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natalia romanova and i go way back

[kommanders]

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[cherryysunshine]

A Cage Built Like a Crown

Pairing: Dick Grayson/F!Reader

Word Count: 14k

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: explicit sexual content, canon-typical violence, blood/injury, trauma, forced sterilization, medical abuse, past abuse, panic/dissociation, angst with a happy ending, oral sex, vaginal sex, aftercare

Summary: Dick Grayson was the boy the Court wanted. You were the girl they settled for. 

Author’s Note: this fic is a response to this ask

reader and Dick both grew up in Haly’s circus, but they didn’t really know each other or interact much.

i’m not quite happy with the universe background i built for this fic (feel like it’s too similar to The Art of Falling) but idk how to fix it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The child was not supposed to cry.

That was the first thing they had taught you. Tears wasted air. Fear wasted time. Pain was information. Panic was indulgence. A Talon did not shatter because the world became cruel around her; she learned the shape of cruelty, measured its reach, and cut through it before it could tighten around her throat.

The girl in the warehouse had not been taught any of that yet. She was thirteen, maybe fourteen, all knees and elbows and trembling wrists, with a gymnast’s posture and bruises too recent to be from training. She had curled herself behind a stack of shipping crates while the men who had brought her there argued in low, furious voices near the loading bay doors. One of them kept checking his phone. The other kept glancing toward the rafters as though he could feel you there.

He could not. No one felt a Talon until it was too late.

You watched the girl press her fist to her mouth. Her shoulders hitched around a sound she had enough instinct to swallow, and the sight of it lodged beneath your ribs in a place you had spent years hollowing out. There was nothing useful about sympathy. There was nothing productive about remembering the cold marble floor beneath your palms, the owl mask above you, the voice that had said, This one will have to do.

You had been eight years old when you learned that being chosen could still mean being unwanted.

Your orders were simple. Retrieve the candidate. Eliminate loose ends if necessary. Return before dawn.

The Court had become careful since Gotham learned to fear owls in daylight. They no longer took children from circuses in ways that left grief behind like a blood trail. They acquired. They arranged. They moved through guardians, scholarships, private training programs, medical bills, favors owed by frightened men with expensive suits and old family names. A girl disappeared from a regional gymnastics meet, and by morning there would be paperwork proving she had flown to Metropolis with an aunt who did not exist.

You shifted your weight along the beam and listened to the building breathe.

Three men in the main room. Two outside. One driver. The girl behind the crates. A camera network you had already killed. A police patrol four blocks away, too distant to matter. Rain tapping against the skylights in a thin, needling rhythm.

And then, above the rain, a soft scrape of boot against brick.

You turned your head a fraction.

He landed on the opposite beam as though gravity had learned manners for him. Blue-black suit. Escrima sticks. A domino mask that hid almost nothing important if you knew how to look. He crouched with one hand braced against the steel, his body folded into balance with the same loose confidence you had seen in hundreds of hours of stolen footage. Robin on rooftops. Nightwing above Blüdhaven alleys. Dick Grayson under circus lights, smiling before he flew.

For a moment, all the years between you collapsed.

The Gray Son was real.

He looked at you, and his expression shifted before he could stop it. He had expected a monster. You knew what he saw instead, because men had been making that mistake since you were old enough to wear the mask. A woman in black and silver armor, a hood drawn close, knives at your thighs, talons sheathed along your forearms. Alive. Breathing. Watching him from behind an owl’s face.

“Let the girl go,” Nightwing said.

His voice was lower than you had expected. Warmer, too, even with the warning in it.

Below, one of the men cursed. “What was that?”

You moved first.

Nightwing moved with you.

You dropped from the beam as the first gun came up. Your blade caught the man’s wrist, turned the shot into the concrete, and the sound cracked through the warehouse hard enough to make the girl scream. Nightwing hit the floor a breath later, one escrima stick snapping across another man’s knee, the second catching him at the temple before he could aim. Efficient. Controlled. Merciful in a way that would have gotten you punished during training.

The third man went for the child.

You crossed the distance before he took two steps. Your body knew the math of it better than your mind did: push off the crate, twist over the raised arm, hook your knee against his shoulder, blade to throat, pressure enough to stop him from breathing without opening the artery. He froze beneath you, choking, eyes wide.

Nightwing’s gaze flicked to your knife.

“Don’t,” he said.

There were many things in that single word. Command. Plea. Recognition, though he had no right to it. He was not your handler, not your judge, not the voice behind the mask that told you when blood was required. Still, your hand stopped.

The man beneath you shook.

You heard the girl behind you whisper, “Please.”

You did not know whether she was speaking to him, to Nightwing, or to you.

The knife moved from the man’s throat to the hinge of his jaw. One sharp blow put him down. He hit the concrete hard, alive and gasping, and Nightwing’s attention sharpened like a blade.

You should have left then. You had already deviated. The mission was compromised. The candidate had seen your hesitation, and the Gray Son had seen far worse.

Instead, you looked at her.

She stared back through a curtain of tears, her face gone pale beneath warehouse grime. There was a number written on the inside of her wrist in permanent ink. Someone had done it neatly. Someone had held her still.

Your arm hurt suddenly, though no one had touched you there in years.

“Run when he tells you,” you said.

Nightwing went still.

The girl blinked at you.

“Now,” he said, without looking away from your mask.

She ran. Her shoes slapped against the concrete, uneven and frantic, and Nightwing stepped aside just enough to let her pass while keeping himself between you and the exit. It was a good instinct. It was also useless. If you had wanted the girl dead, she would have died before he landed.

“Who are you?” he asked.

You almost laughed. The sound would have come out ugly if you had let it.

The Court had given you many answers to that question. Talon. Daughter. Instrument. Replacement. Failure. Asset. Crowned blade. Consolation prize. Each name had been placed around your neck until the weight of them became indistinguishable from your own bones.

“You know what I am.”

“I know what they call you,” he said. “That isn’t what I asked.”

There it was. The thing you had hated in him before you met him. The impossible gentleness of a boy who had been taken in by a billionaire with a grief-shaped manor instead of men in owl masks. Dick Grayson had fallen and been caught. The Court had spent years teaching you that his escape was theft, that his life had been stolen from them, that every breath you took in service made up for what Gotham’s prince had denied them.

He was supposed to be one of us, your first handler had told you, walking a slow circle around you while you held a handstand on bleeding palms. Cobb’s blood. Haly’s boy. The Gray Son. But Wayne took him. Wayne always did mistake possession for mercy.

Then he had crouched in front of you, lifting your chin with a gloved hand.

You will have to be better.

Nightwing took one careful step closer.

You let him.

It was an error. His eyes changed half a second before his body did, and you saw the moment he realized you had allowed the distance to close. He brought one stick up as your blade flashed toward his ribs. Metal met electricity with a violent blue snap. Pain skittered up your arm, but you rode it, catching his wrist and turning with him. He knew the turn. Of course he knew it. It came from trapeze, from aerial recovery, from bodies learning to trust momentum before fear could ruin the line.

His breath caught.

You drove your elbow into his sternum and sent him back into the crates.

“Who trained you?” he demanded.

You tilted your head. “You did.”

The words landed exactly where you wanted them to. His face went open with confusion for half a second, and that was long enough. You threw a smoke pellet against the concrete, vaulted toward the broken skylight, and climbed into the rain before he could follow.

You did not look back. Looking back was for people who believed something behind them might still want them whole.

The Court did not summon you immediately.

That was worse.

Punishment was clean when it came quickly. You understood pain delivered with purpose. You understood the arithmetic of failure: a mission compromised, a lesson administered, a debt recalculated in bruises and obedience. Silence had always been more dangerous. Silence meant they were deciding how much of you was still worth preserving.

You returned to the old courthouse through the tunnels beneath Drescher Avenue, shedding the rain before you stepped into the lower hall. The city had abandoned the building for twenty-three years. Official records indicated that the upper floors were unstable, which kept restoration committees and curious architecture students away. Beneath the cracked foundation, the Court had built something colder than law.

Marble floors. Brass fixtures. Gaslight turned electric behind frosted glass. Owl emblems carved into the walls with the delicacy of old money and the arrogance of people who believed history was only real when they owned it.

You knelt in the receiving chamber and waited.

Three hours passed before anyone came.

You kept your gaze on the floor. Your right shoulder ached from Nightwing’s strike. Your left wrist was swelling from the electrical backlash. Blood dried beneath your collar where one of the men in the warehouse had managed to graze you with a knife. None of it mattered enough to acknowledge.

A cane tapped once against marble.

“Look at me.”

You obeyed.

Edmund Thurston wore his age like wealth: polished, deliberate, untouched by anything as vulgar as time. His family had sat in Gotham’s hidden rooms since before the city learned to call itself a city. He had never raised his voice in your presence. He had never needed to. Men like Thurston did not believe anger was dignified when ownership would do.

Behind him, two masked attendants stood with their hands folded.

“Where is the candidate?” Thurston asked.

“Gone.”

“To whom?”

You said nothing.

His mouth curved with faint distaste. “The detective’s first son, then.”

Your stomach tightened. It was a small reaction. Too small for most people to notice. Thurston saw it anyway.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I wondered what you would do when faced with him. Our poor substitute, standing in the shadow of what she was made to replace.”

You had heard variations of that sentence for most of your life. It should have lost its edge by now. Instead, each repetition found the original wound and pressed down with patient fingers.

Thurston descended the last step into the chamber. “Do you know why the Court values legacy?”

“Legacy preserves purpose.”

“Legacy preserves quality,” he corrected. “Blood remembers. Lineage carries instruction. William Cobb understood that. Haly understood that. Your circus understood it, even if they lacked the language to name the thing they were breeding.” His cane touched the floor inches from your bent knee. “Dick Grayson was not merely a boy. He was culmination. Cobb’s descendant, born under canvas and applause, shaped by flight before he could understand walking. He was promised to us before Bruce Wayne ever laid a hand on him.”

The old anger stirred. You crushed it before it reached your face.

“I know.”

“Do you?” Thurston asked. “Because tonight you behaved as if you had forgotten your place in that story.”

Your place. The space left over after the better future had been stolen. The child they had taken because she had the right body, the right history, the right absence of anyone powerful enough to object. The girl whose parents had not fallen in front of an audience, whose grief had not moved a billionaire, whose disappearance had been filed away as tragedy by people too poor to make Gotham care.

You remembered every inch of your place.

“The candidate became a liability,” you said.

“The candidate became sentimental.”

You lowered your eyes. “Yes.”

The admission tasted like blood. Thurston studied you for a long time, and when he moved, you braced before the cane struck.

It hit the side of your face hard enough to turn your head.

Pain bloomed white behind your left eye. You let it pass through you. The Court had taken many things, but it had never managed to make you loud.

“You disappoint me,” Thurston said. “Not because you failed. Failure can be corrected. You disappoint me because you saw him and remembered that envy is easier than duty.”

You swallowed. “I have no envy.”

“No?” He crouched with care, his knees creaking beneath the expense of his suit. “You have worn his absence since childhood. Every skill in your body was measured against his ghost. Every meal, every scar, every breath was purchased with the promise that you might become worthy of the investment he squandered.”

His gloved hand touched your cheek, almost tender where the cane had landed.

“And then he looked at you with pity.”

Your teeth came together.

There. That was the part you had not been ready for. Nightwing’s concern had enraged you more than any strike. If he had hated you, you could have met him cleanly. If he had treated you like a monster, you could have sharpened yourself against the judgment and walked away intact. Instead, he had asked who you were as though the answer might matter.

Thurston smiled.

“There she is.”

You hated him for seeing it. You hated Dick Grayson more for causing it.

“What are my orders?” you asked.

Thurston rose. “The Court has indulged Wayne’s theft for long enough. Gotham has seen too much of the Owls to be ruled by mystery alone, and symbols must be reclaimed when they wander. You will bring us the Gray Son.”

Your pulse did one hard, silent beat.

“Alive?”

“Alive,” Thurston said. “Persuaded, if possible. Broken, if necessary.”

You stared at the marble until the veins in the stone blurred.

“And if he refuses?”

“He is a Grayson,” Thurston said, as though that answered anything. “He was born to fly for those above him.”

He left you there with blood in your mouth and the order sitting behind your ribs like a hook.

Bring us the Gray Son.

You had been built to obey.

That was the lie, anyway.

Dick found the girl first.

Her name was Mila Santos. She had been missing for nine hours by the time he got her to Leslie Thompkins, and she spent the first twenty minutes wrapped in a blanket with her hands locked around a paper cup of water she did not drink. Her mother arrived shaking, furious, sobbing, and alive with the kind of terror that still had somewhere to go because her child had been returned to her.

Dick stood outside the clinic room and watched them through the narrow window.

He should have felt relieved.

He did feel relieved.

It did not touch the deeper unease sitting cold beneath his sternum.

Barbara’s voice came through his comm, low and thoughtful. “I found the scholarship program. Gotham Youth Athletic Initiative. Private donors, lots of impressive language, almost no public financials. Three board members are dead, two are shell companies, and one routes through an old Haly’s account that should have been closed in 2008.”

Dick closed his eyes.

“Of course it does.”

“Dick.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do.” Barbara paused. He could hear keys clicking in the background, the quiet hum of the Clock Tower wrapped around her voice. “There’s more. Mila wasn’t the first. She was just the first one we caught before transport. I’m seeing at least six possible disappearances over the last decade, all girls with athletic or performance backgrounds. Gymnastics, aerial silks, ballet, competitive diving. One circus kid, maybe, though the records are messy.”

His hand tightened around the railing.

“How old?”

“When they disappeared? Between seven and fifteen.”

Dick thought of the woman in the owl mask moving across the warehouse like every lesson his body had ever loved had been taught at knifepoint. He thought of the way she had stopped when Mila begged. He thought of her voice, flat and quiet beneath the mask.

You did.

“Send me everything.”

“Already did. There’s one file you need to see now.”

His phone buzzed. Dick opened the image with a kind of dread that had become too familiar in Gotham, where the past never stayed buried unless someone was feeding it bodies.

The photograph was grainy, pulled from an archived newspaper scan. A small traveling circus stood in front of a striped tent, the performers smiling in costumes bright enough to survive the bad resolution. A girl stood near the left edge beside a pair of aerialists, chin lifted, expression solemn despite the glitter painted at her temples. She could not have been older than eight.

Dick did not know her name.

He knew the shape of her stance.

“When?” he asked.

“Seventeen years ago,” Barbara said gently. “The article says the circus closed two months later after a fire. Four casualties, one missing child presumed dead.”

Dick stared at the photograph until the little girl at the edge of the frame blurred into the Talon on the beam. She had been made into a weapon with his movements in her bones. She had known him. The Court had trained her on him.

He had been the blueprint for someone else’s cage.

“Keep digging,” he said.

“I will. And Dick?”

“Yeah?”

“This isn’t your fault.”

He almost laughed, because it was such a Barbara thing to say. Accurate, compassionate, and wholly useless against the shape of the guilt already forming. Gotham had taught all of them to inherit crimes they had not committed. Bruce wore his parents’ blood as a mission. Jason wore the crowbar and the grave. Tim wore every silence he had walked into by choice. Damian wore bloodlines like chains he was still learning to loosen.

