’t want you to do it alone.”

“Thanks,” you whispered, leaning closer to him as you laid in the grass.

“Master Dick!” Alfred called from the patio. “Are you alright?”

Dick rolled his eyes and jumped to his feet, assuring Alfred everything was alright as he helped you to your feet.

“Want to stay for dinner, goofball?” Dick asked.

“Hey, that’s my thing,” you reminded him, bumping your hip against his side. “Get your own nickname.”

Present Day

“Dick?” you ask, twisting to see him. “You alright? Need me to call Leslie?”

“I- I’m not hurt,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Did you just call me a goofball?”

You drop your miniature screwdriver and stand, rubbing your hands together. “I didn’t mean to be offensive,” you explain. “It’s just something I’ve said-”

“Since you were a kid,” Dick finishes for you. “It never bothered me, even I pretended it did.”

“You remember me?” you ask, breathless as Dick steps closer to you.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Dick prefaces, “I didn’t. Not until just now. I knew I had seen you before, but I couldn’t remember where. It was keeping me up at night, the wondering and thinking about you.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“I didn’t know if you remembered me, too. Or if you wanted to.”

“Of course, I remembered you. I’ve known since that night in the alley behind Iceberg when you did the triple kick flip.”

Dick smiles, shaking his head as he muses, “And Jason said my showmanship wouldn’t get me anything in life.”

“Now that I know and you know… Do you still trust me?”

“I always have.”

“Good. Because I think your mic is a lost cause.”

“Sounds like something you should tell Bruce.”

“Sounds like something you should tell Bruce,” you counter. “I did my part and I wash my hands of it.”

“Scaredy cat,” Dick taunts.

“That is correct. Tim and Damian are coming over to watch a movie, if you want to stay.”

Dick agrees, though something in his chest tightens at the idea of his brothers being so much closer to you than he is, even with your shared history.

“Hey, Glitch?” Dick calls when you move toward the living room. “I’m glad I remembered.”

You smile at him, and Dick nearly falls to his knees when you say, “Me too.”

“You know the night-shift baristas all have crushes on Jay, right?” Dick asks.

“When did you get here?” you question, setting your cup down as you look at the still-closed door.

“You should be used to that by now,” Barbara mumbles.

“Wait, is that why he never lets me pay him back?” you realize. “The drinks are free?”

“My brother brings you drinks?” Dick exclaims. “He never gets me anything!”

You smile and posit, “Maybe he likes me more.”

Dick peels his domino mask off and slides onto your desk before he nods. “Understandable. I actually came in because I need a favor.”

“What’d you break?”

“Me? Break something?” Dick repeats, holding an offended hand to his chest. “How could you think such a thing?”

“Dick,” you sigh, looking up at the exposed roof rafters.

“Less of a break and more of an accidental deletion,” he admits, passing you the small device you privately refer to as a batphone.

“What do you need to recover?” you ask, plugging it into your computer.

“A picture of-”

“Glitch,” Damian says, pushing the heavy metal door open. “We require assistance.”

“You and every other hero,” you murmur. Speaking up, you ask, “How can I help?”

“I found this in Two-Face’s stuff,” Tim offers, passing you a red thumb drive.

“Which you can investigate without me,” you reply, sliding it across the desk. “Though I appreciate you trusting me enough to keep passing off your work.”

“I don’t think I can,” Tim counters, pushing it back.

“I was here first,” Dick interrupts as he lays his hand on your shoulder. “Get in line.”

Damian narrows his eyes at Dick, then whispers something you can’t decipher. You can’t be sure if you’re more grateful or curious.

“I can help you both, but if you’re all camped out in here, who’s watching the streets of Gotham?” you inquire.

“Me, Batman, Red Hood, Spoiler, and Orphan,” Barbara answers. “We’ve got it handled for at least twenty minutes. Take your time.”

“And stop accepting presents from Jay,” Dick suggests.

You twist to look up at him, already sure of the answer when you ask, “Why?”

“Uh, because… You know… For the baristas! He’s taking advantage of them and the working class has it rough.”

“I see.”

“I knew you would,” he hums, nodding. “You’re very perceptive.”

“This is super weird,” Tim groans from your other side.

“I’ve seen bird courting rituals in which the male retained more dignity,” Damian mutters.

“I can call you when it’s done,” you offer. “You too, goofball.”

Dick smiles, moving lithely toward the door. “You’re too kind, my love,” he calls.

“So, are we going to talk about that or you want to keep it secret like when you found out his identity?” Barbara wonders, smirking at you.

“I thought you were protecting Gotham,” you respond softly, scrolling through the files on Dick’s device.

“I can multi-task.”

“Fantastic.”

“What is going on tonight?” you ask no one in particular, clicking between numerous open tabs. “It wasn’t this bad when Scarecrow dosed the Upper East Side.”

“Gotham’s an enigma,” Barbara agrees. “My dad is sending some intel and a few 911 call transcripts.”

“You think that’ll help?”

“Yes. Maybe. No. Who knows?”

“That was encouraging,” you deadpan, watching the boys’ trackers blink across the city. “Thanks for that, Barbara.”

“Anytime. I’ll be here all night.”

“Glitch,” Jason radios. “Where am I going?”

“We could use some help down here, G!” Tim yells, his first word overlapping with Jason’s last.

“Let me-” you begin before Damian agrees that your assistance is required.

“Where’s Killer Croc?” Dick asks then. “I’m by the camera you said spotted him.”

“Guys,” you interrupt. “I can only check one thing at a time.”

“I asked first,” Jason reminds you.

“But we are facing a situation with more urgency,” Damian argues.

“And I need to find Croc before he eats someone,” Dick chimes in. “Or another taser!”

“Okay, okay,” you concede. “Then maybe one of you could ask Babs? She can-”

“No,” the boys say together.

Across from you, listening in, Barbara begins laughing, clutching her stomach as the heroes of Gotham argue over who you should help first, refusing to go to Barbara to get the information and assistance they need. Her laughs grow shorter as her eyes water in amusement.

“Seriously?” you question, splitting your monitor to have three tabs open and accessible.

“Yep,” Jason affirms.

“Babs asked you to help because she’s busy, too,” Tim reminds you.

“And you care about us,” Dick murmurs, his pout practically audible as he checks, “right? We’re helpless boys, remember?”

“Helpless?” you repeat incredulously.

“Yeah. And you’re so smart and kind and you-”

“Fine, I’ll help. Just stop talking for a second. Hood, Mercy Hospital.”

“Aye, aye, cap,” he radios before his tracker moves toward the bridge connecting the narrows to the Upper East Side.

“Robin, Red Robin, your intel is old. The new meeting is in Cherry Hill.”

“This is why we love you,” Tim singsongs.

“And Nightwing…”

“I’ll do the triple kick flip again, you just have to ask,” he responds when you trail off.

“Killer Croc is in the water tunnels, moving toward us,” you say. “And maybe another day, when you’re ready to make that a quadruple kick flip.”

“Smart kind and beautiful,” he mutters softly. “’S what I was gonna say before.”

“Go save the city, Nightwing.”

“Only ‘cause you’re in it.”

Barbara takes a deep breath, wiping beneath her eyes. “Oh, I’d heard that he flirted with you and the others were acting like your kids, but I wasn’t expecting it to be that good.”

“They trust me,” you sigh. “That was the goal, right?”

“They do more than trust you. Especially the Boy Wonder.”

“He’s flirty. Always has been.”

“With you, I believe.”

Three months into being part of Batman’s team, you’ve become part of the family. Tim and Damian have practically moved into your apartment — it’s the only place they can be found most weekends — while Dick has kept up the flirty repertoire while he patrols and Jason gives you unsolicited but amazing book recommendations and advice. When you’re not in the clocktower working alongside Barbara or watching nature documentaries with Damian, you hang out with Barbara as people rather than Batman’s backstage crew. You go shopping together, visit her dad, just have fun.

But it’s different with Dick. Not just the radio flirting, all of it. You lie in bed at night unable to sleep; not because of the fights and the devastation you witness, but because you’re thinking about Dick Grayson. Like tonight, the boys are taking shifts protecting the night while Bruce is at a charity gala, and you’re sitting at home, restless as you wait for midnight, when you’ll take over for Barbara from the comfort of your own home.

With only an hour and a half ‘til then, you flinch when someone knocks on your window. Your window that is far above ground level. Carefully, you inch down the darkened hallway until you reach the living room. Peeking around the corner to see the window, you gasp at the sight of Nightwing leaning against the fire escape railing.

“What happened?” you demand as you pull the window open.

“I think Bane is having a bad night,” he grumbles, sliding into your space. “Was. I knocked him out.”

“You couldn’t have done that before he tried to crush you like that radio you broke my first week?”

Dick smiles, flipping the latch on your window to lock it behind him. “I’m clumsy,” he excuses with a shrug.

“You’re hurt,” you correct, ushering him to your bathroom.

He falls heavily onto the closed toilet lid, hissing softly when he pulls the domino mask off his face.

“I thought you had Leslie for stuff like this,” you murmur, spreading a first aid kit open by the sink.

“We do.”

“Then why are you here with me?”

Dick drops his head back, his eyes closed as he smiles. “Just answered your own question, goofball.”

“Hold still,” you request, cupping his chin to wipe a scrape across his forehead. “How bad is it?”

“I’ll probably be sore, but nothing’s broken. Totally not like the radio.”

You nod, then work in comfortable silence. Kneeling in front of him, you put ointment on his bruises to ease the pain, then open a few bandages. You press one to a scratch on his left shoulder and one around his thumb.

“Elephants?” Dick asks when he opens his eyes.

You lift your head to find he’s looking at you rather than the cartoon elephant bandage. “I promised I’d patch you up with them if you fell,” you remind him softly.

“Yeah, you did.”

Dick reaches forward, brushing his hands against your waist. When you lean into the touch, he grips you tighter, pulling you closer in the already limited space. He whispers your name when you brush your fingers through his hair.

“Nightwing,” you reply lowly.

“No, it’s-”

“I know, Dick,” you promise, smiling. “I know.”

“I wanted to fall that day,” Dick admits. “I knew that if I fell, you really would patch me up and maybe if I was lucky, I could convince you to kiss it better.”

“Genius plan.”

“I’m very smart,” he defends. “But then I got in the starting position and all I could think about was my parents falling and how scared I was. I knew I couldn’t do that to you.”

You nod, stilling your fingers in his hair. “I’m sorry we lost touch,” you offer.

“I’m sorry I broke so much stuff,” he replies. “I just… I just needed to see you, to be close to you.”

“Not entirely unlike how it was back then. You snapping pencils in half to borrow one of mine or breaking hair ties to offer to play with my hair,” you remember. “It’s just, it’s a little better now.”

Dick smiles, straightening as he raises one hand to cup your face. “You think so?”

“Of course I do.”

“I was scared that you wouldn’t remember me,” Dick admits.

“I think even if we never remembered exactly what it was like before, we would have found something new,” you promise him. “You were always going to be my goofball.”

Dick smiles, moving slowly as he pulls you down to his level. He brushes his lips over yours, sighing into the kiss as you hold him like you never want to let go. When he moves to pull back, you steal one more kiss, then move to spread kisses along his jaw and up to his cheekbone. Dick laughs, his shoulders shaking against you. At the reminder, you dip your chin and press the bandage on his shoulder, then interlace your fingers and bring his forearm up to kiss there too.

“Oh gross!” someone yells before the sound of an exaggerated gag fills the hall.

“I thought you locked the window,” you whisper against Dick’s arm.

“That doesn’t matter,” Tim scoffs. “We’ll be in the kitchen when you’re done with whatever this is.”

“You could do better, Glitch,” Damian adds, pulling the bathroom door closed.

“I love that they act like we’re kissing in their house and not admitting that they broke in,” Dick muses, sliding his hands along your sides.

“They’re your brothers,” you remind him. “I’m allowed to show my goofball love however I want in my own-”

“Love?” Dick interrupts, his head tipped to the side.

“Yeah, Dick,” you promise, leaning in again. “Same as always. There was no way I’d never remember you.”

Dick smiles into the next kiss, the pain of Bane’s punches long gone as your confession moves like lightning in his veins.

Bonus:

“I thought you weren’t supposed to bring me presents anymore,” you joke when Jason passes you a cup.

“I paid for it,” he promises. “With my winnings.”

“Winnings?”

“You didn’t know about the betting pool?” Babs asks. “You and Boy Wonder?”

“You bet on my relationship with Dick?”

“Not just us. Your goofball made a pretty penny betting that you’d remember him and not tell anyone,” Jason explains.

“Great, now I’m part of a Red Hood-orchestrated rom-com,” you grumble.

“Where did you get that?” Dick asks, standing in the doorway and pointing at your cup.

“Your brother is making amends.”

Dick nods, then sits on the floor beside you, leaning his head against your leg. “I love you,” he says.

“On that note, I’m out,” Jason says. “See you tonight, Glitch.”

“See you,” you call. “Be safe.” Then, you look down at Dick, brushing his hair off his forehead as you promise, “I love you.”

“What’s tonight?” he wonders.

“We’re showing Damian George of the Jungle.”

“Oh, I’m so there. Dibs on the seat by you.”

“It’s yours forever, goofball.”

He plans things, real things, not generic dinner-and-a-movie things, but things: a midnight breakfast at a diner he loves in Blüdhaven, a borrowed canoe at four a.m. so you can watch the sun come up on a reservoir, a rooftop he knows about with a view of the river, the back room of a salsa club where he knows the owner and has known the owner since he was fifteen, a bookstore that's open late where he buys you a book he thinks you'll love and inscribes it with something funny and slightly breathtaking.

He texts back immediately, he calls when he says he'll call, he remembers every offhand thing you mention, he shows up on time, he opens doors, he has manners in a way that's real and was beaten into him by both his parents and Alfred and his own native warmth, and the manners are not a performance.

He is, also, physical in a way that disarms you immediately.

Dick was raised by acrobats and lives in a body that doesn't have the boundary between platonic and not-platonic that most people's bodies have; his hand will be on your lower back when he's guiding you through a crowd, his arm will be slung around your shoulders when you're walking down the street, he'll pull you into his lap on the couch with the easy thoughtlessness of a man who's been physically affectionate with everyone he loves since he was a child, and within the first two weeks you'll already feel like you've been touching him for years.

The flirting is playful. Dick teases the way he was taught to tease, lightly, never punching down, with a grin that lets you know he's having a wonderful time.

He calls you gorgeous and beautiful and uses your name like a song, he winks at you across rooms with the kind of dial-up wink most men cannot pull off to save their lives but which on Dick reads as charming because his face was made for it, he flirts like flirting is a love language he speaks fluently in three dialects and is willing to teach you any of them.

And then (and this is the first crack) you'll notice, somewhere around week six, week eight, that you don't actually know him. Not yet. You know an enormous amount about him: the surface biography (orphaned, raised by Bruce, was Robin, became Nightwing, lives in Blüdhaven, used to date Barbara, used to date Kori, used to date a half-dozen women whose names you've heard in passing and who he speaks of with affection that's also slightly unnerving because who manages to break up with that many women and still be friends with all of them—the answer is Dick).

You know his routines, and you know his favourite restaurants, and you know which of his brothers he can tolerate this week. You know that his back hurts when it rains, and you know how he takes his coffee. But you don't know what scares him, or what he thinks about when he can't sleep, and you don't know what he has not told you, because Dick is a master of giving you so much that you don't notice what's being withheld.

This is the central paradox of dating Dick Grayson, and you have to understand it early or you'll spend years confused: he's not lying, he's not hiding from you in any way he could be called out for, he's not a secretive man. He is, in fact, by Bat-family standards, a radically open one, a person who hugs his friends and tears up at movies and tells you he loves you without flinching.

But he has a way of being present with you that doesn't require him to be known, and it can take you a year to even register that you've been giving him your whole inner life and getting back something that feels like the same coin but is actually a different currency altogether.

The flaws (because yeah, golden boy has those) are real and they're specific, and the first one is that he's conflict-avoidant in a way that can drive you genuinely insane.

Dick was raised by Bruce, and Bruce communicates by glaring through plate glass for forty years, and Dick reacted to that by becoming the opposite on the surface (affable, talkative, easy) but underneath he's still a Bat, which means when something is actually wrong, when something is sitting between you that needs to be dealt with, he'll smile, deflect, and he'll change the subject.

He'll give you a hug and a forehead kiss and a we're fine, baby, we're great, and the issue will not get addressed, and three weeks later it will resurface in some roundabout way and you'll realise he's been carrying it around the entire time and just not telling you, because telling you would have been a fight, and Dick Grayson has spent his whole life trying to be the person who never has to fight with the people he loves.

The second flaw is over-extension. Dick says yes to everything, Dick is in a dozen people's emergency contacts, Dick is the one his brothers call at 2 a.m., Dick is the one Babs calls when she needs help, Dick is the one Bruce calls when something has gone wrong with the family in a way Bruce can't fix on his own.

Dick is the police officer (or the consultant, depending on which era we're talking) who can't say no to overtime, Dick is on the Titans roster, Dick is in the JLA rotation, Dick is mentoring three teenagers and checking in on six others, and you'll find, in the second or third month of dating him, that he's exhausted in a way he will not admit to.

The exhaustion has consequences for you. He'll fall asleep mid-sentence on your couch, cancel plans last-minute with apologies that sound rehearsed because he gives them too often. He'll be physically present with you and mentally three calls behind on his to-do list, and when you try to talk to him about it he will look at you with those big blue eyes and tell you he's fine, baby, I promise, I just need a few hours, and you'll have to learn that a few hours in Dick's vocabulary means I'm not going to address this, please stop asking.

The third flaw (and this one's the worst) is what Babs once called, in a fight that he absolutely did not handle gracefully, his martyr complex.

Dick has internalised the idea that he's responsible for the wellbeing of the people he loves, that their pain is his to absorb, that if anything goes wrong it's on him to fix it.

The way this shows up in a relationship is that he'll not let you take care of him, not in any way he could not have explained as just being thoughtful, not in any way you can call out without sounding ridiculous. But the asymmetry is real.

He'll hold you when you cry, but won't cry in front of you; he'll ask you about your day with focused interest, then deflect when you ask about his; he'll let you in to the version of him that needs to be the strong one, and he'll pretend the version of him that needs anything else doesn't exist. And if you're not paying attention you'll fall in love with the strong version and never notice that the other one is starving.

Then there's the family. Dick's family is, depending on the day, either a delight or a structural threat to your relationship. Dick is the eldest son, the golden boy, the one who absorbs all of the Bat-family chaos and metabolises it into functional family dynamics, and being his partner means inheriting an entire tribe of complicated, traumatized, dangerous men (and women), some of whom will adore you and some of whom will decide instantly that you're not good enough for him.

Damian will be politely contemptuous of you for at least a year before grudgingly admitting that you have your uses; Jason will needle you and Dick equally and call you sister-in-law in that lazy drawl before you've even talked about marriage just to watch Dick choke on his beer; Tim will run a background check on you because he runs background checks on everyone Dick dates and is genuinely apologetic about it (maybe); Cass will simply look at you for a long quiet moment and then either nod or not nod, and there's no court of appeal for what Cass decides; Babs will be polite to your face and reserve judgment, and you'll understand within ten minutes of meeting her that she and Dick share a history that is cellular in a way that nothing can quite touch, and you'll have to make peace with this or you'll lose your mind.

