There was only one thought currently in your head, running circles in your skull in tandem with your own feet weaving around shady buildings and Gotham residents in your mad dash for any place other than the docks.
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shi-
Seriously, what the hell?
You had just gone and done what was probably the stupidest thing of your life, and to top it all off you just had to run your mouth and reveal your discovery.
You’d surely have to pay for your foolishness. You were sure this was bound to bite you in the ass somehow.
Despite all of this though, you couldn’t suppress the giddy feeling blooming inside your chest. It quickly rose up your throat and escaped your body’s constraints, brushing past your lips in the form of crystalline giggles among huffing breaths.
I seriously just did that.
Stupidity aside, that was exhilarating.
The dumbstruck look on Robin’s —on Dick Grayson’s— face was absolutely priceless, a sight you were sure you were never gonna forget.
Sure, you had just given away a pretty good trump card by revealing your discovery, but so what? Robin had clearly recognised you. He would’ve started keeping tabs on you, and while you enjoyed thinking about your crush looking at you more, you sure as hell didn’t want surveillance to be the reason.
This way, you were sure Dick would be forced to approach you with all the cards laid out on the table, with no room for creepy vigilante stalker shenanigans ensuing.
It’s only fair I make sure there will be a direct confrontation, right?
You were also hoping that the news of a non-human in Gotham would be sweetened by the fact you were a known individual, less likely to be seeking the destruction of the city.
These trains of thought kept weaving messily among each other in your mind as your pace slowed and your gait relaxed, your breathing evening out as you reached the stairs leading down into the metro.
All in all it’s alright, you thought.
You were so not ready for this.
Leaning casually on the locker right next to yours, completely relaxed but still way too awake for 8 a.m. on a Friday, was none other than Dick Grayson.
Observing him from the end of the hallway you could only muster a mild impressed recognition for his not having caught a disease after coughing up a lung and a half of toxic harbour slurry.
You were not awake enough for this at all. The sunlight in the morning was way too harsh for your sensitive eyes, and the crisp outside air of the early hours combined with the myriad of noise coming from decidedly too many sweaty teenagers inhabiting the same space at once made pins jab themselves in your temples and in the spot between your eyes.
After a few moments of hesitation, your supremely developed brain helpfully formulated the most articulated thought you had had so far since having woken up: ‘Meh. We ball.’
And that’s the vibe you shuffled to your locker with, eyes opened just enough to avoid tripping over some other student’s abnormally lanky limbs and ending face-first on the floor.
As you approached Dick he finally noticed you. Or pretended to, you mused as your eyes locked, half studying his serene expression.
At least one of us has it together.
Dick did not have it together. At all.
He had noticed things about you during the school days, of course he had. How could he not? He found you simply too interesting to not pay attention, with your abrasive humour and full laugh, the seemingly oxymoronic lack of malice in the judgements you expressed about others, the way you never held back praise and compliments but closed up when it was yourself on the receiving end.
So of course he noticed details here and there, like your sensitive senses and your hatred for the morning, along with your high neck shirts and fingerless gloves.
All of those things could be easily explained, and the social faux-pas you sometimes made he had always interpreted as a mix of uncaringness for social norms and typical teenage awkwardness.
After yesterday night though, all those details came together to form a new picture.
Light and noise sensitivity. Heightened sense of smell. Neck and hands covered.
He was sure if he were to look under your high necks and gloves, he’d find thin silvery lines where gills and webbing were supposed to be.
All that plus, of course, the fact you had magnanimously saved his ass from dying a slimy and underwhelming death at the docks the night before.
Letting the rumble of the engine lull him as he leaned the side of his head on the car window while Alfred drove him to school, he thought over his plan for the day.
Find you first thing in the school day. Secure that chem make-up session. Negotiate mutual identity-secrecy.
Find a way to keep you close.
It was only logical after all. You knew his secret vigilante identity, an extremely valuable bit of information coveted by many villains across the world. He knew your status as an Atlantean in hiding, and had a very immediate connection to the one person in this city who should’ve been in the know about this fact yet clearly wasn’t, plus nobody ever eloped to Gotham if they didn’t have anybody they were hiding from outside of it.
Ergo, he had leverage on you, and you had it on him. The next step would of course be ensuring mutual silence.
And shared secrets always made people closer, didn’t they?
It was simply logical. Secret vigilante behaviour 101. Anyone would do this in his position, strictly for surveillance purposes. The fact he found you interesting– purely as a side-character in his life, that is– played absolutely no part in his very practical, very professional plan.
And so he found himself leaning next to your locker, doing a mighty fine job feigning calm and aloofness as he waited for you to appear in the hallway.
And boy, appear you sure did.
The way the ghost of a drowned sewer rat hopped up on psychotropics would, but appeared nonetheless.
Your hair was a mess, your eyes were puffy and barely opened. Your face was puffy and slightly blotchy, if from the chilly outside air or the hectic school atmosphere he did not know. Realistically a mix of both.
You stood at the start of the hallway for a moment, no doubt having noticed him. After the moment passed, you started dragging yourself to where he was, doing a frankly impressive job of avoiding the other students in your path with half-closed eyes and swaying movements.
How can I not find somebody like this at least mildly interesting?
You finally stopped in front of your locker, not even sparing him a glance as you twisted the combination lock with mechanical movements and all but threw your school bag inside, swinging your arm as the abused backpack slid from your shoulder.
Dick barely suppressed a sympathetic flinch at the muffled clanking of what was very probably your water bottle colliding with the battered metal of the locker.
You then swung the locker door closed, pivoting on your heel and leaning against it with sluggish movements, frizzed-up hair framing your face á la Lestrange as your head lolled lazily in his direction.
Neither of you said anything for a moment, simply existing in the hustle and bustle of the early morning school day.
“So,” you started, looking at him without changing your position in the slightest, like some psycho.
The Krueger stare was real, and it was currently staring Dick in the face through the complexion of a very tired, possibly deranged Atlantean.
He had half a mind to be perplexed, but frankly he had taken way too many weird happenings in his life in stride to be phased or weirded out. He took things in stride almost out of spite at the start, and now it just came second nature.
Plus, the fact you were interesting by nature was already a well established fact in his mind.
“I don’t have enough brain cells available today to adequately tie my shoes, so if you think we’re gonna discuss anything of what happened yesterday you can kiss those dreams goodbye.”
That weirdly intense gaze shifted from Dick’s mildly perplexed expression to the lockers lining the opposite wall as you let you head roll to rest more naturally against the old lacquered metal door.
“But I refuse to tutor you if you skip our next study session. I don’t care to hear the reason you skipped yesterday, it happens another time and you’re cut off for life from my magical chemistry skills, understood?”
Dick simply folded his arms against his chest, mirroring your relaxed leaning.
Mm. Seems like we adopted the same strategy then, huh?
“So that’s how it’s gonna be, then? Not even letting me defend myself, how cruel.”
He fished around in his pocket for a moment, pulling out his phone and angling it directly in front of you, blocking your sight of the scuffed checkered tiles.
“Tell you what, you let me know when you’ve got some brainpower to spare on my hopeless formula-memorisation skills, and I give you a heads up if I can’t make it. Sound good?”
You smirked and wordlessly took the phone, adding your contact info before snapping it closed and holding it back out to him.
“I’m holding you to that.”
A pause before an amused huff,
“Might even throw in a few swimming lessons if you do well enough.”
Your side-eye was the most alert your gaze had been so far.
Dick could only smirk in response.
Jeez, what did he get himself into?
He didn’t dwell much on it though.After all, he’d learnt long ago that the best way to live life was to take it in stride, interesting people and all.
