Chapter Text
#1
The call came in at 19:04: man down, multiple lacerations, possible GSW. Nightwing—no, Dick, just Dick tonight—checked his hair in the rearview, reaffixed the blue latex gloves, and shoved his paramedic kit down beside the gurney as the ambulance lurched toward Gotham’s southside. He’d left his mask in the glove-box, where it grinned out at him every time he reached for the clipboard. Every month or so, Dick reminded himself that normal people did not do field medicine as an off-the-books side hustle, much less after spending all night leaping across rooftops in spandex, but there was a certain rhythm to it. Stabbings were easier than muggings. Domestic calls, those were trickier. He hoped for a tidy slice-and-dice.
The house was lit up like it owed the power company money, crime scene tape barely holding back a crowd of blue-hoodied lookie-loos. Dick ducked the tape, flashed his badge, and found the cop on perimeter duty—one of the few in the city who knew better than to ask for his actual name. The officer nodded him through. “Upstairs, second right. Not dead, just loud.”
He took the stairs three at a time. At the top, the smell hit—copper, sweat, the edge of urine. Dick shouldered through a knot of uniforms and found his patient: big, tattooed, covered in blood, and somehow shirtless in February. Dick knelt, snapped open his kit, and pressed gauze to the guy’s shoulder, right at the edge of a beautiful, raggedy scar.
His hands stopped. His brain kept going.
It wasn’t the blood. It wasn’t the size of the man, or the angle of the cut. It was the pattern, the way the old scar curved just under the clavicle and splintered down into the armpit. He’d put that there. Not as Dick Grayson. As Nightwing, three years and one Thanksgiving ago, when he’d been up against the Red Vipers and one particularly stubborn enforcer who’d tried to kill a city bus full of people.
He’d stitched that wound. He’d also dislocated the guy’s left thumb, which, yes, was also there if you looked for it.
“Hey,” he said, shifting his weight onto the guy’s good side. “Name?”
The man grunted. “S’Pietro.”
“Let’s get you some oxygen, Pietro.” Dick worked fast, patching the fresh wound and steadying the man as the gurney got swapped in. “Who did this to you?”
“Don’ know,” mumbled Pietro, which was a lie.
Dick slid a sterile bandage over the wound and glanced again at the scar. “You ever have surgery on this shoulder?” he asked, probing gently around the site.
“Don’ remember,” said Pietro, barely conscious.
But Dick remembered. He’d performed the world’s fastest field surgery with a batarang and some dental floss, and the man was still alive, so points for improvisation. Dick ran a thumb over the edge of the scar. No mistaking it.
There was a sound in his ear—an alert, encrypted. The League comms, filtered through his phone.
Nightwing, status? said the text, in the distinct all-caps of Batman.
Dick hesitated. He really, really wanted to get this to Bruce first, because Bruce would take him seriously. But they’d been on thin ice lately, and he’d promised to keep the League in the loop.
“Hey, can I get a five on this?” Dick called to his paramedic partner, holding up the trauma kit.
His partner took over. Dick, hands still bloodied, stepped out onto the fire escape and snapped open his phone. He flicked through his photo gallery, found the shot from that old case—same scar, same man. He sent it to the Batline, then added: Confirmed: Scar matches Viper Enforcer, alias “Pietro,” Gotham cold case 11/27. Advise.
He waited, leaning over the railing and blowing on his hands. He counted to ten, barely breathing. The answer came, but not from Bruce.
“Dude, you have the weirdest kinks,” came the text from Hal Jordan, Green Lantern and reigning king of being a dick.
Dick didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the League group chat. The message had already been screenshotted and shared. Zatanna: “Does he seriously recognise people by their surgical scars?” Diana: “That’s an impressive attention to detail.” Hal, again: “That’s what they call it now?” Clark, ever the diplomat, added: “We should check if the enforcer is involved in the current situation.”
“Sorry,” said Dick, half to himself, “how else do you ID a guy with his face smashed in?”
He heard the laughter echo across the chat.
