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Dick Grayson, first and foremost is, and has always been, a performer. The first sunlight to touch his young cherubic face was a spotlight. His first love was the trapeze from which he swung. He was a star. He was
perfect.
That was his birthright: talent, strength, beauty. Beauty. All throughout his formative years under the circus tent, it was always Dick’s cheeks that were pinched by fawning old ladies. He was the Flying Grayson whom everyone wanted to get their picture taken with.
Such a looker! The girls are going to be all over you one day, honey, just you wait.
It was usually followed by a wink and a laugh, and Dick would laugh right along with them. The attention wasn’t any more of a hardship than the adoring crowds’ cheers were when the dazzling Dick Grayson landed a quadruple flip fifty feet above the ground. Everyone loved him, and he loved being loved.
“Don’t be nervous,” Liu whispered. Her hand was chilly on Dick’s bare chest. He’d lost his shirt somewhere between the door and the bed, he wasn’t sure where. Her touch made him shiver. “I love you, remember? It’s okay.”
“I know,” Dick said, nodding fervently. “Yeah. It’s just—” He let out a jittery breath. “I haven’t done this before. I don’t know what—how to—”
Liu put her index finger to his lips, silencing his babbling. Her lips had turned up at the corners like his reservations were cute. “It’s okay, baby. I’ll show you how. You don’t have to be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.” Dick’s pulse raced at the thought of crossing this line for the first time. His pupils were blown, and his cheeks warmed when Liu dragged her fingers down from his mouth, lower, lower.
She was so beautiful. And she loved him. She would never try this with Dick if she thought he wasn’t ready for it. Dick had proven by now that he was not the little kid Bruce kept trying to tell him he was.
He was Robin. He was a goddamn hero. He wasn’t a child anymore.
It’s just sex,
Dick told himself to steel his nerves. He’d been hard for a while now, and Liu clearly knew what she is doing. Her touch sent goosebumps through him.
“Okay,” Dick said, lying down on the bed. Liu followed him down. “Show me.”
Before Liu, Dick hadn’t much considered his sexuality. He was vividly aware of Bruce’s public reputation as a flighty playboy who shared his bed with a new woman every night. He was
also
vividly aware of how untrue the facade was. The mission was too important to worry about such things, Bruce would tell Dick whenever he asked about it. If Batman said it, then it must be true, so Dick filed away his curiosities and left them for another day.
It wasn’t like Dick had never dated before—he
was
a teenage boy, and that was what teenage boys were supposed to do. Dick had had a handful of girlfriends in middle school and high school, most of them lasting no more than a few months and involving little more than sharing chocolate milk in the cafeteria or going on dates to the movie theater.
Liu was the only one who had taken him this far. She was also older than Dick’s schoolyard girlfriends.
Much
older.
It took weeks in the gang for Dick to realize what Liu and her partner Eddie were up to. By the time he’d come to his senses, her hooks were already in him deep. She was everywhere on him, in him. Her poison had changed something fundamental in his DNA, it felt like.
Dick came clean to Bruce about the truth behind Eddie’s operation, leaving out the illicit parts about Liu in his bedroom. About the way she snuck into his heart like a black widow spider. He stuck with the basics: that she and Eddie were manipulating Dick for Waynetech access, and that they needed to be stopped.
Shame rippled through Dick the entire conversation, no matter how he reasserted to himself that it was
just sex.
As if Bruce would smell her on him. Everyone has sex—especially hormonal teenagers.
Bruce
had had plenty of it. Maybe he would have been proud of Dick for being so mature. Dick supposed he would never find out.
The fight to shut down their operation was brief, but it felt like it took decades for the ordeal to end. Dick loathed how much safer he felt with Batman at his back. He wasn’t supposed to be a little kid anymore; that was the whole
point
of all this. Kids don’t run away from home and have sex with grown women. Dick was a man now. Liu made sure of that.
“Forget about me?” Liu crooned when she snuck up behind Robin and held a knife to his throat. Her touch sent goosebumps spreading across his skin, but it was no longer from arousal. Her cruel fingernails dug into his skin.
“Never,” Robin gasped as she drew a line of blood across his neck. In a single move, he sank his elbow into her stomach, pelting her backward and away from him before she could nick something crucial. She hit the ground with a cry. “Not for the rest of my life.”
Liu went to jail with Eddie. Dick wished he could lock up his memories with them and throw away the key.
Dick didn’t respond in detail when Alfred asked if he was all right. He didn’t want to think about the ugly affair if he could avoid doing so, which worked for him almost half the time. There was almost no problem in the world that knocking some low-lifes’ heads together wouldn’t solve.
When Dick came downstairs for dinner his first night back home, Bruce arched a suspicious eyebrow at Dick’s attire. “You’re wearing a turtleneck,” he noted, a question in his voice.
“I was cold,” Dick said. He tugged the collar higher up his throat.
“It’s September.”
Dick’s skin prickled at the scrutiny with which Bruce looked him over, scanning for an explanation. Dick felt naked under the sweltering layers. The hickies Liu gave him were long gone by that point; they had been for days. The ghost of her touch was invisible, even to a detective as astute as Bruce, but Dick couldn’t take the risk. She had taken him apart, bared him in a way he had never experienced before, and it had his skin scrawling with the phantom sensation.
It felt like the entire world would know the truth of what had happened just by looking at him. Dick had to stop himself from wiping a hand across his mouth to rid himself of the lipstick smears that had been washed off long ago.
What might Bruce have even said if he
did
know? Would he be angry? Would he lecture Dick on his stupidity in letting Liu get so close to him and toy with his heart so deeply? Would he tell Dick that he couldn’t be Robin anymore until he got his priorities in order?
And, even more mortifying, what could
Dick
possibly say to defend himself? That it was a mistake and he had learned his lesson? That he was disgusted with himself enough? That he wasn’t so sure if he’d even wanted all of this to happen in the first place?
What actually came out was, “Am I not allowed to wear my own clothes anymore without getting grilled? Jesus, Bruce. The AC in my room is busted. It won’t go any higher than fifty degrees. It’s a polar freeze in there.”
Bruce grunted and accepted the answer. His eyes slid back to his iPad. “I’ll take a look at it later.”
And that was that.
Dick knew he may be wrong, but he began to wonder if maybe that was simply what sex was. Maybe that was what it was for. Dick didn’t know Liu well, but for a few curious hours on those hushed nights, it felt like he did. It felt like he knew her better than anyone else in his life, and she knew him as well. The real him. The him beneath his skin.
Liu treated Dick like she was privy to all of the darkest parts of him, and she touched him with gentleness anyway. She caressed the scars across his body and kissed his lying mouth. It didn’t matter what anger or trauma they both carried inside of themselves; all that mattered was sensation. Dick liked that.
He told no one of the affair, nor did anyone ask. He worked with Bruce as he always had. He hung out with the Titans like nothing was wrong, fawned over girls with Wally and Roy, pretended that everything was fine. It
was
fine. Nothing had changed, not really. He was still Dick Grayson.
As the months passed and Liu’s body faded from the forefront of Dick’s mind, he started to miss the feeling of her eyes on his bare self. She told him he was perfect, and she treated him as if she believed it. Robin’s flaws and failures were irrelevant to her. She only saw Dick for himself.
Dick wanted to feel that way again.
So, he went to the local gym in Gotham, even though there was a far better setup at Titans Tower and at the Batcave. He’d never been able to work out like this, in front of strangers and their straying eyes. It was titillating to show himself off. Men and women alike gawked at Dick’s body, out of jealousy or lust or both.