Bruce will be Bruce about it, which means he will not openly disapprove and he will not openly approve, he'll simply observe, and you'll leave every dinner at the manor unsure whether you passed or failed. Alfred (bless Alfred) will be the one who actually tells you the truth, in tiny offhand asides delivered while he refills your tea, things like, "Master Dick has not slept well this week, Miss, I trust you will encourage him to take a proper rest", and you'll understand that Alfred is the only person in this entire family who's going to tell you what's actually going on, and you'll love Alfred for the rest of your life (don't we all?).

Now, the Barbara thing. Because we have to address it.

Babs is one of Dick's people in a way that you, no matter how much he loves you, can't fully displace at the level of history, and you have to decide early whether you can live with that or whether it's going to corrode you from the inside.

They've known each other since they were teenagers, they've loved each other in every possible way (romantically, platonically, professionally, with grief, with rage, with the kind of forgiveness that only comes from people who've survived each other), and there's a frequency on which they communicate that no one else can pick up (half-sentences finished by the other one, references to events that don't have names, the particular way she says Grayson that sounds like a whole conversation) and the texture of their friendship is going to take some getting used to, because they are close, they'll always be close, and that's information you have to absorb without resentment.

But (and this is very important) Dick knows what it looks like from the outside, Dick has been in this exact situation with previous partners. Dick has watched relationships die on the Babs hill before, and he's not going to let that happen with you, and the way he'll not let it happen is by being crystalline about where you stand.

The first time the topic comes up (and it'll come up, you'll say something offhand, or he'll catch a flicker on your face when she calls, or someone at a Bat-family thing will make a comment that lands wrong) he will stop, turn to you, take your hands or your face, and he'll say it: "hey. hey, look at me. she's my friend. she's my best friend. she's not—she's not what you are. you are what you are. you. okay?" and the use of the word you twice, the you-are-what-you-are, is going to land in your sternum like a bell, because Dick chooses words for a living and he's chosen these ones on purpose. What he's telling you is not don't worry about her but understand who you are to me, specifically, and let that be enough.

He'll do it more than once, because he understands it has to be reiterated. Because he understands that with him in particular the past is populated, and reassurance with Dick is not a one-time conversation it's a practice.

He'll bring it up unprompted sometimes, when he's noticed something you didn't say, "hey, by the way, you know that thing earlier? Barbara and I are gonna be like that forever, that's not changing, but you also know there's no version of my life where I'm not coming home to you, right? you know that?", and the willingness to say it without being asked is the thing that, over months, defuses it.

He'll not perform a separation from her that isn't real, but he'll absolutely perform, in the most direct and least ambiguous terms possible, his choice of you, and you'll learn, slowly, to trust that the choice is renewed every day on purpose.

And the small things matter: he keeps a photo of you on his nightstand, where her photo used to live (he'll mention this exactly once, casually, watching for your reaction, "used to be a different picture there, now it's you, just so you know," and it'll take you the rest of the night to recover).

He introduces you, every time, by your full name followed by my girl; he holds your hand at family dinners (the small everyday hand-holding, not performance) even when she's at the table.

He asks your opinion on cases when both of you are present, because he wants you to know that you're not in the second tier, that the room you occupy in his life is the room with the lights on; and the cumulative weight of all of these small choices, made consistently over years, is what makes the difference between a partner who eats herself alive over Babs and one who learns, eventually, that being his now is not a lesser thing than being someone's was, and may in fact be the bigger thing.

The Kori thing is different and easier, because Kori lives in a different gravity than the rest of you do, and her relationship with Dick is something he carries with him like an ache rather than a pull. It's the past, it really is, but the past did something to him that you'll feel sometimes. The way he gets quiet when stars come up in conversation, the way he doesn't talk about the time after the Titans first broke up. You don't push it, the same way you don't push the rest of it, because Dick is not a man who responds well to being excavated.

Now, the intimacy. This is where everything that's been laid out so far really matters, because Dick in a relationship looks one way and Dick in bed looks another, and the difference is illuminating about who he actually is.

You'd think (based on the charm, the easy physicality, the way he flirts, the half-dozen famous exes) that Dick would be a suave lover, a smooth one, the kind of man who orchestrates a seduction the way a conductor runs a symphony, and the truth is more interesting than that and a little bit funnier:

Dick is technically extraordinary (this is a man who has the body control of an Olympic gymnast, the cardio of a working acrobat, and the kind of physical literacy that means he can find any nerve cluster in your body within four minutes of meeting it), and yes, he absolutely could run the symphony version, and sometimes does, but his actual default mode in bed is delighted, almost playful, with a generosity that borders on excessive.

Because Dick was raised in a culture where giving someone pleasure is a form of love, and he has internalised this so thoroughly that he genuinely doesn't understand selfish lovers, finds them confusing, considers them a category mistake.

The first time is not fast. Dick is not a man in a hurry, he's waited his whole life to find out what you like and he's not going to rush.

The experience of being undressed by Dick Grayson the first time is a thing that will spoil you for other people, because he treats it like an event. He kisses you like he has all the time in the world (and he does, and he's going to use all of it), and when his hands first move under your shirt the touch is so unhurried and so deliberate that you'll, briefly, forget how to breathe.

He undresses you slowly, watching your face, narrating with his hands rather than his mouth. The first thing you'll notice is that he's quiet in bed at first, not silent but attentive, listening to you, watching, learning, and the second thing you'll notice is that he smiles against your skin, often, like he's having a wonderful time, like there's nowhere else he'd rather be.

The smiling against your skin is going to undo you, because nobody has ever made you feel that welcome in your own body before.

He has specific physical tells in bed that are just him, and you'll come to recognise them like signatures:

He hums. A low, almost-not-audible hum against your skin when he's particularly enjoying something, a sound that's not a moan and not really a growl but something closer to a contented animal noise, and the first time you feel it vibrate against your collarbone you'll understand why his exes never quite got over him;

He has a habit of pausing mid-thrust to grin at you, just stop and grin, like he can't quite believe his luck, and the grin will be at close range and unguarded and if you weren't already in love with him it would do the job;

He taps his fingers. When his hand is resting on your hip or your thigh, his fingertips will tap absently, an irregular little rhythm, the same way they tap on a coffee cup when he's thinking, and you'll realise he doesn't even know he does it;

He has a ticklish spot just below his ribs on the left side that he does not announce and will absolutely deny if asked, but if your mouth happens to land there during the slow exploration phase he will jolt and laugh, surprised out of his cool, and the laugh (that real laugh, the one his handsome face was made for) will derail the next ten minutes;

He kisses foreheads, constantly, mid-fuck, between thrusts, after climax, your forehead, your temple, the crown of your head, like a punctuation mark, and you'll learn that the forehead-kiss is his most reflexive expression of affection and it shows up in bed as often as it shows up anywhere else.

He's a worshipful lover in a way that can take you a few times to get used to.

Dick goes down like it's a hobby, he goes down like he's competing with himself for Olympic gold. He goes down for long stretches and shows no signs of getting bored. The eye contact is intense in a way that will short-circuit you the first time, because he wants to watch your face fall apart, he wants the information, and the entire time his hands will be doing other things, attentive things, his fingers laced with yours or holding your thigh pinned open or pressed flat against your stomach so he can feel you breathe.

Afterwards he will rest his cheek against your hip for a moment with this expression of quiet satisfaction that will make you want to weep, because he's pleased with himself, in the best way, like he just executed a perfect double-twist and stuck the landing without a single wobble.

He's vocal in a particular register. Dick praises, constantly, and the first time you notice the pattern it's a little dizzying because you have not, until this point in your life, been told you are gorgeous, perfect, fucking incredible, baby look at you, that's it, just like that, fuck you feel so good, you have no idea what you do to me by a man who clearly means every single word.

The praise is not generic, it's specific. He tells you about the noise you just made, tells you about the way your back arched just now, he tells you about how you taste, tells you about something you did three minutes ago that he can't stop thinking about. And the cumulative effect is that being in bed with Dick is like being told an extremely flattering story about yourself in real time and discovering, against your will, that you might actually believe it.

He calls you baby (that's the dominant one, the one he uses the most) and beautiful and sweetheart and honey and your name, often, comfortably. The use of your name is not a wall to be brought down because the wall isn't there; the first time he says I love you in bed it will be relatively early (months early) because Dick says it easily, he says it freely, and he means it every time.

You'll have to decide whether the easiness of it is a comfort or a complication, because the words come faster from him than they did from anyone else you've loved and that doesn't necessarily mean less, but it does mean different.

He's ridiculously attentive. He reads you in real time and adjusts, he learns your body in two or three sessions in a way that some people don't manage in years. He remembers what worked, he tries new things and watches your face for your reactions, he asks (verbally! with words! like a regular person!) what you want, and the asking is hot rather than awkward because Dick is genuinely curious, he wants to know, the wanting to know is part of the wanting you.

The cumulative effect of all of this, over months, is that the sex with Dick becomes some of the most pleasurable sex you've ever had in your life, and that fact, in itself, is going to start to bother you in a specific way that takes you a while to identify.

Because here's the thing nobody tells you about being a generous lover's partner: you start to notice, somewhere in month three or four, that the dynamic is asymmetric.

Dick is very, very invested in your pleasure, he derives a great deal of satisfaction from giving it to you, but the bulk of every encounter is structured around making you fall apart, and you'll start to wonder, gently at first, what he actually likes. What he actually wants. What would happen if you took the wheel for an evening and made the night about him, and you will discover, over time, that this is genuinely difficult for him.

Dick has trouble receiving. This is the bedroom version of the wider pattern (the over-extension, the conflict avoidance, the martyr-complex thing) and it shows up in bed as a deflection, a graceful one, almost imperceptible.

You start working your way down his body and he'll roll the two of you so suddenly you're underneath him again and he's grinning at you like yeah, no, my turn; you'll try to slow him down and he'll redirect with a kiss and his hand between your legs; you'll say it, eventually, Dick, hey, let me, and he'll laugh (that easy charming laugh, the deflective one) and say baby, I'm having fun, I'm great, c'mere, and the conversation will end and you'll be on your back again and you will, an hour later, lying next to him while he's drifting off, realise that he's done it again.

The first time you sit with this, properly (the first time you understand what's happening) you'll feel a little sick, because you'll realise that the generosity you'd been mistaking for sexual confidence is partly a deflection, a way of making the encounter about you so it doesn't have to be about him. A way of staying in the role of the giver because the role of the receiver is one he was not, somewhere along the way, taught how to occupy without flinching.

The way you have to crack it is the same way you have to crack every other layer of him, which is patiently, over time, with a kind of attention that mirrors back the attention he's been giving you.

What you do, slowly, is insist, gently, repeatedly, without making it a confrontation: you take his hand and put it on the headboard above his head and you say stay there, you laugh when you say it, you keep it light, but you mean it, and he'll laugh and try to move and you'll say no, stay, and he'll go very still and look at you with something new in his face (a flicker of genuine surprise, almost a kind of unease) and what yo're doing in this moment is showing him that the room is going to hold him whether he's in motion or not.

The first time he actually lets you do what you want with him, the first time he just lies there and lets you take him apart, slowly, with no escape route, you'll see his composure crack in real time and it'll be one of the most extraordinary things you've ever witnessed, because Dick Grayson unguarded is a rare phenomenon and you're getting it because you earned it.

And what you'll discover, when he finally lets himself receive, is that he is extremely responsive. Vocally, physically, emotionally. That the surface charm has been masking a deep, almost unbearable sensitivity, that he gets loud when he's being properly attended to, that he has shake in him when someone is patient with him.

He will say things (broken, half-finished things, baby, please, oh god, fuck, don't stop, please) that you have never heard from him in any other context, because Dick when he's being taken care of is a different person than Dick when he's taking care of you.

The moment you get access to that other Dick is the moment the relationship begins to deepen into something the surface version could never have built on its own.

The other thing about Dick in bed (and this is important) is that he's strong, in a way that doesn't always register because his charm makes him read as soft. The way this surfaces in bed is genuinely startling the first time you encounter it.

Dick can pick you up, easily, without much effort, and rearrange the geography of the bed with the kind of casual physicality that comes from a man who routinely flips off rooftops, and the first time he does it (the first time he just lifts you, hands under your thighs, and walks you to a different position with no apparent strain) you'll have a small private revelation about what the rest of his life is like, and the thing he holds back.

The strength he's being careful with around you, is going to become a quiet erotic undercurrent for the entire relationship.

And then there's the flexibility, which you can't talk about Dick in bed without addressing.

The man can do things with his body that other people genuinely cannot, and it's not a party trick, it's just physical fact. He can hold positions other men would tap out of within minutes, his hips have a kind of fluency that's difficult to describe and impossible to forget.

He can fold you up into shapes you didn't know your body would do and hold you there long enough for the position to stop being an act and start being a place you live, and he's not show-offy about this, he doesn't lead with it, he just uses it, casually, the way other men use their hands.

The first time it really registers what you're working with you'll laugh, mid-act, an involuntary disbelieving laugh, and he'll stop and grin at you and ask what, and you'll say nothing, nothing, keep going, and he'll know exactly what, and his ego will preen for a week about it.

He can kneel between your thighs with his back arched and his hands braced wide on the headboard for as long as he wants to; no shake, no shift, no sign of strain, just steady working focus. He can fold himself almost in half over you while still keeping perfect rhythm, his forehead against yours, his elbows planted on either side of your head, his hips doing something that should not be physically possible from that angle but apparently is when it's him.

He can sit back on his heels with you in his lap and stay there for hours, his hands on your hips guiding you, his thighs not trembling once, his breathing barely changed, and the patient quality of that stillness (the way he can just hold and let you move on him at your pace) is one of the most erotic things you've ever encountered, because he's not enduring it, he's enjoying it, you can see it on his face.

His hips are their own subject, and you'll think about them in spare moments for the rest of your life.

There's a fluency to the way he moves that other people simply don't have, an unbroken liquid quality, the same physical literacy that makes him a working acrobat showing up here as the ability to change rhythms mid-stroke without losing the through-line, to slow down without losing the angle, to grind in a slow circle that finds something specific inside you and stays there until you're making sounds you don't recognise, and the worst part is that he knows.

He has the information, he's clocked the angle that makes your breath catch and he can return to it with surgical precision whenever he wants to, and he does, often, with a small private smile against your shoulder.

He has a habit to pick you up mid-fuck and walking you somewhere else without losing rhythm. This is a real thing he does and the first time he does it you will go slightly insane, because you'd been on the bed and you'd thought you were going to finish on the bed, and instead he's reached under your thighs, lifted you cleanly into his lap with his hands cupping you, stood up, walked you to the wall, and pressed your back against it without ever pulling out.

The casualness of the whole manoeuvre (the way it's genuinely no effort for him) is going to recalibrate your understanding of what sex can be; he does the same thing with the bed-to-counter relocation, with the bed-to-shower transition, with picking you up off the couch when neither of you is going to make it to the bedroom in time, and every single time he does it he treats it as completely unremarkable, which is somehow worse than if he were trying to impress you with it.

The positions he prefers shift over time, too.

His early-relationship favourites are these: he loves having you on top of him with his hands on your hips, because he likes watching you, he likes the angle, he likes being able to reach every part of you at once (your hips, your stomach, up to your breasts, your throat if you tip your head back), and he likes the freedom it gives his mouth. He can sit up and meet you, pull you down against him, kiss you while you move, or lean back and just watch, eyes dark, jaw slack, with the kind of frank wonder that's going to feel like being looked at by a man who has never seen another woman in his life.

He loves having you face-down with his weight on your back, one of his hands flat against the mattress next to your head and the other gathered in your hair, his mouth at your ear narrating playful filth, because the angle is good and the intimacy of his mouth that close to your ear is a thing he's very aware of.

He loves having you on your side with him behind you, slow and deep and unhurried, his arm under your head and his other hand splayed across your stomach holding you against him, because this position is the one where he can stay closest to you for the longest, and Dick prioritises closeness above almost everything else.

He loves (and this is one of his giveaway favourites) having you sit in his lap, facing him, both of you upright, your legs around his waist, your foreheads together, his hands on your back holding you against him.

This is the position he reaches for on slow nights, the one he gets you into when he wants the whole encounter to be one long unbroken kiss, and the slowness of it (the way it forces you to breathe in time with him, the way his eyes are right there, two inches from yours, the way every shift is felt across your whole pressed-together body) is the position where he's most undone, where the surface charm comes off completely and you get the real him.

There's also the mid-sex things he does that will become the texture of the relationship.

He hooks one of your legs over his shoulder and turns his head to kiss the inside of your knee, never breaking rhythm, and the casual grace of the gesture (the fluency of it, the way it costs him nothing) will undo you the first dozen times he does it;

He catches your hand when you reach for him and laces your fingers and pins it to the mattress next to your head and holds it there, palm-to-palm, his thumb stroking the inside of your wrist, an entire conversation happening in two square inches of contact; he stops, sometimes, mid-thrust, and just looks at you, his rhythm gone still, his eyes traveling your face like he's trying to commit something to memory, and when you ask what he just shakes his head and smiles and kisses you and starts moving again, and you'll never get the answer to what, but you'll learn that this is one of his most reflexive expressions of love.

He talks against your skin (not on it, into it) his mouth pressed to your throat, your shoulder, the soft place under your ear, and the praise comes out muffled and warm and slightly slurred. Like he can't quite focus enough to enunciate, and there's something about the vibration of his voice directly against your pulse that hits a frequency words alone can't reach.

He murmurs into the join of your neck and shoulder, a small steady stream (baby, fuck, you feel—fuck—)and the sentences don't always finish, and the not-finishing is the proof that he means them.

He has a habit of brushing your hair back from your face mid-sex. Your hair will fall across your forehead, or into your eyes, or stick to your temple, and his hand will come up automatically and touch it, gentle, almost absent, like he can't bear to have anything between him and your face.

The gesture is so reflexive he doesn't even know he does it; he does the same thing with hair stuck to your temple from sweat (smooths it back with his thumb, presses a kiss to where it was, keeps moving) and the overall effect of being touched this attentively, this casually, while he's taking you apart between your thighs, is going to ruin you for partners who treat sex as a contained event with discrete inputs, because Dick treats it as a continuous field of attention, and once you've experienced that you can't go back.

He sucks on his fingers. Sometimes after he's had them inside you, holding eye contact, deliberate, with a small smile that's the smuggest expression on his entire face, and you'll hate him for the smugness and you'll love him for it. And you will, eventually, give up on which one wins; he does it casually, like it's the most natural follow-through in the world, and the unbothered quality of the move is what makes it work, because if it were performed it would be obnoxious and instead it just reads as a man who's genuinely enjoying himself.

He kisses down your body in a continuous unbroken line. Dick doesn't skip, Dick doesn't jump-cut. He gets from your mouth to where he's going by traveling, lips against your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, your sternum, the soft place between your ribs, your stomach, your hip.

The journey takes as long as it takes, he's in no hurry, and he stops at points along the way to settle in for a minute, sucking a mark into the place where your shoulder meets your neck, scraping his teeth lightly across your hipbone and watching you twitch, and the deliberateness of the trip is more arousing than the destination.