Dick had spent years thinking the Court’s claim on him was another horror he had escaped.

He had not considered that someone else had been locked inside it in his place.

The comm crackled.

“Dick,” Barbara said, sharper now. “You have company.”

He moved before she finished speaking.

The blade cut through the air where his throat had been. He dropped, rolled, and came up with an escrima stick in each hand as the Talon landed on the clinic roof with rain sliding over the curved white eyes of her mask.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then she said, “You should have stayed away from the girl.”

Dick let out a breath. “I’m hearing that a lot tonight.”

“You do not understand what you interrupted.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Her head tilted. The movement was too birdlike in the mask, too human beneath it. “Is that what he taught you to do?”

“Who?”

“Batman.” She said the name with clinical precision, as if it belonged to a file rather than a man. “Ask questions until someone mistakes interrogation for concern.”

“That isn’t what this is.”

“No?” Her blade shifted in her hand. “Concern is a tool. You use it well.”

The words hit too close to things Dick had thought about himself at three in the morning, after charming information out of criminals who would have guarded themselves against threat and folded under kindness. He had always known warmth could be tactical. That did not make it false.

“What did they tell you about me?” he asked.

“Everything.”

“That’s usually not the same thing as the truth.”

She laughed then, very softly. The sound scraped at something in him. “The truth is that you were promised to them. The truth is that Bruce Wayne took you before the Court could collect. The truth is that I was trained to replace an absence that everyone made certain I understood was superior to me.”

Dick’s throat tightened.

There it was. Said plainly. Brutally. As though she had cut herself open because wounds were easier when made useful.

“You’re not a replacement,” he said.

Her body went still.

He realized his mistake too late.

The attack came fast enough to drive him back across the roof. She fought like a nightmare version of a mirror, all his oldest instincts bent toward killing. He recognized the aerial feints. The recovery steps. The deceptive softness before a sudden strike. She had taken the language of flying and translated it into violence because someone had forced her to speak it that way.

Dick blocked a blade with one stick, twisted away from the second, and caught her wrist before she could drive it beneath his ribs. They locked close enough that he could hear her breathing through the mask.

“I’m not your enemy,” he said.

“You were my standard.”

She slammed her forehead into his face.

Pain burst across his nose. He stumbled, and she kicked him square in the chest. His back hit the rooftop gravel, and she was on him before he could rise, one knee pinning his sternum, blade angled beneath his jaw.

The clinic lights glowed behind her. Rain slid down the planes of her mask like tears it had not earned.

“Say it,” she whispered.

Dick held very still. “Say what?”

Her hand trembled once, almost imperceptibly. “That I am what they made because they could not have you.”

The knife kissed his skin.

He looked up at her and understood, with a clarity that hurt, that she had not come for his surrender. She had come for confirmation. If he gave her cruelty, she could survive it. Cruelty had walls. Cruelty had rules. It would put her back inside a world where pain made sense.

He could not give her that.

“You’re what they hurt because they couldn’t control me,” he said. “That’s not the same thing.”

The trembling stopped.

For one suspended second, he thought she might kill him.

Then gunfire cracked across the roof.

Her body jerked. Dick grabbed her by instinct, rolling them both behind the HVAC unit as a bullet sparked off the metal where her head had been. She cursed for the first time, low and vicious, one hand clamping over her side.

Dick looked toward the adjacent building and saw the silhouettes.

Owls.

Not assassins like her. Men in black tactical gear with white masks and rifles, moving with the confidence of people who believed numbers made them brave. The Court had sent backup. Or cleanup.

The Talon tried to push herself up.

Dick held her down. “You’re hit.”

“It went through.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s polite.”

Her mask turned toward him. Even through the blank white eyes, he felt the force of her disbelief.

“This is not the time.”

“Disagree.”

Another shot punched into the unit. Dick threw a wingding toward the nearest rifleman, then dragged her toward the roof access door. She resisted for three steps before her left leg faltered. Her blood was dark against her armor, too much of it smeared across his glove.

“Stop helping me,” she snapped.

“Stop bleeding on my hand.”

“I was sent to bring you in.”

“I figured.”

“I would have done it.”

Dick got the door open with his shoulder. “You lowered the knife.”

“Temporary lapse.”

“Great. Have another one.”

They stumbled into the stairwell as bullets chewed through the door behind them. Dick jammed a line charge against the frame and caught her around the waist when she nearly went down. She made a sound like pain offended her personally.

“Do not touch me.”

“I can let you fall down three flights of stairs.”

“I can make sure you go first.”

“That’s the spirit.”

She glared at him through the mask, and for one wild second, despite blood and bullets and the Court closing in, Dick felt something in the air between them shift. It was not trust. Trust was too generous a word. It was the first tiny fracture in a script someone else had written for both of them.

Then the door above them blew inward.

The blast took the lights with it.

Dick moved.

He knew Gotham stairwells. He knew darkness, echoes, angles, and the terrible intimacy of fighting where every missed strike found concrete. The Talon knew it too. Injured as she was, she fell into rhythm beside him with a precision so seamless it made his chest ache. He struck low, she struck high. He disarmed, she disabled. He pulled blows; she adjusted hers half a breath later, as if remembering Mila’s frightened face and hating herself for it.

By the time they reached the alley, three Court soldiers were unconscious behind them, and two more were retreating badly enough to pretend it was strategy.

Dick got her onto his bike.

She stiffened. “No.”

“You prefer bleeding out in the alley?”

“I prefer not being taken to Batman.”

“Good,” he said, swinging on in front of her. “I’m not taking you to Batman.”

That, finally, seemed to surprise her.

The engine roared beneath them. She hesitated only a second before her arm locked around his waist, and Dick told himself the heat of her against his back was only adrenaline. Her blood soaked through his suit. Her mask pressed briefly between his shoulder blades as the bike shot out of the alley and into the rain-bright streets of Gotham.

Behind them, the Court vanished into the city that had always known how to hide monsters with money.

Dick did not take you to Batman.

You had expected a cave. An interrogation room. A manor with old grief in the walls and a patriarch waiting in darkness to explain mercy in the voice of a man who kept files on everyone he loved. The Court had taught you about Batman almost as thoroughly as it had taught you about Dick Grayson. You knew his patterns. His contingencies. The way he folded children into his war and called it rescue.

Instead, Nightwing took you across the bridge.

Blüdhaven was uglier than Gotham in ways that almost felt honest. Its rot had less theater. Fewer grotesques. Less marble. The city hunched beneath the rain with neon bleeding into potholes and apartment windows glowing warm above liquor stores and pawn shops. You had been there before, though never long. The Court’s roots did not sink as deep outside Gotham, and you had never been allowed anywhere that might teach you distance.

Nightwing brought you to a safehouse above an old boxing gym. The lower floors smelled like leather, sweat, dust, and disinfectant. The apartment above them had reinforced locks, blackout curtains, a medical kit better stocked than most clinics, and an escape route through the bathroom ceiling.

You noticed that first.

He noticed you noticing.

“Door stays unlocked from your side,” he said, setting the kit on the table. “Window opens. Fire escape is stable. Roof access through the hall if you want it. Bathroom has one exit, bedroom has two. I’ll stay between you and the front door unless you tell me to move.”

You stared at him.

He pulled off his mask, and Dick Grayson looked back at you with blood drying beneath his nose and rain in his hair.

You hated him more without the mask.

It should have been easier if he were only Nightwing. A symbol could be cut down. An enemy could be understood. Dick Grayson had a face you had seen laughing in newspaper archives, bruised in surveillance footage, exhausted beside other vigilantes who looked at him like he was the thing keeping the room upright. He had grown into a man the Court had wanted and failed to own, and somehow that failure had not made him cruel.

He gestured toward your side. “I need to look at the wound.”

“You need nothing from me.”

“That’s probably true.” He leaned back against the counter, giving you space he had no reason to offer. “You’re still bleeding.”

You stood in the middle of the safehouse and measured everything. Distance to the knives hidden beneath your bracers. Distance to his throat. Distance to the window. Distance to the life you would have to return to if you left now.

The last one was the farthest.

Your hand went to the latches on your mask before you let yourself think about it. Dick’s expression changed when you lifted it away.

You did not know what he saw. You had stopped looking at your own face years ago except when the Court required it for disguise work. You knew the scar on your hairline. The faint mark along your jaw from a training blade that had been allowed to heal crooked because vanity was for people with futures. The bruise swelling across your cheek from Thurston’s cane. You knew the shape of your own exhaustion better than any mirror.

Dick’s gaze went to the bruise.

His jaw tightened.

You almost put the mask back on.

“Don’t,” you said.

His eyes lifted to yours. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to feel sorry for me.”

“I was going to ask if the same person who gave you that sent the shooters.”

You looked away first, which was its own kind of defeat.

“Yes.”

Dick absorbed that in silence. It was different from the Court’s silence. Theirs demanded that you fill it with confession. His seemed to be making room for whatever answer you chose to give.

You despised how badly some starved part of you wanted to step into that room.

“The bullet went clean through,” you said. “I can treat it myself.”

“You probably can.”

“I will.”

“Okay.”

The agreement unsettled you more than any argument would have. He nudged the medical kit across the table and turned his back.

You stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“Not watching.”

“You think modesty is my concern?”

“I think control might be.”

The words struck with unnerving accuracy. Your fingers tightened around the edge of the table. For a moment, the safehouse folded into another room, white-tiled and cold, where gloved hands had turned your body under bright lights and spoken about muscle development, bone density, hormone levels, healing time, surgical margins, obedience. You had been a child the first time you learned that privacy was something other people had. You had been barely older when you woke with stitches low in your abdomen and a physician telling your handler that the procedure had been successful, as though removing the future from your body was only another maintenance report.

Dick remained facing the wall.

You stripped the armor from your side with hands that only shook when the leather caught the wound. Pain steadied you. It always had. The bullet had passed beneath the ribs, missing anything vital, though not by much. You cleaned it, packed it, and sealed it with practiced efficiency while Dick stared at a framed poster advertising a boxing match from eight years ago as though it deserved deep concentration.

When you finished, you said, “You can turn around.”

He did.

His eyes flicked over your bandage and then away from the bare strip of skin above it with such deliberate care that anger rose in you again, bright and defensive.

“You don’t have to perform decency.”

Something in his face softened. “I know.”

“No,” you said. “You don’t.”

The quiet that followed should have been unbearable. Instead, Dick picked up a towel from the counter and tossed it to you, easy and underhanded. You caught it on instinct.

“For the rain,” he said.

You looked at the towel. It was blue, worn soft at the edges, clean.

No one had handed you something soft without conditions in a very long time.

That realization was dangerous, so you turned it into cruelty.

“Is this the part where you tell me I can be saved?”

Dick exhaled through his nose. “I’ve never had much luck telling people what they can be.”

“But you think it.”

“I think you let Mila run.”

“One girl.”

“One choice.”

“I had orders.”

“You broke them.”

“I hesitated,” you snapped. “Do not make it noble because you need me to be a better person than I am.”

His gaze held yours. “I need you alive. Anything past that is yours.”

Yours.

The word had no place in the room. Nothing had been yours since the Court took you. Your name had been forgotten, your history buried, your body cataloged, your skills sharpened, your loyalty demanded before you were old enough to understand what loyalty meant. Even your hatred of Dick Grayson had been given to you, fed carefully until it learned to breathe on its own.

You sat down before your legs decided for you.

Dick moved toward the stove. “Coffee?”

You almost laughed again. “You’re offering coffee to the assassin sent to kidnap you.”

“I’m offering coffee to the injured woman in my safehouse.”

“You should be more afraid of me.”

He filled the kettle. “Probably.”

The honesty disarmed you. You watched him move around the small kitchen with an ease that made the apartment seem lived in despite its sparse furniture. He knew where the mugs were. He checked the window lock without looking at it. He favored his left side slightly from the kick you had landed on the roof, and he kept his body angled so you could see his hands.

He was adapting to you. Not controlling. Not cornering. Learning.

The difference felt like a bruise being pressed.

“Why Blüdhaven?” you asked.

He glanced over. “Because Gotham belongs to too many ghosts.”

“You are one of them.”

“Sometimes.” He set a mug near you, then stepped back before you could accuse him of crowding. “But less here.”

You did not touch the coffee.

Dick leaned against the counter. “What do I call you?”

The question was gentle enough to be cruel.

You gave him the name the Court used for civilian masks. It sounded false in your own mouth.

His head tilted. “Is that yours?”

“It is one of them.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

You looked at him sharply.

He seemed to realize the echo at the same time you did. In the warehouse. On the beam. His voice asking who you were as though identity were a door you could open if someone knocked politely enough.

Your throat tightened with a rage too old to belong entirely to him.

“My name was buried with a dead child,” you said.

Dick’s expression changed, grief moving through it before restraint could stop him. You wanted to punish him for that, too. For having a face that admitted pain. For looking at you as if the eight-year-old in the newspaper photograph might still be somewhere worth reaching.

“Who told you that?” he asked.

“The people who made it true.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Do you remember it?”

You remembered everything. That was the curse. The Court had trained your memory until it became a locked room full of knives. You remembered your mother sewing crystals onto a costume by lamplight. Your father kissing the top of your head before a show. The smell of popcorn and hay and rain on canvas. The night of the fire. Smoke. Hands. A car trunk. Marble beneath your knees.

Your name, screamed once behind you before the world closed.

You wrapped both hands around the mug. The heat bit into your palms.

“I remember,” you said.

Dick did not ask you to say it.

That was the first mercy you believed from him.

He slept on the floor.

You did not understand that decision. There was a couch. There was a chair. There was enough space in the bedroom for him to stay within reach of the door and still keep a distance. Instead, Dick dragged a blanket near the entrance, set his escrima sticks beside him, and stretched out like a man who had slept in worse places by choice and worse still by necessity.

You sat in the armchair near the window and watched him breathe.

He did not sleep deeply. You recognized the pattern. Vigilantes and assassins had different vocabularies for the same damage. His body rested while some trained part of his mind stayed listening. Twice, noise from the street made his fingers shift toward a weapon. Once, thunder rolled over Blüdhaven, and his breathing changed like memory had reached into his sleep and closed a hand around his heart.

You wondered what the Court would have done with him if they had gotten there first.

The thought arrived uninvited.

You had spent years imagining him as the perfect Talon. The boy you could never equal. The heir whose absence had become the measure of your worth. You had hated him for escaping, hated him for being wanted, hated him for making your life necessary in the eyes of men who had never seen you as anything except a second choice.

But looking at him on the floor, with dried blood still beneath his nose and a blanket bunched beneath his shoulder, you could suddenly picture a different child kneeling on marble.

Dick Grayson, eight years old, grieving and bright and beautiful, made to hold a blade while owls watched from above.

Your stomach turned.

The Court had not been wrong because they chose you instead.

They had been wrong because they chose anyone.

Dick opened his eyes.

You went still.

He blinked once, then focused on you without alarm. “Can’t sleep?”

“I do not sleep on assignment.”

“Are you still on assignment?”

The answer should have come easily.