Dick never changed in the locker room for gym class at Gotham Academy, citing a skin condition whenever someone asked why he dressed in the bathroom stalls. The bullet marks and knife slashes were too pink still to go unnoticed. Never had Dick been able to make a spectacle of his body like this.
Dick was drying his hair in the men’s locker room when he was suddenly not alone at the bench anymore. Dick recognized the man; he’d been jogging on the treadmill right in Dick’s eye line from the lat pull-down. Dick hadn’t missed the way the man had watched the sweat drip down Dick’s body.
“I’m impressed,” the man said, sending Dick a glittering smile. “Never seen a newcomer as built as you are. What’s your secret?”
“Broccoli and meringue pies,” Dick replied with a playful smirk.
“It’s clearly working. How old are you?”
“Nineteen,” Dick lied easily. In the back of his mind he had to wonder if to the world he looked young yet strong, or mature yet youthful. Whatever he was, this mid-twenties gym rat was certainly into it.
“Well, if you ever want to do some cardio together, let me know.” The man slipped Dick a piece of paper. He winked and wandered back to his own locker, leaving Dick looking down at the digits scribbled across the note in his hand. His cheeks warmed, and he rushed through the rest of his routine before quickly leaving the gym.
The slip of paper burned in Dick’s pocket on the drive home. He felt oddly flushed, though he wasn’t sure why. He’d been flirted with plenty before, by men and women alike. Maybe it was the forwardness of it. Maybe it was the knowledge that Dick had appeared mature enough to catch the eye of older suitors. Maybe it was that, despite it being a man, Dick sort of wished he’d stuck around longer.
He threw away the paper as soon as he got home. It didn’t quell the heat under his skin.
Dick had been Robin for years by this point. He’d encountered Scarecrow’s fear gas his fair share of times; it was an occupational hazard in Gotham. Unfortunately for him, that experience didn’t make it any easier whenever he got hit.
It’s okay, Dick. Let me do this. It’ll feel so good.
He could feel her on him, her saliva cooling on his lip, and Dick
knew
it couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be back, not like this, but damn it, he could still feel her fingernails scraping down his back and her sweat on his skin. He could smell her.
“Robin, son, it’s going to be okay. What you’re seeing isn’t real. Just breathe.”
Wouldn’t it be a shame if Batman found out what a whore his partner was? He’d never want to see you again. You’ll have lost three parents. It will be all your fault.
Dick felt a hand squeezing his own, one with unwavering strength encased in firm kevlar. But he also felt Liu biting down on his neck, tearing through skin, drawing blood. She was going to take him apart until there was nothing left.
Don’t be scared, baby. You don’t need family anyway. I’m the only one who loves you. I’ll keep you safe. Who else is going to want you the way I do?
Dick could feel hot, coarse tears rippling down his cheeks. He could hear himself gasping, pleading, begging for her to
get off, get off me, don’t touch me, please don’t, I don’t want it anymore.
He was too out of it to hear Bruce’s sharp intake of breath, nor could he see the look that Bruce exchanged with Alfred while they pinned Dick down on a medical cot to prevent him from scratching himself to ribbons.
Afterward, of course, Bruce asked him about it. About the nightmares. He’d have been a fool not to notice that something had been amiss for a while now in Dick’s world. The fear gas incident only tipped the matter forward in urgency.
The problem was that even if Dick
wanted
the confess the truth of what had happened, he wouldn’t know what to say. He couldn’t look Batman in the eye and tell him that his trusted partner had let a woman manipulate him with a toxin of teenage hormones and lust to sponsor her criminal activity. He wouldn’t have been able to take the disappointment from his mentor.
Dick shrugged at the question. He averted his eyes from Bruce’s. “I don’t remember.”
“You were crying. Quite a lot.” Bruce’s expression was unreadable as he examined Dick’s face for a truth he would not find, no matter what his suspicions were.
“Maybe it was my parents’ deaths again,” Dick said. He turned away. “Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter. I’m fine now. It was just a hallucination.”
“Was it?”
Dick couldn’t answer. He left the Batcave, feeling the weight of Bruce’s stare like a dartboard on his back.
Dick loved Wally West in a way that he couldn’t entirely describe with words. If someone had asked him to try, he wouldn’t know what to tell them. Romance? Friendship? Family? He couldn’t define the bond between him and the speedster with more than that Wally carried a piece of Dick’s heart with him, always.
They were teenagers. Being a teenager meant growing, meant experimenting. It meant kissing your best friend in your bedroom at Titans Tower, trying to be quiet so that the others wouldn’t hear you in the next room over.
Dick was straddling Wally’s hips on the leather couch in his bedroom. He captured Wally’s lips between his own and kissed him deeply, passionately. Wally tasted like electricity. His skin was warm where Dick cupped his freckled cheek.
Dick was starting to suspect that he may be bisexual.
Wally pulled away, just an inch. He and Dick shared the same breath. “This is weird, right?” His mouth was red and swollen. “I mean—it’s
good,
it’s so good. But also it’s weird. Is it as weird for you as it is for me?”
Dick chuckled. “Kinda. But also good.”
“Mmhm,” Wally mumbled against Dick’s lips.
“Very
good.” Then he pulled away again, to Dick’s frustration. No matter; Dick mouthed at his throat instead, making Wally gasp and tilt his head back. “Are we—do you wanna? Because…like, I’ve never. With a boy. But we can.”
They could. They could do whatever they wanted, and it was—it would be different this time. Was that because it was a boy, or because it was Wally? Dick knew Wally, inside and out, and Wally knew Dick just as well. They were best friends. This was good. This was comfortable. It didn’t feel like Liu, all hard and loveless. Dick trusted Wally with his life. There was not a single doubt in his mind that he could trust Wally with his body as well. Wally would never treat him the way Liu did.
He shouldn’t have even been thinking about Liu, not with Wally right here beneath him, warm and alive. He didn’t
want
to think about her.
He watched Wally’s tongue flick over his shiny lip and shivered in response. He could feel against his leg that Wally was just as into this as he was. “Yeah,” Dick said finally, out of breath. “Yeah, we can—we can do that.”
“Only if you want to,” Wally checked. Dick had never seen his face so pink before. It was cute. “I can go take care of this in my own room and we’ll never talk about it again.”
Liu never asked. She only told.
Dick kissed Wally, more gently this time, silencing him. “I want to.”
Kory was nothing like Liu. She was nothing like Wally. As they grew closer and their relationship deepened, Kory taught Dick that sex was about joy. It was not about taking; it was about giving and accepting and loving and sharing. Sex with Liu and sex with Kory had nothing in common. They weren’t even in the same category.
Other than a few fumbling handjobs with Wally on weekends with the original Titans, Dick hadn’t known what it was like to have sex without the awkwardness. Shame was not in Kory’s vocabulary, and Dick found himself growing more confident with her.
Afterward, he and Kory lay in bed together. Her body was so warm against his, he could easily fall asleep like this. “Was that okay?” Dick asked.
Kory grinned, her green pupilless eyes crinkling at the corners. “Of course. You were admirable by human standards.” Her voice was teasing.
Dick snorted. “But not by Tamaranian standards?”
“My people are much…different,” she settled on. “But you already knew that. And it doesn’t matter to me how un-Tamaranian you are. I love you because you’re you. And I like having sex with you because it’s you.” She tipped his chin up with her fingers and kissed his nose. “You can sleep in here tonight, if you wish. I don’t mind the company.”
“Only if this slumber party comes with pillow fights and ghost stories.” That earned him a pillow to the head, which Dick caught with a laugh. “Try not to bruise the face, your highness. It’s my best feature.”
“I’d have to argue with you on that,” Kory giggled.