Dick has a thing he does where he'll be inside you, going slow, and he'll stop moving entirely. Just stop, just stay there, deep, holding still, and lean down and kiss you, hungry and unhurried, for a full minute, two minutes, however long, while the rest of him is just present inside you, not moving, not building, just there.

The held stillness combined with the kissing is going to do something to your nervous system that nothing else has ever done, and he knows, and he does it on purpose, and he watches your face afterward with this small satisfied expression that says yeah, that one's mine, I did that.

He gets a flush (high on his cheekbones, down his throat, across his chest) when he's getting close, and the flush is one of the few things about his body he can't control. The first time you notice it (you'd been watching his face) you'll feel the small private thrill of having identified one of his tells, and after that you'll watch for it deliberately, and he won't know you're watching for it, but when it appears you'll know before he does, which is a strange small power that becomes one of your favourite things about him.

He stretches afterwards, in bed, with the unselfconscious physical grace of a cat. Arms over his head, back arched off the mattress, a long luxurious extension of every muscle group, and the first time you watch him do it you'll understand viscerally what kind of body you've gotten access to, and you'll think about the stretch in inappropriate moments for years; sometimes he'll do it half-on top of you, his weight pleasantly pinning you to the mattress while he stretches his arms above his head, and the unconscious comfort of the gesture (the way he'll just use your body as a place to land) is one of the most affectionate things he does.

He puts his ear to your chest, sometimes, after you're both finished. Head tucked under your chin, ear flat against your sternum, and listens to your heartbeat, and he does this often enough that you'll realise it's very much deliberate. He's checking, that something in him is soothed by the sound of your heartbeat; he won't explain why, and you won't ask, but you'll find yourself, on the nights he does it, automatically running your fingers through his hair, holding him there, letting him stay as long as he wants. Because you understand on some pre-verbal level that this is one of the ways he loves you.

He likes (and this is something you'll have to learn over time, because he doesn't volunteer it, it has to be asked for) being underneath you. Not just casually. But in a true sense. With you setting the pace.

He likes pinning your hands above your head and watching you try to move under him; he likes (and this is the one that surprises you both) being held afterwards in a particular way, your arms around his ribs, your face against the back of his neck, your whole body tucked against his, and the first time you do it without thinking.

The first time you fold yourself around him and just stay, he goes still in the way that means I didn't know I needed this and now I will not be able to live without it, and he won't say anything, but in the morning he'll be a little softer with you than usual, a little more clingy, and that'll be his way of telling you.

He also has, and this takes you longer to notice, a thing about hair (yours specifically, but his too) he likes you running your hands through his hair (and his hair is thick and a little wild and slightly too long and he uses some kind of product that smells like cedar, and you will find yourself reaching for it constantly), and he likes pulling yours, gently, at the right moment, with the kind of precision that suggests he has done his homework on what you can take.

He likes when you scrape your nails along his scalp, soft slow drags from temple to nape, and the first time you do it absent-mindedly while watching a movie he goes liquid on the couch beneath you and you'll think you've broken him, and then you'll do it again, on purpose, in bed, and he'll make a noise you've never heard him make before.

He's a kisser in a way that some men are not. Some men kiss as a transition, a means to an end, a thing you do on the way to other things. Dick kisses as a destination, kissing is part of the event, and he'll kiss you for absurd lengths of time without escalating, just kissing, slow deep unhurried kissing, his hand at your jaw, his thumb stroking your cheekbone.

There are nights when the whole evening is essentially just that, hours of just kissing on the couch like teenagers, and you'll realise at some point that he's doing this on purpose, that he's savouring, that he genuinely loves the act of kissing you and considers it not foreplay but its own complete category of intimacy.

The slow nights with Dick are soft in a way that's almost embarrassing. He's not afraid of softness, he leans into it, he enjoys it. He kisses you for forty minutes before anything else happens because he genuinely loves kissing you, he wraps his whole body around yours and moves slowly enough that you can feel every shift. He keeps his eyes on yours, he talks, but quieter than usual, the praise reduced to its essentials, baby, baby, you're so perfect, I love you, fuck I love you, and the I-love-yous on these nights are easier than they have any right to be, because Dick really does love easily, that part isn't a lie, the difficulty is what's underneath the loving, but the loving itself is real.

Dick is a man who feels things deeply and was trained from childhood to perform composure, and there are nights (usually after he's let you take him apart, usually after a stretch where work has been hard and he's been carrying too much) where he'll hide his face in your neck afterwards and you'll feel his breath catch, and you'll feel something wet against your skin.

He will not acknowledge it, and the way to handle it is to do nothing (don't comment, don't question, don't make it a thing) just hold him, run your hand up and down his back, and let him do it, because what is happening is that he's letting himself feel the day, and the only place he's allowed to do that is here, with you, and if you make a fuss about it he won't be able to do it again without feeling like a burden.

Aftercare with Dick is seamless. He's good at it the way he's good at everything socially calibrated, but the early version of his aftercare has a quality of checking that you've to learn to read past (are you good? you good, baby? you need water? you need anything?) and this is partly genuine concern and partly anxiety, partly his own need to confirm that he did the encounter right.

The loving thing to do, eventually, is to take his face in your hands and kiss him gently and say yes, I'm good, I'm great, come here, and pull him down and hold him, and let his version of aftercare give way to your version, and the long quiet hours of just lying tangled up in him, his head on your chest, his hand in yours, are the hours when he is most himself, when the performance is fully off, when he's just a man in a bed with someone who loves him.

He's deeply affectionate post-sex in a way that will spoil you.

Dick doesn't roll over and just fall asleep. No. Dick wants to talk, Dick wants to cuddle (he uses this word, unironically, he's not embarrassed by the word cuddle, he's comfortable with all of his feelings in a way that took him years of work to get to).

Dick will trace shapes on your back for an hour, he'll kiss the top of your head every few minutes like he's checking in. Dick will tell you stories from his childhood at 2 a.m. with your head on his chest and his hand in your hair, and these are the hours when he gives you the real him, the one that exists underneath the glossy charm, and you'll learn that the way to access this Dick is to be still with him. To not rush it, not ask him questions that put him on the spot. To just be a warm body next to his and let him talk, and over months, over years, the stories will accumulate, and you'll know him in a way that few people have ever truly known him, and that knowing will be the thing that makes the relationship real.

His general affection, outside of bed, has its own grammar that you'll learn to read as well.

He's a toucher, constantly, never aggressively, just always. His hand on your knee at dinner, his fingers tangled in yours under the table at family events, his arm around your shoulders on the couch, his hand at the small of your back when he's standing behind you in any line for any reason.

He's a forehead-kisser, as established, and the forehead kiss is his most freely given affection. Dispensed dozens of times a day, when you walk past him in the kitchen, when you hand him coffee, when he leaves for patrol, when he comes back.

He' a nape-of-the-neck-toucher, his palm warm and broad against the back of your neck when he's leaning in to say something close, and there's a soft, possessive quality to the touch that he himself doesn't quite recognise, the kind of soft mine that doesn't need to be said out loud.

He likes holding your hand, full hand, fingers laced, in public, walking down the street, at parties, at dinners, like he wants people to see, and the wanting-people-to-see is its own kind of declaration.

He cooks for you. Badly. But with great enthusiasm, and he'll get better over the years because Dick gets better at everything he applies himself to.

He learns your favourites and makes them on bad days, he leaves you notes on the kitchen counter with hearts on them like he's twelve years old, he sends you texts in the middle of the day that are just thinking about you, beautiful, hope your day's going okay, and the weight of all of these gestures is what builds the relationship into something solid.

Dick understands (in a way many people don't) that love is not a feeling you have once and refer to forever, it's a practice, it's the daily choice, and he's good at the daily choice, which is one of the most quietly extraordinary things about him.

He dances with you in your kitchen. Actually dances. Not the joke kind, real dancing, he was raised by acrobats and learned to dance before he could read.

He can lead, and he'll teach you, and the first time he pulls you up off the couch to dance to something that came on while he was making dinner you will feel like you have walked into a different kind of life

He sings, badly, in the shower, loud, unselfconscious, and the badness of his singing is one of the only things he is genuinely unselfconscious about, the only place where the surface composure cracks without him noticing.

He laughs at your jokes. Not in some polite way, in a full way, head thrown back, with his whole body, and the laugh is so generous it will make you try harder to be funny, just to hear it again, and you'll become, over the course of dating him, slightly funnier than you were before, because he's been treating your humour like a thing worth investing in. And he'll become happier, because you're one of the few who can bring simple, uncomplicated happiness into his life with a few sentences.

He remembers everything. The names of your friends from college, the specific wine you liked at that one restaurant two years ago, the way you take your eggs, the title of the book you'd mentioned wanting to read. And the effect of being remembered like this, of being attended to at this granularity, is destabilising in a way that takes you months to recover from. Because most people in the world are not paying attention at this level, and discovering that one of them is paying it to you will change your understanding of what attention can be.

Now, fights with Dick are their own thing because they're terrible in a specific way. Dick doesn't yell, he doesn't storm out. Dick instead does the worst possible thing, which is get quiet, get gentle, smile at you with sad eyes and say you might be right, baby, let's just—let's just take a beat, okay? and then leave the apartment for three hours and come back composed and ready to not talk about it.

The first time he does this you're going to be furious in a way you don't quite have language for, because he didn't fight back, he didn't engage, he just side-stepped and you're now standing in your living room with all of the original anger and nowhere to put it.

You will learn, over time, that the way to fight with Dick is to refuse the side-step: you have to make him stay in the room, you have to ask him direct questions and not let him deflect with charm.

You have to be willing to call him on the we're fine, baby when you're not, in fact, fine, and you have to do this without yelling, because yelling triggers his shutdown, the version of him that learned at age fourteen that the way to survive Bruce Wayne in a bad mood was to be agreeable and inscrutable.

You have to be steady, and you have to be patient, and let him know that the conversation is going to happen, today, and that you're not going to be charmed out of it.

When he realises you've figured out the trick of him will be a moment of genuine pain on his face. Not anger, not annoyance, grief, almost, because something he's used to manage relationships his whole life has just stopped working, and he's now going to have to actually be in the room with you, and he is, on some level, terrified, and that fear is a thing you have to handle gently, because what is being asked of him is enormous, and what he's going to discover, on the other side of it, is that he can survive being known.

Over time, the relationship with Dick stabilises into something that's both easier and harder than the early days suggested it would be.

Easier because he's genuinely a wonderful person to be around, because he makes you laugh, because he's reliable in the ways that matter. Because he loves you with a steady warmth that doesn't ever waver. The sex remains, against all odds, better than it was at the start.

But harder because the work of dragging him out of his own self-effacement, the work of insisting that he be a whole person with you and not just the version that takes care of you, the work of sitting in conflict with him until the conflict is actually resolved... that work is constant. IT doesn't get easier, you don't fix it once and have it stay fixed. You have to do it every six months, every year, every time something gets stressful and he reverts to his old habits, and you have to decide if you have the energy for that work, because you'll need it for the rest of your life with him.

The big picture, the actual truth of dating Dick Grayson is this: he's the easiest man in the world to fall in love with, but one of the more difficult ones to actually know. The gap between those two facts is the entire territory of the relationship.

Butt if you're willing to do the work, if you're willing to refuse his deflections without breaking him, and you're willing to be the person who insists on his full self instead of accepting the gracious half he hands you, what you get on the other side is a man who is radiantly good.

Who loves you with everything he has, who is kind in a way the world doesn't produce many of anymore, who will show up for you for the rest of his life, who will hold your hand in the hospital and your face when you cry and say your name like a prayer when he comes.

Who, when he finally lets you all the way in, will look at you with the kind of relief that suggests he's been waiting his whole life for someone to refuse to let him hide, and you will understand, then, what the charm was for: it was simply the door. It was never the room.

DAILY PLANET | MARCH 19TH DOES DAMIAN WAYNE HAVE A CRUSH ON SUPERGIRL? Article written and edited by Catherine Grant 

This morning, an alien attack struck upon Metropolis around 9:43 am — a race coming from another galaxy wanting to destroy Superman; common routine. The Man of Steel immediately got into action, and as he bought time by negotiating with the chieftain of the invaders, other Supes such as Supergirl and the Superboys assured that the population was properly evacuated and far away from the zone of the inevitable, impending battle that was soon going to take place. 

The laser cannons went off at 9:47 am, and by that time, most civilians had been warned about the looming attack and were on their way to LordTech Field, where Superwoman and Superboy (the one with the punk fashion sense) were already stationed to protect the population. Out of all the areas, the only one who still hadn’t been properly evacuated was the business district, as the LexCorp building apparently proved to be particularly difficult to clear from all the employees. When the attack started, only a few establishments still had citizens inside, including Wayne Tower. 

We’ve already talked in yesterday's article about Damian Wayne’s — son of famous billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne, as well as top executive and heir to Wayne Enterprises — sudden arrival in Metropolis, supposedly because of an important work meeting with S.T.A.R. Labs. Reliable sources claim that Mr. Wayne was one of the last people to exit the building, as he apparently made sure that everyone was out before even thinking about running away from the building himself. 

“He waited until we were all on our way to the emergency exits before running to the staircase leading to the upper floor,” says Lynn Porter, 23, interning at Wayne Enterprises and survivor of the attack. “He said that other people were still there — that he had to make sure everyone got out safely.” 

Mr. Wayne’s bravery didn’t come without a price, as he was still in the building when the mothership’s attack reached the business district. Fortunately, Supergirl intervened quickly, and all remaining employees were escorted out either into the waiting ambulances or to LordTech Field. However, the most remarkable out of all the victims has to be the youngest Wayne himself, who openly refused to let go of Supergirl as she came to extract him from the rubble. 

The paramedics’ body cam footage was leaked not even an hour after the attack ended, and shows Wayne holding on tightly to Supergirl’s neck as she bridal carries him. When the superheroine tries to lie him down on the ambulance’s stretcher, the video shows the man screeching and holding onto her shoulders tighter — quite a comic sight, considering that Damian Wayne is usually considered to be around 6’2” and Supergirl is clearly shorter than him. 

The footage could be seen as a simple show of a trauma response — if it wasn’t for the fact that before the paramedics managed to get him down in the stretcher, he left a kiss on Supergirl’s cheek. 

This is undeniable — as the kiss cannot only be seen, but also heard, as a loud smooching sound is clearly distinguishable in the body cam footage audio. Before the leaked video ends, Supergirl can be seen laughing and patting Mr. Wayne’s chest as he finally settles over the ambulance’s cot, telling the very perplexed paramedics, “Oh, this one must’ve hit his head hard,”

Damian Wayne has, in fact, reportedly hit his head pretty hard, and was transferred to Metropolis General Hospital with a grade 2 concussion. Netizens have already begun commenting on the short video, some outraged about Mr. Wayne’s behaviour, others speculating about the possible entanglement between a superheroine and the son of a billionaire. 

The thing that has mostly sparked controversy, however, is the known fact that Mr. Wayne has been off the dating market ever since he was a teenager, and has a years-long relationship with Miss Kent, the daughter of well-known reporter and multi Pulitzer Prize winner Lois Lane. The two have always been quite private about their relationship, but Mr. Wayne’s kiss to Supergirl has since led to speculation that they have since broken up. 

Sources very close to the couple state that they’re as in love as ever, and that a simple moment of affection towards a heroine who saved Mr. Wayne’s life is not nearly enough for them to start doubting the other. Although, the only question we all have right now is: does Damian Wayne have a crush on Supergirl?

You angrily slam your phone on the dinner table. “I knew she didn’t call just to wish me happy birthday earlier today!” 

Lois sips placidly her coffee, reading the article on her laptop. “Your birthday was four months ago, honey, you should’ve known.” The smile on her lips tell you everything you know — she’s too flattered by her mention as a multi Pulitzer winner to be bothered with her friend’s breach of privacy in your life. “I think the article is brilliant.” 

Your father has been sulking ever since he finished reading it. “Yeah, because at least she mentions you as her mother,” he whines, resting his forehead on the counter. “I’ve known Cat for twenty years and she bothered to only mention you. She could’ve at least said in passing that you didn’t make her on your own — that Clark Kent has helped, y’know. What am I now, chopped liver?” 

You blink, pushing your glasses up. “Hello? Are we forgetting that she called me earlier to ask me if everything was alright after the attack and instead only cared about how me and Damian were doing?”

“Aw, you know Cat, sweetheart,” your mother hushes, waving you off. “Remember when she wrote that article about you finally being potty-trained?”

Clark deadpans. “She just wanted to write something that would’ve caught the eye of mothers with small children to expand her audience. And she used one of our daughter’s darkest times to do it.” 

You tug on your hair. “Do you know how hard it is to go around like nothing’s wrong when there’s still copies of that article going around? I’m haunted. Grandma still has her copy hung up on the living room’s wall. I once asked Damian to buy all the copies he could find of that just to burn them and instead he kept them.” You’d never felt more betrayed in your entire life before then.

“Just stop answering her calls,” Jon suggests, still a bit weirded out by the video of his best friend kissing his sister — albeit the two of you have been dating for years now, he’ll never get over how weird it feels. “I did when she used my acne as an excuse to write that article about pimple remedies.” He leans over the table, voice as serious as ever, “Grandma has that one framed too, by the way.”

“Horrible, horrible woman,” your father agrees, still not recovered from his colleague’s utter dismissal of his fatherly role in raising you. “Do you know how many diapers I have changed? How many tantrums I had to tame? I even participated in all the dance recitals that strictly requested the mother to participate. I wore tutus for you!” 

“Hey, don’t blame this on me,” you rebut. “That’s your coworker — tell her you’ve won a couple of Pulitzers too, I don’t know,” you open your arms with a puzzled expression, “besides, how is it that she wrote more articles about me and Jon than you guys did?” 

Your parents share a look. “Well, the two of you are the closest people she has to rely on for the younger audience. While me and your father keep our mentions of you for birthdays and TV reportages, she can be a bit nosey.” Your mother's nose scrunches. “I remember clearly the time when everyday she was coming up with a different article on how I was undoubtedly a member of Superman’s supposed harem. She wrote tens of those — more than she's ever written about you.” Another sip of her coffee, “Otherwise, I would've intervened. Your privacy can't possibly get more breached than mine did.” 

You let out a frustrated groan. “I thought she genuinely forgot about my birthday and remembered when she found out Damian was injured in the attack.” 

“I love you with all my heart, honey,” Lois starts with a grimace, “but sometimes, I think that you and your brother took too many traits from your father to properly work in a society — you guys trust people way too much.” 

“You say that because if we weren’t related, you’d probably be worse than Cat,” you grumble. 

Your father nods, spirited, “Yeah– all those articles about Superman when I first debuted? You were so mean about it — and I even gave you all the interviews you could’ve ever wanted!” 

Your mother shrugs. “Sue me — an opportunity is an opportunity.” She gets up from the couch to wash the now empty coffee mug over the sink, “By the way, how’s Damian? He must’ve been pretty out of it if he really kissed you in front of paramedics while you were in your costume.”

You sigh, “I’ll visit him at the hospital as soon as I’m halfway done with the essay that I’ve got to turn in by today– Dick and Bruce came to visit him and when I called, he was already babbling something about Vicki Vale and how much he hates her.” 

Jon raises an eyebrow. “Vicki Vale wrote an article about what happened today? I thought she only wrote about Gothamite things.”