Yes. Always. Until released. Until death. Until the Court decides what remains of me is less useful than what can be harvested from my corpse.

Instead, you said nothing.

Dick pushed himself up slowly, careful of his bruises. “Nightmares?”

You could have lied. You were very good at lying. The Court had taught you how to become whatever a room wanted to see, and survival had taught you the rest. Yet the safehouse was dim, and Dick’s voice was rough with sleep, and for once, no one was asking because they had the tools ready to punish the answer.

“Memories,” you said. “Nightmares are less accurate.”

His face did something complicated in the dark.

You looked out the window before you could be trapped by it. “They used to tell me stories about you.”

He was quiet enough that you knew he understood this was not an invitation to interrupt.

“When I was small, I thought you were dead,” you continued. “Not physically. I knew you were alive. There were pictures, reports, sightings. But the version of you they talked about was dead, because he had never existed. The perfect Gray Son. The heir. The Talon who would have made the Court proud.” Your mouth twisted. “It was easier when I believed you were a myth.”

“What changed?”

“I met you.”

Dick’s gaze stayed on you, steady and sad.

You hated the sadness less in the dark.

“You were disappointing,” you said.

That startled a laugh out of him, soft and brief.

The sound did something terrible inside your chest.

“You were supposed to be arrogant,” you said. “Cold. Powerful. Someone who escaped because he was better than the rest of us. Instead, you were kind to a crying girl and stupid enough to offer coffee to someone who had a knife to your throat.”

“Very disappointing,” he agreed.

“You should not joke.”

“Probably not.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Joke?”

“Make things lighter than they are.”

Dick leaned back against the wall. The city lights caught in his hair, turning the edges silver. “Because sometimes things are heavy enough without my help.”

The answer was too simple to argue with.

Your fingers found the edge of the blanket he had given you. It smelled faintly like laundry detergent and the safehouse itself, like old wood and rain and him. You should have put it down. You should have left through the fire escape while his injuries slowed him and returned to the Court before they sent someone worse.

Instead, you asked, “Did you know?”

His face stilled. “About the Court wanting me?”

“Yes,” you said.

“Not when I was a kid.”

“Later?”

“Yes.”

“And you stayed free anyway.”

Something in his eyes sharpened at the word. “I stayed out of their hands. Freedom is trickier.”

You looked at him then.

Dick’s smile was small and humorless. “Bruce took me in, and I love him for it. That doesn’t mean I always knew how to tell the difference between being saved and being recruited. I got a family, but I also got a mask, a mission, a war, and a lot of bruises I called purpose because purpose sounded better than pain.”

You had no answer for that.

It did not make you the same. You knew that. Bruce Wayne was not the Court, and Robin was not a Talon, and Dick Grayson had been given choices where you had been given commands. Still, the line between rescue and use was thinner than people wanted to admit, and the fact that he could name it made something inside you loosen against your will.

“Why did you leave Gotham?” you asked.

“Because I needed to find out who I was when I wasn’t standing in Batman’s shadow.”

“And did you?”

“I’m still working on it.”

The honesty settled between you.

You almost told him your name.

The impulse frightened you so badly that you stood. Pain flared through your side, and Dick rose with you, stopping himself before he took a step.

“I’m leaving,” you said.

His expression closed around fear and did not let it reach his voice. “The Court will be waiting.”

“The Court is always waiting.”

“They’ll hurt you.”

You looked at him. “They already have.”

This time, he did move. One step, then another, slow enough that you could stop him. “You don’t have to go back.”

“You don’t get to say that.”

“I know.”

“You don’t,” you said, sharper. “You think leaving is movement. A door opens, and you walk through it. That is not what they made me. The Court is in my training, my records, my bloodwork, my safehouses, my scars. They are in every instinct I have. I hear orders in my sleep. I know how to kill a man with the mug you gave me, and when you turned your back, I counted seven ways to break your spine before you reached the kettle.”

Dick’s face did not change with fear. That made your anger worse.

“I am not free because you unlocked a door.”

“No,” he said. “You’re free because you let Mila run, and because you’re still standing here arguing with me instead of obeying them.”

Your breath caught.

He saw too much. That was the danger. Not that he wanted to save you, but that he could look at the wreckage and find the living thing inside it without permission.

“I hate you,” you whispered.

His expression softened in a way that made your eyes burn. “I know.”

“No, you don’t.” Your voice broke, and you despised it. “I hated you before I knew your face. I hated your name. I hated your files. I hated every time they told me you would have done it better. I hated that they wanted you first. I hated that your parents died in front of everyone and the world cared enough to remember, because mine died in the dark and the Court made sure even their graves forgot me.”

Dick went very still.

The room blurred. You blinked hard, but it did nothing. Tears had always felt like betrayal. Your body had been trained for pain, hunger, cold, endurance, seduction, assassination, escape, and silence. It had never been trained to survive kindness.

“I hated you,” you said again, quieter now, “because if they had taken you, maybe they would have left me alone.”

Dick crossed the rest of the distance.

You should have stopped him. You could have. Injured or not, you knew a dozen ways to make him regret coming within reach.

When his arms went around you, your whole body locked.

He did not tighten his hold. He did not trap your wrists or press your face to his chest or tell you to calm down. He simply stood there, warm and solid and shaking a little with the force of whatever he was holding back, and gave you room to decide whether being touched was something you could bear.

The first breath hurt.

The second was worse.

By the third, something cracked.

You made no sound at first. Then one slipped out, small and strangled, and Dick’s hand settled between your shoulder blades with careful pressure. That was all. A hand. A point of contact. A reminder that you were standing in a room above a boxing gym in Blüdhaven, not kneeling on marble beneath the eyes of the Court.

You gripped the front of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice rough.

You hated apologies. They were useless things, too small to hold the damage people tried to pour into them.

This one hurt anyway.

“Don’t,” you said, but you did not let go.

Dick rested his cheek against the top of your head for one brief second, so light you could pretend it had not happened if you needed to. “Okay.”

You stayed like that until the city outside began to pale toward morning.

When you finally stepped back, he let you.

He looked wrecked.

You suspected you did, too.

“They will use me against you,” you said.

Dick’s mouth tightened. “They can try.”

“You don’t understand. There are commands. Phrases. Triggers. Some are psychological. Some are chemical. Some are old training paths cut so deep I don’t always know I am following them until I have already moved.”

“Then we find them.”

“There is no we.”

“Sure there is,” he said gently. “You just hate it.”

A laugh broke out of you. It sounded almost like a sob, which was unacceptable, but Dick smiled as if you had given him something precious.

Then your comm implant activated.

The sound was too soft for anyone else to hear. A thin vibration behind your right ear, buried under skin and old scar tissue, followed by three tones only the Court used.

Your spine straightened.

Dick saw it happen.

“What is it?”

The voice came through the implant like a needle sliding beneath a nail.

Talon. Crowned in shadow. Kneel before the nest.

Your breath stopped.

Dick said your borrowed name, but it reached you from very far away.

The world narrowed. Safehouse. Window. Door. Target. Gray Son. Alive if possible. Broken if necessary. Your hand moved toward the blade at your thigh.

Dick’s eyes sharpened.

“Hey,” he said. “Stay with me.”

The implant pulsed again.

Bring him home.

Your body turned.

Dick did not reach for you. That was smart. Touch would have become threat, and threat would have become permission. Instead, he stepped into your line of sight with both hands visible, palms open.

“You’re in Blüdhaven,” he said. “You’re in my safehouse. You’re injured. You let Mila run.”

Your fingers closed around the knife.

His voice steadied. “You told me I was disappointing.”

The blade cleared its sheath.

“You cried on my shirt,” he said, softer. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

Your hand shook.

The command pressed harder, dragging through pathways carved by years of repetition. Kneel. Obey. Retrieve. Correct. Your vision spotted at the edges. Dick was in front of you, and the Court wanted him, and wanting was the closest thing to law you had ever been given.

Then he said your name.

Your real name.

The one you had not told him.

You froze.

Dick’s eyes were bright with fear and apology. “Barbara found it,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry. I know I should have asked. I know.”

The name struck deeper than the command.

For a second, you were eight years old beneath a burning tent, and your mother was screaming, and your father’s hand was gone from yours, and the world had not yet learned to call you Talon.

Dick said it again.

Gently.

Like it belonged to someone alive.

The knife fell from your hand.

You dropped with it.

Dick caught you before your knees hit the floor, and this time you did make a sound. The implant shrieked behind your ear, pain lancing down your neck, but your hands found Dick’s shoulders and held on with a desperation no training could make graceful.

“They know where I am,” you gasped.

“I know.”

“They will come.”

“I know.”

“You should run.”

Dick’s arms tightened around you. “I’m done running from them.”

By noon, the Court had surrounded the block.

By sunset, they learned why Gotham’s old ghosts had failed to keep Dick Grayson.

Oracle killed the street cameras first. Red Robin jammed police dispatch just enough to keep curious officers away without leaving a pattern obvious enough to invite questions. Red Hood took the south alley with the kind of enthusiasm that made Dick mutter, “Non-lethal,” into the comm every three minutes until Red Hood told him to stop flirting with death and focus. Robin, despite being explicitly ordered to stay out of it by at least three people, appeared on the neighboring rooftop with a sword and an expression of profound offense at the Court’s continued existence.

Batman did not come.

You knew that was Dick’s choice.

The absence mattered.

It made the fight smaller, stranger, more yours. This was not the Bat descending into an old Gotham war to reclaim a stolen piece from another predator. This was Nightwing in the city he had chosen, standing beside the weapon made in his image and refusing to let either of you be written by men in masks.

“You can still leave,” Dick said as the first Court vehicle rolled into position below.

You flexed your injured side and checked the line of your blade. “I know.”

The words surprised both of you.

Dick smiled a little. “Yeah?”

You looked at the men gathering beneath the streetlights. Thurston would not be among them. He liked distance. He liked clean hands. But his orders would be there in every masked face, every weapon, every command waiting to crawl through the implant still throbbing beneath your skin.

“I’m staying,” you said.

Dick’s expression softened, but he was wise enough not to make too much of it.

“Then stay behind me if the trigger hits again.”

You glanced at him. “You say things like that and expect me not to be offended.”

“I live in hope.”

“You live because many people have chosen not to kill you.”

“I like to think my personality helps.”

“Your personality is a tactical liability.”

His grin flashed, sudden and bright, and for a moment, you understood why people followed him into impossible fights. It was not because he made danger seem small. It was because he made survival seem imaginable.

Then the first shot shattered the window.

The Court came in waves.

They expected you compromised. They expected injury, confusion, and emotional instability. They expected Dick to protect you at the cost of himself, which meant they did understand one thing about him, if nothing else. They did not expect you to know their formations from the inside out. They did not expect you to cut through the first assault team’s confidence before you cut through their weapons. They did not expect Nightwing to trust you at his back.

Trust was a strange weapon.

You had been feared before. Obeyed. Desired by people who mistook danger for intimacy. Valued by men who measured your worth in completed missions and bodies left behind. You had never been trusted in a fight by someone who knew exactly what you were capable of and still turned away to handle the threat in front of him.

Dick did.

Every time he gave you his blind spot, something in you broke and rebuilt itself incorrectly.

The implant triggered twice. The first time, you dropped to one knee with a hand clamped behind your ear while Dick took a blow meant for your skull. The second, you nearly opened his throat before he caught your wrist and said your name against the edge of your blade.

You came back shaking.

He looked more frightened by that than by the knife.

“I’m here,” you said, though you were not sure which of you needed to hear it.

“I know,” he answered.

The final team breached from the roof.

Thurston came with them.

Seeing him in Blüdhaven felt obscene. Gotham’s Court should not have crossed the bridge into this uglier, freer city. He stepped through the broken rooftop access door with two guards at his back and his cane in hand, dressed as though he had come from dinner rather than a failed abduction.

His owl mask was porcelain.

You had never seen him fight. Men like Thurston rarely needed to. Violence was something they purchased, inherited, commissioned, and admired from far enough away to keep blood off their cuffs.

“Talon,” he said.

The implant burned.

Your body stopped.

Dick took half a step toward you.

Thurston’s head turned slightly. “Richard Grayson. Even now, you stand where better men placed you. Between property and its owner.”

Dick’s escrima sticks hummed blue in his hands. “You don’t own her.”

“How sentimental. Wayne did cultivate that in you, didn’t he?” Thurston stepped forward. “A pity. You were meant for higher things than this little city and its little loyalties.”

Dick’s smile was cold enough to be unfamiliar. “I’ve met your higher things. They keep ending up underground.”

Thurston ignored that and looked at you.

You could not move. The command held your muscles in place, old obedience locking each joint with invisible wire. Your breath came shallowly through your teeth.

“Kneel,” he said.

Your knees bent.

Dick said your name.

Thurston’s cane struck the roof. “Kneel.”

You hit the ground hard enough to send pain through your wounded side. Shame flooded after it, immediate and poisonous. Around you, the fight faltered for half a second. Dick did not look away from Thurston, but you saw the tremor that passed through his shoulders.

“There,” Thurston said. “Do you see? This is what purpose looks like when it has not been diluted by Wayne charity. She knows what she is.”

Dick’s voice was very quiet. “She knows what you did.”

“What we made,” Thurston corrected. “From scraps. From disappointment. From the poor remains of a bloodline and discipline enough to shape what nature left unfinished.” He looked down at you. “Tell him.”

Your throat worked.

The command dragged the words out by their roots.

“I was made to replace you,” you said.

Dick looked at you then, and the pain on his face nearly undid you.

Thurston smiled. “Again.”

You shook. Every muscle fought itself. Your hands curled against the rooftop gravel until your nails tore.

“I was made,” you said, voice splintering, “to replace you.”

“Again.”

Dick moved.

The guards moved faster than Thurston had any right to expect, but Nightwing had been trained by Batman and raised by grief, and there were moments when mercy became very precise violence. He took the first guard down with a strike to the throat, dropped beneath the second’s shot, and drove an escrima stick into the man’s knee hard enough to end the fight. Thurston stepped back, cane lifting, and something silver flashed from its tip.

A blade.

Of course.

You forced one hand flat against the roof.

The command crushed down.

Kneel.

Dick fought Thurston like a man fighting history. He was faster, younger, stronger, but Thurston knew where to cut because the Court had spent generations studying Graysons like prized animals. The cane blade caught Dick across the ribs. Another slash opened his forearm. Thurston moved with old fencing discipline and the obscene calm of a man who believed the world had already agreed he would win.

“Cobb would weep to see what became of you,” Thurston said.

Dick caught the cane on crossed sticks. “Then he can take it up with me in hell.”

Thurston twisted, and the blade slipped through, carving red across Dick’s shoulder.

Your breath tore.

Kneel, the implant demanded.

Dick staggered.

Thurston raised the blade toward his heart.

And you thought, with sudden perfect clarity, of Mila Santos running.

One choice.

Your body had been trained to obey commands, but training was only repetition. The Court had repeated pain until pain became language. They had repeated shame until it became identity. They had repeated Dick Grayson’s name until you mistook his absence for the shape of your failure.

But before all of that, someone had repeated your real name with love.