The paramedic partner gave him a thumbs up through the glass. Dick went back inside, made sure the guy was breathing and on fluids. In the back of the ambulance, while his partner drove, he finished the field report: “Patient conscious, stable. Suspect prior injury, unique surgical scar. Recommend surveillance upon discharge.”
His phone vibrated.
Bruce: Noted.
And then: Good catch.
When they arrived at Gotham General, Dick stepped out, lit by the orange sodium streetlamp, and stretched his back. It was almost break time.
He peeled off the gloves, binned them, and tried not to check the League chat again. He failed.
Clark: “We’re going to need more context, Nightwing. This is the third time you’ve identified a suspect by their bare skin. Are you working at a clinic, or…?”
Hal: “Just say it. He’s a stripper. Or, like, a bodybuilder, but less sad. Or a professional masseuse, those people see a lot of skin.”
Diana: “That’s not the only possibility, Hal. He could be in performance art. Or a medical examiner.”
Hal: “What kind of performance art, exactly?”
The messages stacked up, a chain of plausible deniability.
Dick ignored them, finished his shift, and jogged to the alley where he’d stashed the Nightcycle. He changed in the shadows, zipped the domino mask out of his kit bag, and took to the rooftops.
On the first landing, as he double-checked his comms, he caught the League’s conversation thread still active, this time with Bruce silent and everyone else bandying theories.
Hal: “He’s definitely a stripper. I bet he does police-themed nights.”
Clark: “You’re being juvenile, Hal.”
Hal: “It’s called investigative logic, Clark. If every week he’s seeing random Gotham guys with their shirts off, and they’re not in a hospital, what else could it be?”
Zatanna: “Professional modelling?”
Diana: “That would explain the flexibility. But not the violence expertise.”
Clark: “He’s a very good medic. That’s all.”
Hal: “You’re just jealous he has more abs than you.”
Dick thumbed the power switch on his comm and set it to Do Not Disturb.
Three rooftops later, he was mid-vault over a lighted billboard when he caught a message from Diana, private channel:
I think your friends are wrong about you, Nightwing. But if you ever want to tell me the truth, you know where to find me.
He almost missed his grip on the ledge.
The last thing he saw before tucking into the shadows was a newly posted League memo, unironically titled “Nightwing: Unusual Skillset Hypothesis Log,” with a list of possible civilian jobs.
At the top, under Hal’s edit, was a single word, bold and underlined:
STRIPPER
The punchline rang in Dick’s ears all the way to the next crime scene.
#2
It was supposed to be a simple extraction, but things had gotten complicated the moment Aquaman burst through the west wall and tripped the silent alarm. Dick was wedged between a sweating chemical drum and a panic-stripped hostage, wrestling zip-ties off the kid’s wrists, when the ceiling above them started to come down. Standard League gig: minimum three hostages, maximum chaos, one mid-tier maniac with a laser pointer and the morals of a sea slug.
Dick freed the last zip tie, grabbed the kid under the arms, and tumbled through the fire door just as a rain of asbestos insulation came drifting down. He landed on his left side—bad wrist, didn’t matter—spun the hostage behind him, and shouted, “Stay low, follow the arrows!” as he crab-walked backward out of the blast radius.
Flash zipped past, scooping the kid like a bowling pin. “Nice move,” he said, then slowed enough to add, “Do you always roll out of danger with the hostage on top of you?”
Dick flashed him a grin. “It’s the fastest way to shield the lungs. Plus, it limits smoke inhalation.”
“Remind me not to get kidnapped in Gotham,” Flash said, then vanished.
The after-action was its usual mess. Wonder Woman directed the press away from the building; Clark finished patching the gas line with Cyborg’s help. Dick was busy examining his own bruised forearm when Diana landed beside him, a little too gracefully for someone who’d just arm-wrestled an exploding door.
She eyed his arm. “Are you certain you don’t want me to set that? I have some experience with fractures.”
“It’s just bruised,” said Dick, peeling back the glove. “See?” He pointed to the ugly blue stripe down the radius. “It’s barely starting to swell.”
Diana crouched, looking closer. “It will turn yellow by tomorrow, then fade by Thursday,” she said. “But if it were me, I’d ice it tonight.”