“Right, of course, my mistake. My ass has its own Wikipedia page, after all.”
Kory rolled her eyes and twisted to lay her body over Dick’s, putting her head on his shoulder. She flicked his ear. “I meant your
heart,
you silly boy.”
Strange the way that, after everything they had done that night,
that
was the thing that made Dick blush.
Her body heated up every inch of Dick’s that it touched, warming him to the core. He liked the way Kory’s hair slipped through his fingers like ribbon. He did it over and over, watching the red and orange hues trail over his knuckles and down her neck. “Was this your first?” she asked after a comfortable moment.
Dick hesitated only briefly. “No.” He didn’t know if he should be ashamed of that answer or not.
“Wally?” Kory guessed with a knowing gleam in her eyes.
Dick gaped at her, wide-eyed. “Who told you that?”
“Gar. But it was just a rumor.”
Dick shouldn’t have been surprised. The only thing that traveled faster at Titans Tower than a speedster was the gossip train. “Only twice. We were just teenagers blowing off steam.”
“Ah, yes, very different from the Dick Grayson I know now. Eighteen entire years old.”
“There was one person before Wally,” he confessed. If it were anyone else, he’d have been less willing to share, but Kory made him feel safe in a way that reminded him of Bruce. The love was unconditional, unbreakable. Kory would never do anything to hurt him, and that was a kind of love Dick hoped he’d become addicted to.
“You don’t want to talk about it?” she deduced when he did not elaborate.
“It’s not a great memory.”
At once, Kory’s demeanor changed. Her eyes narrowed. “Did someone hurt you?”
“I don’t know,” Dick answered honestly. Part of him wanted to say yes, if only because Kory looked ready to strangle this mystery person on his behalf without knowing anything other than that their place in his memory was not a happy one. Maybe she would be right to. Maybe it was on Dick for misleading her.
Was
he misleading her? He had never detailed the story aloud to anyone. Would the villain change if the words hit the air? Would Kory agree that Dick’s provocativeness had earned him his own heartache?
“Did you love them?” she asked.
Dick had to stop and consider that. “I thought I did.” He shrugged it off. “But it was stupid. I only knew her for two weeks. She never cared about me. She just wanted my money.” The words tasted like thumbtacks on his tongue. Dick turned his face away so that Kory couldn’t see the cracks in his expression. Two years later and he still didn’t know how to move on. Had he ever known how? Had he ever been taught?
They didn’t speak more about Liu that night, or any other night. Kory never pushed him to talk, and Dick wasn’t about to offer the information up. It was better this way. Nothing would come of lingering on the past.
In the years he’d known her, Kory had never had any reason to be ashamed of her body, and it was one of the things that Dick loved most about her. He loved how unrepentant she was about it, how natural she seemed in her skin. Maybe life would be easier if Dick had been born a Tamaranian as well.
He changed his costume to a deep V-neck and grinned inwardly when he caught people’s eyes tracing the line of his pecs all the way down to his navel. Nightwing wasn’t like Robin—he was a free agent, capable of making his own decisions and taking charge of his own destiny. Nightwing needn’t obey anyone’s guidelines but his own.
One night, Kory commented on the uniform change. She was gluing rhinestones onto a belt while Dick did sit-ups on the floor. “There is a difference, you know. Between doing it for yourself and doing it for them.”
“What do you mean?” Dick asked, pausing his workout.
“It would make no difference to me if I were naked in the shower or if I were naked in the living room. I feel the same way about my body in private as I do when I am around other people. It’s mine.”
“I know what you mean.” Dick didn’t want to be made to feel like he had to hide himself. In the circus, he was the glittering star of the trapeze. The crowds came to watch him. And Robin was meant to be the colorful counterpart to Batman’s shadow. He was
meant
to be seen, to distract. Maybe he should have been more conservative with his choice of uniform, but it didn’t feel right being out of the Flying Graysons leotard. The shorts allowed Dick to move freely as he desired. Just because he was older now didn’t mean he had to shelter himself away.
“No, you don’t,” Kory said gently. She’d looked up from her craft, her attention solely on Dick now. He felt naked under her gaze. “You’re…different when other people are around. It’s like you’re waiting for their approval.”
“I’m not,” Dick said, baffled. “I
don’t.
I’m comfortable with my body.” He knew how he looked. He knew how people looked at
him.
He had no reason to be ashamed, and every reason to show it off. People liked when he showed it off.
“And yet you base your opinion of yourself around whether other people want to sleep with you.”
“The only person I’m sleeping with is you,” Dick reminded her, temper flaring. “And, like, where is this even coming from? You’re a model in your spare time. Don’t act like it’s any different.”
Kory was annoyingly unaffected by Dick’s anger. She carried on calmly, “I do it because it is fun, and because I don’t let it change who I am. I won’t slim down or wear flat shoes for photo shoots because I know that my body is perfect the way I have it. I don’t care about what they think of me. I just like playing dress-up.” She lifted the halfway bedazzled belt in emphasis. “You treat your body like you are waiting for someone to give you a grade.”
“So, what?” Dick huffed. “I’m too fucked up for you to handle? God forbid I set
standards
for myself?” He was being a jackass. He knew he was being a jackass. He didn’t know how to stop.
Kory’s gaze was unwavering. She held no anger in it, no offense at his harsh words. If anything, when she spoke, her tone became so pitying that it made Dick want to break something. “Bruce taught you that your body is a tool, correct?” She didn’t wait for a retort. “It doesn’t matter if you use it to fight crime or for pleasure, as long as you believe in what you do with it. You don’t owe anyone anything. It doesn’t have to hurt.”
Except that it did.
Kory’s words stuck with Dick for a long time, and he almost believed her. But then her entire personality changed, and Dick wondered if maybe she, too, was coming to finally realize what everyone else in the world had already seen.
The change was quick. Suddenly Kory went from compassionate and patient to someone completely different. She developed a distaste for Dick’s uniform and picked a new one for him, one that she felt suited his physique better. She cut his hair, insisting that she knew what would look good on him.
Dick couldn’t fathom what would cause the shift other than time and exposure. Perhaps this was Kory coming to her senses about him. Perhaps it was better this way.
She certainly preferred Dick this way; her eyes lusted after him every time he entered a room. Their sex life accelerated almost immediately, as did Kory’s aggressiveness in bed. It would have been frightening if Dick didn’t know her, if he hadn’t fought alongside her and trusted her to have his back time and time again. Kory would never hurt him. Kory loved him.
Except that Kory wasn’t
Kory.
None of it was Kory.
“I just can’t believe it, Dick. I was held prisoner for
days,
and not one of you came looking for me?”
It’s fine, pumpkin, I’m just in the mood to shake things up a bit. What do you say?”
“I’m—Kory, I don’t…I didn’t
know.
How did I not
know?”
What are you talking about, Dick? I’m perfectly fine. You’re the one who’s acting weird. Don’t put your insecurities on me.
“And the fact that you
slept
with her! Wasn’t it obvious that she wasn’t me? Aren’t you a detective?”
Of course you’re hot no matter what. All I’m saying is that a makeover would do you good. You want to look pretty for me, don’t you? I’m just trying to help you.
“I’m so sorry, Kory. I didn’t know.”
Don’t be nervous, baby. I just want to try something new. Just lie back and let me take care of you. I promise you’ll like this.
“Ten days. I waited ten days for you to realize what was happening and come for me, but you never did, did you? Was she that good of an actress?”
You’re being so good for me, baby. So perfect for me. Tell me you love me. Tell me you’ll do whatever I say. Tell me you’re mine.
That’s good, Dick. Again. Again.