“Technically, this is a Gothamite thing,” you huff, “because the son of the Prince of Gotham just kissed Supergirl, and she’s pissed about it.”

GOTHAM GAZETTE | MARCH 19TH HAS DAMIAN WAYNE CROSSED ALL ESTABLISHED SOCIAL BOUNDARIES? Article written and edited by Victoria Vale 

This morning, after an alien attack struck Metropolis, a video of Damian Wayne — who, for all living under a rock, is the son of billionaire playboy and supposed Prince of Gotham Bruce Wayne — kissing Supergirl — speculated daughter or relative of the Man of Steel — got leaked. The footage has sparked controversy on the Internet as people began to question the role of female superheroes and how Wayne seemingly took advantage of the situation to fulfill some kind of depraved fantasy of his. 

We’ve known of the Waynes’ entanglement with superhero society for a while now (click here for the article about Batman and Bruce Wayne’s speculated affair, here to read about the latter’s disastrous date with Wonder Woman, and here to know all about Dick Grayson’s on-and-off relationship with known alien superheroine Starfire) but this was probably a pairing that not even the most creative fortune teller could've predicted. 

Damian Wayne has always been an elusive figure in high society, especially for what entails his love life. It’s a known fact that he’s been in a relationship with the daughter of Daily Planet’s reporters Lois Lane and Clark Kent since high school, but other than that, he’s always refused to elaborate more during interviews and social gatherings.

Miss Lane has participated in the celebrations for Wayne Jr’s birthdays, and has been a new presence to this past New Year’s Eve Wayne Gala (click here for more on that). 

This secrecy about what should be an established relationship has sparked scandal on socials like Instagram and TikTok, where netizens harshly criticized the new Prince of Gotham — as really, Bruce Wayne is starting to get a tad bit too old for that title — for not sharing every little aspect of his private life like his father does. This, added to the leaked footage of this morning, has users wondering if the supposed relationship is still going strong or if tensions have arisen within the couple. 

Meanwhile, some users are outraged not rather by the supposed cheating, but by the treatment of female superheroes in modern society. “She (Supergirl) handled it very well, but I doubt she would’ve shown otherwise with the already stressed paramedics in front of her”, one comment under the leaked video suggests. “Men’s audacity managing to stay strong even during a literal alien attack never fails to amaze me”, another reads, leading to the debacle on the role of superheroines and their perception by superhero fanatics. 

Users are mostly worried about Supergirl’s well-being, as she found herself harassed by someone she was supposed to be saving. Some could argue that Wayne was in an utter state of confusion caused by the concussion he was later on found to have, but most are convinced that it was a calculated act to try and establish a predominance over a woman, even if said woman is considered to be one of the most powerful beings of Earth.

The primary question we’re all asking ourselves is: how should civilian women be able to feel safe around men, if not even superheroines are spared of their unwanted advances? And what does trust really mean for them, considering that even Damian Wayne, who has never shown an ounce of emotion to the public and has always been deemed as a feminist, did not hesitate to betray his girlfriend with Supergirl as soon as the opportunity presented itself? Stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter to be updated as soon as Wayne's representatives come out with a statement on the situation. 

“I will go back to my old ways just to murder her,” Damian grumbles, still high off the pain medication. He rises on his elbows, still dizzy, “Father– order a jet to Gotham now, I’ve decided I’m killing this wench–”

Dick — who has barely managed to contain his laughter this whole time — tuts and has him lie back down, patting his shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry — B’s lawyers have already got it handled. Just try to get some rest, will ya?”

“She didn’t even say the kiss was on the cheek!” Damian slurs, “This is insulting — the whole time, it looks like I violated her!”

“Well, if you were a stranger, I guess you would’ve,” Bruce mutters grimly, his eyebrows knitted ever since he entered the hospital room and showed his son the article. “The thing is, you weren’t, but you can’t exactly go around to say that now, can you?” 

“I was disoriented!” your boyfriend screams, outraged. “I was hit in the head by a very heavy piece of rubble! I just wanted to show gratitude towards my girlfriend!” 

“And thought it was snuggle time,” Dick adds, amused, thinking back to how Damian had clung to you like a monkey very clingy towards his favourite tree branch. The latter glares at him, “You say that now, Grayson, but I still haven’t forgotten that one time when you jumped into Starfire’s arms at the haunted mansion in the fair.” 

His brother shrugs. “I wasn’t being recorded, at least. Poor Dami here instead got his lovey-dovey footage leaked, and now everyone thinks he’s a creep.” 

Damian’s left eye twitches as Dick hugs and pats his head like he’s still a kid, “Just kill me now. Ten years of feminist statements, ruined by a little peck.” 

Bruce lets out a heavy sigh, crossing his arms, “At least it wasn’t Tim’s accusation of breaking into the government’s archives to find out what really happened to Marilyn Monroe — I had to pay off federals, Damian, federals. The lawyers have already sent Vicki a very coloured letter — you’ll be out of the trenches in a matter of days.”

Damian grumbles, his words still a bit mushed from sleep and the concussion. “Where’s she? I didn’t ask to be taken to Gotham General just so she could come see me.” 

“The subway’s still down,” Bruce replies easily. “Clark said she wanted to come flying, but paparazzis probably would’ve followed her to have the exclusive on what really happened between the two of you, so he’s giving her a ride — but try to remember that a fifth of the city’s still destroyed. They could take a while.” 

Damian blindly reaches for his phone, seated on the nightstand beside the bed, and nearly rips out his IV in doing so. Dick catches the mobile when it almost falls to the ground, then holds it out of his brother’s grasp. “Lemme call her,” your boyfriend whines, in an uncharacteristic show of actual emotion. Grayson coos, “Aww, and what’s the magic word, honey? Come on, say it, I know you can do it,”

“Dick,” Damian hisses — with in mind anything but his actual name. Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. “Stop bullying your brother, Dick — while he’s in a hospital bed, at least refrain from doing so.” 

Grayson sing-songs the whole time as he unlocks his brother’s phone, coos at the wallpaper picture of the two of you at your birthday dinner, and positively squeals when he sees your contact name. “You’ve got her saved as Beloved — and I got my full name? Not even Raven has me saved as Richard John Grayson! I think not even the government knows me like that!” 

“Suck it,” Damian says, in an actually very characteristic show of pettiness. “Gimme the damn phone.” 

You reply on the third ring, but to him, it feels like a lifetime. “Hi, Dami, how are you doing?”

“Where’re you?” he demands, words slurred on his mouth. “You save me and next thing I know, Vicki Vale is calling me a sexist patriarch who molested Metropolis’ golden girl.” 

“I’m sorry about that,” you tell him softly, honestly — you’ll make sure to patch the situation up as soon as you get back into the costume, maybe ask your mother to interview you about the incident. “If it helps, Cat Grant described you with far more gentle words — something about how you bravely made sure that everyone was out of the building before thinking about getting out yourself.”

“Right before calling me a cheater,” he grunts. “Where are you? I wan’ you here.” 

“Picking flowers,” you hum, as peaceful as ever. “Roses or lilies?”

“You,” he replies without hesitation. 

You laugh, and he’s sure he could get drunk off the sound. “Chrysantemum it is,” he can hear a hushed conversation with your father in the background, and the chirpy voice of the cashier as she asks if you’d like to add anything else to the total. “I would’ve gotten there earlier, but you know, the city’s still half destroyed and I still have to turn in that exam by today, and I bet that once I get there, you won’t let me out of your sight.”

He lets out a noise of agreement, sending a pointed look to Dick — currently picking on his nose from behind his hand, probably thinking he’s so discreet — and Bruce — on his phone, trying to look like he’s not listening into the conversation as he replies to the lawyers’ emails. “I don’t think I will. I’m stuck here with a bully and a cop, so you’d be the best upgrade I could ever think of getting.” 

Bruce turns to Dick, stunned. “Did he just call me a cop, when you’re right here?” 

“Don’t worry,” you assure your boyfriend, “I’ve packed a bag to stay overnight. I’ve got my computer with me so you can help me with the essay with that little bandaged head of yours.” You’re acting like it’s not him who always asks you to help write his essays — but it’s okay, it makes him feel useful and you know he needs to hear it sometimes. “About that, how’s the concussion?”

“Hurts,” he whines, definitely faking it out for you just so you’ll get to the hospital faster. Bruce raises an eyebrow at him, having rarely seen his son complain about injuries, as Dick finally bursts out laughing. “When are you getting here?”

“Oh, shush, you big baby,” you chuckle into the phone, the sound of a car door opening and slamming back closed resounding in the speaker. “I got you in time, didn’t I? You’re fine. You’ve handled worse.” 

“Is it Damian?” Jon’s voice — probably from the backseat — rises as he recognises the voice of his best friend coming from the phone. “Hi, Damian! Hope those rocks didn’t hit you too hard!” 

You can basically hear Damian deadpan. “Oh, yeah, guess you’re there too. You didn’t pack a bag, did you? Because I don’t want you here tonight.” 

Jon rolls his eyes even if his friend can’t see him as Clark laughs. “Don’t worry, cowboy, I won’t be the one who stops you from going to town this evening.”

Your father chokes on his breath and nearly hits a street lamplight at the joke, and you lean over the backseat to repeatedly smack your — by now not so much little — brother. The phone must’ve fallen on the backseat, because all Damian can hear is vague insults and the screeching of tires, and then your father’s voice yelling at you two to stop fighting. A chorus of “I didn’t start it!” can be heard before two smacks echo, and your voice comes back to the speaker after what feels like endless shuffling. 

“Damian,” you grumble, “Jon here just tried to murder me.” 

“It’s you who took out the heat vision–”

”Anyways,” you cut your brother off, “we’ll be there in five, ‘kay? Hang on tight for me until then.” 

The yelling starts again right before the line goes silent, and Damian wonders how possibly he has managed to survive the last twelve years with the both of you always at the other’s neck. You and Jon love each other and he’s never doubted it, but the love-and-homicide relationship between a brother and a sister actually needs to be studied. Thankfully enough, Cass has yet to try to murder him. 

The hospital door opens a few minutes later, and you emerge from the hallway, a big bouquet of chrysantemums in your hands. “Bonjour!” Jon is right behind you, hair looking a bit ruffled — no doubt from the scuffle the two of you had — and a floating, bright yellow GET WELL SOON! balloon in his hand. You pause, “Or is it bonsoir by now? I don’t remember anything about French.” 

“It’s bon après-midi," Damian’s pronunciation is as good as ever, but he grumbles when you first greet his father and brother instead of running to him. “Hey! I’m right here!”

He catches Jon’s attention instead, and he immediately drops the balloon in the air to smother him amidst his friend's various protests. “Aww, poor baby! Don’t worry, Nurse Jon is here now, everything will be alright!” He leaves a wet, fat kiss over his cheek as he cradles his head to his chest comically, not caring a single bit about Damian’s shrill screams. “Release me, heathen! I did not call for you — get away from me!” 

You laugh as Dick takes out his phone to snap a picture of the moment for his blackmail folder, and settle the bouquet in the vase sitting over the window counter. “Sorry, sorry — Jon, c’mon, he’s injured, let him go,”

”Does little Dami have a boo-boo?” Jon coos, voice high-pitched as Damian continues to thrash in his hold, “I’ll fix you up in no time–”

“Jonno,” Clark’s voice comes from the door — he’s just entered the room, jacket slung over his arm, “be nice to him — he’s got a concussion, bud.” 

This just escalates Jon’s teasing, even as you rip Damian away from his arms and into yours. “A concussion! You must be the first person on Earth to get one. I’ve never heard of it.” 

High school has taught Jon to finally tease people around him — and he takes every opportunity he can to pay back his best friend for years of being picked on. You swat your brother as your boyfriend settles with his cheek over your stomach, whining softly. “Leave him alone,” 

Your brother chuckles, softening up a bit before poking Damian in the arm. “You’re so fake, man — I’ve seen you handle broken bones with less fuss.” 

Clark sends a concerned glance at Bruce as the three of you bicker, retrieving the floating balloon from the ceiling. “How is he, actually?”

Bruce shrugs — he probably considers this more a facade than anything, as normally, his son would already be up and about. “Well, he has had worse. The doctors would like to keep him here for the night, see if he gets any nausea or other symptoms, but overall he should be out of here by tomorrow.” 

Your father raises his eyebrows — he sometimes hates the way your mother has rubbed off on him being nosey all the time, but it’s his daughter’s boyfriend they’re talking about, and he needs to know if Damian is a wimp whenever someone’s not looking. “So he is faking it.”

Bruce presses his lips into a thin line and nods, sighing. “He is.” 

“It’s like he’s a whole different guy whenever she’s around,” Dick whispers, his tone conspirational. “It’s either those alien genes you guys have got, or he’s down bad.” 

Clark scratches the back of his neck. “If it’s about genes, I’d say it’s the Lane ones working far too well. I don’t have that much appeal compared to my wife.” 

His friend hums. “I agree. Lois is ten times more interesting than you.” 

Your father frowns — the article only citing Lois as your parent coming to his mind. He’d lie if he said he wasn’t still a bit hurt by that. “What’s that supposed to mean, now?”

You and Jon have already settled on both sides of Damian — you on his right, seated on the cramped table chair with your computer open in your lap, and Jon on his left, sprawled over the bed chair for visitors’ overnight stays. While you’re mostly unbothered by it, your boyfriend has been glaring at him ever since he sat down. “I would say that chivalry has fallen on low ends, but that would equal saying that you’re supposedly a knight, and that would be insulting to all cavaliers.” 

Your brother snorts, “So what, you’d define yourself to be a knight?”

Damian huffs presumptuously, crossing his arms. “I would.” 

Jon cackles, “Since when do knights get saved by their ladies?”

“Since ladies started having superpowers. That doesn’t mean I don’t treat her like a lady whenever I’m not in need of saving.”

“Boys, behave,” you say absentmindedly, fingers tipper-tapping over the computer’s keyboard. “I’ve got this assignment due at midnight. I can’t waste any more time lecturing you two about manners.”

By the time your essay is turned in, the sky outside is pitch black, and both your father and brother have left. Dick’s snoring on the bed chair when Bruce nudges him awake, nodding to your form — finally rising from your uncomfortable seat, stretching your limbs out. “That has to be a new record for the most difficult spot to finish a document.”

Grayson yawns as Damian stares at him, disgruntled. “I’ll leave the couch to you,” he tells you, still a bit sleepy, “I assume you’ll stay here?”

You plug in your by now almost dead computer to its charger and nod enthusiastically. “Oh, yeah! Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on Damian for the night. Feel free to go back to your hotel.” 

When it’s finally time for the two of you to be alone, your boyfriend demands, “Beloved.” 

Still hunched over your backpack to find a hair clip, you reply, “Yes, Dami?” 

He scooches over the side on his bed, patting the now empty space. “You’ve been far too away for far too long.” 

You laugh, trotting over to his side and settling beside him — noting the way he instantly relaxes, cheek dropping to your shoulder. “I was here the whole time, hun.”

“Yes, but out of touch. Far too away, as I just said.”

Shaking your head, you take your phone from the nightstand, muttering something about how dramatic he is. “So– should we still be together? I mean, you literally cheated on me.”

His groan is the glorious crowning to a whole evening spent under Jon and Dick’s remarkable teasing, and he smushes his face against your bicep in pure, unadulterated annoyance. “Do we really have to talk about this? I don’t think I want to.”

You have to hold your laughter in just to avoid falling off the bed from it, because you know that once it comes out, it will probably never stop. “I already see tomorrow’s headlines — Damian Wayne, misogynist or result of years of Wayne patriarchy?”

“It was a kiss on the cheek!” he protests, “Vale didn’t even specify it — by reading her article, you’d think I had shoved my tongue up your throat!”

“I know that– but did you read the article about your father allegedly having an affair with Batman? Pure gold. I don’t know what that woman’s on, but I want triple the dose she has of it daily.” 

He muffles an exasperated groan on your arm, pressing a soft kiss on the exposed skin. “Years of being a gentleman at galas and with the public — gone with a kiss. And now everyone thinks I’ve violated you.”

You trace the moles on his cheek, “Well, I mean, I guess superheroines are more sexualised and all of that —and, you know, if you weren’t you, I would’ve let you down so fast you wouldn’t even have had the chance to pucker your lips before your ass was back on the rubble.” You shrug, poking where his dimples usually show, “The nice thing about being a girl and a hero, aside from wearing skirts and heels with your costume without being judged, is that you can beat creeps all you want without ever fearing how they might respond to it.”

The kiss you leave on the small unbandaged part of his forehead feels like it’s made of — what was it? Sugar and spice and everything nice? “So, when the reporters inevitably ask, I will tell them that if I was uncomfortable, I wouldn’t have been so nice with you. And that if I did perceive your behaviour like the one of a creep rather than the one of someone who had just hit their head and was clearly very disoriented, I would’ve just kicked you into the ambulance instead of being so polite.” 

Damian finally allows himself some rest, resting his head on your hip as you doomscroll over the monstrosities that are comments left under the leaked footage. “Look– there’s this girl saying ‘Don’t you guys dare lie and say that you wouldn’t have done that, because I would’ve snatched a kiss so fast that one might’ve called me the Flash’.” you giggle like a kid, “Those comments are so fun. I didn’t even realise I was so high on the Hot Heroes List up until now.” 

Your boyfriend grumbles, barely awake, his hold on your sides tightening slightly as you press a soft kiss over his temple. “Don’t get too excited now, it’s not creepy only when I do it.” 

Twirling a strand of his hair with your index finger, you hum. “Sure it isn’t, cuddlebug.” 

DAILY PLANET | MARCH 20TH SUPERGIRL SPEAKS UP AGAINST DAMIAN WAYNE’S ALLEGED HARASSMENT Article written by Catherine Grant, edited by Lois Lane

After yesterday’s incident in the business district, we’ve all been wondering how Supergirl took the situation, as this is a first for Metropolis’ heroes in general. As this morning the Supes gathered to help with cleaning up the rest of the rubble left behind by the alien attack, our staff has managed to snag an exclusive, even if brief, interview with the Girl of Steel. 

The first thing we ask is, of course, how she feels about the scandal that has taken over the Internet in the last few hours — but she just smiles, bright as ever, like all our conspiracies are just nothing more than that. I mean, I didn’t even know who the guy was until I saw the news, she replies easily. Even if it’s not really unusual, saving a big shot with this kind of job. 

When we question her well-being, she just laughs. Now, c’mon — we’ve all seen the footage; poor dude was totally out of it. This happens all the time, mostly with kids– they see something in me that reminds them of their mother or their little sister and they start clinging like crazy. It’s a totally normal, common trauma response. 

Next up is the elephant in the room — the allegations accusing Damian Wayne of harassment in her regards, brought on by the netizens and Gotham Gazette’s reporter Vicki Vale. Supergirl looks surprised, almost embarrassed at the mention of it. Well– not to undermine the gravity of any mishaps my female colleagues might have had with other men, but if a guy bothers me, I make sure he knows of it. Had he bothered me, I would’ve dropped him. 

Of course, cleaning up the city has a priority over responding to such trivial questions, so she soon left us to go back to helping the workers and the other Supes; her answers are however vital to let Damian Wayne off the hook, as they align with the version told by the latter’s lawyers on the official statement published this morning. 