Dick snorted. “That’s the ancient Themysciran technique? Ice and elevation? I know it'll turn a soft yellow after purple, and fades into pale grey.”
She almost smiled. “That, and a strong drink. But it is impressive how quickly you recover. Most mortals do not.”
He shrugged, keeping the mask of casual confidence. “You’d be surprised what a little prehab does. And I haven’t missed a range-of-motion day since I was ten.”
That caught her attention. “That explains the flexibility. But not your accuracy with pressure points.”
He grinned wider, not quite ready to say it out loud. “Just something I picked up.”
Diana studied him, as if cataloguing his posture, the line of his jaw. Dick saw her file the information away for later. If she’d been Batman, she would have asked the next twelve questions in ascending order of paranoia.
Instead, she rested a hand on his shoulder, checking the mobility. “Not dislocated?”
“Not even close. You can always tell by the way the deltoid sits—see?” He flexed, the muscle popping cleanly into place. “No step-off. Not even a subluxation.”
She looked at him, more curious than sceptical. “You have the knowledge of a battlefield medic, Nightwing.”
“Comes with the territory,” he said, but there was a shift in the conversation. Diana was still cataloguing.
Later, in the post-op debrief, the rest of the League gathered in the conference suite. The room had the smell of ozone and sweat, the weird dryness of spent adrenaline.
Dick arrived late, spinning a medical marker between his fingers and making it disappear every few seconds. Hal was perched on the edge of a table, feet kicked up, openly watching him.
“So, did you memorise the entire Gray’s Anatomy or just the parts that get people undressed?” Hal called across the room, a smirk already taking shape.
Dick arched an eyebrow. “You want me to start with you, Hal? Because you have the posture of a guy who’s about three months out from lumbar disc herniation.”
The snort from Black Canary was audible across the room.
Hal made an exaggerated show of stretching. “See, that’s what I’m talking about. Every time you pop up, you’re either patching somebody’s wound or reciting obscure medical trivia. I’m just saying—”
Cyborg cut in. “Didn’t you diagnose my broken metatarsal just by the way I was limping, like, last month?”
Dick spread his hands. “You landed on concrete from four stories. It’s basic maths.”
Zatanna leaned over to Diana, stage-whispering, “It’s a little uncanny, isn’t it? He’s like a walking medical examiner. Or one of those guys who hosts true crime shows.”
Hal, never letting go of a bone, tapped his temple. “No, you’re all missing the point. There’s only a handful of jobs where you get that close to people on the regular. And if it’s not medicine, it’s… something client-facing. Something hands-on.”
He made finger quotes.
Clark, hovering just above the floor, tried to rein things in. “What Hal is attempting to say is that Nightwing’s familiarity with the human body is… notable.”
Diana, perfectly composed, folded her arms. “He corrected my approach to muscle strain recovery today. And he knew the exact colour a bruise would turn before healing.”
Hal: “Professional. I’m telling you.”
Black Canary raised a hand. “Let’s take a vote. Anyone think Nightwing is secretly a medical examiner?” A couple of tentative hands.
Hal: “Stripping. I’m putting all my money on stripping. Or, at minimum, personal training for really rich weirdos.”
Canary: “Is there a difference, at that price point?”
They all laughed, the sound echoing off the glass walls.
Dick leaned against the window, arms crossed, listening to them assign him a new occupation by committee. He could correct them. He could tell them that he actually was a certified paramedic, but he knew the rules: once the League got a rumour in their teeth, they’d run it into the ground.
He caught Bruce’s gaze across the table—three piece suit, sunglasses inside, nothing but stone-faced neutrality. For a moment, Dick thought Bruce might intervene, clarify, save him from another round of Hal’s escalating innuendo.
Instead, Bruce said, “Let’s focus on the mission. But Nightwing, be prepared to debrief the medical findings later.”
Hal’s eyebrows shot up. “Debrief is an interesting word, Bats.”
“Grow up, Jordan,” Bruce said, but didn’t deny it.