They’d tried to fix it. They both did everything they could to make their relationship work despite every curveball sent their way. It simply wasn’t enough in the end.
After he and Kory had parted ways, Dick wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He didn’t know how to
be
himself after the dust had settled. Roy said once that partying always did the trick for him when he was aimless and alone, and it wasn’t as though Dick had any luck elsewhere. Maybe a change was what he needed. Maybe Dick needed to stop listening to his own instincts and start following others’.
The club scene was loud, crowded, and more chaotic than Gotham during an Arkham breakout. It was everything Dick needed. He wasn’t much of a drinker, nor a dancer, but if Mirage could pretend to be Kory so seamlessly that her supposed “lover” could not detect the difference, then who was to say that Dick couldn’t play the part of a mentally healthy young adult?
Dick couldn’t recall how exactly he ended up pressed against a dirty wall with some woman clinging to his hips and grinding on him through her sequined dress, but he wasn’t about to complain. If he closed his eyes and let the thrumming music drown all other sounds out, he could almost pretend that it was Kory’s lips dragging down his collarbone.
Maybe that was the alcohol. Maybe it was the intoxicating rush of rock bottom.
The woman crooned in Dick’s ear, “I’ve got a hotel room for the night. What do you say we keep this party going? Just you and me?” She tugged on his earlobe with her teeth.
Dick’s spine tingled at the offer. “I’m—I’ve got work tomorrow,” he lied.
She just laughed and nipped at his neck. “So do I.”
“Not tonight,” Dick said, more firmly despite the buzz and the music and the dizzying lights above. Only then did the woman pull away from him.
“Then what was all this for?” she demanded, disappointed and resentful at the rejection. She was gorgeous, Dick could see now that there was more than a few inches between them. She was not used to getting rejected often, it seemed. “Don’t tease if you’re not planning to follow through with it. It’s a shitty thing to do.”
She stalked off, back to the crowded dance floor in search of someone else to borrow for the night. Dick didn’t begrudge her that pleasure. Everyone deserved to have fun, however they wished.
So then, why didn’t Dick chase that pleasure as well? He wasn’t busy tonight or tomorrow. He was twenty years old and freshly single. This was the time to go out and flirt with strangers and have hot, toe-curling sex that you don’t remember the next morning. What was so wrong with Dick that he no longer knew how to act like a normal human? Was it the childhood of vigilantism that broke him, or was he always this broken inside?
Sex with Kory was amazing. Being in
love
with her was amazing. Dick was too sore for love at the moment, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still act on his sexual impulses, right? He was young. He was supposed to want sex.
Everyone
wants sex. Surely if Dick just put himself out there, the desire and normalcy would follow through.
Dick was an attractive man; it would be easy to find a partner to help him forget his troubles for the night. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of sex with a stranger, but he liked the idea of being desired, being wanted. He wanted to feel that way again.
So, Dick went up to the bar and ordered a shot of whiskey. When that didn’t work, he ordered another, and another, until his traitorous mind finally quieted.
When Dick woke up in the morning, it was to a sore back and sore legs. His head pounded as the hangover set in. He was naked and covered in hickies from nape to hip, the marks already darkening into what would soon be bright purple bruises.
A man slept soundly beside Dick in the unfamiliar king-sized bed—fairly attractive, but Dick didn’t recognize his face. He couldn’t remember anything of the night before aside from blurs of action between drinks and dances. He didn’t recognize the apartment he found himself in.
Dick rose from the bed quietly. He found his clothes on the floor and his keys and wallet on the table, everything accounted for. He snuck out of the apartment without leaving a note or waking his nameless companion. He wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for this, but he didn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out.
Dick expected to feel disgusted with himself after. Or maybe something would click into place—he’d find himself filled with that feeling that everyone else claimed to have, but that he could never identify in himself. He expected to feel
something,
but instead, all he got were some blooming hickies and another experience under his belt.
Maybe he wasn’t supposed to feel different. Maybe
this
was what everyone else felt when they talked about impersonal sex. Maybe he was supposed to feel empty all the time, every day, for the rest of his life.
Regardless, Dick made no attempt to cover up the hickies when he went over to Wayne Manor for brunch the next morning. This was what everyone else did, so clearly Dick wasn’t so different from them after all.
Bruce arched an eyebrow when he caught sight of Dick’s souvenirs. “I didn’t know you were dating again.”
Dick shrugged and shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth. “Just some fun. I’m young. You know how it is.”
Bruce didn’t lose the scrutinizing look in his eyes, but he didn’t comment on the hickies again. Dick preened inwardly at the thought of people knowing, of them all seeing how desired Dick Grayson was. This was what adults were supposed to do. Bruce “Playboy” Wayne was in no position to judge his ward for following in his father’s footsteps.
Dick felt better on Wayne property. Maybe it was the instinctive comfort that came with familiarity; maybe it was the knowledge that nothing could hurt him here, in the cave where he grew up, with his family at his back. He was impenetrable here.
Dick was running a blood sample through Bruce’s extensive cross-matching system for a case he’d been working on in Blüdhaven. Stephanie and Tim sparred across the cave on a training mat, jabbing each other with pool noodles as some sort of new exercise invented by them both.
“Okay, I’ve got a hard one,” Tim said as he dodged an attack. “Black Canary, Aqualad, or Zatanna?”
Steph scoffed. “Oh, Zatanna, definitely. You even have to ask? Give me something harder.”
“Really? I thought for sure you’d have gone for Canary.”
“Fishnets are fishnets, boy wonder. And have you heard her when she talks backwards? She could be telling me to jump off a cliff and it’d sound dirty.”
Dick had been idly listening throughout their strange game, chuckling to himself. He was getting flashbacks to days at Titans Tower, shooting the breeze with the guys like they had the world in their hands. Tim and Steph weren’t even seventeen yet; they had so much life ahead of them. What must it be like to feel that way again?
“You know, I should be offended you guys didn’t invite me to play,” Dick called over to them with an easy grin.
Steph snorted. “Please, you’d just vote for all three. Hey! That’s an illegal move!” She bonked Tim on the head with her noodle in retaliation.
Dick laughed it off and didn’t deny it. Yeah, he probably would. Dinah and Zatanna were both known for their gorgeous physiques, and Dick knew from personal experience how kind and funny they both were. No one listened to him the way Dinah did. And Dick spent his teenage years seeing Garth through his awkward pimply phase to when his growth spurt hit and suddenly he was a deep-sea Adonis. Not to mention the few glances Dick managed in the Titans locker room after missions.
And why
shouldn’t
Dick choose all three? It was an innocent game. He was never shy about his bisexuality, nor the range of his attraction. People were sexy.
Dick
was sexy. If he had been part of the game, wouldn’t he have been offended if he hadn’t been chosen? It was a compliment. He worked on his appearance so strenuously for a reason. Dick Grayson was known for his hotness in the superhero world, and he didn’t do a single thing to discourage the looks or the gossip. It was all in good fun.
That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
Dick and Barbara were together now, and things were good. There was something about her that made Dick feel secure in a way he rarely felt in relationships. Maybe it was because they had been best friends for so long, so the only thing that really changed was that they were allowed to make out now. It was friendship, but deeper. More permanent. More vulnerable.
Barbara’s presence alone helped Dick forget everything that was wrong with him—probably because, unlike himself and everyone else, she couldn’t see the flaws beneath his skin. Or maybe she just didn’t care. She looked at his face when she spoke to him. She kissed his cheek like it meant something to her.
Dick would have almost compared her heart to Kory’s, except that wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t Kory, she was
Babs,
and Dick knew them both well enough to know that for every lovely similarity between his two greatest loves, there were twice as many equally lovely differences.