Wayne’s lawyers state that he had sustained a major head injury and so was mostly incoherent during the time of the saving, attaching various medical records that seem to fully clear him of all charges of malicious intent. 

In the end, just like Supergirl said, he has probably just 'hit his head really hard’. We wish Mr. Wayne a fast recovery and leniency from Miss Kent, who has yet to speak up about the situation.

Finally out of the hospital and sat on one of the chairs in your kitchen, Damian side eyes you over his copy of the Daily Planet. “Poor dude really hit his head hard, huh?”

Swinging your legs under your kitchen table, you hum, unbothered like always. “Don’t worry, I love it when you look dumb. It makes me feel like the smart one in the relationship.” 

“Nothing.” You bite back a grin, heat bubbling up despite the danger. “It’s just, everyone always makes you sound… I don’t know. Taller. Broodier.”

He glares. “I’m not here to live up to your expectations.”

You can’t help it. You laugh, a nervous little sound muffled against your sleeve. “Okay, sorry, don’t get your tights in a twist boy wonder.”

His scowl only deepens, and then a crackle from his comm has him turning his head. A man’s voice, Batman, you realize with a shiver, low and commanding. Robin mutters something back, sharp and clipped, before his gaze settles on you again.

“Go home,” he says, more tired than angry this time. “This isn’t a game.”

“But my dad…” You hesitate. Your dad is still out there, talking fast, and you can’t tell if he’s winning or losing.

“Your dad’s fine,” Robin adds quickly, softer now. “Batman’s got him. But if you stay, you’ll make it worse.” 

You study him for a beat, and beneath the impatience, you catch it: the edge of worry. Not just about the mission. About you. Something inside you twists.

“Fine,” you mutter. “But only because you’re bossy.”

He doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He just takes your wrist and tugs you down a different alley, cape brushing your arm as he half-drags you back toward the safer streets. He doesn’t let go until the noise has faded and the streetlamps burn steady again.

When you reach the corner near your house, he finally stops. Folds his arms. “You’re gonna stay put this time?”

“Yes, mom,” you shoot back, rolling your eyes. For the first time, he cracks a smile. Just a twitch of his mouth, quick and bright, before he shakes his head like he can’t believe you.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters. “You’re lucky you’re not grounded for life.”

And then he’s gone, a flash of cape against the skyline.

You stand there on your street corner, heart pounding for reasons that have nothing to do with mobsters, and think, So Robin is shorter than expected. Bossier. Maybe even kind of annoying.

But also…he might just be the most interesting person you’ve ever met.

-

The second time you see him, it’s by accident. At least, that’s what you tell yourself. You weren’t looking for him. You swear you weren’t. You were only out walking because your apartment felt suffocating and Gotham, for all its broken glass and shadows, still felt like it might offer air. But when you cut down Burnside Avenue, past the flickering neon of the diner, he drops from the fire escape two feet in front of you. The cape swishes. The boots hit concrete.

“Seriously?” he mutters. “What are you doing out here again?”

You nearly jump out of your sneakers. “Oh my god! Do you always sneak up on people like that?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of my thing.” He’s glaring, but it doesn’t land right. His mouth is tight, sure, but his voice sounds more like a boy caught between annoyance and…something else. Worry, maybe. “You don’t learn, do you? Crime Alley ring any bells?”

You cross your arms. “I wasn’t in Crime Alley. I was, like, three blocks over.”

“That’s not the point.” He sighs, the sound way too old for his age. “Gotham’s not safe for late-night strolls.”

You almost tell him it’s not safe in daylight either, but then you catch it; the way his shoulders hunch, like the weight of protecting a whole city has been shoved into bones that haven’t even finished growing. And suddenly you don’t feel like arguing. Instead, you shrug, pretending casual. “You always hang around diners waiting for girls to wander by?”

His mask tilts toward you, eyes narrowing. Then, to your surprise, he huffs a laugh. It’s short, almost embarrassed. “You think I was waiting for you?”

“Well, were you?”

“No.” Too fast. “I mean…no.”

But later, when you climb the fire escape to your roof and find him sitting there, swinging his legs like he owns the place, you realize you don’t actually believe him.

-

The roof of your building isn’t glamorous. Tar paper bubbled from rain, rust stains streaking down the side of the water tank, the occasional pigeon that refuses to be intimidated by you. But when you push the heavy door open and step out, the air feels different. Gotham’s hum is still there, sirens, horns, the buzz of neon, but up here it doesn’t press as hard against your ribs.

And more often than not lately, he’s already there. Robin sits cross-legged on the ledge, or sprawled on his back with one arm thrown over his eyes, cape fanned around him like he doesn’t care how ridiculous it looks. Sometimes he drops down a few seconds after you arrive, startling you with the scrape of boots on metal. Either way, it starts to feel like a routine: your door creaking, his head lifting, both of you pretending not to be waiting for each other.

“Busy night?” you ask one evening, sliding down to sit a safe distance away.

“Busier than yours,” he deadpans. “You know, most people spend their nights doing homework. Watching TV. Not scaling fire escapes.”

“Homework doesn’t come with a view.” You tilt your head at the skyline. Gotham glitters in a way that almost tricks you into thinking it’s beautiful.

He snorts, but when you glance sideways, you catch the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s trying not to smile. That’s how it always goes. You jab at him, he pretends he’s above it, and somewhere in between, you both soften.

-

Over time, the conversations stretch longer. You tell him about your dad, how he’s never home, how he burns through notebooks and cups of stale coffee like they’re oxygen. How you’re not sure if you admire him or resent him, and how sometimes it feels like Gotham chews your family as much as it does everyone else.

Robin doesn’t laugh, doesn’t brush it off. He just sits there, chin in his gloved hand, listening like every word is weighty. When you finish, he nods once, sharp and certain, like he’s filing it away as important.

And then, in quieter moments, he lets pieces of himself slip through. Not many, always measured, always cautious, but enough. How Batman trains him until his bones ache. How his armor never feels like it fits, how the bruises bloom in places no one ever sees. How sometimes he doesn’t know if he’s saving Gotham or if Gotham is slowly eating him alive.

His voice is always lower when he says those things, almost lost to the hum of the city. Like he’s afraid of being overheard by shadows.

You never tell him, but that’s when the crush starts. Not the giggling, diary-scrawled kind your friends whisper about. This is quieter. He isn’t even cute, not really. His ears stick out, his voice still cracks if he laughs too hard, his nose looks like it’s been broken once already. But he carries himself like every problem in Gotham belongs to him, and when he looks at you, you feel like you matter in a way the city never lets you.

-

Some nights you talk about nothing at all. Pizza debates that spiral into full-blown arguments.

“New Trioni’s is better than Angelo’s. Don’t argue with me, I’m right.”

“You’re so wrong,” he shoots back, mock-offended. “Trioni’s slices flop over like wet paper. Angelo’s can hold its shape when you fold it.”

“Who folds their pizza?” you demand, eyes wide.

“Real Gothamites,” he says with all the gravitas of someone who’s fourteen and just learning what the word “gravitas” means.

The bickering lasts twenty minutes, ending with you scribbling “TRIONI’S > ANGELO’S” on the back of your notebook and holding it up in his face until he swats at you.

Other nights, you complain about teachers. Yours, who you swear has made it their personal mission to fail you, and his, who he can’t talk about too much but still slips through in hints. “It’s like… training disguised as lessons. Fail and you do push-ups until your arms give out.”

You tell him that’s got to be child abuse. He rolls his eyes. “It’s Gotham.”

-

It happens on a night when Gotham feels especially sharp. The air smells like rain on copper pipes, and somewhere far off a siren wails, long and low. You’d promised yourself you wouldn’t sneak out again, but promises don’t hold much weight in this city. You’d only been a few blocks from home when the shouting started. Two guys fighting over a busted radio, the kind of thing you should’ve ignored. You’d frozen, pulse climbing, when one of them noticed you watching.

It doesn’t take long. Heavy footsteps. A hand grabbing too close to your arm.  And then he’s there. Robin drops from the fire escape like a shadow snapping into place. A blur of red, green, and anger. His boot catches the guy’s chest, sends him sprawling. The other one bolts.

“You again,” he grits out as he drags you behind him, voice cracking just enough to remind you he’s not much older than you.

You mean to thank him, but the words catch when you see him stumble. Just a hitch, a fraction of a limp as he turns. His arm is tight against his side, hand flexing like he’s trying not to use it.

“Are you hurt?” you blurt.

“I’m fine.” He tries for firm, but it’s more defensive than convincing.

“You’re bleeding,” you insist, catching the dark smear seeping through his tunic.

“I said I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” Your voice sharpens, louder than you mean it to. “And you’re not going back out there until you let me look.”

He stares at you, eyes unreadable behind the mask, like he’s calculating the odds of you actually tackling him if he refuses. Finally, with a long, theatrical sigh, he mutters, “Fine. Five minutes.”

-

Your apartment is embarrassingly small. Peeling wallpaper. A couch with stuffing trying to claw its way out of the seams. The bathroom’s worse, barely enough room for the sink, the tub, and both of you crammed inside.

“Sit,” you order, tugging at his wrist until he perches awkwardly on the closed toilet lid, cape spilling over the floor like dark water.

“This is unnecessary,” he says, though his voice wobbles when you press a towel against his ribs.

“Unnecessary is bleeding out in a back alley,” you snap, trying to hold your hands steady. The towel comes away red. Too red. “God, do you even know how to take care of yourself?”

His eyes flick up at you then, sharp, defensive, but there’s something softer underneath. Something that makes your stomach twist.

“You sound like him,” he mutters.

“Batman?”

He doesn’t answer, but the silence is enough. You grab the first aid kit from under the sink, bandages, alcohol wipes, the kind of things your dad keeps for paper cuts and clumsy accidents, not vigilantes. Still, you make it work.

“Hold still,” you warn, tearing open an alcohol pad.

“I am still.”

“You’re fidgeting.”

“You’re bossy.”

“Better bossy than dead.”

That finally earns you the tiniest smile, quick and crooked, gone almost before you register it.

You’re close now, too close. Kneeling in front of him, hands braced against his side as you patch what you can. The smell of leather and sweat clings to his tunic, the faintest hint of smoke in his hair. His breathing evens under your touch, like he’s not used to anyone bothering to fix him up.

When you look up, his eyes are already on you. The mask gleams under the bathroom’s weak light, distorting him into something untouchable. And suddenly it feels wrong. Wrong to be this close to someone whose face you can’t really see.

“You ever get tired of it?” you ask quietly. “The mask?”

His shoulders tense. He looks away, down at the cracked tiles. For a second you think he won’t answer. Then his hands lift, hesitant and slow.

The domino comes off.

You freeze. It’s not some hardened soldier under there. Not a myth. Just a boy. Hair damp and stubborn where sweat’s plastered it to his forehead. Eyes too big, too tired, too human. A face you recognize from posters years ago—the acrobat from Haly’s Circus.

“…you’re Dick Grayson,” you breathe, the name spilling out before you can stop it.

His chin tips up, defensive. “You gonna tell anyone?”

“Of course not.” The words fall out fast, desperate to close the space between you. “I’d never.”

He studies you, eyes searching your face like he’s bracing for betrayal. Whatever he sees must be enough, because his shoulders ease, his breath lets out slow. “I shouldn’t have told you,” he mutters. “Batman would kill me if he knew.”

You nudge his knee with yours, a tiny grin tugging at your lips despite the tight knot in your chest. “Guess it’s a good thing Batman doesn’t know everything.”

For the first time, he laughs. Really laughs. It’s uneven, boyish, and it shoots straight through you, leaving you dizzy. And in that cramped little bathroom, with the hum of the city seeping through the cracked window and the smell of antiseptic sharp in the air, you realize this isn’t just Robin anymore. It isn’t just Dick Grayson either. It’s both.

And it feels like a secret only you get to keep.

-

The day you find out you’re leaving, it doesn’t feel real. Your dad doesn’t sit you down or soften it, he just mutters over cold coffee and half-packed files, “It’s not safe anymore. We’re going. End of discussion.”

That’s all you get. No details, no vote. By nightfall, cardboard boxes are stacked in the living room, your whole life folded and taped shut. Gotham shrinks to the size of a trunk and a suitcase. You don’t cry. Not right away. But when the apartment gets quiet, when your dad slams another box closed and the walls echo hollow, you slip out the window and climb.

The roof is empty at first. No cape on the ledge, no boy dangling his boots. Just the hum of the city below, as if it doesn’t care you’re about to vanish. You wrap your arms around yourself and stare out at the skyline, hoping, willing, he’ll show.

And then, like he always does, he drops into place beside you. “You weren’t gonna say goodbye?” he asks, voice soft under the gravel.

Your throat goes tight. “I didn’t know how.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just sits there, mask half-lit by the flicker of a neon sign, waiting.

So you talk. About how your dad’s stories finally drew the wrong kind of attention. About how Gotham feels like it’s about to spit your family out after chewing through you all so thoroughly there will be nothing left, and this time there’s no choice but to run. About how much you hate leaving; not the apartment, not even the city, but this. These nights. This secret. Him.

He listens like he always does, quiet and intent, the kind of quiet that means he’s holding every word.

Finally, you look at him and whisper, “I don’t want to forget this.”

Something flickers in his expression, too quick to name. He shifts, pulling the domino mask off and turning it in his hands until the edges press little crescents into his palms.

“Then don’t,” he says simply. “Don’t forget me.”

Your heart lodges in your throat. You want to tell him you won’t, that you couldn’t if you tried. You want to tell him that the crush you’ve been burying is bigger than you can hold, that you’re leaving with a piece of yourself you didn’t know you’d given away. But you’re fourteen, and the words are too big, too heavy.

So instead you nod, fiercely, until the tears blur the skyline. “I won’t.”

For a moment, you swear he leans like he might say something else. Might ask you to stay, might admit he doesn’t want to forget either. But then your dad’s voice calls up from the street, sharp and impatient, and the moment shatters.

You stand. He stays seated, mask still in his hands, like he can’t quite put it back on. You want to hug him, to make the promise tangible, but you’re not sure if that’s allowed, so you just hold his gaze for one more beat and whisper, “Goodbye, Dick.”

“Goodbye,” he echoes, voice raw around the edges.

You don’t look back as you climb down the fire escape, suitcase handle cutting into your palm. The car door slams, your dad starts the engine, and Gotham begins to slide past the windows like a dream smearing at the edges.

But when you finally let yourself glance back, there he is, perched on the rooftop, cape trailing behind him, mask dangling loose in his hands.

A boy too small for the weight he carries, silhouetted against a city that will never stop asking more. Watching you leave like it’s the last thing he’ll ever let himself do.

And then the car turns the corner, and he’s gone.

-

You’d always told yourself you weren’t keeping tabs, not really. But the truth is you couldn’t help it. Gotham’s headlines are hard to ignore. Batman never vanished; he’s a permanent fixture in the background of every crisis, every scandal, every blurred photograph of a cape against a floodlight.

Robin was there too, at least for a while. But not your Robin. This one was smaller, sharper, someone else’s kid in colors that weren’t his. The news never explained the swap. Gotham doesn’t explain anything.

As for Dick Grayson? You never let yourself look too hard. Some nights in Metropolis, you’d type his name into a search bar, just to hover over the letters. Circus boy, ward of Bruce Wayne, rumored dropout. Then you’d slam the laptop closed before the results could load. It felt like breaking some unspoken promise, like trespassing on a secret that had only ever been yours.

So you let him fade into the background of your memory. Or tried to. Life went on. You grew up. Metropolis U gave you a degree you’re still not sure you earned. You dated a little, kissed boys who didn’t make your chest ache the way rooftop laughter once did. You told yourself you were moving forward, not circling back. And yet, here you are. Returning to Gotham with a job at the paper, retracing your father’s path like a shadow.

Your dad isn’t with you this time. He’s staying behind, insisting he’s too old for Gotham’s grind. So it’s just you and your boxes, your byline, and the faint echo of footsteps on tar paper that you never really forgot.

You pause on the corner outside your new apartment, suitcase wheels caught on a crack in the sidewalk. Gotham breathes heavy around you; neon flicker, taxi horn, the muffled thump of bass from a club down the street.

You wonder, not for the first time, if you’ll see him. And just as quickly, you remind yourself: probably not. Gotham eats people. It chews them up, spits them out, and even the ones who survive don’t always stick around.

Still, when you climb the steps and let yourself into the dim little apartment, you can’t help glancing out the window at the rooflines beyond. Half of you expects to see a flash of cape, the silhouette of a boy you once knew.

But the skyline is empty.

-

By now, Gotham has settled into your bones again. It’s been months since you unpacked your last box, months since you stopped flinching at the way the city exhales smoke and sirens instead of air. The novelty wore off fast. Gotham is like that; she lets you think she’s offering something new, then reminds you it was always just grit and rot under the paint.

Your nights taste like coffee grounds and exhaustion, your mornings like stale bagels eaten while jogging across crosswalks. The newsroom smells of burnt ink and anxiety, and it clings to you even when you leave.

So when your editor sent you chasing whispers across the river, you didn’t think twice. Blüdhaven, he’d said, a smuggling ring near the docks. Gotham’s smaller, meaner cousin, the kind of place your dad used to warn you about but still sent you to buy fireworks from when you were twelve.

You’d told yourself you could handle it. Gotham-born, seasoned on backstreets and rooftops, no stranger to shadows. You’ve always been too curious for your own good.

Turns out curiosity doesn’t count for much when the alley closes in on you.

-

Blüdhaven smells worse than Gotham. Like saltwater left too long in a rusty bucket, sharp and sour all at once. The alley is narrow, brick pressing close on either side, graffiti bleeding into one another under the yellow smear of a streetlamp. You’d only meant to skirt the block, maybe snap a photo of the cargo crates stacked like crooked teeth along the waterline. Instead, you’ve got three men cutting you off, their boots heavy, their breath reeking of stale beer.

The wall is cold against your back.

“Where you think you’re going, sweetheart?” one asks, voice slick. He’s taller than you, bulkier too, the kind of man who’s never been told no in a way that stuck.

Your pulse kicks hard. Your mind tries to measure exits, two steps left, maybe a sprint to the chain-link, but they’re already tightening the circle. The sound of their shoes on wet concrete echoes too loud, too final.

Your hand clamps around your notebook, knuckles white. For one mad second you consider swinging it like a weapon. And then the air splits.

He comes from above. A shadow drops out of the night, suit a streak of ink, boots hitting the first man’s chest with a crack that rattles the brick. The impact sends him sprawling, air rushing out of his lungs in a howl. The second man barely has time to register movement before a blur of blue arcs through the dim. The escrima stick connects with his jaw, a clean, efficient crack that folds him sideways.

The third curses, steel flashing as he pulls a knife, but it’s useless. The stranger moves faster, duck, twist, wrist locked and wrenched. The blade clatters uselessly to the ground. A sharp elbow, a spin, and the man collapses onto the damp concrete, groaning. It takes less than a minute. You don’t breathe until it’s over. Then theres silence.

The three men groan in a heap, nursing their bruises, and you’re left standing in the mouth of the alley with your notebook pressed to your chest like a shield.