Your mother’s voice. Your father’s laugh. A life the Court had buried because dead children were easier to own than living daughters.

Dick had said your name like it still had a pulse.

You moved.

It was ugly. Nothing about it belonged to training. You dragged yourself out of the command with a sound that scraped your throat raw and threw your blade with enough force to bury it through Thurston’s wrist before his strike landed.

He screamed.

The sound was shockingly human.

Dick disarmed him before the scream ended. The cane blade clattered across the roof. Thurston fell to his knees, clutching his ruined wrist, and for one breathless moment the shape of the world reversed itself.

You stood over him.

The implant shrieked, then sparked with sudden heat. Something wet slid behind your ear. You swayed, vision going white at the edges.

Dick caught you.

This time, you let him.

Thurston looked up at you through the owl mask. “You ungrateful little—”

You kicked the mask hard enough to crack porcelain.

He went down.

Dick stared.

You leaned heavily against him. “I have wanted to do that since I was nine.”

His laugh came out broken with relief. “I’m proud of you.”

The words should not have mattered. They were too simple. Too late. Too small against years of being measured and found wanting.

They mattered anyway.

Your eyes burned, but you kept them open as the others secured the roof. Red Hood zip-tied Thurston with unnecessary force. Robin looked at you with narrowed eyes and said, “Adequate strike,” which Dick seemed to interpret as high praise. Someone on comms who had to be Oracle said your name softly, checking whether you were still with them.

You were.

For the first time in years, you were.

The implant came out in a clinic outside Blüdhaven.

Leslie Thompkins did the work herself because Dick trusted her and because you refused to let Batman’s doctors near you. It took three hours, local anesthetic, and enough restraint not to claw through the examination table when the old scar behind your ear was opened. Dick stayed beside you the whole time. He did not hold you down. He held your hand because you asked him to, though the asking nearly killed you.

When the implant finally came free, Leslie dropped it into a metal tray with a sound too small for the thing that had lived inside your head for half your life.

“There,” she said, voice steady. “It’s out.”

You stared at it.

A bit of metal. Wire. Cruelty made technical.

Your hand tightened around Dick’s.

He bent close enough that only you could hear him. “Still here?”

You turned your face toward him. “Still here.”

His eyes closed for one second.

The Court cell fell over the next week. Not all of it. You knew better than to believe the Court of Owls could be destroyed by one rooftop fight and a handful of seized servers. Gotham’s oldest monsters survived by molting, shedding names and rooms and families whenever the light got too close. But Thurston talked. Men like him always did when pain became personal and loyalty stopped being theoretical. He gave names to save himself, and Oracle took those names apart thread by thread.

The Gotham Youth Athletic Initiative collapsed first. Then three shell foundations. Two judges. One private security firm. A boarding school outside Bristol. A medical supplier. The old courthouse burned in a fire that the news called “electrical.”

You knew better.

Dick did not ask where you had been that night.

He only opened the safehouse window when you came back smelling faintly of smoke, then set a mug of tea on the table and said, “Shower’s free.”

You stood in the doorway for a long moment. You weren’t sure when he noticed that you preferred tea over coffee.

Blüdhaven rain tapped against the fire escape. The safehouse looked the same as it had the first night, except now there were more blankets, more groceries, a second toothbrush still in its package by the sink because Dick had placed it there without comment and waited for you to decide whether its existence was a threat.

You had left three times that week.

You had come back three times, too.

Dick never called it a pattern. You appreciated that more than you wanted to.

“I don’t know how to do this,” you said.

He looked up from the table. There were stitches along his shoulder and bruising beneath one eye. He had been pretending not to favor his ribs for days.

“Do what?”

You gestured vaguely at the apartment, the window, him, yourself. “This.”

“Me neither.”

“You have done this with strays before.”

His mouth twitched. “Is that what you are?”

“I am trying to insult you.”

“I noticed.”

“It is less satisfying when you refuse to be insulted.”

“I can pretend.”

The absurdity of it settled through the room like warmth. You looked away before your face could betray you, but Dick smiled as though he had seen enough.

“I don’t want to be another project,” you said.

His expression sobered at once. “You’re not.”

“I don’t want to be watched like I might break.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t want the manor.”

“You don’t have to go there.”

You looked back at him. “Everyone expects me to.”

“I don’t.”

The answer came too quickly to be strategy.

Dick leaned back in his chair, careful of his side. “I love my family. I trust them with my life. That doesn’t mean Wayne Manor is the right place for someone who just got out from under a secret society obsessed with bloodlines, legacy, and old houses full of rich people making decisions in the dark.”

A laugh caught in your throat before you could stop it.

Dick’s smile softened. “Yeah. Bruce didn’t love hearing it phrased that way either.”

“You told him?”

“I told him enough.”

“And he allowed it?”

The look Dick gave you then was dry enough to feel almost normal. “Bruce doesn’t control my life.”

You lifted an eyebrow.

“He tries,” Dick amended. “It’s a whole thing.”

You walked to the table slowly. Your side was healing. The scar behind your ear still ached. The silence where the implant had been felt enormous, a missing tooth your mind kept worrying at in the dark. Sometimes you woke expecting the tones. Sometimes you reached for orders and found only your own thoughts waiting, which should have been a relief, but instead felt like standing on a wire without knowing whether anyone had ever taught you balance.

Dick pushed the mug toward you.

You took it.

“I want to stay in Blüdhaven,” you said.

His face changed before he could control it. Hope was too bright on him. Too dangerous.

You looked into the tea. “Not because of you.”

“Okay.”

“Partly because of you,” you corrected, annoyed by your own honesty.

His smile flickered. “Okay.”

“I need work. Papers. Somewhere that isn’t this safehouse forever. I need to know which names are still attached to my face. I need to learn how to sleep without exits mapped in advance, or perhaps with them mapped but without shame. I don’t know yet.”

“We can do that.”

You glanced at him.

He raised both hands slightly. “Sorry. You can do that. I can help if you want.”

If you want.

The words had become his habit around you. A doorway left open. A key placed on the table. A hand offered, never closed until you reached for it first.

You set the mug down.

“I want,” you said, and stopped because the rest of the sentence had no training to support it.

Dick went very still.

You hated that he understood before you finished. You hated the care that entered his face, the restraint, the way he held himself as if one wrong movement might send you back behind walls he could not follow.

“I want you,” you said.

The words came out steadier the second time.

Dick’s breath changed.

He did not move closer. “You don’t have to prove anything.”

Anger flared, then faded when you saw that he meant it. Not rejection. Not doubt. Care, again, infuriating and precise.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

You considered lying. Then you sat across from him, close enough that your knees nearly touched his, and gave him the truth because he had been reckless enough to keep giving it to you.

“No,” you said. “Not entirely. But I know I am tired of letting them own every place someone might touch me. I know I have wanted you since before I trusted you, which was inconvenient and offensive, and I know wanting something no one ordered me to want feels terrifying enough that it must belong to me.”

Dick’s eyes darkened.

Your pulse moved under your skin in a rhythm no command had set.

“I need you to be sure,” he said.

“I am not sure of anything.” You reached across the narrow distance and touched the back of his hand. His fingers flexed but did not close around yours. “I am choosing anyway.”

That was what undid him.

Dick turned his hand beneath yours and laced your fingers together with exquisite care. His thumb brushed once over your knuckles, and the simplicity of it nearly hurt more than hunger would have. You expected him to stand. Expected charm, perhaps, or the sudden confidence he wore so easily in the field.

Instead, he brought your hand to his mouth and kissed the inside of your wrist.

The place where the Court had once written numbers on children.

Your breath left you.

Dick looked up immediately. “Too much?”

“No.” Your voice was barely there. “Again.”

He did.

Mouth warm. Pressure gentle. Eyes on yours as though the looking mattered as much as the touch. He kissed your wrist, your palm, the first knuckle of each finger, and by the time he stood, your whole body felt like a room with lights being turned on one by one.

You rose with him.

For a second, neither of you moved.

Then you stepped into him, and Dick kissed you.

He tasted like tea and rain and restraint. His hands settled at your waist, careful of the healing wound, and you gripped his shirt because the first press of his mouth was so much softer than you had expected. You had been kissed before for missions, for covers, for manipulation, for practice under watchful eyes. You had learned how to make your body convincing while your mind stood somewhere else.

This was different.

Dick kissed like he was listening.

Every shift of your breath mattered. Every small tension made him slow down, every answering movement drew him closer. When his tongue brushed yours, heat rolled through you so suddenly that your fingers tightened in his shirt and pulled a quiet sound from him. He broke the kiss with his forehead against yours, breathing hard.

“You okay?”

“If you ask me that every time, I will bite you.”

His laugh was rough. “That might not discourage me.”

Desire sparked through the words, bright enough to make you dizzy. You tilted your face and kissed him again, less carefully this time. Dick answered with a low sound that went straight through you, one hand sliding to your back while the other rose to cradle the side of your face. His thumb brushed near the bruise that had faded from Thurston’s cane, and the tenderness of it made something ache beneath the wanting.

You pushed his jacket from his shoulders.

He let you. More than that, he understood. He stood still while you undressed him piece by piece, giving you time to see each scar and decide what to do with the knowledge of him. There were many scars. Some old, some newer, some thin and pale, others rougher where healing had been rushed by necessity. You touched the edge of the bandage near his shoulder, and his breath hitched.

“Does it hurt?” you asked.

“A little.”

You drew your hand back at once.

He caught it gently. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“I have.”

“Not now.”

The distinction landed softly.

You leaned forward and kissed the skin beside the bandage.

Dick went still beneath your mouth. You felt the control in him, the careful leash on his own need, and for the first time, it did not feel like distance. It felt like respect. It felt like he was holding a door open and refusing to pull you through it.

You pressed another kiss to his chest, then another lower, learning him by warmth and scar tissue and the way his breathing changed when your teeth grazed skin. His hand found the back of your neck, not holding, simply resting there. When you sank to your knees, his fingers tightened once.

“You don’t have to,” he said, voice strained.

You looked up at him. “I know.”

His eyes searched yours.

Whatever he found there made him curse softly under his breath.

You undid his belt with hands steadier than you felt. He was hard beneath your palm, and the sound he made when you touched him was so openly affected that heat gathered low in your stomach. You had expected to feel exposed on your knees. Instead, looking up at Dick Grayson while he trembled because you wanted him felt like power with no blood on it.

You took him into your mouth slowly, watching his face as his head tipped back. His restraint frayed by degrees: a parted mouth, a hand braced against the table, your name dragged rough from his throat when you hollowed your cheeks and took him deeper. He never pushed. Never took more than you offered. The absence of force became its own kind of intimacy, and you found yourself chasing the sounds he tried to swallow.

When his hand tightened in your hair, he froze. “Sorry.”

You pulled back just enough to speak. “Did I tell you to stop?”

His pupils blew wide.

“No.”

“Then don’t.”

The groan that left him was wrecked and beautiful. He touched your hair again, more carefully this time, fingers threading through without guiding. You set the rhythm yourself, slow until he shook, then deeper until his hips jerked with the effort of staying still. He warned you before he came, voice unsteady, and you drew back because you wanted to watch him fall apart.

He looked at you afterward as though you had taken him apart and handed him back better.

Then he pulled you up and kissed you with none of the earlier restraint, mouth hungry, hands careful but certain. You gasped against him when he backed you toward the bedroom, and he stopped at once.

“Still okay?”

This time, you did bite him.

Not hard. Just enough at the edge of his jaw to make him laugh and shudder at the same time. “I warned you.”

“You did.”

The bedroom was small and dim, the window cracked open to the sound of rain. Dick sat on the edge of the bed and let you choose whether to come closer. You did. You stood between his knees and removed your shirt with the strange, deliberate courage of someone disarming a bomb. His gaze moved over you with such naked desire that you almost reached to cover yourself.

He caught the movement in his face, not with his hands.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

The words hurt.

You shook your head once.

Dick leaned forward and kissed the scar beneath your ribs. Then the one near your hip. Then the edge of the bandage that still covered the healing bullet wound. He kissed you like he had all the time in the world to argue with every cruel thing ever said about your body, and by the time his mouth reached the center of you, your knees had gone weak enough that he had to guide you onto the bed.

“Tell me if anything feels wrong,” he said.

You nodded.

“I need words, sweetheart.”

The endearment slipped out softly. You felt it hit him after it hit you, his expression shifting like he was ready to apologize.

You touched his face. “I will.”

He kissed the inside of your thigh.

Your breath caught.

Dick took his time. He pressed his mouth to your skin until anticipation became a living thing, then looked up at you before he licked into you with a slow, devastating heat that made your spine arch off the bed. Pleasure arrived like a language you had known only in translation. Your hands twisted in the sheets. His arms hooked around your thighs, steadying without trapping, and when you gasped his name, he answered with a sound that vibrated through your body.

It was too much and not enough. It was terrifying to want more.

Dick noticed the moment your breathing turned sharp. He lifted his head immediately, mouth wet, eyes dark. “Stop?”

You shook your head, then remembered. “No. Just—slow.”

He kissed your thigh. “I can do slow.”

He did.

Slow became unbearable. Slow became his tongue moving with patient attention until you stopped bracing for pain that did not come. Slow became his fingers sliding into yours above the sheets while his mouth worked between your thighs, grounding you even as pleasure built and built until there was nowhere left for it to go. When you came, it broke through you with a force that dragged his name out of your throat like a confession.

Dick held you through it.

Afterward, he climbed up beside you and kissed your temple, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. You could taste yourself on him, and the intimacy should have made you turn away. Instead, you pulled him closer, one hand sliding into his hair as though you could anchor yourself there while the room slowly came back around you.

“I want you inside me,” you said.

Dick’s breath caught. His hand went still against your hip, warm and careful above the place where old scars cut low across your abdomen.

“You’re sure?”

You gave him a look, more offended by the question than the caution behind it.

He huffed a quiet laugh and leaned down to kiss you. “Okay. Sorry. Last time for at least five minutes.”

“You are incapable of silence.”

“People find it charming.”

“People are wrong.”

He smiled against your mouth as he kissed you, and the smile stayed there until his hand shifted toward the nightstand. It was an ordinary movement. Practical. Considerate. A habit formed by a man who knew enough to be careful, who had probably reached for that drawer a dozen times with other people and never once had the gesture turn the air cold.

Your body went still beneath him.

Dick stopped immediately.

His hand did not reach the drawer. It did not return to you either. He held himself above you with sudden, absolute attention, giving you space without pulling so far away that the absence became another kind of alarm.

“Hey,” he said softly. “We can stop.”

“No.” Your voice sounded distant to your own ears. “It isn’t that.”

He waited.

That almost made it worse. If he had pushed, if he had asked too quickly, if he had tried to smooth over the silence with reassurance, you could have sharpened yourself against him. Instead, he only watched you with that careful grief in his eyes, and the patience made the words feel larger than they were.

“I can’t get pregnant,” you said.

Dick said nothing, but his expression changed. You saw the moment he understood that you had not offered reassurance. You had opened a wound.

“The Court saw to it,” you continued. “They took my ovaries when I was young enough that the doctor had to explain the rest to my handler in terms of dosage schedules and bone density. Hormones. Maintenance. Efficiency. Talons could not be compromised by pregnancy. Talons could not have loyalties that began in their own bodies.”