Kory smelled like the sun, while Barbara smelled of peony hand cream and drugstore deodorant. Starfire protected Robin’s back in the field with sheer strength and fire blasts, while Oracle warned Nightwing of threats before they even happened. Kory could crack all the knuckles in her toes just by flexing, and Barbara could recite all of the US capitols in alphabetical order.
And she made him quiet. The buzzing in Dick’s head stopped when she was near. The ants stopped crawling on his skin and the eyes on the back of his neck lessened in intensity. He felt better when she was around, asking nothing more of him than to simply be himself.
They were at the local video store picking out a movie for the night. Saturdays had become the designated date days for them both, spent outside on the town or in Babs’ apartment testing out her new panini maker. How Dick missed being in a relationship. It was so much easier to pretend to be normal when he had someone by his side.
Barbara was telling him about her day at work while they browsed. There was some Pride Month event at the library this week, and the employees had set up an LGBTQ+ section in honor of that.
“And it’s not like anyone should be surprised,” Barbara was saying, idly reading the back of a DVD case. “I mean, her name is
Helen.
She was basically predisposed for bigotry at birth.”
“That’s not very woke of you,” Dick snorted. “Check your privilege,
Barbara.”
“Oh, whatever, Richard.” She swatted him on the arm and moved on. “And it’s fine for everyone to have their preferences, but she just kept getting so
fussy
about it, you know? She nitpicked every decoration like it was a life-or-death situation.”
“Jeez,” Dick said when it was his turn.
“Right? I know! She threw this whole fit over there being an ace-spectrum section in the pride shelf because it will ‘confuse the older people,’ which is
obviously
a crock of horse shit. Asexual and demisexual people could really use those resources, and old people are already confused about queer stuff anyway, so what’s the point in trying to cater to them at all, right? You know I’m right.”
Dick just hummed and picked up a movie case. He turned it for her to see. “What do you think about
The Lorax?”
Barbara rolled her eyes with a fond chuckle. “You’re lucky you’re pretty, Grayson.”
What life must be like for a fish,
Dick thought.
He was in the bathtub, trying to unwind after the latest in a string of long days. All the days felt long, felt gray. He could hear Barbara puttering around the apartment outside the cracked-open bathroom door, Maroon 5 blasting from the stereo while she sang along. She sounded so carefree it almost hurt.
What Dick wouldn’t give to be like that. Even without the use of her legs, Barbara never had to stress over feeling uncomfortable in her skin. She never felt out of tune the way Dick did. He wished he knew how to be that carefree. Or, better yet, to lack any capacity to care at all. Not to be free of it, but to never have been trapped by it in the first place. To be a fish. To float the world, mindless and worriless. Bodiless. To serve no purpose but to live, to eat, and to eventually die.
Dick envied every being lesser than a human.
The light fixture above the tub flickered every few seconds, the ancient bulb in dire need of replacing. Dick kept meaning to get around to it. The thought of dragging over a stepstool and taking care of it now had his body aching with phantom exhaustion. He stared at the mini sun until his vision grew black spots.
Before Dick knew it, he was sinking deeper in the tub until the soapy water sloshed up past his ears, up to the temples. He could hear his heartbeat and nothing more, the music outside the door muffled and the water’s movements hushed. Dick breathed out, and bubbles burst from his nostrils as they too became covered by the water.
It was peaceful. It was quiet.
Here, Dick felt weightless in the way he would normally have attributed to falling—or to flying. Just him and the air. No hands caressing his skin, no wet mouths sucking on his lips, no teeth scraping against his nipples.
What Dick wouldn’t give to be nothing at all.
Dick paid no mind to the burning in his lungs as he released his last breath into the still water. He closed his eyes.
And then sudden hands were wrapping around his forearms, tugging him upright. Dick emerged from the water, coughing and blinking soap from his eyes. Babs had appeared beside the bathtub, her green eyes wide with worry. “Jesus, Dick! What the hell was that?” The sleeves of her sweater were damp with foam.
Dick coughed. He shook his head minutely. “I—” He what? How could he possibly provide an answer for that frantic look in her eyes? “Just…taking a bath,” he said finally.
“It sure didn’t look like it.” Barbara didn’t release Dick’s arms, as if she were afraid he would slip back into the water if she let go. Dick wasn’t sure she was that far off.
“I nodded off. Sorry if I scared you.” Dick didn’t look at her again. He stood and reached for the towel hanging on the bar, not bothering to rinse the soap off his skin. “I should get a nap in before patrol tonight.”
Barbara didn’t leave. “Dick, are you—”
“I’m fine, Babs.” He was
fine.
Catalina Flores was a flirt, Dick learned early on in their mentor/mentee relationship. He didn’t waste his breath calling her out on it or telling her to stop. After all, who could blame her? It wasn’t as though Nightwing was the most conservative of dressers. The tight suit left very little to the imagination. It was understandable that eyes would tend to linger, as that hands would tend to drift.
Dick didn’t think more of it than that. Maybe he should have. With so much destruction pressing on his shoulders in such a short period of time—the apartment building fire, Haly’s, the BPD, Bruce,
Barbara—
Dick hadn’t the space to register it when Catalina touched too long or purred too close. He hadn’t thought to wonder if “danger” was a word he should have attributed to her.
As if the name
Tarantula
wasn’t warning enough.
When Catalina pointed the gun at Blockbuster and told Dick to move out of the way, it was in that moment that Dick knew he had failed. Every possible thing that he could have failed, he did. Everyone. All of it. He’d lost it all, so why bother trying anymore? What more did he have to lose?
Blockbuster’s blood was still warm when it hit Dick’s skin in explosive splatters. It slid down his neck and dripped through the collar of his uniform, staining his skin red. He wanted to strip down and be rid of it all, scrape off his flesh until he cut right down to the bone.
In the end, he didn’t need to do any of that. Catalina did it for him.
Blood was washed away by rain as drops hit his newly exposed skin. Even up here on the dark rooftop, Dick couldn’t blink away the image of that damned bullet ripping through Blockbuster’s body.
Catalina—
Tarantula—
shimmied Dick out of his uniform, murmuring reassurances to him while she turned the hero back into a man. He could smell her breath, her sweat, the shampoo she used. Something sweet; it burned his sinuses. He could smell blood as well.
Maybe Catalina was venomous, like a real tarantula. Maybe that was why Dick lay paralyzed on the dirty roof instead of fighting her off when she grabbed his unclothed member and began to stroke.
“Shh,
hermoso.
I’ve got you.”
Dick told her not to. While nightmares flashed through his fractured mind and rain that smelled like blood pelted his bared flesh, Dick heard himself tell Catalina to get off of him, to get far away from him and his poison. He ruined everything he touched.
Catalina touched him anyway. And when touching wasn’t enough, she began licking. And squeezing. And thrusting. He didn’t recall when exactly she lost her clothes.
“Mm,” she moaned, sliding up and down Dick’s unmoving body. “That’s more like it, my love. I knew you wanted this. I knew you loved me.”
And, of course Dick wanted it. Of course he did. He said otherwise, but his body clearly knew better than he did. He got hard. He finished inside her. He didn’t do a thing to stop her, even if he felt slimy and disgusting after, even as silent tears coursed down his face while Catalina washed his blood-spattered body in the shower. She licked them off his cheeks.
“Everything is going to be okay,” she whispered hotly in his ear.
Dick closed his eyes and let himself drift away.
There was this thing that Bruce would often say. About guns, and about killers.
A gun is only a weapon in the hand of the person using it.