He straightens. Under the weak streetlight, he looks unreal. Black and blue armor clings to broad shoulders, the stylized bird spreading across his chest in sharp, gleaming lines. He spins one escrima stick in his hand like it weighs nothing, the move so casual it’s showy. The mask gleams, eyes whited out, hiding everything but the shape of his mouth, the curve of his jaw.

And then he turns to you.

“Still can’t stay out of trouble, huh?” The voice hits first. Familiar enough to send a jolt through you. It’s smoother now, deeper, no trace of the cracks it used to have, but you know it. You know it like you know your own pulse.

Your knees nearly give. “I-what?”

He steps closer, head cocked, smirk curling at his mouth like he’s been waiting years to use it. Except there’s nothing boyish about him anymore. His shoulders fill the armor like it was built for him, lines sleek and lethal. His movements hum with confidence, a looseness earned from years of knowing exactly what he can do and knowing everyone else is a step behind.

The mask hides half his face, but what it doesn’t hide is worse. The jawline is sharper, cut like someone sculpted it with glass. His mouth is curved in a smile that’s both infuriating and magnetic. His body radiates energy, command, like he could take on the whole block if you dared him.

Your brain scrambles. This isn’t the boy you knew. This isn’t the awkward kid who smudged ink into your margins and laughed too hard at your jokes. For a second you’re convinced you’ve conjured him out of memory. That your exhaustion and the shadows stitched together a hallucination just to taunt you.

And then, like he knows you need proof, he lifts his hands and peels the mask away.

The world tilts.

“…Dick?” It’s his eyes that betray him. Blue. Bright. The exact shade you’d memorized years ago under the moonlight on your roof. But steadier now. Sharper. Older.

“Hi.” His grin spreads slow, deliberate, every inch of it self-satisfied. “Miss me?”

You forget how to breathe. Because this…this is really not the boy you left. Not your awkward crush with too-big ears and a voice that squeaked mid-laugh. Not the kid who leaned stiffly when you first bumped his shoulder.

This is a man. He’s taller, towering over you in a way that makes the brick wall at your back feel unnecessary. Every inch of him looks carved, built, honed. His arms ripple with muscle that wasn’t there before, his chest fills the blue emblem like it was made to draw the eye. His hair is longer, darker, his mouth sharper, the grin edged with confidence you don’t know how to stand against.

He looks like someone who walked out of a fantasy you never would’ve dared to put on paper.

You blink once. Twice. Three times. Your brain refuses to reconcile the two images; the scowling boy with smudged gloves and this unfairly gorgeous man standing in front of you. “What… what happened to you?” The words fly out, strangled, mortifying. Heat floods your face before you can stop it.

His eyebrow arches. He tucks the mask into his belt, casual. “Puberty?”

It should be funny. And it is funny. The corner of your mouth twitches in betrayal, a laugh half-born and dying in your throat. But your chest is twisting, hard, because you can still see him underneath it all. Still see the boy who leaned too far forward on ledges, who let his laugh crack when he forgot to control it. The boy who told you secrets in the dark and asked you not to forget.

And now here he is, all swagger and charm and jawlines that should be illegal. Handsome in a way that would be arrogance if he couldn’t back it up with every move he just made. Your pulse is hammering, and the spiral is real. What do you do with a crush that was built on personality, on earnestness and laughter and responsibility, when it comes packaged now in a body like this? When it’s sharpened into something magnetic, commanding, impossible to look away from?

You stare at him, dazed, like you’re trying to catch up to reality. “You… you were not this good-looking when we were kids.”

His grin only widens, cocky and warm all at once. “So you were paying attention.”

You want the ground to open up and swallow you whole. Because Gotham didn’t just chew Dick Grayson up and spit him back out. It reforged him into something you are absolutely not ready for.

For a few stunned seconds after he speaks, you stand there and do nothing but hear your heart in your ears. The alley is wet and ringing; distant gulls, a siren far-off, the tinny drip-drip of a faulty gutter. One of the guys on the ground groans, rolls over, thinks better of it, and stays facedown. The streetlamp above you flickers like it’s chewing glass.

“Okay,” you manage finally, voice rasped thin. “Okay.”

“Yeah,” he says, softer now. He tips his head, searches your face like he’s tracing the years there. Then, practical as a tide, he tucks the mask back over his eyes. The Nightwing look clicks into place with a finality that makes your stomach dip. “Walk with me,” he adds. “This block’s loud for all the wrong reasons.”

He offers a hand. Warm leather. Callused palm. The glove creaks when you take it, and you try very hard not to catalog the new details; how much larger his hand feels than it used to, how steady it is, the easy strength under the restraint. He doesn’t tug so much as guide, falling into step beside you like your bodies remember the distance they’ve always kept.

You exit the alley into air that smells like engine oil and salt-stung wood. The docks breathe: winches clicking, a forklift grumbling, water slapping pilings in a thawed rhythm. Nightwing angles you toward the brighter avenue, keeping himself between you and the shadows without making a show of it. His presence folds around you the way his cape used to on rooftops; same instinct, different body.

“You’re really here,” you say, because it’s the only sentence that keeps starting in your brain.

“So are you,” he answers. “Thought I was hallucinating when I saw you in that alley. Journalism, huh?”

“It runs in the family,” you say, apologetic and defiant all at once.

He hums. “I noticed.”

“You noticed?”

“Hard to miss,” he says, like it’s obvious. “Bylines. Two pieces on the housing ordinance, a profile on the Jackson Street food pantry, a fire that shouldn’t have spread as fast as it did. Your ledes are cleaner. Fewer adverbs.”

You blink at him. “You… read them?”

He shrugs one shoulder. The motion makes the blue stripe arc over muscle in a way that should be illegal. “I keep an eye on Gotham. And people who used to live on rooftops with me.”

It takes a few steps to realize your face is doing the warm thing again. You look away, huff out a laugh like you can steam the heat into the Blüdhaven night. “Still a critic.”

“Still right,” he says, and there’s the grin; quick, bright, and edged with something fond. “You got sharper.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” he says, tilting his chin, “you’re not the kid who followed trouble because it glittered. You followed it in there because you had a plan. You clocked their shoes before their faces. You kept your notebook hand free. You put your back to a wall.”

You glance up at him. “You saw all that in, what, thirty seconds?”

“Ten,” he says, entirely too pleased with himself. “Give or take.”

The walk bleeds you out toward the waterfront road. Nightwing crosses you behind a stack of palettes with the same unthinking choreography he used to have on rooftops. One hand light against your elbow, a check for traffic, the quick tilt of his head as his comm crackles something at him you can’t hear. He answers it without breaking stride, then flicks the channel off and comes back to you like you’re the station he meant to tune to all along.

“Your dad?” he asks after a beat.

“Back in Metropolis,” you say. “He says he’s retired. I give it six months.”

His mouth pulls wry. “Retirement never sticks.”

“Does it for you?” The question flies out before you can leash it. You mean it to be casual; it lands heavier, threaded with too many years, too many unsent searches of his name at one a.m.

He doesn’t flinch. “Didn’t for me,” he says. “I needed… different air. A city I could learn without being measured against a cape that walks like thunder.”

“Blüdhaven,” you say. “Gotham left out in the rain.”

He huffs a laugh. “Something like that.” Then he glances at you from under the curve of the mask, gravity sliding back in. “It grows on you if you let it. Like mold. Or a stray.”

“Romantic,” you deadpan.

“Hey, I never promised romance,” he lies very badly, because even his walk is a little romantic now, loose-hipped and careful in the dark, shoulder brushing yours when the sidewalk narrows, the night clicking into place around him like it’s learned the shape of his stride.

You pass a shuttered bait shop with a neon marlin blinking. A stray cat watches you from a garbage can lid, eyes pearls in the lamplight. Your shoes squeak; his steps don’t make sound at all. Every few yards he scans the roofs with that lifted chin. You remember the gesture, how it used to be smaller on a smaller body, and you picture the mental map overlaid on what your eyes see: viable fire escapes, plausible ambushes, routes-out stitched in blue light.

“How long were you on that roof?” you ask. “Before you dropped in.”

He contemplates the question like it has a proper answer. “Long enough to count three sets of footsteps and a knife. Not long enough to forgive you later if you’d been stubborn enough to run.”

“I wasn’t going to run,” you start, then hedge, “for long.”

He barks a laugh. It slides into something softer before it’s done. “You’re… different,” he says, the word careful, as if he’s testing the edges to make sure it won’t cut.

“Older,” you offer.

“That, yeah.” The corner of his mouth tugs. “But it’s not just that. You walk like you own your space now, not like you’re renting it. You look people in the eye longer. You… speak headline and copy without thinking.” He flicks his gaze over you, deliberate enough that you feel seen rather than scanned. “You still don’t fold your pizza, I bet.”

“I will die on that hill,” you say gravely.

“You will die incorrect,” he returns, equally grave, and a piece of rooftop-laughter that you thought you’d boxed up somewhere years ago shakes itself awake and trots between you like it never left.

“Okay, Mr. Puberty,” you say, putting a hand to your chest as if to ward off the unfairness. “Since we’re making observations, what exactly are you eating to look like you could bench-press a yacht?”

“Protein bars and spite,” he says, deadpan. “Mostly spite.”

You trip on a cracked tile and he catches you without thinking, a warm bracket at your elbow and the lightest pressure of his other hand at your hip to steady you. It lasts half a blink, then he’s gone again, space restored, the afterimage of touch ringing in your nerves like a bell. The alley stench loosens for a second, and you catch the smell of him beneath leather and city: clean soap, ozone, summer heat trapped in fabric that moves like skin.

“Thanks,” you say belatedly, and hope he can’t see the flush doing somersaults up your throat.

“Occupational hazard,” he says lightly. “Saving journalists who don’t fold their pizza.”

“I saved the notebook,” you argue, brandishing it. “That counts as self-preservation.”

His eyes crinkle. “God, I missed that.”

You were not prepared for those words. They land like a warm hand on your sternum, like the exact right weight after too many years of empty space. You swallow once, twice. The docks open into a long, bleak avenue where the streetlights flock in nervous clusters. He steers you toward the brighter end.

“I kept tabs,” you admit, voice tucking itself small. “Not… really. Not like a creep. Just… Batman was always there, and then there was a Robin who wasn’t my Robin, and I didn’t…” You shake your head, chase off the tangle. “Sometimes I typed your name and closed the laptop before the results could load. It felt wrong, like prying at something that was mine because you gave it to me.”

He walks a few slow steps without answering. The night stretches, thin and elastic. When he finally speaks, it’s soft, the timbre reaching you beneath the noise. “I’m glad you didn’t,” he says. “Go looking, I mean. Part of me… needed to earn being found.”

You glance up. His expression is harder to read with the mask back on, but the mouth, older now, yes, and built for trouble, goes gentle in the corners. He kicks at a pebble; it skitters into the gutter. “The leaving was messy,” he says. “I had to be more than a shadow to a shadow.”

“And now you’re a bird,” you say. “Blue suits you.”

“Figures you’d appreciate the re-branding,” he says lightly, then, “yours does too, though.”

“What?”

“The re-brand. It suits you,” he says, and there’s a smile in his voice now that didn’t exist when he was fourteen. “You grew up into your name. Your bylines. Your whole… thing. It looks good on you.”

You stare at him, cheeks doing that heat thing again. “My… thing.”

“Your spine,” he clarifies, and the tease bumps to the side to let the truth through. “You always had one. It just… fits you better now.”

The ridiculous urge to cry chooses that exact moment to crest, so you let out a little choking laugh instead and look at a billboard for a discount mattress warehouse like it’s fascinating art. “You’ve gotten complimentary in your old age,” you mutter.

“It’s the protein bars,” he says, solemn, and you trip into laughter that tastes like your rooftop nights, cold air, the city in your lungs, the right person at your shoulder. A night bus sways past; he slow-blinks away the wind grit. You fall quiet for a block, footsteps scuffing in sync. Somewhere inland, someone’s playing a radio too loud. It spills a chorus that means nothing and everything past the brick and rebar.

“You’re staying?” he asks eventually. “Gotham, I mean. Not a six-month and run?”

“I’m staying,” you say, and feel the words set in your body like a foundation finally poured. “When I told my dad, he said it’s my turn to decide what Gotham is to me.”

He nods, thoughtful. “Blüdhaven’s an extension of the same storm. We share weather fronts.” His mouth twists, fond and rueful. “I’ll be around.”

“You always are,” you say before you can help it.

He glances sidelong, and the grin that takes his face then is uncomplicatedly pleased. It should be arrogant; somehow it just looks like sunlight found a gap in the boards. You wonder how many people get to see that one and decide maybe you don’t want to know.

A woman behind a plexiglass window sells cigarettes and bus passes. The night wind lifts the edges of the taped notices, makes them whisper. You stop under the awning, the two of you edged into the white noise of the fluorescents, and the city swivels into a gentler key.

“I can call you a car,” he says. “Or,” He hesitates, then crooks two fingers. From somewhere you don’t see, a motorcycle growls to life, a sleek, low thing that rolls obediently out of the gloom to settle at the curb like a well-trained animal. He pats the seat with absent affection. “I can take you back.”

You stare. “Did you name it? Like the Nightcycle or something equally as lame?”

“I absolutely did not,” he lies, horrendously, then swings a leg over and steadies the bike with a boot. Up close, he’s too much again; too many lines and angles that weren’t there the last time you catalogued him, too much easy strength, too much blue. “Helmet,” he says, offering one out. It’s heavier than you expect; when you take it, your fingers brush, leather over skin, static jumping.

You hesitate. “Are you going to drive like a responsible citizen?”

He gives you a look that is eighty percent angel, twenty percent criminal. “Define responsible.”

“Alive when we get there.”

“Deal.”

You settle onto the bike behind him with the kind of care that admits you are about to do a reckless thing on purpose. Your knees fit against his hips like there’s only one way to sit; your hands find the line of his jacket and pause, hovering. He reaches back without looking, takes your wrists, and draws your arms around his waist until your palms meet. The gesture is matter-of-fact and wildly intimate. You can feel him laughing, silent and low, at your ear.

“Still bossy,” you say, because your voice needs somewhere to put the tremor.

“I remember you like being told what to do,” he says, and then, so quick and soft you almost miss it, “Sometimes.”

It shouldn’t hit the way it does. It shouldn’t make heat pool low in your stomach, shouldn’t make your pulse trip against your throat, shouldn’t leave you wondering if the helmet’s padding is enough to hide the color climbing up your cheeks. But it does.

You laugh, helpless, a little breathless, because if you don’t laugh, you might actually whimper. The sound crackles in your throat and goes thin in the rush of the night air. You can feel the vibration of the engine through your thighs, the leather of his jacket under your hands, the solid line of his body in front of you, and now, layered over all of that, his words, humming through your nerves in a way that feels dangerously good.

He glances back once, eyes catching yours over his shoulder, mask bright in the streetlight. The look is quick, but it’s enough. He knows what he said. He knows how it landed. And then the bike glides into the street, smooth and certain, as if nothing in the world has shifted, even though everything inside you just did.

The city rushes at you, neon and shadow blurring into ribbons. You clutch harder without meaning to, breath hitching, and he adjusts his posture just enough to shield you from the first hard push of wind. The shift presses your chest closer to his back, your knees locking tighter against his hips.

Your chin bumps the back of his shoulder. There’s damp salt there, leather warmed by body heat, and the sound of him breathing, steady, rhythmic, the same cadence you used to fall asleep to on rooftops when he kept watch.

The bike thrums beneath you, vibration rolling up through your thighs, settling into your stomach, buzzing in places you don’t want to admit are suddenly very awake. Every curve of the road asks you to lean with him, to trust the drop of his weight and the strength in his shoulders, and every time you do, you feel him there under your hands; solid, certain, unshakable.

He doesn’t go fast. He goes sure. The kind of riding that says I know this grid with my eyes shut and my hands tied, and I am choosing to bring you home. But the steadiness only makes it worse; it gives you time to notice everything.

The way his body heat seeps into you through layers of leather. The flex of muscle when he shifts gears, the ripple of his stomach under your forearm as he leans into a turn. The casual way his hand adjusts the throttle, so close you imagine what it would feel like if he used that grip on you.

At a light, he puts a boot down, head turning just enough that you catch the angle of his jaw beneath the mask. He checks on you without a word. You don’t know if he can see the flush burning under your helmet, but you feel seen all the same, and it does nothing to calm the pounding in your chest.

When the light changes, he rolls forward, and you press into him again, tighter this time, because the vibration and the closeness are unraveling you inch by inch. Small things, all of them, his steadiness, his quiet, the way his body seems to know yours is there and adjusts like it belongs pressed against him.

They add up to something you don’t let yourself name yet, but you feel it everywhere.

The bike growls to a halt a block from your building. The engine cuts, and in the sudden hush the night feels sharp, like the air itself is watching. The silence rings in your ears after miles of vibration. He doesn’t move right away. He reaches back instead, gloved fingers brushing over yours where they’re still hooked around his waist. A silent reminder: you can let go now.

You don’t. Not immediately. Your fingers unclasp a second too late, reluctant to surrender the heat of him, the solid line of his body. He feels it, he has to, and yet he doesn’t call you out, just slides his hands free of the handlebars with a kind of deliberate patience.

He swings one leg over and plants his boots on the ground, bracing the bike steady with practiced ease. Then, before you can fumble an exit, he turns and holds a hand out. “Careful,” he says. His voice is rougher than you remember, steady but edged with something lower, something weightier. “It’s a little taller than you think.”

You could protest. Tell him you’ve managed steps taller than this since kindergarten. But the way he’s standing there, broad and sure, palm open, the easy invitation of it, undoes you in a way stairs never could.

You take it. His hand is warm through the leather, steady as you swing your leg back over the bike. You slide down too close, body brushing his chest for the briefest moment. The contact snaps across you like static. You feel the give of his armor under your shoulder, the heat rolling off him in a wave, the faint tang of leather and sweat that clings to him.

It should be over in an instant. Just a hand-off. But his grip lingers, a fraction longer than necessary, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around yours. Enough that you notice. Enough that your breath catches, shallow and sharp, before you tug back.

You’re on your own two feet now, the pavement gritty beneath your shoes, but your body is still buzzing from the bike, from him. Your pulse is thudding in your ears, your palms hot where his gloves touched.

“Still trouble,” he says at last, because he can’t help himself.

“Still bossy,” you volley back, because you can’t either. But this time, it doesn’t feel like banter tossed across a rooftop. It feels like a line pulled taut between you, humming with something you’ve both pretended not to hear for years.

He studies you for another long, unapologetic moment. His voice, when it comes, slips a layer down. “You grew up, you know.”

You swallow. “So did you.”

“Yeah,” he says, and it sounds like he’s acknowledging an ocean and a bridge and a lot of half-built scaffolding. His mouth curves, not the cocky smirk he used in the alley, but something older, carved from relief and surprise and the joy of recognizing someone in a crowd. “Feels like we should…” He gestures, uselessly, as if the city might supply the word.

“Pizza,” you say, because the universe clearly wants callbacks. “So I can prove you’re wrong.”

“You won’t,” he says immediately, but his eyes go bright, pleased, like you just handed him the right answer to a test he wanted you to enjoy taking.

He reaches into a belt pouch, produces a small black rectangle you’d charitably call a phone if phones weren’t usually made by people not afraid of the apocalypse. He toggles it awake, thumbs something in. When he looks up, he’s all business again, but the softened corners remain. “Same roofline,” he says. “Different skyline. You call, I land.”