Clark, gently, “If you don’t want to share your civilian expertise, that’s your prerogative, Nightwing. But the knowledge is impressive.”
Dick nodded. “Thanks. I just like being useful.”
Cyborg: “Dude, I’ve seen you pop a shoulder back into place mid-fight. You sure you’re not, like, moonlighting as a trauma surgeon?”
Dick grinned. “I did a first aid seminar once.”
Hal rolled his eyes. “He’s lying. He’s obviously moonlighting as a club dancer. The kind that gets really good tips. The kind where you get hands on and where you need to know how muscles work not to pop ‘em.”
The room dissolved into good-natured chaos. Zatanna conjured a ten-dollar bill from behind Dick’s ear; Canary made a joke about “costume reveals.” Even Diana, high priestess of dignity, allowed herself a smile.
By the end of the debrief, the running theory had shifted: Nightwing, defender of the vulnerable and Gotham’s most eligible mystery, definitely had a side hustle. Possibly several. Hal’s “stripper” theory was now openly discussed. Diana, in a moment of rare candour, said, “I see no shame in an honest performance art. The body is a temple, after all.”
Clark, still the diplomat, still very much in the know but refusing to correct them if Dick wasn’t, summed it up: “Whatever it is, we’re just glad you’re on our side.”
Dick took his leave early, backpack slung over one shoulder, and left the conference room with the sound of laughter echoing behind him.
As he passed the observation deck, he caught a snippet of conversation, Hal and Canary in a low voice:
“Do you think he wears the mask at work?” Hal.
“I hope so,” said Canary. “If you got it, flaunt it.”
Dick kept walking, and behind his sunglasses, he let himself smile.
#3
They say Gotham’s East Quarter never sleeps, but on Friday nights it doesn’t even bother to blink. The street was a jigsaw of neon and stumbling humanity, every bar packed to the fire code, every alley lined with gleaming pools of something that would never come out of your shoes. The League was supposed to be running crowd control for a visiting diplomat, but the real threat turned out to be the city’s own homegrown liquid courage.
Dick didn’t bother with the mask tonight. Sunglasses and a bomber jacket did the trick; no one in the crowd could tell Nightwing from the world’s most attractive bouncer. He threaded his way past a staggering line of partygoers, ignoring the catcalls (“Nice shades, pretty boy!”) and the equally creative offers of a good time.
“Looks like the situation’s escalating,” said Flash, already vibrating in place. “Three reports of disorderly, one open container citation, and I think I just saw someone try to take a selfie with Aquaman.”
Dick laughed. “Hope he smiled.”
“He did,” said Flash, then paused. “Actually, I think he bit the phone.”
Dick spotted the diplomat—short, sweating, beset by a phalanx of truly panicked aides—trying to move through the sidewalk but getting blocked at every turn by a human wall of drunken enthusiasm. There were League personnel up and down the block, but nobody was making headway.
Then he saw the real problem: one guy, tall, broad-shouldered, shirt halfway off, doing a slow-motion pinball between parked cars and careening toward the heart of the action. The kind of drunk who doesn’t fall down so much as attempt to fall through solid objects.
Dick met him at the curb. The guy blinked, eyes red-rimmed but hopeful. “Hey, man,” he slurred. “Where’s the, uh, where’d my friends go?”
“Let’s find them together,” Dick said, easy as a Sunday morning. He slid an arm around the guy’s waist, not quite a hug, but more support than the man had seen all night.
“Bro, you’re really warm,” said the man, sounding amazed.
“High metabolism,” Dick replied. “Let’s get you some water.”
He led the drunk away from the action, kept the banter light. “What’s your name?”
“Daaaave,” said the man, emphasis on every syllable.
“Dave,” Dick repeated, “I’m going to be honest with you. There’s about four different Daves lost on this street right now. You’re in good company.”
Dave gave a dopey smile, his head lolling onto Dick’s shoulder. “I think you’re my best friend.”
Dick laughed, and gently manoeuvred Dave onto a bench, making sure he didn’t tip over. “Sit tight, Dave. I’ll get you a bottled water.”