One didn’t put a gun on the stand and testify against it. One didn’t give a gun the title of “killer” and lock it in prison as penance for its crimes. As much as Batman hated everything they stood for, it was an undeniable fact that a gun didn’t become a weapon until someone picked it up and decided to make it one.
Catalina Flores turned her gun into a weapon, and in doing so, she turned Blockbuster into a corpse. And Dick…Dick
let her.
Dick felt like melted plastic. Time stopped having meaning, one minute dragging through the next hour in the span of a second. Dick stared blankly at the dingy white wall of the hotel room, watching a fly struggle in a cobweb.
He wondered if he was the fly, or if he was the web. Maybe he was both. Maybe he was always meant to destroy himself.
The door opened and closed across the room, accompanied by the sound of many shopping bags hanging from an arm. “I’m home,
mi amor!”
Catalina dropped her spoils to the floor, kicking them out of her way as she approached the bed. “You’re going to
adore
the shoes I bought myself.”
Dick didn’t remember giving her his credit card—just that she had it now, and that she liked using it.
Catalina crawled into bed with Dick. She kissed his bare shoulder. He had clothes somewhere in the room, but he possessed neither the energy nor the motivation to find them and put them on. Catalina would have him out of them soon enough, anyhow. “Have you gotten out at all today, honey?”
Dick didn’t answer. Probably not. He felt grimy. Catalina craned up to kiss his neck, then the corner of his mouth. Her hand pushed at the waistband of his underwear. “Get these off. I need a little something.” She nipped his ear.
She didn’t waste time waiting for audience participation, and pretty soon that lone article of clothing was being slid off Dick’s legs and thrown to some corner of the room. Dick buried his face in his pillow and tried to ignore the sensation of her freshly manicured fingers stroking his length.
It took hardly any time for her to get him hard. Dick still couldn’t quite wrap his head around how he could still feel so awful while she was trying to make him feel so good. He must have been the worst lover she’d ever lain with, but Catalina didn’t complain about Dick’s dead-fishness and slung her leg over his hip. She sank down onto him, moaning in his ear.
Dick kept his eyes shut.
“Perfect,” Catalina sighed as she rocked into him. “So perfect for me. So beautiful.” She kissed Dick’s mouth. His lips felt numb.
Was this it? Was this all that Dick was now? Was he hers? He must have been, because Catalina kept saying that he was between keening strings of Spanish. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe everything would be easier if Dick
was
just a thing.
Things couldn’t be murderers. Things couldn’t feel like their lives were falling apart.
Upon returning to Gotham to help the bats get a grip on the gang war, Dick did his best to push down everything inside himself and focus his attention on the mission at hand. It should have been no surprise that Bruce saw right through his act. He raised Dick; he knew him better than most. Maybe Dick resented that fact a little.
Regardless of what he knew—or
thought
he knew—Bruce didn’t push when Dick said he was fine. He clearly did not believe the lie one bit, but all he did was tell Dick to keep his head clear while they handled the gang war. It was more leniency than Dick deserved.
And, really, it should have been no problem for Dick to move on from…what happened. In the grand scheme, what he’d gone through was nothing compared to the rest of it. People died—people were
dying.
Gotham was tearing herself apart, and all Dick could think about in the midst of it all were Catalina’s hands on him? He was better than this. He was stronger.
It wasn’t until Dick was laid up with a bullet in his leg and the phantom stench of blood in his nostrils that Bruce finally confronted him. “I want you to tell me what happened in Blüdhaven.”
Dick couldn’t decide if Bruce was choosing now to break the ice because he had Dick cornered on a medical cot, or because he could see that Dick was inches away from falling apart completely. Dick refused to accept the latter. “Nothing happened. I’m fine.”
“You are not fine,” Bruce told him, yanking off his cowl so that Dick was faced with sharp blue eyes and an age-hardened face. “I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, but I know you definitely aren’t fine. Have you even slept since you came back? Don’t tell me you’ve been eating, because Alfred knows you’ve been throwing your meals down the garbage disposal.”
Dick had no idea he was so transparent to them. He was losing his touch. Maybe he was a failure to begin with. He shouldn’t have been surprised; what kind of joke failed to save his home and everyone he cared about, time and time again? What kind of failure let a man
die?
“You can’t go on like this.”
“I can do anything I damn well please,” Dick shot back childishly. He made a grab for the crutch at his bedside, and Bruce didn’t make a move to stop him. Dick shakily forced himself to his feet and hobbled past Bruce, ignoring the ache in his leg. “We have bigger problems right now.”
Bruce stepped in front of him, obstructing his path. “I’m here if you need to talk, chum,” he said, so unlike himself that Dick was hit with a sharp melancholy that had tears burning in the back of his eyes. Ridiculously, it brought him back to memories of when he was nine years old and Dick would go to Bruce for everything, for every minuscule problem he had.
When Dick fractured his ankle on patrol, Bruce was right there to carry him back to the Batmobile. He dried Dick’s eyes and reassured him that everything would be fine. He never chastised him for crying when it hurt. Alfred would get him fixed up, and then they would spend the rest of the night eating ice cream and watching Dick’s favorite cartoons.
It seemed at the time that there was no problem in the world that Batman couldn’t solve. Dick sometimes caught himself still believing that even now.
Unable to find a response that wouldn’t send the traitorous tears flooding over, Dick excused himself without looking Bruce in the face and hobbled from the cave, his chest tight.
They won the war, but they lost Stephanie. Everyone blamed themselves for it.
Dick blamed himself even more for not having the room to grieve her.
It took months of aimless wandering and mistakes before Dick felt a modicum like himself again—and even saying that much was a stretch. It helped him to reconnect with the friends he’d been shamefully ignoring for longer than he’d noticed. Dick couldn’t name the last time they had done this with Roy and Wally, the three of them chilling at Roy’s place with a few beers and some old reruns of shows they hated to watch but loved to make fun of.
Roy sipped his Coke and remembered suddenly between commercials, “Oh, yeah, Dick—what’s this I heard about you almost getting
married
a few months back?”
Wally spat out his own drink, laughing. “What? No way. You’re pulling my leg.” Their eyes were both on Dick, twin expressions of expectancy.
Dick’s gut churned at the sudden (and unwanted) spotlight, but he played it off with a laugh. “It’s not as big as it sounds, trust me. Things were just hot and heavy for a while.”
Things were just mouths, were just hands, were just crooning Spanish in his ear and bare skin and
touching, touching, touching.
“Dish, dude!” Wally says, slapping Dick’s knee. “What’s her name?”
“Catalina.” The word tasted like bile. “We’re not together anymore, I’m sorry to say. It was…kind of a fast relationship.”
“Thought you didn’t do those,” Roy said. He would know; Dick and Roy had had plenty of playful arguments in the past about their very different versions of love. Dick had insisted he didn’t understand casualty in relationships. He only knew all or nothing.
How naive he was back then. He didn’t see at the time how silly his childlike notions of love were. Nobody loved like that anymore. It was only a matter of time until Dick got with the program.
“Maybe I do now,” Dick replied. He took a swig of his beer to wash away the imagined aftertaste of blood in his mouth. “There’s not much to tell, anyway. The whole relationship happened while I was kind of hazy from some—some stuff that went down. I barely remember anything that happened in those weeks, honestly. We lived in a hotel for a while. She tried to make me sign a marriage license, but then Bruce stole me away to deal with the gang war, and things fell apart after that. Fun while it lasted, though,” he tacked on at the end.
He could have said more. That the vigilante known as Tarantula was now looking at twenty to life in a Blüdhaven prison. That Dick was too ashamed of what had transpired between them to tell anyone what happened, even his family. Barbara assumed they were just having sex, and Dick didn’t try convincing her of any different. It was better that way. No one needed to know anything if nothing happened.