“Is that your way of giving me your number?” you ask, amused and a little breathless.

“It’s my way of saying I read your ledes and I don’t want to do that from far away anymore,” he says, and that’s it. That’s the line that carves through every defense like they were drawn in chalk.

“Okay,” you say, because a bigger word would crack your throat right now. “Nightwing?”

“Mmm?”

“Thanks for the rescue.”

He dips his head once, like you just pinned a medal on him he didn’t expect to care about. “Anytime, Trouble.”

He fits the mask better on his face, swings onto the bike, and then he’s gone, blurring back into the dark with a roar that falls away quick, swallowed by Blüdhaven’s wet lungs. You stand there in the sodium light, hair mussed by a wind you’ll be thinking about for hours, hands stupidly empty of leather and heat, and you try to file this under something. Reunion. Whiplash. Beginning again.

The city exhales. Somewhere a gull laughs like it knows something. You look down at your notebook; rain freckles have started to drink through the top page. On instinct, you flip to a clean sheet, jot three words at the top: Familiar. Stranger. Home.

-

You fall into a new rhythm without meaning to.  It starts with accidents, running into him on rooftops, in alleys, when your investigations overlap his patrols. But it stops feeling accidental when he begins showing up at your office at the end of your shift, leaning against the wall like he belongs there. When he texts pizza? before you’ve even decided if you’re hungry. When you start leaving your fire escape window cracked, because somehow you know he’ll be there.

It isn’t dating. Not really. But it also isn’t not.

He has made it clear, in every way except saying it out loud over the past few months, that he wants to be in your life. And you? You haven’t decided if you’re brave enough to admit that you want him in yours just as badly.

-

The first time he picks you up after work in his civilian clothes, it knocks you sideways. You’re shuffling out of the newsroom with ink on your fingers, hair pulled back in a half-hearted bun, when you see him leaning against a lamppost. No mask. No armor. Just Dick Grayson in jeans, forearms bare, sunglasses tucked into the collar of his shirt.

He waves like it’s the most normal thing in the world, like he hasn’t just shattered the delicate line you’d kept between “him at night” and “him in the day.”

“What are you doing here?” you demand, adjusting the strap of your bag.

“Picking you up.” He shrugs, casual, like the ground didn’t just shift. “What, you’d rather take the bus?”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking the bus.”

“Sure,” he says, grin tugging at his mouth. “But where’s the fun in that?”

It’s disorienting, walking beside him in broad daylight. You keep expecting people to notice, to point, to whisper Nightwing…but no one looks twice. They just see Dick Grayson, easy in his own skin, fitting himself into your day like he’s been there all along.

And when he slings a leg over the motorcycle and offers you the helmet with that cocky tilt of his head, you don’t argue. Not really.

-

The rhythm builds. Some nights it’s him dropping by your apartment, sprawled on your couch in a t-shirt while you rant about deadlines. Some nights it’s you stitching him up again, fingers brushing skin that’s too warm, too scarred, your pulse thundering at the contact.

“You’re staring,” he says once, voice sly, eyes glinting.

“I’m working,” you snap, fumbling with the gauze.

“You’re staring,” he repeats, softer this time.

You don’t deny it. You can’t. Because sometimes it hits you out of nowhere, the sheer physicality of him. The breadth of his shoulders when he leans against your counter. The casual way he tosses his escrima sticks onto your table, muscles flexing as if they’re part of the furniture. The way his laugh curls low in his chest now, rich enough to make your skin prickle.

You’d had a crush on him once, built on personality and laughter and the relief of being seen. But now that crush is packaged in arms and jawlines and a body that moves like it knows exactly how much power it has…and you don’t know what to do with that.

You catch yourself looking more often than you should. He catches you every time. And the worst part is, he doesn’t seem to mind.

-

Pizza becomes your running joke. Trioni’s booth, sticky varnish under your elbows, slices steaming on paper plates. He folds his, smirking at you the whole time, waiting for your inevitable groan of horror.

“You’re not going to win me over,” you say, waving your floppy slice at him.

“You’ll cave eventually,” he counters, leaning back in the booth, grin sharp and pleased. “I can be very persuasive when I need to be.”

“Not this time.”

He doesn’t break eye contact as he takes a slow bite of his folded slice, chewing like he’s proving a point. It’s ridiculous. It’s infuriating. It’s so goddamn attractive you want to scream.

“Stop looking at me like that,” you mutter.

“Like what?”

“Like you know something I don’t.”

He smirks. “Maybe I do.”

You throw a napkin at him. He laughs, catches it easily, and the sound rings through you like a struck bell.

-

He hadn’t planned to follow you. He hadn’t. His patrol had taken him toward the Narrows, toward the docks, a dozen other places that needed him more than one crowded strip of nightlife where you were laughing too loud in a dress that glittered like you’d stolen the stars.

But the second he spotted you, he stopped. You were walking in the middle of your pack of friends, arm hooked through one of theirs, head thrown back in a laugh that made your hair slip down your shoulders. Your dress caught every scrap of neon, sequins winking like Morse code, and for a second it was all he could see. Sparkling. Distracting. You, right there, alive and incandescent. He told himself to keep moving. To stick to patrol. 

He didn’t. He slipped into the shadows above instead, tracking you from rooftop to rooftop, his body humming with an uneasy mix of irritation and awe. You shouldn’t be out here this late, drunk and stumbling. Gotham eats people like that alive. And yet seeing you bright and unguarded, cheeks flushed, smile wide, it does something to him. Like he’s watching a life he doesn’t belong to but can’t look away from.

Then he hears it.

“Wait, wait, wait,” one of your friends slurs, catching your arm as you teeter on the curb. “You had a crush on Robin? Little Robin? Short shorts and all?” The words hit like a sucker punch. His boots still on the ledge, heart lurching up into his throat.

You groan, dramatic. “Don’t say it like that.”

Laughter erupts, loud and merciless. “I mean, Batman was literally right there,” another says. “Broody, mysterious, tall. And you went for the kid in green?”

“Listen,” you argue, slurring but determined, your hands slicing through the air as you stumble forward with them. “It wasn’t even because he was, like… hot.”

Dick goes still. Breath locked. Not hot. Not Batman. Not Superman. But… him. His fingers curl tight around the edge of the roof until the stone bites through the gloves. The city noise fades under the thunder of his pulse.

Your friends don’t let up. “You were in Metropolis for years! What about Superman? Have you seen him? Gorgeous. Dimples. Arms. Literal sunshine.”

“That’s not the point!” you insist, cutting them off with a shout, your heels clicking unevenly against the pavement. “Robin, he was… earnest, okay? Thoughtful. Responsible. He listened. He…” Your voice softens. Fragile and fierce at the same time. “He made me feel like I mattered.”

The words gut him. Because he remembers. He remembers every night on rooftops, every time you sat beside him with your knees pressed together, every secret you whispered into the dark because you trusted him to hold it. He remembers the way you looked at him like he was more than Batman’s shadow. Like he was enough. 

He’s gripping the ledge so hard he thinks it might crack under his hand.

Your friends are howling again, teasing, “God, you really do have a type. What’s next, Green Lantern?” But he’s not listening anymore. He’s locked on you, on the way your laughter shakes loose and dizzy into the night, on the memory of the boy he used to be, the boy who never believed anyone would pick him.

And here you are, years later, admitting you had. He doesn’t care that you’re drunk. Doesn’t care that you might not remember this tomorrow. Because he will. He’ll remember the conviction in your voice, the way you doubled down, the way you said he made you feel like you mattered.

Up on the ledge, hidden in shadow, Dick feels it burn through him. A match struck in the dark. And he knows he’s not letting you run from this. Next time his eyes linger, next time his hand presses at the small of your back, next time his voice drops lower than it should, you won’t get to brush it off as banter. You won’t get to hide behind excuses. Because you said it. You chose him. You always had. And he thinks you still might. And God help him, he’s not about to let you pretend otherwise.

-

The problem with Dick Grayson isn’t that he doesn’t know how to look at you. It’s that he does. He knows exactly how long to let his eyes linger before you catch him. He knows how to tilt his head so it looks like he’s teasing when it feels like something else. He knows when to let his gaze soften, how to press just enough warmth into it to make you think about things you shouldn’t, not when you’re supposed to be friends.

And this morning, as you’re face-planted into the couch cushions in a tiny, sparkly black dress, head throbbing, stomach rolling, the last thing you need is for Dick Grayson to be looking at you.

Unfortunately, he is.

“Rough night?” His voice is bright, smug, like sunshine filtered through something wicked.

You groan into the cushions. “Go away.”

“No can do.” You hear his boots cross the floor, the quiet shift of weight as he crouches beside the couch. “I figured you’d need a little… moral support. Or maybe electrolytes.”

“I need you to shut up,” you mutter.

He laughs low, warm, and irritatingly fond. “You look like roadkill.”

You lift your head just enough to glare at him. He’s crouched at your side, forearms resting on his knees, hair damp from a shower, dressed down in a t-shirt that clings a little too well. His eyes take you in shamelessly; your hair a mess, mascara smudged, sparkly dress creased from sleep.

“You’re not cute. Don’t look at me,” you mumble, shoving your face back into the couch.

“Too late.” He leans his chin into his palm. “It’s seared into my brain now. You, draped over a sofa like a tragic starlet.”

“Kill me.”

“Nah.” His grin sharpens. “Not when you give me material like this.” You don’t remember how he got in your apartment. You don’t remember much, actually, past stumbling in the door last night and half-collapsing onto the couch. But you do remember the way your friends had teased you on the walk home. Robin. Batman. Superman. And your stubborn, drunken insistence that it had always been Robin.

Heat flushes through you even now, a full-body cringe. God, what if you’d said too much? What if someone had recorded it? What if—

“You snore,” Dick says, breaking into your spiral.

Your head snaps up. “I do not.”

“Like a chainsaw.” He smirks, infuriatingly pleased. “It’s cute, though. Endearing.”

You throw a pillow at him. He catches it one-handed, effortless, then tosses it back onto your stomach, knocking the breath out of you. “Jerk,” you wheeze.

“Roadkill,” he volleys back like he is affirming his earlier statement. The banter is easy, familiar, but there’s an edge to it today. You feel it in the way his eyes keep tracking over you, softer than they should be. In the way he hasn’t moved from his crouch, too close, knees brushing the couch.

You shift, meaning to sit up, but your limbs betray you. Instead you flop sideways, head landing on the pillow, legs still dangling over the armrest, knees bent awkwardly on the floor. Your dress rides higher, glitter catching in the sunlight slanting through the blinds. His gaze flickers, quick and sharp, before snapping back to your face.

“You’re staring,” you accuse.

“You’re imagining,” he shoots back. But his voice is a shade too low, and it twists something in your stomach.

You try to change the subject. “So what, you just decided to drop by and harass me while I’m defenseless?”

“Defenseless, huh?” He leans in, close enough that you smell his soap and the faint tang of leather clinging to him. “Funny. Last night, you didn’t sound very defenseless.”

Your heart stutters. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His smile turns slow, wicked. “Oh, nothing. Just that you’ve got… interesting taste.”

It hits you like a bucket of ice water. Oh. Oh, no. He heard. He had to have heard.

“Shut up,” you say quickly, too quickly, your cheeks blazing.

“Robin, huh?” he presses, voice feather-light but edged with something deeper. “Not Batman. Not Superman. Me.”

You bury your face in your hands. “I’m never drinking again.”

His laughter curls low in his chest. He nudges your knee with his hand, playful. “Relax. I’m flattered.”

“That makes one of us,” you groan, wishing the couch would swallow you.

But when you peek at him through your fingers, his eyes aren’t just amused. They’re intense, sharp, gleaming with the memory of your drunken confession. He’s not going to let you forget it.

The comedy of errors continues when you try to sit up. Your foot catches on the armrest, your heel slips, and you pitch forward, straight into his chest. He catches you easily, an arm banding around your waist, the other braced on the couch. Suddenly you’re nose-to-nose, his grin right there, his heartbeat loud against your palm where it’s landed on his chest.

“Careful,” he murmurs.

“I hate you,” you whisper, breathless.

“Liar,” he says softly, “You have a crush on me.” And it feels like a strike.

For a second, neither of you moves. The air between you hums, heavy, loaded. His eyes flick down to your mouth before darting back up. You feel it, every millimeter, like a live wire under your skin.

“Had,” you whisper. His eyes followed the shape of your lips as they formed around the word. 

“Have.” He says again, voice more firm this time. Your gaze traces his lips this time.

Your head tilts closer, like instinct, like your body is done pretending it doesn’t want him. His arm is still locked firm around your waist, holding you steady, keeping you pressed against the heat of his chest. Your palm flattens against him, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat, the give of muscle under cotton, the impossible warmth of him seeping straight through your skin.

He doesn’t pull away. Just looks at you, steady, unblinking, eyes so blue they feel like they could cut you open if you let them. His breath brushes your mouth, warm, uneven. You can taste coffee and something darker on it, and your lips part without permission, every nerve in your body straining toward the last millimeter of space.

The air thickens, heavy as syrup. His fingers at your waist flex, just once, enough to draw you an inch closer. His chest rises against yours, and you feel the faintest shiver where his nose grazes your cheek, his forehead brushing yours, testing the contact without closing it.

You don’t think. Your hand slides higher on his chest, tracing over the solid line of his collarbone, up the curve of his shoulder, fingers brushing the back of his neck. His hair is still damp from his shower, soft and warm under your touch. He exhales raggedly, his whole body tightening like he’s holding back a wave.

Because the problem with you isn’t that you don’t want Dick Grayson. It’s that you do.

“You’re not fooling me,” he says, voice low, rougher now that your lips are so close you can taste the warmth of his breath. “Not with that look on your face. Not with your hand all over me.”

Your fingers twitch against his chest, traitorous, pressing into solid muscle as though proving his point. Heat curls low in your stomach, sharp and insistent, and you hate that he can read it so easily.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” you manage, though your voice shakes.

His eyes darken, his thumb tracing slow circles into your hip where his hand grips you. “Say it again. Say you don’t still want me. Say it while you’re this close.”

You can’t. The words lodge in your throat, choking on the truth you’ve been dodging for weeks. His smirk softens, just barely, eyes narrowing in satisfaction as he leans in until your noses brush, your pulse stuttering wildly under his stare.

“Had,” you whisper again, desperate, as if repeating it might make it true.

“Finish the sentence if you mean it, sweetheart.” The words vibrate out of him, certain and unshakable. His gaze dips to your mouth again, slower this time, deliberate, and the sound you make is soft, caught halfway between a breath and a plea, and it has his jaw flexing tight like he’s fighting himself.

“Dick…” His name leaves your mouth broken, trembling, and he shudders like you’ve just lit a match against his skin.

His forehead tips to yours, contact so small but devastating, heat bleeding from him into you. “You can lie all you want, Trouble,” he murmurs, his breath ghosting across your lips, “but you don’t let someone this close unless you want it.”

Your head tilts, your lips part, your palm sliding up to his collarbone in a silent answer. For one perfect, electric second, the whole world narrows to the inch of air left between your mouths, heat, and his heartbeat under your hand.

Your lips brush his, so faint it’s almost not contact, just the ghost of it, but the shock of it rattles you down to your toes. His breath shudders out, shaky and hot, and when you lean in that last fraction, his mouth finally meets yours. It isn’t clean. It isn’t careful. His teeth catch your bottom lip, tugging just enough to make your stomach flip and a whimper catch in your throat. The sound seems to break something in him, because suddenly his arm around your waist tightens, dragging you fully into his lap.

You straddle him before you realize you’ve moved, dress riding high on your thighs, his heat pressed solid between your legs. His hands slide down, big and certain, cupping your ass through sequined fabric, pulling you flush against the thick line of him. The spark between you roars into fire.

He kisses you like he’s been waiting years for it, messy, hungry, devouring. Your palms splay across his chest, clutching at the muscle under his shirt, your fingers curling into the warm skin at the nape of his neck. His tongue slides against yours, slow at first, then harder, deeper, until you’re gasping into his mouth, moving against him without meaning to.

His hands squeeze, firm and sure, guiding you into him, hips arching up to meet yours. The friction makes your head spin, your pulse pounding everywhere at once. He tastes like wine and want, and the low sound he makes into your mouth vibrates all the way down your spine.

For a breathless stretch of moments, there’s no Gotham, no rain, no history. Just this. Just you and Dick, tangled up, finally giving in, kissing each other like you’ll never get enough.

Your lips part beneath his, and he takes the invitation greedily, kissing you deeper, tongue stroking against yours with a hunger that has your head spinning. It’s clumsy in places, teeth clicking, mouths chasing, but that only makes it worse, better. It feels alive, electric, like every ounce of restraint you’ve both held onto has finally gone up in flames.

You rock into him, desperate for more friction, and he groans low in his throat, the sound vibrating into your mouth. His hands tighten on your ass, dragging you down against him, grinding you into the thick, unmistakable weight straining against his sweats. The pressure makes your breath hitch, your body clenching around the ache building low in your belly.

You clutch at him harder, fingers fisting into his t-shirt until the fabric rides up, exposing hot skin. You smooth your palms over his stomach, the ridges of muscle flexing under your touch, and he shudders, biting your lip again as though to punish you for it. You moan into him, nails digging lightly into his sides, and he hisses through his teeth, kissing you harder, like he can pour every ounce of his want straight into your mouth.

The kiss tips sideways, and suddenly you’re gasping, laughing into him when his stubble grazes your jaw. He doesn’t let up. His lips trail fire down the line of your throat, teeth scraping lightly over the delicate skin there before sucking hard enough to make your toes curl. You arch into him, dress shifting higher, sequins scratching his hips where your thighs cage him in.

“Dick,” His name rips out of you, broken and desperate, and his mouth is back on yours before you can say more, swallowing the sound like it belongs to him.

Your hips roll against him, helpless, chasing the friction, and he meets you halfway, thrusting up into you in short, sharp motions that make you whimper into his mouth. His tongue tangles with yours again, messy and wet, and your vision sparks at the edges. His hands are everywhere, palming your ass, sliding up your spine, threading into your hair to tug your head back so he can kiss you deeper, rougher.

You’re dizzy with him, his taste, his weight, the sheer size of him under you. Every breath you drag in is filled with him, every nerve alight with the demand to get closer, closer, until there’s nothing left between you at all.

When you finally break for air, your foreheads slam together, both of you panting like you’ve run miles. His lips are swollen, glistening, his pupils blown wide, his chest heaving under your palms. He looks wild. Starved. Perfect. And then he’s pulling you back down, kissing you again, hungrier than before, open-mouthed, filthy, like he’s making up for every year he didn’t.

Your body can’t stop moving against him, chasing every drag of friction. The sequined dress has ridden high on your thighs, hem bunched at your waist as you straddle him. His hands are greedy now, sliding over bare skin, thumbs digging into the soft bare curve of your ass like he’s waited his whole life to touch you here. He drags you down harder, grinding you over him, and the blunt thickness straining his sweats makes you gasp into his mouth.

He’s huge. You knew he was, the outline impossible not to notice whenever he sprawled careless in those pants, but feeling it pressed solid against you, hot and heavy even through layers, makes your stomach twist and your core clench with want. You rock down on him harder, helpless, and the sound he makes is low, guttural, and almost pained. It shoots straight between your legs.