His face went pale with anger.

You hated that the anger was for you. You hated more that some broken part of you wanted to lean toward it, as though fury on your behalf could warm places the Court had left cold.

“They took that too,” you said, quieter now. “Before I knew whether I wanted it.”

Dick did not touch you. His hands curled once against the sheets, like he needed somewhere to put the violence of what he felt and refused to place any of it on your skin.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

You swallowed. “Don’t make it sound like grief.”

“It is grief.”

The answer was so immediate that your throat tightened.

You looked at him then, and the softness in his face nearly undid you. There was no disgust. No pity in the way the Court had taught you to recognize it, no distant sympathy that made you feel like a broken thing being studied from across a room. Only sorrow and fury held carefully away from you, and Dick understanding that the Court had not merely used your body. They had edited it. Carved absence into it. Called the theft preventative because preventative sounded cleaner than control.

“I don’t know how to want you without bringing them with me,” you admitted.

Dick’s voice went rough. “Then we go slow enough that they don’t get to keep up.”

The words struck somewhere deep.

You reached for his wrist and brought his hand back to you, pressing his palm over the scar low on your stomach. His touch was warm there, achingly gentle, and for a moment, you could hardly breathe around the strangeness of choosing a hand in a place where choice had once been taken from you.

“I want to feel you,” you said.

His eyes closed for a second. When they opened again, the want in them was still there, darker now, but held with so much care that it hurt. “Tell me if anything changes.”

“I will.”

Dick bent and kissed you, slow and aching, as if the promise deserved reverence.

You guided him down.

The first press of him inside you made both of you go still. He watched your face, every muscle in his body held taut above yours, and you wrapped your legs around his hips because you wanted the weight of him. Because you wanted the choice. Because the Court had taken a future from your body and called it useful, but this moment belonged to no one in a mask, no physician with gloved hands, no old man with a cane speaking of bloodlines as though children were investments.

Dick sank in slowly, inch by inch, giving you time to adjust until the stretch turned from ache to heat. His hand stayed over your scar because you had put it there, and the pressure of his palm felt like an answer to a question you had never learned how to ask.

Your hands found his back.

“Move,” you whispered.

Dick obeyed you.

The thought nearly shattered you.

He moved like he fought, like he flew, with rhythm and grace and attention so complete it made the world narrow to his body over yours and his breath against your cheek. There was nothing performative in it, nothing polished for anyone watching. He lost composure by degrees, and you loved each loss fiercely: the catch in his throat when you tightened around him, the way his hips stuttered when your nails dragged down his back, the broken sound of your real name against your mouth.

Your real name.

Not Talon. Not substitute. Not consolation. Not a blade, not a legacy, not a debt.

Yours.

Tears slipped free before you could stop them.

Dick froze. “Did I hurt you?”

You pulled him down before panic could take root in his face. “No.”

“Then what—”

“I’m here,” you said, because it was the only answer that held enough truth.

His expression broke open.

Then he kissed you, and the gentleness of it ruined you more completely than hunger ever could. He moved again, deeper and slower, one hand cradling your face as though he could keep you tethered to the room by touch alone. Pleasure rose again, tangled with grief, with want, with the terrible fragile knowledge that your body could be more than something the Court had trained and used and punished.

Your climax took you softer this time, no less powerful for the quiet. Dick followed after, burying his face against your neck with a shudder that ran through both of you. For a while, the only sound was rain and breathing.

When he moved to pull away, you held him tighter.

“Stay.”

Dick stilled above you.

Then he carefully shifted his weight so he would not crush your side and stayed.

Much later, under blankets that smelled like him, with the window open and Blüdhaven rain whispering against the fire escape, you woke from a dream of marble.

Your hand went first to the space behind your ear.

Smooth bandage. Tender skin. Silence.

Dick woke when you moved, because of course he did. He did not grab for a weapon. He did not ask what was wrong. He only turned toward you, sleep-soft and bruised, and opened his arms.

You stared at him through the dim.

The Court had built you a cage and called it a crown. It had taught you that obedience was honor, that pain was proof, that being chosen was the closest thing to being loved. It had dressed ownership in silk and legacy and old blood until you could not tell the difference between a throne and a prison.

Dick Grayson had been the boy they wanted.

You had been what they made instead.

But he was here now, warm and alive in a city the Court did not own, looking at you as if the future were not a command but a question.

You moved into his arms.

He held you carefully, one hand settling between your shoulder blades. His heartbeat was steady beneath your ear. You listened to it until the dream receded, until the room became only a room, until the open window meant air instead of escape.

“You okay?” he murmured.

You considered threatening to bite him again.

Instead, you said, “I think I will be.”

Dick pressed a kiss to your hair. “Yeah?”

You closed your eyes.

For once, there was no voice in your head telling you to kneel. No Court waiting behind your thoughts. No ghost of the Gray Son standing in judgment over all the ways you had failed to become him.

There was only Dick, and the rain, and your own name resting inside you like something returned.

“Yes,” you said. “Not tonight. Not all at once. But someday.”

Dick’s arms tightened around you, careful and sure.

“Someday works,” he said.

Outside, Blüdhaven kept rotting and living in equal measure. Gotham waited across the water with its owls, its ghosts, its old houses full of men who still believed cages could be mistaken for crowns if they were built high enough.

Let them wait.

You had spent your whole life being shaped into someone else’s replacement.

In the dark, beside the boy who had escaped and come back for you anyway, you finally began to become yourself.

credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider and @toxisyddy for the Nightwing divider ❤️💛

[kommanders]

and if i made a nasty smutty birdflash x reader fic who says no????

[kommanders]

lowkey turning this into dickkori x wally x reader sorry perks of being a lesbian😭 i need kori there with meeee

[kommanders]

and if i made a nasty smutty birdflash x reader fic who says no????

[kommanders]

hello! i loved ur body guards fic so much truly it festers inside me 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

can i request one where the reader maybe accidentally peeks through a door and sees dick going down on kory. the reader can’t stop watching them and then looks up and realizes kory is looking directly at reader? they make eye contact the whole time and she even starts exaggerating her moves looking at reader?? maybe they even get called out by either dick or kory to join as well? :)) i appreciate your work dearly!!!

i need this so bad why have you set me off omg!!!

[kommanders]

Hiii lovely welcome back!!!!

Take as much time as you need to write! I’m forever eating up your blog!!

-superbat anon

thank you so much it’s so nice to hear that people actually enjoy my work😭❤️

[kommanders]

hi guys it’s my easter vac and i wanna write again please send me rq and ideas to my inbox to get me going ahh!!!!

(dc only - anyone i write for is down below!)

[kitkatscabinet]

BLUE & GREEN

pairing | kyle rayner x fem! blue lantern! reader

a/n | finally expanding on this concept from all the way back in july 25 <3

cw | character death, slight suicidal ideation, read at your own discretion, reader is pretty gn! But marked as fem in case I missed anything <3

It’s the nightmares that wake you, the phantom sensation of searing heat licking against your skin, the screams of your corps members, your friends, your family, hundreds gone in an instant. Sweat drips down your spine as you kick the blankets off, suddenly far too hot for comfort as you try to fight back the onslaught of tears before—

There’s a gentle knock on the door, and you don’t even need to look up to know it’s Kyle, slinking into your room and radiating with so much worry you can taste it. Wordlessly, you slide over, just in time for Kyle to perch on the edge of your mattress, “Odym again?”

You nod, but Kyle already knows. The question is a simple formality when your souls are so deeply entwined. Lying beside you, he lifts his arm, letting you scooch in close for a hug before pulling the covers back.

“Thank you. For being here.” You murmur into his chest, focusing on the steady beat of his heart.

“It’s what I’m here for.”

“I doubt that’s what the guardians had in mind.” The two of you giggling at the thought of Guardian-sponsored cuddles. Truthfully, you doubt anyone had realised the reality of the Guardians actions, least of all themselves. Whatever their manipulations, you and Kyle had been eternally bound, souls irrevocably chained. Kyle knows you better than anyone ever has or ever will.

You’re one of the last blue lanterns in the galaxy, and as such, a precious resource. One to be guarded, protected, nothing more than a commodity. Initially, you’d been furious, bitter, intent on making the life of whatever man you were given to a living hell. But then you’d met Kyle, felt his soul brush against yours, learned his dreams, hopes, feelings, without even needing words, and decided you could never hate him.

You did everything together, went everywhere together, something Guy Gardner teased you both relentlessly for. It used to bother you, in the beginning, but now you know him better, not as well as Kyle obviously, but the redhead had managed to endear himself to you, and you saw the teasing for what it really was.

That didn’t mean he still wasn’t one of the most annoying pricks you’d ever met. You trusted Guy to have your back; you might not be bonded in the same way, but your presence was still enough to boost his capabilities well beyond the norm, and Guy was an excellent Green Lantern.

Still, you’d much rather it were Kyle with you now, the two of you having been separated in the chaos of your latest mission. Practically the moment you’d entered the planet’s atmosphere, you’d been attacked, forced to split up.

“Kyle’s a big boy; he can look after himself.” You know that, but Guy’s attempted reassurance doesn’t make you worry any less. Not when Kyle’s absence is a physical ache in your side.

“I know, but I—” Something akin to a crack echoes through the air, and you stumble back into Guy’s arms from the sudden force of something hitting you in the chest. Looking down in confusion, the sharp, searing pain hits the moment you spot the rapidly growing pool of red staining the blue of your lantern suit.

“Guy?” You mumble, as he swears, loud and panicked, pulling you back into the safety of cover whilst forming a protective green bubble.

The shock and pain have rendered you essentially useless, dying as you are, because it's with distant acceptance that you realise, you’re about to die, you’re going to die, and all you can think of in this moment is Kyle.

He’s the last thing on your mind as you succumb to the darkness, a picture of his beautiful smile flashing behind behind your eyelids as you mumble out an apology he’ll never get to hear.

A few streets over, the man in question stumbles, rapidly gasping as a concerned Hal catches him by the arm. “Kyle, man, what’s—” He’s cut off when the younger man suddenly lets out an agonised, gut-wrenching wail before taking off faster than Hal can blink.

“Shit.” He hisses, hurrying to catch up to the blazing green wrecking ball, wreaking havoc through the district.

Kyle’s never felt such intense agony in his entire existence; his heart feels as if it's been ripped from his chest, his very soul torn in half as he blindly flies toward where he senses your rapidly fading presence. Later, he won’t recall the seismic rage that had overcome his being, nor the way he’d mowed through the enemies without mercy, uncaring of potentially fatal injuries.

Kyle drops to his knees beside your already cooling body, gathering you in his arms with a messy wail, fruitlessly begging you to come back to him as a shellshocked Guy watches on, unsure what to do.

“Kyle buddy…” He puts a hand on his friends shoulder, only to gasp when a large green hand grabs him, throwing him against the nearest wall.

“Don’t touch me!” Kyle snarls like a cornered dog, tugging your body even tighter to his chest. “Don’t touch…Just leave us be! Just…” His words trail off, swallowed by the deep heaving sobs. Tears slid down his cheeks rapidly, falling on your peaceful face and if it weren’t for the fact your chest no longer rose and fell, Kyle might have been able to trick himself into believing you were just sleeping.

He’s dazed, helplessly lost without you, a gaping black hole in chest where his heart is supposed to be, the heart he no longer has, for you’ve taken it with you into the darkness he’s sure to quickly follow.

You were his blue, his to love, his to protect and he’s failed you. Failed in his one duty, that had long since stopped feeling as such.

Kyle doesn’t notice Hal’s arrival either, not until hands try to pull him away from you and he’s lashing out like a rabid dog once more. Words of comfort and reason are lost on him, for truthfully, Kyle’s no longer there.

He’s a shell, a case with his insides scooped out, never to be a person again. Nothing more than a ghost living on borrowed time.

Through some miracle, Hal and Guy manage to pry his exhausted form off of you, but it’s only by knocking him out do they manage to make the journey back to OA.

His friends try their best to support him, but none of them realise it’s already too late, there’s nothing left of him to save.

Kyle wakes for the last time on the day of your funeral, having to be practically dragged into attendance, and when the night falls and he finally closes his eyes, they never open again.

He refuses to live in a world without you, he can’t— so, he doesn’t

[kommanders]

literally found a sub!battinson fic in my drafts gonna finish that haha i’ve finally found the motivation

[littlebunnybigheartfics]

just a reminder for smut readers to not compare yourselves to what you read. at the end of the day it is porn and it still has tropes and stereotypes like any other.

if you can't go multiple rounds, or if you need more time, or if you have trouble finishing/can't finish at all, if you don't have big breasts or a small waist or birthing hips, if intimacy is intimidating, if you don't like the feel of penetration, if ur a virgin, if it takes more time for you to get wet, if you can't squirt, if you're not short and petite, if you have medical issues that get in the way, if ur a victim of sa or abuse. that is all normal and it does not make you less than. if you don't find a reflection of yourself within stories, that is more than alright. lots of it is escapism and glorified and porn trope adjacent and not a reflection of real life. you are perfect just as you are.♡

[froggibus]

— The Cruise Ship Dilemma

Pairing: Kyle Rayner x Batsib! reader

Summary: when your boyfriend breaks up with you just days before you're meant to introduce him to your family, you pretend to date your best friend to avoid the embarrassment of your breakup

Word Count: 3.2k

Content/CW -> gn! reader, breakup, fake dating, best friend! Kyle, batfamily being batfamily

this is day 1 of my love letters valentine's event! this was the blue ship letter <3

froggi yaps -> yay!! this was the one based off what @/kitkatscabinet told me her fave trope/character(s) were :p so i am very very happy i got to do this one first! tbh the others probably won't be as long as this but this one just had *so much* plot!! totally not based off the comic line where Kyle goes on a cruise with Wally & Conner...

The screen of your phone is a blur through your tears, the bright light making your eyes ache. You clumsily wipe at your eyes with the back of your hand but more tears bloom in their place. You settle on your bed next to your half-packed suitcase.

What am I going to do now?

You swipe through your contacts, fingers stilling over Bruce’s photo. You should call him, let him know Chad just broke up with you and his ticket for the cruise is going to waste. Your thumb hovers open the call button but you just can’t bring yourself to press it.

Instead, you scroll down to the only person who really gets you: Kyle.

“Hey, sugar.” He picks up on the first ring, sounding a little breathless, “what’s up?” “Kyle—” Your voice shakes, thick with tears. There’s a pause, some of the noise in the background dies down.

“What’s going on? Are you crying?” “He–he broke up with me.”

Kyle mumbles a string of unintelligible words, mashed together with curses you’re not sure you’ve ever heard before. All you manage to make out is, “asshole—never deserved you.”

“I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Nothing, sweetheart. He’s a jerk.” A sigh and then, “do you need anything?”

“I don’t know…” You blink, “are you busy? I miss you.” “I’m—” There’s a loud smacking sound followed by a crash, “I’m not busy. How about I stop and get some takeout, come and see you?”

“That would be great.”