Dick pretended not to notice the look Roy and Wally exchanged and chugged the last of his beer.
It was stupid that he was so rocked by what happened. Nightwing had flirted with plenty of people in the past. It was fun. Catalina knew what Dick was like. She’d practically drooled over him when they met, and Dick didn’t discourage her, so of course she’d seized the first opportunity to get with him. If Dick didn’t want it, then he shouldn’t have been so promiscuous in the first place.
Everyone knew that Nightwing was the most drool-worthy hero on the coast. He couldn’t help his sex appeal, and even if he could, it wasn’t as if he did anything to hide himself away or reject people’s advances. He was asking for it.
Later, when Roy was on the phone with Lian’s babysitter and Dick was raiding the fridge for a snack, Wally took the opportunity to corner him there. “Can we talk for a minute, man?”
Dick froze, but he didn’t stop what he was doing. He found a tupperware container of leftover chili and grabbed a spoon. “Sure. What’s up?”
“Are you…you know,
okay?”
Dick forced a grin. “‘Course I am. I’m great.”
“Yeah, sure,” Wally said, nodding to himself like he wanted to believe it. “It’s just…the stuff you said earlier. It didn’t sound…” He trailed off uncertainly.
Dick set his cold chili down and crossed his arms. “Didn’t sound what?”
“It didn’t sound like you. Any of it.”
“People can have casual relationships, Wally. Get with the times.”
“Except that it doesn’t really sound like a relationship at all,” Wally shot back. “Did she even check to make sure you were
conscious
when you guys did it?”
“I was conscious,” Dick said, like the very idea was preposterous. It
was
preposterous. “I was great. I
am
great. And whatever, Wally, I like sex.
You
know that.”
Wally’s stare was scathing. “Yeah, I do. That’s how I know there’s something off here you’re not telling me.”
“Keep your jealousy to yourself, will you? A couple flings in high school doesn’t give you any right to control what I do now.”
“You mean
concern,”
Wally snapped, and it would have been intimidating if Dick didn’t know Wally as well as he knew himself. Wally was never good at hiding his worry. “Real fucking concern. There’s nothing wrong with casual sex, but there is something
seriously
wrong with what happened between you and this Catalina woman, I can tell.”
The black hole in Dick’s chest swallowed his lungs. He found his voice after a moment: “Who cares? It’s in the past, Walls. I’m over it.”
“I don’t like how casual you’re being about this,” Wally insisted. Dick was remembering why they didn’t often get together. His friends knew him too well. That was probably his fault too. “Because to me, it sounds like you were being assaulted and manipulated by this chick.”
Dick let out a terrible laugh.
“Assaulted,”
he echoed, like the very concept was a joke. “That shows what you know. If you want to be a prude, that’s your problem, Wally. But leave my relationships out of it. I’m fine.”
He slammed his spoon on the counter and stalked back to the living room.
Later that same night, Dick lay awake in his bed at the manor, his conversation with Wally replaying in his mind on a loop.
It sounds like you were being assaulted and manipulated by this chick.
He took up his cell and called Wally. He was surprised when Wally picked up on the first ring. “You need something?” Because even when they were in a fight, Dick could say he needed help and Wally would appear in the room in ten seconds flat, no matter how angry he was. Dick didn’t deserve that kind of unconditional love, and yet he had it.
“I’m sorry about before,” Dick said. He was lying on his side, staring at the dark shape of Gotham out his window. He traced a raindrop down the pane. “I shouldn’t have said all that. It wasn’t about you.”
“Yeah, I figured that.” Even now, as adults living on opposite sides of the country and leading opposite lives, Wally still knew Dick like the back of his hand.
“A lot of stuff went down between me and Catalina,” Dick confessed. Wally deserved the truth, even if Dick couldn’t give him all of it. He owed his friend that much. “Some of it I don’t remember. The parts I do remember…they weren’t great. But she’s gone now, so I’m…I’m trying to move on, I guess is what I’m saying. Dwelling on it won’t help me.”
“And ignoring it will?”
Dick laughed emptily. “Usually does the trick. Old dogs, and all that.” They were quiet for a moment. The raindrop sank to the bottom of the window frame and disappeared in a small pool. Alfred should do something about that leak. “You ever feel like you’re not right inside?”
“I can do a lap around Antarctica in ten minutes, Dick. That’d be a pretty long list.”
Dick snorted quietly. “Yeah, probably.” Except that Wally
used
to be a normal kid. The lightning changed him, but Wally still hadn’t changed who he was on the inside. Dick was the one who had turned rotten inside, turned into a person he could no longer recognize. “I’m going to stick around Gotham for a while. I need to get out of my head.”
“I hear that can be helpful,” Wally agreed. “You ever need someone to talk to, you know you’ve got me, right? Always. No matter what.”
Strangely, Dick kind of wanted to cry when he heard that. “Yeah,” he said, chewing on his lip as he willed the tears back. “I know.”
Dick turned his phone off and didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
Blüdhaven was destroyed. There was nothing left to salvage in the aftermath. Hundreds dead—
thousands
dead. Dick could have stopped it. He could have done
something,
but he was powerless to do a thing as his home was blown to smithereens. He was
always
powerless, no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise. What a fool he was. What a fucking fool.
Dick couldn’t say what force drove him to Barbara’s apartment that lonely night. Maybe it was the grief. Maybe it was the way Bruce and Tim walked on eggshells around him at home, as if they expected Dick to shatter at any moment. All Dick knew was that suddenly he was knocking on her apartment door, and in the next moment, there she was.
“Are you aware of what time it is?” Babs demanded, scrubbing her tired eyes. “Patrol ended not even an hour ago. People like us need whatever sleep we can get. How are you even—” She stopped when she finally got a good look at him. “Are you okay?” Dick hadn’t even known he was crying.
He didn’t—
couldn’t
answer her. Dick dropped to his knees and kissed her like he would die otherwise. It felt like he would. Barbara pulled away after only a couple seconds, her eyes startled. “Dick? Dick, talk to me. What happened?”
“Please,” he whispered, hating the salt on his cheeks, hating the flesh that clung stubbornly to his rotting bones. “Please.” He tried to kiss her again, but Barbara gently pushed him back again.
She kept a firm grip on his shoulders, holding him at arm’s length so that she could look at him. “Dick, no. This isn’t good.”
Of course he wasn’t good enough. He would never be good enough. Catalina’s words echoed in his ears, never leaving him be, never freeing him from her web. They were overshadowed only by the louder memory of Bruce barking orders to his young sidekick, demanding that he be better, faster, stronger.
He had to be stronger. He had to push himself until he broke. Dick didn’t know how to be anything else.
“This isn’t good for
you,”
Barbara amended, her green eyes locked on Dick’s as she searched for something Dick couldn’t identify if he tried. “What is going on with you?”
“Does it matter?” he answered hollowly.
“Yes.”
She ran her fingers through his shaggy hair. It had been too long since he’d gotten it cut. “Dick, honey…talk to me.”
They didn’t have sex that night.
Instead they lay together in Barbara’s bed, tears dripping onto the pillow as Barbara held Dick close to her. She hugged him even when it got too hot, even when the position grew uncomfortable for them both. Dick was grateful she didn’t let go; he might have shattered into pieces otherwise.
He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t know what he was allowed to have, only that something was
missing.
That black hole inside him had grown bigger and bigger. Maybe he
was
the black hole. He was ripping everything apart with his presence alone.