He flagged down a nearby vendor—bottled, not tap, because the city’s tap water had been untrustworthy since the last Scarecrow thing—and paid double in single notes. He cracked the seal, handed it over, watched as Dave took a long, wobbly pull.
“Hey,” said Dick, “I need you to count to five for me. You good?”
“Yeah,” said Dave, then got stuck at “three” and gave up. “Just wanted to dance, man.”
“There’s time for that later,” Dick promised. “For now, just relax.”
He waited until Dave’s breathing evened out. The guy’s pulse was fine; he’d probably black out and wake up thinking he’d had a transcendent encounter with the world’s nicest security guard. Dick wiped his hands on his jacket and glanced over at the rest of the League.
They were struggling. Flash was fending off selfie-hounds. Wonder Woman was getting her hands kissed by a parade of inebriated groomsmen. Aquaman was locked in a deep, serious conversation with a retired sailor who kept poking him in the chest. No one was making progress.
Dick strolled up to the diplomat, flashed his customary Nightwing grin, and said, “Stick close. I’ll clear you a path.”
He moved with purpose, guiding the group like a sheepdog but never shoving. Every time a drunk wandered into their way, Dick sidestepped, made eye contact, used body language so gentle it was almost hypnotic. The trick was to never look annoyed, never escalate. He’d learned it in the ambulance, back when every shift ended with at least one belligerent patient and a lecture about liability.
By the time he’d gotten the diplomat to the waiting car, Flash had caught up, sneakers skidding on wet pavement.
“You handled that guy like he was a lost puppy,” Flash said, voice low and kind of awed. “You didn’t even get mad when he almost puked on you.”
“He wasn’t trying to be a problem,” Dick said. “He just needed a nudge in the right direction.”
Flash looked at him for a long moment. “That’s not a vigilante skill, you know. That’s, like, customer service. You ever work a bar or something?”
Dick just smiled. “It’s all about reading the crowd.”
Later, back at League HQ, Flash repeated the story for anyone who’d listen.
“He didn’t even flinch,” Flash said, recounting the saga to Black Canary and Green Arrow, “The guy could’ve been naked and on fire, and Nightwing would’ve handled it. Zero drama.”
Canary, who’d been a lounge singer in another life, nodded approvingly. “Takes a special kind of patience to babysit the blackout crowd.”
Green Arrow grinned. “Maybe he’s moonlighting as a bouncer. Explains the arms.”
“Or a bartender,” said Canary. “Those people are saints. Or,” she looked at Flash, “maybe something more… interactive?”
Flash’s eyes widened. “Wait, you mean—?”
Canary gave him a sly look. “I mean, if you’ve ever been to a Gotham male revue, you know there’s an art to it.”
Green Arrow started laughing so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. “Nightwing: Gotham’s Most Eligible… and Most Employed!”
Flash held up his hands. “I’m just saying, it tracks. I’m officially switching sides to Team Hal. Dude’s definitely got a night job, and it’s probably not legal in most states.”
On the monitor, a running tally of “Nightwing Civilian Occupation Theories” now had STRIPPER in all caps, with “VIP club host” and “high-end bartender” in close competition.
Dick wandered past the observation deck, caught the tail end of the conversation, and decided it was probably better not to correct anyone. Sometimes, letting people believe the rumour was safer than the truth.
As he left, Flash called after him, “Hey, Nightwing! You ever do birthday parties?”
Dick, without breaking stride, shot back, “Only for people who can count to five.”
He heard the laughter echo long after he’d vanished down the corridor.
#4
The thing about breaking into a LexCorp research vault is that the security systems are programmed by people who sincerely hate acrobats. The lasers came in crisscrossed, rotating, and strobing in a way that bordered on hostile performance art. The mission brief had promised “moderate resistance.” Dick’s definition of moderate didn’t usually involve negotiating the business end of a laser tripwire with his crotch.
But this was the job. He flexed, rolled his neck, and calculated the timing in a single, smooth sweep of the vault room. Zatanna watched from the shadows, tablet in hand, logging the pulse frequency and mumbling a soft incantation in case things got dicey.