“Alright, see you soon. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Judging by the fresh bruise on his cheek when he shows up at your door, Kyle was busy when you called. He brandishes the bag of chinese food like a trophy.

“Kyle,” you gape, standing on your toes to cup his cheek. “What—you got hurt?”

He flushes under your touch. “Hm? Oh, that’s nothing.”

You frown. “You didn’t have to come if you were busy.”

He steps into your apartment, dropping the bag of takeout on your counter. He assesses you, taking in the tear stains on your cheeks and the redness to your eyes. His arms open for a hug, pulling you into his chest.

“You needed me,” he says simply. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Your shoulders shake, your tears returning. He strokes your back, mumbling soothing words into your ear. Kyle’s never been one to shy away from his feelings, always been so sensitive and sweet to you. 

“Thank you for coming.”

Kyle holds you a moment longer before finally releasing you. He gets to work unpacking the takeout while you pull out the dishes. He ducks under you to grab some cutlery, and you find yourself breathless at how easy it is with Kyle. How routine.

Settled on the couch and munching on chicken fried rice, Kyle grabs your remote and turns on your TV.

“What are you putting on?” 

He grins, “you’ll see.”

You watch as he navigates your abundance of streaming services—gifted to you by Bruce, of course—and turns on your favorite movie. Your eyes light up, your back suddenly straighter.

“I love this movie!”

“I know.”

And he does, because of all your boyfriends, all of your friends, nobody pays more attention to you than Kyle Rayner. Nobody knows you like he does.

“So,” he says casually, “are you guys still going on that cruise this weekend?” Your face blanks, all of the blood draining away. You sniffle, the weight of your recent breakup weighing on your shoulders once more. Kyle watches you carefully, notes every emotion that passes over your face.

“Oh, god. I forgot about the cruise.” Hot tears pool in your eyes, your nose burning. You try to blink them away, taking deep breaths to guide yourself through it. It doesn’t help, a fat tear slipping from the corner of your eye and rolling down your cheek.

Kyle’s resting his plate on the coffee table, leaning in to wipe your tears before you can even react. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

“No, it’s fine it’s just—” You look to your lap, fiddling with a loose thread on your pants, “they were going to be meeting him for the first time and now I just—I feel silly telling them my relationship only lasted three months.”

“It’s not silly at all, it wasn’t your fault.” He rests a hand over yours, stilling the nervous motion, “they’ll understand.”

“I know, but…it’s so embarrassing, Kyle.”

He pauses to think for a moment. “Did they know what he looked like?” “...no?”

“You’re sure? Tim and Dick didn’t run a background check on him already?”

“Yeah, I didn’t….they didn’t even know his name.”

He nods, considering it. Silence blankets the room, cut only by the sounds coming from your tv. You risk a glance up at Kyle, deep in thought.

“So bring someone else.”

You blink, confused.

“If you’re not ready to tell them, just bring someone else. It’s only four days, right?” He smiles gently when you nod, “then you don’t have to be alone, and you don’t have to tell them.”

You think about it. Really, actually think about it. You’re sure someone—maybe Cass or Tim—has already stalked you and found out who you were dating. But you’re sure they wouldn’t dare admit it if you did, and wouldn't bother to correct you if they knew it would upset you.

Plus, you really don’t want to be alone right now.

“Come with me.”

His mouth falls open in shock. “Me?”

“Please? It was your idea and you’re the only one who knows and…I know Bruce at least likes you.”

“I—” His face pales, “Dick will kill me. And if he doesn’t, there’s about ten other people down the line who will.”

You clasp your hand around his, “please?”

And god, he wants to say no. He wants to say no so badly. A week with you, sharing a room, pretending to be a boyfriend and dealing with your family of feral Bats sounds like torture. But it’s the way you’re looking at him, eyes still wet with tears and lips drawn into a pout, shimmering like he’s your only hope in the entire world.

“Okay,” he says finally, “I’ll do it.”

You practically lunge at him across the couch, wrapping your arms around him and nuzzling your head into his neck. “You’re the best friend I could ever ask for, Kyle.” The breath stills in his body from your touch, heart sinking at the word ‘friend’.

Kyle’s heart is in his throat. Waiting on the dock, the smell of salty sea water and the gentle breeze in his hair, he can’t get his nerves to settle. It only gets worse when he catches sight of your father—immaculately dressed in khakis and a Hawaiian print shirt.

You press yourself into his side, lacing your fingers through his. The rest of your family pops into view, the dorky straw hat on Tim’s head sticking out like a sore thumb.

Bruce smiles when he sees you, only for it to falter slightly when he sees the man next to you. Just as quickly as it happens, it stops, that famous Bruce Wayne smile back in full swing.

He opens his arms to greet you in a hug, an awkward gesture with him patting you on the back. “Good to see you.”

By the time you pull away, the rest of your siblings have caught up to the two of you. You feel their eyes assessing you, taking the two of you in. 

You reach for Kyle’s hand again, tugging him forward to present him to your family. “Guys, this is my boyfriend.”

Kyle tenses, feeling oddly exposed. He manages a weak wave with his free hand, “hey.”

It’s Dick that steps up first, flashing that perfect shiny smile. “Good to see you, man.”

And when Kyle offers his hand, Dick squeezes it almost tight enough to crack the bones in his fingers. He sucks in a breath, forcing his face to remain neutral as your brother all but breaks his hand. 

You swat Dick’s hand away, glaring at him. “Really?” “What?” Ever the gaslighter, he plays innocent, “just welcoming him.”

“Yeah, real welcoming.” He pulls you into a hug, tighter and less awkward than Bruce’s. His voice drops so only you can hear him, “you didn’t mention you were dating Kyle of all people, is this why he’s always over?”

“How do you even know that? Are you watching me?”

“...no.”

The rest of the welcomes go smoother, though Cass regards you and Kyle with confusion and narrowed eyes. You wonder if she knows something the rest of them don’t, if she somehow knows you’re lying.

With everyone having thoroughly sized up Kyle in their own way, you’re free to actually board the cruise and be shown to your rooms.

It’s only when the door to your joint room is closing that Kyle feels like he can breathe again. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he settles on the bed.

“Why did I let you talk me into this?”

“Because you love me?”

He sighs. He does, he really really does. More than you could possibly know.

“If I die, do not let Guy use my death to pick up women.”

You fall onto the bed next to him, resting your head on his shoulder. His heart rate evens at your touch, all of his tension melting away. He’s not sure how he’s going to spend four nights sharing a bed with you, not when being so close to you has him forgetting how to breathe.

“You’re not gonna die, Kyle.” You look at him through your lashes, “I’ll protect you.”

And he’s tempted to remind you he’s seen your oldest brother go toe to toe with Gods and monsters with nothing but two sticks and his bare hands, but he doesn’t. He just lets himself be lulled by your touch and the gentle rocking of the ship.

Dinner with your family feels like a minefield.

Kyle does his best to answer their prying questions, looking them in the eyes and lying through his teeth. He’d feel bad about it if it weren’t for your hand on his thigh and how close you’re sitting to him.

“And you guys have been dating for three months?”

Kyle hums in agreement through a bite of food. “Yep.” Tim pipes up next, “but you guys were friends for a long time.” “Yes.”

“And you only started dating now?”

Bruce jumps into the conversation and you brace yourself for the worst. For either the protective father or the over-analytical detective to come into play.

Instead, he smiles gracefully. “Kyle, how are things on Oa?”

Kyle’s grateful for the break in conversation, getting to talk about something other than your fake relationship. He jumps into a semi-detailed conversation with Bruce about Lantern business, the older man nodding along.

Damian nudges your side. “I thought your standards would be higher than a Green Lantern. But if you had to choose one, Rayner is acceptable.”

You laugh, shaking your head at his antics. “Kyle’s sweet.”

“Is that the standard now?” Jason says, and you’re wondering when he started listening in to your conversation.

“You’re one to talk.”

“What? I’m not sweet enough for you?”

You squeeze Kyle’s thigh. This dinner can’t end soon enough.

“I’m sorry.” Those are the first words out of your mouth when you’re closing the door to your cabin. Kyle smiles thinly, dizzied from the borderline interrogation he’d just gone through.

“Of everyone I thought would be weird about it,” he says slowly, “Tim was not the person I expected.”

You cringe. “He can be a lot. I’m sorry.”

Kyle rifles through his swiftly packed suitcase, grabbing out a pair of sweats and a t-shirt you’d gifted him for his birthday. “I’m gonna get changed.”

You watch him retreat to the bathroom, grabbing out your own pyjamas and changing into them. You’re just pulling on your shirt, your back bare and facing the bathroom door, when you hear it click open.

“Shit, sorry!” Kyle covers his eyes, backing up into the wall.

You turn to look at him, tugging your shirt over your head in the process. His cheeks are flushed bright red, a hand clamped over his eyes. You cross the room to him, grabbing at his wrist.

Kyle’s forgotten how to breathe, your gaze on him making his heart swell. His hand drops limply to his side, eyes wide and taking in the sight of you in your pyjamas. Thin shorts and a tanktop, your attempt to keep cool in the warm room of your cabin.

He’s supposed to sleep next to you while you’re wearing those?

“I didn’t realize you were changing,” he rubs the back of his neck, giving you an awkward grin. “Sorry.”

“Huh? I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”

And if his face wasn’t an inferno before, it is now. 

You simply turn and settle back into your side of the bed, burying yourself under the sheets. You’ve slept with Kyle before, cuddled up on your couch after falling asleep during a movie or crashing in his bed after a bad night. It’s not much to you, but it’s everything to him.

Kyle follows suit, footsteps slow and even and awkward. He pulls the sheet aside and climbs under it, the warmth coming off of your body falling over him.

This is going to be a long night.

You wake up to sunlight and warmth, Kyle’s arms around your waist and his head in your shoulder. Heat rises to your face, butterflies swarming your stomach. You try to untangle yourself from him without waking him up, but then his eyes are fluttering open.

“Morning,” he rasps, eyes barely open. “How’d you sleep?”

You frown when he pulls himself away from you, so nonchalant about how he was holding you. You miss his warmth. “N-not bad. You?”

He sits up, stretching his limbs. The muscles in his shoulders bulge, and though you’ve seen his arms countless times, you’d be lying if you said you didn’t savour the sight. 

“Mm, good.”

You try to pretend like the moan from his stretch didn’t send heat straight to your stomach. “G-good.”

You go about your morning, Kyle brushing his teeth while you fix your hair, the two of you fighting over the mirror. Kyle yields to you, of course, tall enough to see around you. 

“Stop, you’re gonna drip toothpaste on me!”

“Hm?” He says, toothbrush still stuffed in his mouth, “I never drip.”

As he says that, a trail of toothpaste leaks out of the side of his mouth.

You elbow him in the ribs, ducking your head out of the way. “Gross!”

You retreat back to the room, satisfied with how your hair looks. You hear the sound of him spitting in the sink followed by running water, and then he’s following you into the room. 

He frowns. “Why’re you running from me?” “Because you almost spat on me!”

“You hate me.”

“I—”

You’re cut off from your impending rant about how you absolutely do not hate him when Kyle starts laughing at your expense. He shakes his head, mess of dark hair falling into his face.

“You fall for that every time.”

“You suck.”

The days spent on the cruise seem to tick by, you and Kyle falling into your fake relationship a little too easily. Casual touches are second nature, one of you always having your hand on the other. The pet names come easily, too. Babe here, sweetheart there, sunshine when Kyle’s in a particularly foul mood (usually put there by one of your brothers.) 

The last day of the cruise comes too quickly, disappointment building up at the thought you’ll be going home tomorrow and your ‘relationship’ with Kyle coming to an end. You cling to the fleeting moments the two of you have left.

To celebrate the last day of the cruise, a dance is arranged. The dance hall is decorated in bright coloured florals and twinkling lights, a band on the stage playing music just loud enough to drown out the voices of everyone else.

You sit with Dick at the bar, nursing your drink. 

“Kyle doesn’t want to dance with you?” He gestures to the Lantern, currently sitting at the table with the rest of your family and doodling something on a napkin. 

“Uh—”

“I know you two aren’t really dating.”

Your heart pangs in your chest, your mouth suddenly dry. “What?”

“You and Kyle. I know you’re just friends,” he frowns. “I just don’t get why you felt the need to lie.”

A thousand possibilities cross your mind. Lie, play dumb, double down, come clean. You blank, suddenly wishing Kyle was here. He’s a lot better at coming up with things on the fly than you are.

“Why do you think that?”

And as if he could hear your thoughts, Kyle is suddenly at your side, an arm falling around your shoulders. “Hey, sweetheart.”

He kisses your cheek and you lean into him instinctively. Kyle looks from you to Dick, back to you and then back at Dick.

“What’re you guys talking about?” He plucks your drink from your hand, sipping on it, not even bothering to drink from a different side of the glass than you.

Dick’s eyes narrow, looking between the two of you. “That I know you’re not really dating.”

Kyle nearly chokes on his drink. 

You nudge him, your own face a perfect mask of calm. “Dick was just about to tell me why he thinks that and why he’s so invested in my personal life.”

Your brother’s eyes roll at the sarcasm in your tone. “I’m just looking out for you.” 

“Please, Kyle is the last person you need to worry about.”

“Maybe,” he shrugs, looking at Kyle. “What do you think?” “Me?” Dick nods.

“I think—” You hold your breath, worried that what he’s going to say next will ruin your facade. 

“I think I’ve never loved somebody so much in my entire life,” he says quietly. “I think I’m the luckiest man alive, getting to date my best friend. And I think there’s no one else I’d rather be with.”

Tears burn the backs of your eyes, the world around you having stopped spinning sometime during his speech. Dick looks as shocked as you feel, confusion marring his features. 

“Kyle…”

Dick slides away, “I’m just gonna go.” With Dick gone, Kyle’s attention is fully on you now. You try to blink away your tears, steadying yourself against the bar counter.

“I-I meant every word,” he admits, and his eyes drift away from yours. “I really do love you.”

You’re not sure who leans in first, if your hands found the back of his neck or his found your waist, but all of a sudden his lips are on yours and the world falls away from around you. You taste your drink on his lips, feel the softness of them and the need behind his kiss.

His hands slip from your waist to the small of your back, tugging you flush against him. You let him pull you in, let his body absorb yours, hold you close. 