Dawn came too soon, and neither of them had gotten a wink of sleep in that time. Dick pleaded with Barbara not to tell anyone. She asked him again what happened to him. Dick left.
The annual Wayne Foundation Christmas party was an affair that Dick had made a point of never missing unless currently dead or dying. For all the stress and carnage that vigilante life wrought, Dick Grayson refused to let his public image disappear. The rest of the Waynes were in attendance as well, including Damian—Bruce’s newly discovered son. Bruce even brought Selina along.
Dick styled himself for the occasion in a form-fitting suit with the top three buttons of his shirt undone. He borrowed one of Barbara’s makeup pallets to really sell the look with a sexy smoky eye. He was hot as fuck. He was Gotham’s favorite eye candy, and everyone knew it.
It was clear to the world who Bruce Wayne’s son was. When he was a child, Dick grew up confused by the way Bruce let Gotham’s wealthiest drape themselves over him like he was a piece of art in a museum. At the time it seemed terribly objectifying, but Dick had grown since then. He knew now what it meant to have this kind of armor. Bruce needed it to protect his identity, and in a way, so did Dick. This was him. He was adored. He had value.
People were all over him in a blur of jewels and gowns, snapping pictures and offering up dances with the most eligible Wayne boy.
Dick loved this. He loved being wanted. Five minutes in a chosen spotlight could heal years upon years of hurt.
Some middle-aged socialite Dick vaguely recognized from a magazine pinched his ass as she walked by. Dick didn’t even know her name, but he sent her a flirty smirk in return. Here, in this environment, no one could dare say that Dick Grayson wasn’t good at what he did. No one could claim him a powerless failure. No one would care whom he could or couldn’t save.
Dick detoured to the refreshments table for a glass of champagne and found Tim already there, sampling a shot glass he’d filled with whipped cream. “You’ve got some lipstick right there,” Tim informed him, pointing to the collar of his own shirt. He said it casually, but there was underlying disapproval in his words.
“Do I?” Dick said nonchalantly. He made no move to remedy the situation and gulped down champagne. He didn’t even like the taste, but he liked the tingling buzz down his throat.
“You know, we can duck out early if you want,” Tim offered. He sprayed more whipped cream into his glass, licking a stray drop off his knuckle. “I spotted a basketball hoop in the back. Bruce won’t miss us if you need to get some air.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” Dick replied smoothly. “I’m having fun. But if you want to leave, you can always call Alfred to pick you up.”
He should have felt bad for brushing Tim off, but perhaps it was better this way in the long run. Tim didn’t need this kind of scene, anyway. He wasn’t like Dick; he was too young to put up with this kind of atmosphere.
Dick ended up wandering back to Bruce and Damian after a bit, where a state senator’s wife was chatting them up beside an ice sculpture. “And aren’t you just the most
darling
thing?” she cooed at Damian. She pinched his cheek.
The little devil barely held himself back from biting her—an admirable display of restraint on his part. He bristled at the touch nonetheless and backed away from her sharp fingers. “And what a looker, too!” she praised, unfettered by his unfriendliness. “Just wait until you’re eighteen, little man. If you turn out anything like your dad here, I’ll be giving you a call.” She winked playfully. She was old enough to be his mother.
A shiver ran down Dick’s spine at the scene playing out before him. He couldn’t look away from Damian’s small, young face, and that woman’s wandering hands. Dick didn’t understand why he was so affected; it wasn’t like this was a rare occurrence in this crowd. Dick himself had been the center of attention constantly during his childhood and teenage years, fawned over by adoring older women as they watched him grow from a cute boy into a handsome man. He wasn’t fazed by it anymore.
Except that it was
Damian.
Damian, who was only ten years old. Surely Dick hadn’t been that young when it was him, right? But even as he imagined an older Damian reaching adulthood, the very thought of him still being prodded and flirted with by these predators had Dick’s gut churning with a wave of nausea.
Dick very nearly stepped in to intervene, but he didn’t have to. Bruce beat him to it.
Bruce stepped forward, putting a hand on Damian’s shoulder and subtly putting himself between the boy and the woman in front of him. “While we’re on the subject, how is your ex-husband doing?” he asked, his easygoing smile still fixed in place beneath his smoldering eyes. He looked ready to flay skin from bone. “I heard he became engaged to a younger woman. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she looked like a version of you from fifteen years ago,” he chuckled.
The woman did not join him. She clammed up at once, her face reddening. With a quiet humph and a halfhearted excuse about getting more wine, she turned and headed back for the refreshments.
The protective look in Bruce’s eyes didn’t leave after she was gone. He turned to his son and planted his hands on Damian’s shoulders, leaning in close so that Dick couldn’t hear what he said. He only caught a brief snippet of, “—sorry you had to hear that. If something like that ever happens again, you let me know and we can leave right away.”
It was stupid, the way that made Dick’s eyes grow misty and his chest twist in knots.
“It’s okay, mi amor. It’s just the two of us now. Nothing can hurt us here.”
“What are you talking about? It’s me, Kory. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t say no to this. Just let me take over. I know what’s best for you.”
“Hush, baby. I’ll do all the work, and all you have to do is enjoy yourself. It’ll feel good, you’ll see. I’ll make you a man.”
Dick woke up in a cold sweat, the ghosts of hands and mouths and touching and begging sending revulsed goosebumps through his body. The bedsheets against his skin became too much, and he was out of his bed in an instant with a shudder. Even in his old room at the manor, they felt so close to him still. They wouldn’t let go.
Instinct forced Dick’s feet forward, and soon he was across the hall and standing in front of Bruce’s bedroom door. This scene was a familiar one: Dick, young and afraid, running to his dad after a nightmare. Except that it had been years since the last time he’d done this. Dick was a man now; he wasn’t supposed to need this anymore.
He pushed the door open anyway. It creaked quietly as it swung, but thankfully not enough to wake the room’s sleeping inhabitant. Dick watched from the doorway as Bruce’s chest rose and fell in the dark, sound asleep. How silly this was. How pathetic Dick was, this boy pretending to be a man pretending to be a hero. If he had any shred of dignity left, he would turn around and go straight back to his own room.
He was still frozen by indecision when the feeling of being stared at woke Bruce up, and his eyes opened. It was dad instincts and Batman instincts rolled into one. “Dick?” Bruce sat up groggily. “What is it, chum?”
What is it, chum?
It’s okay, chum, you’re okay. You did good tonight. You saved them.
Don’t be scared, chum, I’ve got you. I’ll never let anything happen to you.
I’m here if you need to talk, chum.
Dick…couldn’t. With those words alone, everything swelled over and Dick burst into tears. He buried his face in his arms as he wept, feeling every inch like the child he’d sworn never to be again.
He heard the bedsprings shift as Bruce rose off the bed, and then there was a hand on Dick’s shoulder and one cupping the back of his head. “Hey. Hey, talk to me,” Bruce said, his voice having gone from groggy to soothing as soon as the first tear fell. “What is it? What happened?”
He ran his hand through Dick’s messy hair, the action so comforting that it was devastating. It was devastating to be treated so gently, so carefully, as if he was
worth
being gentle with. As if he wasn’t filthy, inside and out. Dick had tricked everyone around him into loving him, making them all believe he deserved it.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Dick choked out between harsh sobs. “I don’t know how to fix it. Everything I do, it just makes it worse and I’m—I can’t—” He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think.
Bruce hugged him, wrapping Dick in his strong arms and letting him bury his face in Bruce’s sleep shirt to surely ruin it with snot and tears.
He shushed Dick quietly, holding him like he was a boy all over again, and for once Dick didn’t mind. “It’s okay, son. I have you. It’s going to be okay.”