Robin On The Window
pairing: dick grayson x fem!reader
genre: friends to lovers / second chance
summary: your teenage years were spent with windows left open and nights wide awake, robin's sneaky escapades coloring you bedroom walls. then robin suddenly stopped perching on your windowsill, and the hollowing pain he left behind was your only company. until you met dick grayson in a gala and life threw you for a spin again.
content warnings: galas and nosey people. complicated relations between reader and her father. mentions of dead family members (reader's mother). possibly ooc dick grayson (just to be safe).
author's note: this is not edited. if you see mistakes, kindly ignore them. i will come back to editing this later. this is also my first time writing fanfiction in a long time. my skills are rusty at best, please be kind. i also have no idea how galas work. do people dance there? who knows.
Chapter One : Gala Blues
The air in the limousine was thick with expectations, the smell of the smoke from you father's cigarette wafting to the backseats even with the partition rolled up. You felt claustrophobic, and not for the first time.
You smoothened the gown you were wearing for the nth time, straightening out imaginary wrinkles on the expensive dark red fabric, eyes trained on the quick-moving buildings outside the tinted windows of the car.
It was your first official public appearance after the incident which killed your mother and made your father paranoid enough to keep you away from public eye since you were thirteen.
Your family was rich enough for this to be a big deal.
Some days — days when you see the paparazzi chase after the elites of Gotham and strip away any semblance of privacy they have — you are grateful for your father's decision. Other days — days when you remember your friends grew up without you because they were part of the elites and you weren't allowed out with them anymore — you are left with a bitter, resentful feeling coiling around your heart like a venomous snake.
Those days used to end with screaming matches and slammed doors, until you moved away to a different country at twenty.
You were very much intent on never returning to Gotham. The city only had painful memories attached to it now, be it your mother taken away from you way too young, your father's paranoia, all the friendships you couldn't keep anymore, or the boy scaling your fire-escape and sitting on your windowsill until he didn't.
Robin was like the breath of fresh air in a claustrophobic atmosphere. He was the company which you desperately needed in the isolation when your father leant too much in his grief and stayed in his room, forgetting to talk to you for days.
Robin was there when everything felt like it was too much.
Until he wasn't.
You didn't want to return when your father called you and asked you to come back to the manor. You fought again for the first time all year, accusations and insults hurled from both sides. But eventually, begrudgingly, you caved.
Your father was growing old, he would retire in very few years, someone had to take care of his business. You, unfortunately, were an only child, so that responsibility fell on you.
Your father wanted to establish you in the public eye as a heir to his legacy, so you were flown back to Gotham and shoved into a gown and dragged to a gala.
You complained the whole time, but it was less angry-at-the-world and more resigned-but-not-making-it-easy.
The limousine stopped smoothly behind the queue of other cars of guests attending the gala, and the locks clicked open. You and your father got out, and he handed the car keys to the valet waiting before dropping the butt of the cigarette on the ground and stepping on it to extinguish it.
Both of you entered the venue together.
You forced a smile on your face when you two were greeted by a couple as soon as you entered — probably because your father had released it to the media that you were attending the gala and people were waiting — and pretended to remember them even when you're certain you've never held a proper conversation with them.
Most of the people at the gala were people you've seen in the passing when you were a kid, more focused on the food and disappointed at the small portions, than networking like your father. You clinged to your mom like a limpet and barely paid attention to people most of the time during those days.
It was going to be a long night.
You had finally managed to convince your father to get away from his side for a while after nearly two hours of forcing so many smiles, you didn't want to smile for a week just to recover.
You slipped away gracefully between one elite who had ideas for a joint venture and another elite who wanted to talk about stocks, wandering until you found the bar and took a seat.
You didn't really want to drink — evident from the glass of wine you had ordered when you sat on the bar stool and barely took a sip of — just wanted to get away from nosey old people who had started to praise their sons (and even daughters, in some cases) and list their achievements infront of you even since the fact that you were single had slipped out.
They weren't even trying to be subtle in their match-making attempts.
You really wanted to go home, or atleast to the manor if you can't convince your father's assistant to book you a flight back right now.
But you couldn't, so you took the second sip of your wine and prayed to God nobody approached you.
"Is the wine for show?"
God, apparently, hated you.
You bit back a groan of utter despair and an eye-roll of annoyance as a man slid into the seat beside you, the bartender immediately making a drink for him without him needing to ask, as if you knew the order by heart.
You turned your head just because it's not polite to not acknowledge people and you were here to make a good first impression on the public.