“Well,” he says, mouth resting on the corner of yours, “I guess we don’t have to fake it anymore.” You laugh, wet and filled with joy, “yeah, I guess we don’t.”

dc masterlist | navigation | valentine's event

thanks for reading & have a wonderful week /ᐠ > ˕ <マ ₊˚⊹♡

[kommanders]

hi guys idk if you can remember me but sorry i haven’t written anything since summer ive been in such a rut and uni’s been so overwhelming ive made no friends and it’s genuinely getting hard to wake up every morning but i will find the time to write and make you guys happy 🥲💗

[kommanders]

it’s my birthday today!!! i promise i’ll try and come back and get writing again!!! love you all so much🤍

[3ll333-deactivated20260509]

─── THINKING ABOUT PROFESSOR DICK GRAYSON

you've just aced your latest exam, and the rush hits as you lock the office door behind you. professor grayson's eyes light up, that quiet pride warming his gaze. there was no need for words— he just pulls you close, his hand steady on your back, making you feel safe in the vulnerability.

he lifts you onto the desk, skirt hiking up as he tugs your panties aside with gentle firmness. his touch spreads you open, thumbs pressing reassuringly into your thighs. he leans in, his breath teasing you first, then his tongue laps slow and deep, savoring your taste like it's his reward too.

he sucks your clit with just the right pull, eyes locking on yours— hungry but soft, sharing this moment. your back arches, gasping as your orgasm washes over you, but he keeps going, tongue circling through the sensitivity, his fingers slipping in to curl against that spongy spot inside you. it's intense, overwhelming, but his hand on your hip grounds you, whispering trust in every stroke.

you're left trembling, your slick coating his lips. he laps you up tenderly, slowing as you go limp, utterly spent. once he's done, he straightens your skirt with a soft smile, whispering softly about how he'll give you more if you ace your next test..

i'm sorry that this is soo short. i've just been so busy with college lately and this was written at like 2 am last night. it isn't proofread, so pls lmk if there's any typos.

[kommanders]

need him…

[kommanders]

hey can anyone give me like any inclination of my 2025 solar return that’s starts next week i’m both distraught and confused (left is whole sign and right is placidus) thanks🫶🏾

[noodlie-reads]

college au; in which 2000’s party boy core!dick grayson is a concerned friend

masterlist - part one • part two

2.9k - no use of y/n, no physical descriptions of reader

warnings: mentions of sex, sexual innuendos

a/n: ah i forgot to queue this😭 here you go! part three for you~ (this was originally like 3.8k-ish words bc I couldn’t stfu lmfaooo but I want the slowburn to burn slowly you feel me? so i split it🤭)

-`✦´-

it wasn’t too long after the party and subsequent ‘cuddle puddle,’ (which had really just been you and dick, in each other’s arms, at the edge of a gaggle of sleeping college students) that the gracious host had reached out to you.

you were knee deep in highlighted texts and flash cards, finals looming ahead of you, when your phone started assailing you with vibrations.

bzzt bzzt……..bzzt bzzt……..bzzt bzzt

“jesus christ, what?!” you’d whined, pulling your face from your text book to glare daggers at the device, as if it had just declared war on you. checking your notifications, however, only left you with more questions.

Unknown Number:

hey nerd🥸

do u ever leave ur dorm orrrr?

it’s dick btw 😛

well, the question of who had been blowing up your phone had been answered. but, how he got your number and why he was even hitting you up in the first place were beyond you… and you didn’t even wanna touch his emoji usage. you quickly tapped out your reply.

You:

adding “stalker” to your resume, grayson??

how do you even have my number🤨

after you had hit send, you glanced at the time illuminating the top of your screen. 5:13PM… you’d been hitting the books so hard you didn’t realize how many hours had passed. you needed to eat and take a deeply necessary break.

dick grayson:

last name? & after i leant u my favorite pj pants😪that’s cold, angel

i have my sources😎 (celeste gave it to me)

u like pizza??👀

try as you might, you couldn’t help the little smile that found its way to your face. he was, unfortunately, being kind of cute. your new contact somehow cosmically knowing you were hungry definitely wasn’t helping the stalker allegations, though. not that he’d denied them anyway. still, you needed a break from both studying and instant ramen, so you’d texted him yes and accepted the invitation that followed.

you had expected him to just take you to the blaze pizza on campus. but, when he came to pick you up, he’d insisted on taking you to have “the best pizza in gotham.” you had rolled your eyes, but you hadn’t said no.

dick grayson’s car was sleek, black, and looked nauseatingly expensive. the interior was spotless, in a way not very typical for college guys… or any guy you knew, really. the smell of leather conditioner and dick’s cologne surrounded you. music filled any silence, tracks disjointed and very likely just his “liked” songs on shuffle. you took passive mental notes. 3oh!3 (you could’ve guessed that), justin timberlake (just the y2k classics, you could respect it), and doja cat (unexpected, but incredibly valid).

“so, do you drop off the face of the earth often?” dick had asked, eyes on the road but his mind, ever increasingly, on you.

you hadn’t known it at the time, but his mind had actually been on you since you two had woken up, almost in sync, bathed in the golden sunlight that had started streaming through the windows the morning following his final party of the year. you had looked angelic and open, like the sarcasm hadn’t settled back into your bones yet. he couldn’t get the image out of his mind.

“you mean study?” you scoff, “not really, but finals are coming up and the thought of being unprepared makes me wanna crawl outta my skin. do you slide into random people’s phones often?” you turn it back on him with a teasing smile. he considered your question with a smile of his own, one that said he knew you’d have something to say about him finding his way into your messages.

“no,” he shot you a glance, “but you’re not a random person. we cuddled.” he’d said it in the same way 1st graders talk about two people sittin’ in a tree. you found him ridiculous… and you liked it. “and, anyway, your best friend is clearly on a mission to steal my best friend, so i thought i’d return the favor.” he shrugged at his second statement, playing it off as the only logical course of action.

“thievery, richard? i’m appalled.” you feigned offense, widening your eyes in an attempt to appear scandalized.

you knew disapproval was coming when his nose scrunched, “first grayson, now richard? do you hate me?”

you’d laughed and told him no, you didn’t hate him. and, when you asked what he’d prefer you call him, he had a prepared list; which included but was not limited to:

- dick (obvi)

- handsome (alright…)

- darling (unlikely)

- light of my life (absolutely not)

the pizza was good, the company was better. it had never occurred to you, prior to actually interacting with him, that the reason dick grayson might have gotten so popular was because he’s actually just an easy person to be around. he’s funny and good with conversation, sure, but he’s also an active listener. and those eyes? those eyes that had the sky trapped inside and damn near haunted you ever since you’d gotten too close for your own good? dear god, do they keep you locked in.

he even proved to be more observant than he let on and definitely more attentive than you could’ve guessed.

he had caught your eyes flicker briefly to the napkin dispenser and plucked one free for you before you could make a move to do it yourself. when your eyes had started wandering around the restaurant, wordlessly searching for the restroom, dick pointed to a hallway over his left shoulder and said, “second door on the right.” when you pouted momentarily at your straw for sucking in air instead of soda, dick’s hand was ready and waiting to take the cup from you and get you a refill.

this was a problem. not because you didn’t like it, but because you did. you liked it a lot. and you really didn’t want to.

-

dick grayson was also a chronic, but casual, flirt. if you were interested in him, it might be an issue. but you’re not. nope! you wouldn’t allow it. so, instead of fantasizing about how it might feel to have all that aura focused on you, you gave yourself space to find it amusing.

earlier today, dick had tracked you down and found you in the library. and maybe it was the muscle tank? or the knowledge of how luscious his hair is under that snapback (backwards, as per usual)? hell, maybe it was even the basketball shorts. whatever it was, a trail of giggles, lip biting, and ‘heyyy, dick’s followed him and alerted you that he was in the vicinity before you even saw him.

you only looked up from your notes when you’d heard his voice say, “better, now that i’ve seen you,” to someone who’d eagerly asked how he was doing. by the volume, you could tell he was close. you really did try to be subtle about holding back your laughter, but when he saw you, he knew.

“what’s so funny?” he asked, simultaneously greeting you with a head nod. he rested his hands on the desk, across from you and leaned his weight into them, drawing him nearer.

“you ever seen she’s all that?” you ask. the smile on your face let dick know that you were about to poke fun at him; a new favorite pastime of yours. he didn’t mind, he’d always been happy to entertain.

“that movie from the 90s?” he sighed, dropping his head to prepare himself out of your view. he picked his head back up, neutral, “yeah, why?”

“becuase you’re so zack siler coded,” you kept your laughing to a minimum…mostly. he rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t stop the smile that grew on his face.

“ha-ha, very funny,” he’d mocked.

you couldn’t help the comparison being incredibly accurate. wherever he went, fawning faces followed. and for every hopeful greeting, he had a playful and flirtatious response. the only difference, really, was that dick never got anybody’s name wrong.

he interrupted your laughter, “now c’mon, i’m getting you outta here.”

and just like that, your amusement had been replaced with confusion, “what? why?”

the other problem with dick grayson? he cared. deeply. and he took it seriously. which was only a problem for you because you found it deeply attractive and you did not want to go down that road. having a crush on the guy who was on everyone’s wish list felt like a death sentence that you’d rather avoid.

the man in question was already gathering your notebooks and writing implements for you as he explained, “celeste called.” –you groaned and crossed your arms– “said she hasn’t heard from you in hours. and, since she’s out of town for the weekend, i’m taking on the mantle of making sure you don’t study yourself to death.”

he finished packing all your things away, everything neatly filed into your backpack which he then slung over his shoulder. there was a moment of silence, his gaze expectant and yours resistant.

“if i fail–” “you’re not gonna fail.” his voice was gentle, but assured as he cut you off.

“but could i just–” “get some air? great idea! let’s go.” you wished it was easier to say no to him. but it wasn’t, so you didn’t.

he was grinning by the end of the exchange, and it only grew when you gave in and followed him out of the library and into the sun’s late afternoon glow. he was right, fresh air was a good idea.

-

now, because cares so deeply, you’re sitting at a picnic table in the quad, picking at the fries he had pushed towards you and letting him lecture you on the importance of study breaks.

“i know that you wanna do well,” he fidgets with an empty straw wrapper, “but i’m telling you, constant studying isn’t good for your brain. you gotta destress, otherwise you’re gonna burn yourself out.”

you sigh and tilt your head back, eyes pointed toward the sky as you take in his words. he’s right. you know he’s right.

“i hate it when you’re right,” you mutter, turning your attention back to your fries. “fine, i’ll take more breaks.”

“that’s great, but what i think you really need is to get out more,” he presses, “i mean, when was the last time you let loose?”

“what do you mean? you were there.” you answer simply, almost smug. he won’t like that answer, you’re aware.

“the party?” he looks distraught, as predicted, and you nod. “angel, that was over a week ago. plus, you spent half of it in the bathroom trying not to puke on celeste while you held her hair back.”

“maybe taking care of drunk people is how i let loose, darling,” you shoot back, ironically using one of his pre-approved pet names. he doesn’t look amused.

“alright, you’re not a party animal. noted. how about…” he looks around, as if the surrounding trees or students have a solution to offer, “dating? you’ve gone on dates, right?”

there’s a quiet amusement to your features, “i have gone on dates. am i dating actively? absolutely not.”

now, he just looks confused, “so, when’s the last time you got laid?”

you almost choke on your fry and hastily grab for your sprite to wash it down.

once you can breathe properly again, you glare at him, “i am not having this conversation with you.”

“what? why not? i’m simply asking as a concerned friend.” he tries to reason with you. you stare with a raised brow, but don’t answer. “all i’m trying to say is that sex can be great for relieving tension, y’know? unless you don’t know… wait, are you a virgin?” his question is earnest but you’re mortified either way.

“no, dude, i’m not a virgin.” your tone is hushed when you say it. you continue at your normal volume, “i just… don’t date around for the express purpose of engaging in mediocre coitus to ‘relieve my tension.’”

his brow furrows, “well if you want tension relief, mediocre’s not gonna cut it, so let’s start there.” he leans in, his eyes doing that thing that they do to you where you feel trapped and safe all at once, “c’mon, answer the question. when’s the last time you got laid? and, additional question now, was it any good?”

you consider him for a moment. you know he doesn’t gossip, you know he keeps his promises, and he seems to just genuinely be curious. you close your eyes and ask yourself why you can’t seem to stop giving in to him.

“alright. fine. but this doesn’t leave this table. got it?” you set your terms. he nods, eagerly offering his pinkie finger to you. your sternness wavers, softened by the nostalgia and sanctity of a pinkie promise.

your pinkies interlock and you hold them there between you while you answer. “it’s been a few months,” you sigh, “and he was not very good. had to fake… one,” you hope he catches your implied meaning, “just to get outta there.”

you release his pinkie and lean back to take him in. his features had frozen in horror, like you’d poured water in his circuit board. his mouth opens, then shuts, then opens again, “are you fucking kidding me?”

you chuckle and shake your head, answering his question with a soft ‘no.’ the issue with your most recent escapade hadn’t even been lack of trying. which almost made it sadder, he had been trying really hard. it was lack of skill.

“what is wrong with men these days,” dick places his head in his hands, then proceeds to drag them down his face. “we gotta fix this. first of all, no way someone who looks like you should be having a dry spell, that’s definitely illegal. and second, i cannot, in good conscience, go on with my days knowing my new friend’s last sexual experience warranted a fake orgasm.”

your smile remained, thoroughly entertained by how seriously he’s taking this. but, your eyes once again found themselves rolling at him.

“settle down, nerd,” you shrugged, “it’s really not that deep.”

“that guy clearly wasn’t,” he huffs under his breath.

“richard!” you scold, though you find yourself laughing anyway. he mirrors you, saying your name the same way.

“c’mon, let me fix it! you know what they say, ‘the more you fuck the better for your health.’ i’m just concerned for your health, angel.” he’s borderline pleading. he can’t be serious. he shouldn’t be serious. and yet, because he’s dick grayson and he’s ridiculous, he is.

“did you just quote 3oh!3 at me?” you pick on him instead, desperate for a subject change.

“maybe,” he replies, happily caught red handed.

“you’re impossible.”

“it’s part of the charm,” he gives you that award winning smile.

you think, momentarily, that he might let you go… but, he spends the next few minutes grilling you on crushes you may have or people you find attractive enough to entertain the thought of. and one by one, he vetoes them all, for one reason or another.

total asshole. budding alcoholic. doesn’t reciprocate oral.

your list dwindles, and as it does, another comparison comes to mind. you watch dick as he sits in front of you, leg bouncing, looking around at students passing by. consideration, rejection, consideration, rejection. an endless loop of ‘not good enough for you.’

the cycle continues until you voice your thought,

“you’re really on your anthony bridgerton shit right now, aren’t you?”

dick pauses at this, pulling his focus away from the surrounding pedestrians and back to you, “on my what? who the hell is that?”

“wait, you haven’t seen– never mind, of course you haven’t. okay so, it’s regency era, right? anthony’s little sister is of age and trying to find a husband, but anthony has a reason to dislike pretty much every suitor around. he basically thinks the only eligible bachelors of worth, are him and the rest of their brothers.” you explain your thought process. his eyes brighten with a mischievous twinkle and somewhere deep within, you feel you might have fucked yourself.

“so, you think i’m the only eligible bachelor of worth?” yeah, you should’ve known. welcome to this hole, good luck digging yourself out.

“i think that you think that,” you correct.

“mmmm… not what i heard,” he insists.

“mmmm… not what i said,” you retort, mocking his faux pensivity.

his smile lingers for a moment longer before melting into heartwrenching sincerity, “would you?” it’s a simple question; vulnerable and lacking any vulgarity. but, it’s a reckless implication. so, you pretend not to know what he means.

“would i…? use your big boy words, grayson.” you tease, because deflection is your only hope of staying afloat. dick, however, doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh. he’s steady.

“would you sleep with me?” everything stops. your heart, your breath, your ability to see anything other than his safe eyes and softened features.