“Fuck,” he groans against your lips, kissing you harder, tongue driving deep like he’s trying to drown himself in you. His hips surge up in answer, rutting against you, the thick head of him catching just right against the soaked center of your panties. Your cry muffles into his mouth, nails scraping down his chest until you find skin, dragging up his shirt until it’s bunched under his arms.

His abs are hot and hard under your palms, slick with sweat, muscles flexing as he thrusts up into you. You break from his mouth to gasp down his throat, and he’s on you instantly, lips latching to your jaw, your neck, sucking and biting bruises into your skin like he wants to mark every inch he can reach.

“Say it,” he rasps against your throat, his teeth grazing your pulse. His hands knead your ass, grinding you down over him, the thick bulge in his sweats perfectly aligned with your clit. “Say you still want me.”

You can’t speak, not with the way he’s rolling his hips, relentless, the pressure building sharp and unbearable. You whimper his name instead, broken and needy, and he groans like the sound undoes him.

“Fuck—yeah, you do,” he breathes, pulling you down harder, guiding you to rock over him faster. The sequins of your dress scratch at his bare stomach, your panties soaked through, clinging to your folds as you grind over the obscene bulk of him. Each pass drags his thickness right against your clit, each grind shooting sparks down your spine until you’re gasping against his mouth, trembling in his lap. “She’s honest with me, even if your mouth won’t be,” he pants. 

He kisses you senseless again, filthy and wet, tongues clashing, teeth tugging, his hips never stopping. You roll against him desperately, chasing it, chasing him, your thighs trembling where they cage him in. His cock strains against the thin cotton, massive, the outline pressed hot and unyielding against your swollen pussy, and all you can think is how good it would feel inside you.

His hand slides up your spine, into your hair, yanking your head back just enough to bite at your throat again, his breath ragged. “Thatta girl. Keep grinding, Trouble. Wanna feel you cum all over me.”

The words hit harder than anything. You moan brokenly, hips stuttering against him, the rhythm sloppy but desperate, pleasure winding sharp and tight in your belly. His hands hold you steady, dragging you over him in rough, perfect circles until you’re shuddering, mouth open against his, every nerve screaming as you teeter on the edge.

And he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t let you run. He keeps you pressed to him, grinding against the thick, straining length of his cock until you’re shaking apart in his lap, soaking through your panties, every pulse of your orgasm spilling hot and messy against him.

He kisses you through it, swallowing your cries, biting your lip until you can barely breathe. When you finally slump forward, wrecked and trembling, his hands are still on you, still firm, still wanting. And he’s still hard, throbbing against you, sweatpants damp with your release, the sheer size of him twitching under you like a promise. 

His mouth breaks from yours only to press wet, biting kisses down your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, muttering against your skin like he can’t stop himself. “Feel how wet you are,” he growls, his voice rough and ruined. One hand slips lower, his long fingers sliding under the edge of your ruined panties. You whimper as his knuckles brush your slick folds, every inch of you drenched and swollen. His groan vibrates against your neck when he feels just how soaked you are.

“Fuck, Trouble…” His middle finger drags up through your wetness, slow, obscene, parting you until he finds your clit. You jolt hard against him, crying out, and he swallows the sound in another bruising kiss. His finger circles you once, twice, then dips lower, pressing inside with a stretch that makes your whole body seize. He’s so much bigger than your own hand, so much deeper, curling at the knuckle just right until your thighs clamp tight around him.

“Look at you,” he rasps, pumping in and out, his thumb pressing cruel circles to your clit. “Soaked for me. Always were, weren’t you?”

You can’t answer. You can only grind helplessly into his hand, your hips jerking against him, your mouth open and gasping against his. He slips a second finger in beside the first, the stretch sharp, delicious, filling you in a way that makes you sob into his mouth. His thumb works you mercilessly, dragging another wave of pleasure out of your trembling body.

Then he pulls his fingers out, sudden, leaving you clenching around nothing. You whine at the loss, but before you can protest, he shoves his slick fingers into his mouth, sucking them clean. His eyes lock on yours as he groans low in his throat, tasting you, devouring you.

“You’re so sweet, baby,” he murmurs, voice dark and reverent. “Could live on this.”

Your whole body shudders. You surge forward, kissing him hard, tasting yourself on his tongue, swallowing his groan as his hands drag at your hips again. But it’s not enough. The thick weight straining his sweats is pressed solid against your soaked panties, and you need more—you need him.

“Dick,” you gasp against his mouth, clawing at the waistband of his sweats. “Out. Now.”

His laugh is harsh, breathless, wrecked. “Now who’s bossy.” But he obeys, shoving his sweats down just enough for his cock to spring free, thick and heavy and already slick at the tip.

Your breath catches. Even soft he’d been obscene; hard, he’s devastating. Long, flushed dark, veins ridging the shaft, the broad head flushed and dripping precum. Your cunt clenches just looking at him, your thighs shaking with the need to feel it.

“Fuck,” he mutters, wrapping a hand around the base, stroking once, slow, groaning through gritted teeth. “Been dying to feel you on me.”

You grind down against him, soaking panties dragging over the thick length of him, smearing wetness across his cock. The slide makes you both groan, your clit catching against his head with every pass.

He curses again, gripping your hips so hard you know he’ll leave bruises, guiding you to rock on him. His cock drags along your soaked center, fat and hot, the head bumping your clit with every grind. You can feel the pressure of him catching against your entrance, the blunt head pushing at your soaked panties, teasing what you both want.

“You feel that?” he groans, eyes wild, forehead pressed to yours as his cock slides thick and heavy under you. “So wet you’re gonna ruin me. Gonna let me in, Trouble? Let me split you open on this cock?”

Your moan is answer enough. You grind harder, desperate, the head of him pushing your panties aside just enough to catch against your opening, stretching you slightly before slipping away again. He groans raggedly, pumping his cock once against your soaked fabric, precum smearing across the sequined dress bunched at your waist.

“Gonna make you feel so good,” he pants, kissing you hard, messy, teeth clashing. “Gonna bury this cock so deep you won’t be able to say my name without cumming.” His hands slide down, fingers curling under the edge of your panties, tugging at the damp fabric. “These coming off, or can I rip ‘em?”

“Rip,” you gasp, dizzy, desperate. And he does. The lace tears with a sharp sound, shredded by his long fingers like it’s nothing, the ruined fabric dragged aside as he growls into your mouth. The sudden cool air against your bare cunt makes you shiver, but then his cock is there, thick and hot and real, dragging through your soaked folds, smearing your slick up his length.

“Fuck,” His voice breaks, guttural. “You’re dripping. Been dreaming about this for so long sweetheart, about feeling you like this.” Your hips jerk forward, chasing it, and the broad head of him catches at your entrance. He holds you still with hands locked bruisingly tight on your ass, forcing you to feel it, just the heavy pressure of him nudging in, stretching you wide, parting you slow.

The stretch steals your breath. He’s so big your body fights to take him, and the sting makes you gasp into his mouth. But underneath is heat, thick, overwhelming heat, like your whole body’s been waiting for this exact moment.

“Christ,” he groans, forehead slamming to yours, sweat dripping down his temple. “So tight. Gonna ruin me.”

You claw at his shoulders, nails biting through cotton, panting. “More…please, Dick.”

He whines softly, and then he thrusts, hard. The thick length of him drives into you, slow enough to split you open, deep enough to make you cry out. Your walls seize around him, clenching helplessly, trying to adjust as inch after inch slides into your body. The stretch burns, pleasure laced sharp through pain, but he’s groaning against your mouth, kissing you through it, muttering ragged curses into your skin.

“Taking me…fuck, you’re taking all of me so well,” he grits out, his hips jerking up, forcing the last thick inch inside. His cock bottoms out deep, the blunt head pressed right against your cervix, so deep it makes your vision blur. You sob against his mouth, your body clutching him, trembling. The fullness is as unbearable as it is addictive; like he’s rewired you from the inside out.

“Look at you,” he pants, dragging back an inch only to slam forward again, grinding deep. “My pretty girl. So good for me.”

You moan brokenly, your hips rocking without thought, meeting him. The friction is devastating; bare, raw, his cock dragging against every swollen inch of you. Slick gushes down his shaft, wetting the base of him, smearing against his stomach where your dress is bunched. His rhythm builds fast, messy. Years of wanting crashing into each thrust, hips snapping up into you hard enough to jolt the couch under you. You cling to him, legs trembling around his waist, your cunt gripping him so tight he groans with every stroke.

“Oh baby,” he whines, mouth crushed to your jaw, teeth scraping. “You’re so fucking wet, gonna make me cum so deep inside you.”

You can only gasp, moan, sob against him, every thrust lighting you up. His hands cup your ass, dragging you down onto his cock harder, grinding you into him until your clit rubs against the base, sparks exploding in your belly. You’re close again; too close, the pressure building sharp and fast. You roll your hips against him, desperate, and he feels it, feels the way your walls flutter and clench around him.

“Gonna cum?” he rasps, voice breaking, his cock driving into you relentlessly. “Gonna soak me like a good girl? Let me have it, c’mon.” Your body shatters. Pleasure rips through you, hot and unbearable, your cunt clamping down on him as you scream his name into his mouth. Slick gushes around him, soaking him, dripping down your thighs, and he curses, rutting into you harder, chasing his own end.

His rhythm falls apart, hips slamming up into you in ragged, desperate thrusts, his cock throbbing inside you with every grind. His forehead presses to yours, sweat dripping, breath coming in short, broken gasps. “God, you feel so good,” he groans, the words spilling without thought, low and raw against your mouth. “So tight around me, so wet for me. Fuck, sweetheart, you’re perfect. Perfect.”

Each word is a strike, praise so filthy and reverent your whole body shivers around him. You moan into his mouth, clutching at his shoulders, rolling against him, your cunt clenching tighter every time he speaks. He thrusts deep, almost to the hilt, then stops, shaking with restraint, his cock swelling thick inside you. His voice cracks when he mutters, “I can’t…I’m gonna cum. Please. Please, let me…inside you, I want to.”

The sound of him begging makes your breath catch, your walls fluttering around him. You feel him shaking under you, his control frayed to nothing, but still he doesn’t let go, doesn’t cross the line until you give him the word. His mouth crashes to yours, messy and frantic, his tongue tangling with yours as he whispers against your lips, “Say yes. Tell me I can. Please, Trouble, I need it. Need to fill you up.”

The plea wrecks you. Heat coils sharp in your stomach, the pressure unbearable. You tighten around him, nails raking down his back, and gasp, “Yes, yes, Dick, cum inside me, please!” The sound he makes is broken, guttural, like you’ve torn the air from his lungs. His hips jerk up violently, his whole body locking under you as he buries himself deep, cock swelling as his release rips through him. 

“Fuck, oh, fuck, thank you,” he gasps, his voice sick with praise, chanting it against your mouth as he spills inside you. Thick heat floods your cunt in heavy pulses, and the sensation drags your orgasm out all over again; you clench down hard, milking him, crying into his kiss as he moans your name like prayer.

He holds you down on him, grinding up into you, desperate to push every drop deeper. “So good…so good for me, fuck, you’re perfect. Taking all of it, all of me.”

You collapse against his chest, trembling, both of you panting hard, still joined, his cock still twitching inside you as his release drips hot between your thighs. His forehead presses to yours, his voice wrecked, almost breaking. 

His forehead presses to yours, both of you still trembling, breaths dragging in uneven gasps. His voice is wrecked, almost breaking.

“Years,” he whispers, softer now but still aching, still desperate. “Wasted years not feeling you like this.”

Your chest tightens, words lost somewhere in your throat. So you kiss him instead, messy, deep, your lips swollen and clumsy. He kisses you back with equal fervor, but slower now, as if he wants to savor, to commit the taste of you to memory. His cock is still sheathed deep inside you, twitching faintly as he softens, but neither of you makes a move to part.

You shift against him, and his hands instantly tighten on your hips, keeping you down, keeping him buried inside. His laugh is low, roughened by exhaustion and bliss. “Don’t even think about it. Not letting you go yet.”

You groan against his chest. “You’re heavy.”

“Good,” he mutters, dropping his lips to the damp slope of your shoulder. “Means you’ll stay put.” He breathes you in, deep, reverent. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted you?”

You pull back just enough to search his face. His eyes are glassy, unguarded in a way you’ve never seen. “How long?” you ask quietly, brushing his long dark hair out of his face.

He swallows, thumb brushing slow along your cheek, still cupping your face as if you’re fragile. “Since fourteen,” he admits, voice soft, bare. “Since the first night you sat on that roof and talked to me like I wasn’t just Robin. Like I was… a person.” His jaw flexes, like saying it out loud costs him something. “I never stopped, even when you left. Even when you came back and seemed distracted by my face.”

Your breath catches. The weight of it hits you hard, heavy and bright all at once, knocking your chest open. You don’t have to think. You know, suddenly, fiercely, that you’re falling in love with him. Not just the boy who once unmasked for you, not just the man currently buried inside you, but all of him.

“Dick…” you whisper, cupping his jaw, thumb brushing over the rough stubble there. “You’re ridiculous.”

His lips twitch, a crooked grin breaking the tension. “What, because I’ve been in love with you since I was a scrawny circus kid?”

“Because,” you correct softly, rolling your eyes even as your chest aches, “I liked you when you were gangly and angry at the world, and awkward with your kindness. That’s what got me.” Your thumb brushes the edge of his jaw. “Not… all this.”

His smile gentles, the teasing melting into something shy, almost boyish. “Doesn’t hurt, though, right? The face.”

You huff a laugh, shaking your head, but it comes out tender instead of sharp. “No. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Good because you,” he says, kissing your forehead, your nose, the corner of your mouth in quick, playful succession, “are stuck with me now. So remember that when I get on your nerves.”

You sigh, pretending exasperation, but you can’t stop smiling. “Guess I am.”

-

You stay like that for a while, tangled and warm, the storm outside softening into a steady patter. His thumb strokes along your cheekbone, lazy, reverent, like he can’t quite believe you’re real. Eventually, though, the ache in your thighs reminds you both of reality. You shift, wincing slightly, and he feels it immediately.

“Hey,” he murmurs, kissing your temple, “don’t move. I’ve got you.”

You make a soft noise of protest when he finally pulls out, the stretch easing but leaving you empty in a way that makes your chest squeeze. Heat spills between your thighs, sticky and messy, but he’s already tucking you back against the cushions, murmuring, “Stay,” before disappearing down the hall.

When he comes back, he’s barefoot, carrying a damp towel and a glass of water, his hair even messier from running a hand through it. “Lift,” he says gently, and when you blink at him, dazed, he smiles. “C’mon. Let me take care of you.”

You do, cheeks warming as he crouches between your knees, wiping you clean with careful, unhurried motions. His hands are steady, reverent, as though the act itself is holy. He kisses the inside of your thigh when he’s done, soft and fleeting, before standing to hand you the water.

You take a sip, your throat dry, then glance at him over the rim of the glass. “You always this bossy after sex?”

“Back to bossy again?” His brows lift in mock offense as he sinks back onto the couch beside you. “But, please. I’m efficient. There’s a big difference.”

You laugh, weak but real, tucking yourself into his side. “You were efficient at fourteen too. Efficiently broody. Efficiently avoiding eye contact.”

He groans, dropping his head back against the cushions. “God. Don’t remind me.” Then, softer, with a smile that curves like memory, he adds, “And somehow you still liked me.” His face warms with a smile as he says it, looking more boyish than you’ve seen him look, like the thought of you having felt something for him all these years makes him giddy.

“I didn’t like you because of the brooding,” you tease, tilting up to meet his gaze. “I liked you because you couldn’t hide how good you were. Not from me.”

His eyes soften, his hand smoothing gently over your hip. “You’ve always seen too much.”

“And you’ve always pretended it bothered you,” you shoot back, but your smile is quiet, your chest aching.

He presses his lips to your hair, lingering there. “Never bothered me,” he admits into the crown of your head. “It scared me. That’s different.”

His lips linger in your hair, warm and steady, until your eyes slip closed. The storm outside has softened to a drizzle, a steady hush against the glass, and the room feels like it’s holding its breath with you. You set the glass of water aside, curling instinctively into him. His arm comes around your shoulders without hesitation, hand smoothing slow circles over your arm. It’s grounding, the weight of him, the heat of his body still seeping into yours.

“You should sleep,” he murmurs against your temple.

“So should you,” you mumble back, your voice heavy with exhaustion.

“Not tired,” he lies, and you can feel the smile pressed into your hair.

“You’re full of it,” you whisper, but the fight is already gone from you. Your head sinks against his chest, ear over his heartbeat. It’s steady, strong, the sound you didn’t know you’d missed all these years until now.

He shifts, adjusting you both, and before you realize it, you’re stretched across the couch together, tangled under the throw blanket. His hand stays at your hip, fingers curled there like an anchor, as if he’s afraid you’ll slip away in the night.

You reach up, tracing lazy circles over his chest. “Dick?”

“Mmm?”

“I think,” you murmur, words already blurring at the edges of sleep, “I might be falling in love with you.”

He stills, then exhales slow, his lips brushing your hair. “Good,” he whispers. “Because I’ve been in love with you for half my life.”

Your throat tightens, but your body relaxes, the truth settling into you like warmth. You smile against him, soft and certain. Outside, Gotham exhales under the rain. Inside, you let yourself drift, safe in the arms of the boy you once knew, the man you’re choosing now.

-

The city looks different from up here. It always does, under his arm.

You’re sitting on the ledge of a Blüdhaven rooftop, legs dangling over the streetlights, the night air cool against your bare skin. Dick’s beside you, mask pushed up into his hair, the blue symbol catching the glow of the skyline. His hands are warm where they rest on your hips, steadying you like you might slip, even though you both know you never would with him here. Both his thighs bracket yours. 

“Déjà vu,” you murmur, glancing at him over your shoulder.

His grin tilts sideways, boyish and wicked all at once. “Except this time I get to kiss you instead of lecture you.”

“Mm,” you hum, leaning back into his chest. “Not sure which one you’re worse at.”

He gasps, mock wounded, then dips his head to mouth at your neck. “Harsh. And here I was thinking I’ve improved since the green tights days.”

“You have,” you say, fighting a smile. “Marginally.”

“Marginally?” He nips lightly at your skin, enough to make you squirm. “You wound me.”

“You’ll live,” you tease, twisting in his hold until you’re facing him. His hands slide automatically to your waist, thumbs stroking slow against the fabric of your jacket, and his eyes soften in a way that makes your stomach flip.

“You know what hasn’t changed?” he says quietly.

“What?”

“You.” His smile curves, tender under the tease. “You still sneak out when you shouldn’t. Still get yourself into trouble. Still make me chase after you.”

You snort. “Admit it. You like it.”

“Like it?” He laughs low, kissing you once, quick and sure. “I live for it.”

The kiss deepens, sweet and unhurried, the city buzzing around you, forgotten. When he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against yours, his voice soft enough for only you to hear. “Feels like we’ve been waiting years for this,” he murmurs.

“Maybe we have.” You smile, brushing your thumb along his jaw. “Worth it, though.”

He grins, eyes bright as the city lights. “Definitely worth it.”