The man beside you was familiar. Not familiar in the I've-seen-you-up-close-and-talked way, but in the oh-my-god-you're-so-famous-I-see-you-everywhere way.
You suppose that comes from being the first son the only billionaire of Gotham took in and later adopted.
"I'm Dick Grayson," The man said, as if you hadn't seen his name plastered on thousands of magazines along with his ridiculously pretty face, and extended his hand towards you with a smile.
You shook his hand, trying very hard not to focus on how the magazine covers barely did him justice — you had eyes and could appreciate beauty when you see it — and told him your name.
Dick repeated it, and his smile widened until his dimples showed.
You ignored how that resurfaced a memory of the bird on your window late at night who had a similar grin, withdrawing your hand with a smile, watching as he picked up his glass of whatever the bartender had given him and took a sip, you mirroring his movements with your own glass.
"So, hiding from people?" He asked, setting his glass down, attentive and ridiculously pretty blue eyes trained on you.
Maybe it was the casual way he asked his question, or the fact that he too seemed like he was hiding from people, something in you loosened until you found yourself nodding with a sigh.
"They're trying to set me up with their children," You admitted, red-painted lips twitching up in a wry-but-slightly-amused smile.
The situation was hilarious on hindsight. The keyword was hindsight. You would rather rip a nail than put yourself back in that situation, but it was funny seeing parents put their kids on a pedestal infront of someone who was basically a stranger given how this was your first appearance in years.
He laughed, not the polite, rich-people laugh everyone here seems to have perfected, but a genuine one, running a hand through his silky black hair, "Welcome to the club. They've been after me since forever."
Then, he tilted his head a little, blue eyes looking into yours in a way which had your heart doing stupid things like skipping a beat, "Can't say I blame them."
You raised an eyebrow, ignoring the red creeping up your neck at those simple words, "Are you trying to flirt with me?"
"What if I am?" He asked, leaning just a little closer, voice smooth and confident, and God was it ridiculous how just a few words can affect you so much.
You found yourself inching forward before you realized it, "Won't say it's working, but it's close."
There was just something about him that felt familiar in a way you couldn't place. Did you meet him in one of these galas years ago and had just forgotten it? You didn't know, but conversing with him was easier than it was with anyone else.
Both of you quickly eased into an actual conversation, talking like you've done it for ages. The tense knot in your chest that was there since you'd set a foot in Gotham slowly loosened as time passed, the wine in your glass slowly disappearing between dialogues and small laughs.
He extended his hand to you when the music changed from a string quartets piece to a waltz, and you — three glasses of wine in and slightly tipsy — looked at the couples already moving to the center of the floor and looked back at him, placing your hand in his.
The crowd seemed to part as he led you to the center of the floor, his moves fluid and confidence as he placed a hand on your waist and intertwined your fingers together, you hand resting on his shoulder.
You were no dancer, but you managed to keep up with his smooth movements. He distracted you from any mistakes you made with a smile and sweet words anyways, so you didn't feel much guilty when you accidentally stepped on his foot. He continued on as if he barely felt it.
"You really are something," You found yourself saying mid-dance as he pulled you closer to avoid another couple from colliding with you.
He looked deep in your eyes, smiling, "In a good way, I hope."
"Definitely in a good way."
He left after the dance with a murmured apology when he was pulled away by a boy who looked around fourteen, but not before he snagged your phone number with a promise to text and you — in all your three-glasses-of-wine-in-and-slightly-tipsy glory — brushed a kiss on his cheek.
You later learned the boy was Tim Drake while roped into a conversation with a woman who had, unfortunately, seen the scene play out and had quite a few questions.
She mainly wanted to make sure you were still single for her son. You refused to give her a direct answer. She refused to take a hint.
For once, you were glad when your father approached and whisked you away to meet a business partner and you got to get away from her.
The gala winded down as the time ticked and struck midnight, and both you and your father exited the venue and got into the car the valet had already brought from the parking lot.
You were pretty sure that he had seen you dance with Dick — it was hard to miss when you were one of the highlights of the event — but had decided to not speak on it for his own good.
Maybe he decided he has already controlled enough of your life. Or maybe he felt like an alliance with the Waynes would be great for business.
The first one felt like wishful thinking. The second one was the more plausible one.
You pulled out you phone as the ride back to the manor started, scroll a little and barely held back a groan when you saw that articles after articles had already started to pop up.
Some of them were about you, but most were about you and Dick and speculations of your apparent relationship.
You just met him today. You hadn't even been to a date yet.
But ofcourse, none of that matters to the media.
As you scrolled past the articles, you had a feeling your life will never be the same.
Oh how much that was true.