“Ready when you are, Nightwing,” she said, and even through the comm, Dick could hear the smile.
He grinned, vaulted off the wall, and let muscle memory do the rest. The first three lasers were easy—duck, roll, handspring—but on the fourth, the oscillation narrowed into a gap so tight that normal mortals would have stopped to measure and plan.
Dick dove for it anyway, twisting his body midair in a way that made his hip flexors protest. He hit the floor in a textbook full split—ankles flush to the concrete, torso upright, hands out for balance. He held the pose for a half second, just long enough for Zatanna to snap a picture with her phone.
Then he popped up, wove through the last of the grid, and disarmed the alarm in a flourish.
The comm went dead silent.
Finally, Canary, who’d been watching from the security feed, chimed in: “Was that strictly necessary, or are you auditioning for Cirque du Soleil?”
Dick, dusting imaginary lint off his knee, said, “Stability. You get lower to the ground, there’s less margin for error.”
Zatanna, still amused, posted the photo in the team group chat. “Low centre of gravity,” she added, as if this was a perfectly normal reaction.
Green Arrow’s voice came over the line, deadpan: “You know, we keep running these drills, but nobody ever brings up how much yoga you must do on the side. I’m just saying.”
Canary: “It’s not yoga, it’s dancer splits. My sister teaches at a studio, and even she would be impressed.”
Flash, somewhere up in the air ducts, started laughing. “Can I get a slo-mo replay on that? Because I swear you broke the sound barrier with your—” he made a raspberry sound, “—thighs.”
Dick powered down the security panel and strolled to the vault door, ignoring the peanut gallery. “You want to do the honours?” he asked Zatanna, who was still clutching her phone like a trophy.
She snapped her fingers, whispered a word, and the lock fell open with a satisfying thunk. “Teamwork,” she said, and followed him into the vault.
Inside, the target was exactly where the brief said it would be: an innocuous metal briefcase, probably holding the world’s most over-engineered thumb drive. Zatanna picked it up, then looked back at Dick with a new sort of curiosity.
“So, out of all the training you’ve done, which discipline helps the most in the field?”
Dick thought about it, then said, “Honestly? Ballet. And circus trapeze. But the martial arts don’t hurt, either.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What about the, uh, extracurriculars?”
He shrugged. “If you mean the splits, that’s mostly genetic. But it does help with crowd control.”
Zatanna smiled, sly. “I bet it does.”
They made their exit, retracing the path through the grid—Zatanna using a little magic, Dick just walking it backwards with infuriating ease.
When they regrouped topside, Canary and Green Arrow were already updating the “Nightwing Side Gig” list on the ops centre whiteboard. Yoga instructor, dance teacher, and “male flexibility coach” were crossed off in quick succession. Underlined, in red, was the word STRIPPER, with a question mark and a sketch of sunglasses.
Canary looked up, grinning. “Every time you do something like that, the list gets shorter, you know.”
Dick just said, “I live to serve,” and headed for the showers.
The rumour mill spun on, relentless as ever. Canary and Zatanna spent the rest of the evening debating whether the move was more Russian Ballet or Vegas headliner. Flash tried (and failed) to replicate the split on a conference table, and Green Arrow bet actual money that Dick had a gig at the Iceberg Lounge.
The next day, the whiteboard had a new entry: Professional Entertainer. The word “stripper” was circled twice, and someone (probably Hal) had added sparkles around it.
Dick saw it, paused, and thought about erasing the whole thing. Instead, he added a smiley face, then walked away, leaving the League to their theories.
He figured, if nothing else, it gave them something to talk about during downtime.
#5
The League hangar was at half power, lit mostly by the green sheen of Cyborg’s diagnostics and the low red of “do not touch” warning panels. The team was winding down from a mid-morning threat; most of them lingered in gym gear or under towels, sipping rehydration drinks and pretending not to watch the drama unfolding by the Batplane.
It started like most Grayson-Wayne altercations: quietly, and then not.
“I told you, I have it under control,” Dick said, voice tight.