“dick…” you breathe. not warning, but cautious. treading lightly because, in the short time you’ve truly known him, you’ve already gathered that this is not a man who brings something up if he isn’t ready to offer it. and he wouldn’t offer it unless he was sure he could provide.

he recoils, “sorry, that was fucking… that was a stupid, crazy question. let’s drop it! how about karaoke? you like karaoke?”

he’s rambling, which means he’s nervous. your understanding of the world buckles because you can’t process that you live in a reality where you make the campus heartthrob nervous.

“dick,” you repeat, a little firmer this time, in an effort to end his… whatever this is.

but, he keeps going, “celeste comes back tomorrow night, we can plan something– or just you two. you two can plan something.”

“dick!” it holds more urgency now, but still doesn’t stop him. his nervous rambling bulldozes right through it, trailing into talking-about-nothing territory.

“richard john grayson,” you say with finality. finally, he stops. his eyes are owlish with surprise and his cheeks are flushed with embarrassment. “relax. yes, i would… possibly, maybe… toy with the notion,” you’re stalling now, bordering on bashful, “of considering the idea… of… having sex with you.”

-`✦´-

a/n: does this count as a cliffhanger? probably :3 but part 4 is already half way done lol so dw! you’ll be able to find out our precious party boy’s reaction soon enough!🤍

tags: @angelicp0etry, @chuuya-san, @kommanders, @sakiigami, @celestialnightwing, @smurfelle

[noodlie-reads]

college au; in which 2000’s party boy core!dick grayson teaches you the meaning of the cuddle puddle… and you flex your britney spears knowledge bc nothing says y2k like some britney bitch✨

part one

2.5k - no use of y/n, reader is so not physically described it’s crazy, minor sexual tension, reluctant crushes do something to me idk

warnings: none tbh i’m too much of a scaredy cat to attempt smut at this point in time so more fluffy time for dick and reader!! lol

a/n: um i didn’t think many people would read anything i wrote and i definitely didn’t anticipate multiple people asking for a part two😭 i love you thank you for being so nice and encouraging to me🥹

okok enjoy!!

🩵

even in the midst of something with the word “puddle” in its name, you still find yourself far from the center of it. but, you wouldn’t have it any other way. if this entanglement of sleeping bodies was water, you were happy to be the surface tension ensuring it stays neatly together. ever the observer… until dick grayson finds a way to change that, of course.

-

after dick had returned with the afore-promised “jammies and a hair tie,” he’d given you and celeste time to change (and, in celeste’s case, rinse her mouth out) and showed you both to his room, where she could recover and you could watch over her in peace. you weren’t sure what you expected his room to look like, you hadn’t given it much thought, but if you had you’re sure you would’ve been pretty close.

the first thing you noticed was all the blue. the walls a shade of midnight, the sheets powdery in hue, pillows encased in a matching powder blue and a contrasting royal. someone’s got a favorite color, you’d thought.

this is where you stayed, taking in his picture frames and polaroids featuring dick accompanied by smiling faces you didn’t recognize, the “flying graysons” poster just above his bed, accolades from high school days distributed across his shelves, until dick came back to retrieve you.

upon his return, dick found you sitting with your back against his headboard and a sleeping celeste curled into your side. one arm, draped protectively around her while the other scrolled through your phone for entertainment.

“cuddle puddle time,” he’d broken the silence with a surprisingly gentle, singsongy tone, almost like the one you’d use to rouse a sleeping child from their naptime. you had expected something more obnoxious from the party boy, but you’re always glad to be pleasantly surprised.

but pleasant surprise aside, you’d still opened your mouth to protest. to your surprise, though, celeste had perked up before you could speak.

“that was real?” she grinned, shooting to a seated position. then, she cleared her throat, feigning a chill demeanor, “is, um… like, wally still around or…?”

“yeah, he usually sticks around for these,” dick had replied. he was suppressing laughter, you could tell, but so were you. subtlety wasn’t exactly celeste’s speciality.

after some light coaxing from celeste, under the patient gaze of an expectant dick grayson, you finally shuffled your way back downstairs alongside them. on your way back down the staircase, you looked out to see that the party had been pretty sufficiently cleaned up. the lighting was now dim and warm, and in place of a dance floor, there were about six air mattresses squished together. four large couches border them, one on each side of the giant air-inflated rectangle, to prevent them from slipping around, an array of pillows are sprinkled in amongst the drowsy partygoers. cute.

in the center, you could see the once dancing bodies now at rest, already tangled up in one another. heads on chests, legs intertwined, all snuggled up in a…

“cuddle puddle. got it.” you’d smirked to yourself.

still not on board with the ‘cuddling people you barely knew’ thing though, you’d opted for a seat on one of the bordering couches.

-

which is where you find yourself lounging now. you watch as dick grayson, his back to you, talks over a very content celeste, engaging in a heated debate with an increasingly frustrated wally. wally west, who your best friend had finessed into spooning her. she was in the middle of a dick and wally sandwich and reveling in it, not bothered at all by the two arguing above her, their tones hushed as to not wake anyone else.

“no way you actually think that, man,” dick denies, shaking his head at wallace for the third time in five minutes. “you’re insane.”

“what?!” wally lifts his head from where it had been resting on celeste’s shoulder, tone drenched in disbelief, “she has way more iconic songs on ‘circus’ than on ‘oops… i did it again,’ how am i insane for that?”

“you’re both wrong,” you sigh, “and i’m starting to think neither of you know shit about britney spears.”

dick turns his body, leaning back on both elbows, and brings his head around to face you. wally’s stunned gaze shifts up to meet your relaxed one.

“alright, cutie,” dick raises a brow, “what’s her best album, then?”

“it’s so obviously ‘blackout’ it’s crazy,” you assert with a self-assured smirk. you’re met with bewildered faces from both boys. sighing again, you continue, “from a production aspect, the album totally fucks. but, even if we’re ranking off of iconicism alone, blackout’s got both of your albums beat. so beat, in fact, that ‘circus’ literally reused the song ‘radar’ on its deluxe version which was originally released on? say it with me: ‘blackout.’ plus, ‘gimme more’? ‘piece of me’? ‘break the ice’? come on!”

celeste smiles, she knows you’ve got them beat. you two have discussed this very topic several times. the older boys, however, continue to stare at you; dick amazed and amused, wally with furrowed brows, intent on piecing together a counter argument.

dick speaks first, voice deep and bordering on seductive, “get naked.”

“…huh?” your face flushes, body going rigid with shock. your heart quickens its pace at his perceived audacity. and, despite yourself, your face isn’t the only part of you that becomes… heated at the quality of his voice.

“you forgot ‘get naked’ on your list of iconic songs from ‘blackout.’” his face brightens as he feigns innocence. you can’t shake the feeling that he’d said it like that on purpose. regardless, you release a deep exhale and allow yourself to relax back into the couch cushions.

“oh. right.” you collect yourself, “well, i was trying to be…concise. the full title’s ‘get naked (i got a plan),’ by the way.” you correct, attempting to conceal the flustered shakiness that your voice seems to have adopted against your will.

“oh, i know,” dick is, once again, entirely too pleased with himself. yep. he so did that shit on purpose. “but, yeah, i can concede to ‘blackout.’” a satisfied smile graces your lips, though you know he’s giving in to you way easier than he gave in to wally.

“the fuck?” speaking of wally, he cuts in absolutely incredulous. “no way! ‘if u seek amy’ literally had news stories about the double entendre being allowed on the radio!”

“yeah, babe, but ‘blackout’ shook shit up. it was so tonally different from any other album britney had put out at that point,” celeste breaks her silence to echo the previous talking points you two had shared, so engrained in her mind it almost sounded rehearsed, “it was totally fresh, deeply sexy, and way ahead of its time. ‘blackout’ basically walked so ‘circus’ could run.” you grin as wally looks between you both, as if you’d been conspiring against him this whole time.

deciding he was no match for you both, he finally concedes as well, burying his face back into celeste’s shoulder with an elongated, “fiiine.” you both giggle at your shared antics. for a moment, it feels like any other sleepover you and celeste have had.

“congrats, you win,” dick declares, extending his arms toward you, “your prize is snuggling with yours truly! c’mere.”

he makes grabby hands at you, as if to beckon you to him. instead of accepting the invitation, you recline into the couch fully, laying on your side to use your arm as a pillow.

“a high honor, truly, but i’m good here,” a light chuckle punctuates the end of your sentence. dick’s face goes from smug to entirely perplexed. cel and wally both try (and fail) to suppress their laughter, watching the man try to process the fact that your response had been anything other than an eager acceptance of his “prize.”

“but? uh… wha?” his voice is the auditory embodiment of his furrowed brows and you can’t help but laugh.

“are you always this articulate?” you tease, but dick just pouts in response. ever the softy, you sigh and look beyond him to meet celeste’s eyes. she’s comfy, cozy, and deeply pleased with wally wrapped around her. your eyes pose your question for you: do i give him this?

she returns your inaudible question with her own equally inaudible answer; a soft smile, gleaming eyes, and a shrug that says: eh, why not?

fair enough. you roll your eyes and begin your decent into dick grayson’s still waiting, albeit deflating, arms.

his face scrunches, “i don’t want pity cuddles…”

“pity cuddles? nooo,” you assure with light sarcasm, “i’m claiming my reward, remember?”

you position yourself to be face to face with the unexpectedly endearing man. once settled, your eyes meet his and your breath catches as you take him in. you had been right when you assumed his eyes were the kind to shock your system, because yours definitely is. being able to see almost nothing but his eyes makes you realize how close you really are. you make a conscious effort not to think about what it would be like to brush your lips against his.

“you always sleep with that hat on?” you ask, desperate to recover. your eyes flick up to his snapback then back to his, though you still refuse to get lost in them.

dick scoffs a soft “no” and removes it, revealing hair that you wanted to run your fingers through. he tosses the hat onto the couch you’d previously occupied. he shifts, then, to lay on his back, pulling you in to rest on his chest. it’s effortless, as if you were a stuffed animal and not a grown ass human being.

you consider certain details of the night. watching drinks, electrolyte replenishing beverages at the ready, giving random juniors comfy clothes, staging cuddle puddles to avoid anyone drunk driving… you lean back slightly, angling your head up to look at dick.

after a moment of consideration, you whisper up to him, “what’s your deal?”

he huffs a short laugh, eyes trained on the ceiling, “my deal?”

“yeah, man,” you grin, despite yourself, “you’re a britney fanboy that has enough forethought to have a shitload of pedialyte accessible at a party, then the ‘jammies,’ the sleepover… what’s the deal?”

he angles his face down to look at you, amused again, "there's no deal. electrolytes help with hangovers. and everyone in this cuddle puddle could’ve been a drunk driving statistic. as for the jammies, well, i’m just an incredible host.” his answers are earnest, he talks like his behavior is just common sense. except for the part about being an incredible host, that he lays the cockiness on thick enough to earn an eye roll from you.

“and so humble. but why not just call ubers? anyone else would. it’d be less effort.” you inquire further. you’re almost not even sure why you care, but you haven’t been this intrigued by a person in a long time.

“i’m not anyone else,” he winks, but continues with honesty that makes your head spin, “but for real, drunk people get taken advantage of all the time. i’m not gonna pass people off to just anyone, even if it’s for convenience. plus, it’s a sick excuse for a giant pillow fort.” he shrugs, again, as if it’s a conclusion one would normally come to.

“hm… well, don’t let the frat boys hear you,” you joke, “you’re like a god to them and taking advantage of getting girls drunk enough to fuck them is kinda their jam.”

this time it’s his turn to roll his eyes, his nose scrunching in disgust, “don’t fuckin’ remind me… it’s so gross. plus, everybody knows that anyone worth boning doesn’t need alcohol as a wingman.”

“eloquently put,” you release a sharp exhale in place of actual laughter. “yeesh, imagine being gross and a bad lay?”

“that’s what i’m saying! like, pick a struggle dude.” he riffs off of you with ease.

“at this point, you should just make them repent,” you’re quick with your response. it gets you both laughing, almost too loudly. he finds out that he likes your laughter. you decide that you like his too.

once you quiet yourselves down, you find yourself staring up at him, in wonder. the thought slips from your lips, “you, like, really care about people, huh?”

“i’m gonna ignore how surprised you sound.” his smile is soft and lopsided when he responds. you’re thankful he doesn’t seem the type to take frivolous things to heart.

“sorry! i didn’t mean to…” –you huff, willing yourself to get your shit together– “you’re just… different than i thought you’d be.”

“so you’ve thought about me?” he smirks, then allows himself a dry chuckle, "what, i don't live up to the stories?”

“i wouldn’t be laying here if you did,” you nearly snort. “it’s the stories that don’t live up to you,” you murmur, almost embarrassed to even be saying it out loud. his breath stutters, caught off guard by the shift in tone. he collects himself, his demeanor taking on a soft determination.

“okay. so, what’s your deal?” he turns the tables on you, shifting his body so that you’re laying face to face once more.

“huh?” you blink. people don’t ask about your deal. you don’t have a deal. you’re just… you.

“you notice all these little details, interrogate me when you should be sleeping, and call me a britney fanboy even when you’re packing the knowledge you have, you’re funny. ergo, what’s your deal?” he recites his list, there’s a spark in his eye that you can’t quite place.

“ergo?” you laugh, “i dunno… my deal is… i’m observant,” you decide, “curious? i guess? and i’m not just funny, i’m hilarious.”

he smiles, eyes in a slight squint, as if he’s deliberating if you’ve given him a sufficient answer or not.

then, a nod, “heard.”

“heard,” you echo, your voice mocking his, even though it comes out small. it’s cute. you’re cute. dick’s mouth forms a small smirk, his hand reaches up to brush some hair out of your face. the intimacy of it causes your breath to hitch. you pray he doesn’t catch it. he does. he smiles like he thinks you’re darling, you stare with bambi eyes because you are.

“alright, get some rest, nerd,” he commands, pulling you in even closer, until you’re buried in his chest. you inhale with shock and– good lord, has he smelled this good the whole time? probably, but you hadn’t been this enveloped in it to notice until now. you almost moan, but remind yourself that he’s not a candle in a bath and body works display and rein it in.

“nerd?” your face scrunches in disapproval. what happened to ‘cutie’? or ‘gorgeous’?

“mhm, anyone who knows as much about anything as you do about britney spears’ discography is a certified nerd.” his tone is falsely apologetic, as if to say ‘sorry, i don’t make the rules, i just enforce them.’

you chuckle, “well, in that case, goodnight nerd.”

you feel his chest shake with quiet laughter. his returning ‘goodnight’ carries a fondness you usually only hear from celeste. it makes your heart ache. instead of dwelling on it, because goodness knows you don’t have time to unpack that, you take one more deep inhale of whatever incredible cologne he has on, and close your eyes.

fine. you could get down with a cuddle puddle, just this once… just as long as dick grayson stays this warm, holding you this tight, and smelling this nice.

🩵

a/n: ugh if only he were real…

anyway, is this tied up in a nice lil bow? do we want more? do we get a tag list going? lmk! i have been pondering things👀👀👀

[kommanders]

i need cuddle puddle with him all the time