Bruce, who was still in his three-piece suit and sunglasses, managed to project both business mogul and full-time nightmare at once. “You do not have it under control. You’re running yourself ragged. You’re taking risks you don’t have to take.”
Dick snapped, “Says the guy who hasn’t taken a vacation since Nixon.”
A muscle in Bruce’s jaw flickered. “I’m not the one with two full-time jobs and no sleep schedule. If you keep—”
“I’m fine,” Dick cut in. “And I’m not giving it up.”
The League couldn’t hear every word, but they didn’t have to. The pitch and the posture said everything: Bruce standing arms-crossed, Dick refusing to meet his glare but not backing down. It had the air of an old argument, one played out dozens of times.
Black Canary leaned over to Green Arrow, whispering, “How many times you think they’ve had this fight?”
Arrow sipped his drink. “If I had to guess, it’s about the side gig.”
Diana, cleaning her blade, watched the pair with open curiosity. “They have strong opinions about second jobs in Gotham?”
Arrow shrugged. “I mean, Bats runs on a code. And whatever Nightwing does outside the League, Batman is… not a fan.”
Flash, perched on the hood of the Batmobile, interjected: “We all know the rumour he’s got, like, a secret identity under his secret identity. You know, like a Clark Kent situation, but with more body glitter.”
Canary snorted. “I’d pay money to see Nightwing do a set at the Iceberg Lounge.”
Diana, ever the voice of grace, said, “There is no shame in honest performance. But it is unusual that Batman is so… judgemental.”
From the hangar floor, the argument reached a crescendo.
“You know what happens if you keep pushing like this?” Bruce said, low and dangerous.
Dick: “Yeah. I actually help people.”
“Don’t be stubborn, it's too dangerous.”
“I’m not! You think I’m not good enough for this? For anything outside your rules? I went to class, I passed the tests, I got the damn license.”
“You’re risking exposure,” Bruce hissed. “And you’re putting yourself in danger.”
Dick threw up his hands. “When have I not? I like helping people. It makes sense, okay?”
Bruce just stared, the kind of glare that could start wars. “You could ask for help.”
“And you’d give it?” Dick shot back.
Bruce didn’t answer.
The silence stretched, the kind that made even meta-humans sweat.
Arrow, never one for decorum, said, “Look, I’m just saying—maybe it’s not a big deal. Maybe he’s a dancer. That’s still service, technically.”
Hal, who’d just arrived from nowhere, slid into the conversation. “Told you, it’s got to be a stripper thing. Batman’s probably just mad he’s not getting a cut.”
There was a long moment where everyone waited for someone, anyone, to deny it.
Instead, Canary said, “Explains the flexibility. And the confidence.”
Diana: “And the lack of shame.”
Flash: “And the way he never gets weird around nudity, which, let’s face it, is not true for the rest of us.”
Hal: “I rest my case.”
Up on the platform, the argument had ended. Dick turned on his heel, grabbed his bag, and stalked toward the exit. Bruce followed, but at a slower pace, like a thundercloud reconsidering whether to rain.
The League watched the two of them go, then went back to their debrief.
Arrow said, “So we’re all agreed, right? Nobody mentions the side gig in front of Batman?”
Everyone nodded. “Absolutely,” said Canary.
Hal added, “If he ever needs a wingman, though, I’m volunteering. For science.”
Diana smiled, faint but genuine. “It takes strength to pursue one’s passions. Even in the shadows.”
The Batplane revved to life. Over the comm, Zatanna’s voice drifted in: “Next briefing is at 0900. And Nightwing, if you wanna give flexibility pointers, my studio is always open.”
The whole room broke up laughing, the kind of helpless, irrepressible laughter that made even Batman’s scowl less terrifying.
Dick, down the corridor and out of earshot, let the sound follow him like a tailwind. He figured there were worse things to be known for.
And in the hangar, under the flicker of warning lights, the rumour settled into fact for another member of the League. Nightwing, stripper. Gotham’s best-kept secret.
Hal raised his drink. “To the world’s greatest detective,” he said, and the toast echoed all the way to the landing strip.