Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time it happens, it’s his own fault.

He falls for her, for whatever reason. For bashful smiles, for wicked glances, for the intoxicating scent of jasmine.

They lay together on a mattress and they talk. They joke. She leans into him and it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

She’s older, but it’s okay. He wanted this. He’s mature. He’s Robin, he has to be.

(Not long after, he retires. Emancipates. Whatever. He tires of Bruce making decisions for him when he knows he can make them himself. He’s 16, nearly 17. Basically 17.)

She’s got red hair. It leans a little more towards brown, all mousy and girl-next-door. He’s always liked redheads.

He knew what she got him into was wrong. Reasonably, he knew. The pranks. The robberies. But he was distracted. She was distracting. And he knew, he knew that something was wrong. He knew that she only wanted to get to Bruce. It took seeing her with Eddie right after she’d left their room to see that.

He thinks he may have really loved her.

He remembers the cool, sharp metal against his neck, drawing droplets of crimson and threatening to slice. He remembers her harsh gaze, he remembers how in that moment he wasn’t Dick Grayson to her. He was Robin - a child, a target, an obstacle.

(“Forget about me?”

“N-never. Not for the rest of my life.”)

He had to arrest her. Under the cover of Robin, he wrestles out of her grasp and brings her to the ground in a way that feels so, so familiar and makes him sick to his stomach.

He still thinks of her. Jasmine. Sweat. Jasmine.

The next time he sees her, he thinks she’s different.

She’s the same. She’s always the same.

She leans in, close, and all he can smell is jasmine. Jasmine, sweat. Jasmine, sweat.

She asks him to take her home.

He knows better. He should know better.

He says no, and she walks away.

He tries not to, but he wonders if Bruce was right when he said that he was too young for this. He knows, then, that it was his fault. That if he had said no, if he hadn’t kissed her, if he hadn’t dragged them down to the mattress…

He’s attacked, and he wonders if things would have been easier if he just went to bed with her.

He was an adult now. If not moral, it would have at least been legal.

He wonders what the difference is. He’s 13 and dancing around Gotham’s rooftops in pixie boots and scaly panties. He’s 16 and in bed with the girl he loves, who won’t love him, but will always be his first.

How is that any worse than what he’s been doing since before he could walk? Since before he could flip, and jump, and swing? He reasons that if he can fight brutal criminals every night, he can handle sex.

He thinks of her for the rest of his life, as promised.

The second time it happens, he doesn’t realise until much, much later.

He thinks it’s Kori. She looks like Kori. She talks like her, she feels like her. He could have sworn on everything that he was spending the night with his girlfriend.

She’s beautiful. Glowing, green eyes that see right through him. Terracotta skin. She’s sweet and she’s kind and angry and cruel. She’s Kori.

It’s normal for them. She doesn’t speak of Tamaran, and when she does, she doesn’t speak of it lightly. The Citadel. The Psions. S.S. Starfire. Kori liberated herself and her people, but she can’t help but fall back into what was deemed her worth. She replaces hands and hands with new hands, friendlier touch, hoping that somehow the accumulation of all the love that has devoured her will devour loves previous.

She likes sex. So what? Dick’s happy to follow along as she drags him, hand in hand, to the bedroom.

They mess around. Dick thinks of Liu. He thinks of Barbara. He tries not to imagine what Kori’s thinking of.

She kisses like he’s her source of oxygen. She sucks him dry and he thinks nothing of it. It is not strange, it is not unusual. He kisses her breasts and she kisses down his torso - down, down, down.

The next day, Kori is not smiling at him. This is unusual.

Typically after they spend the night, Kori is bashful and giddy. Sending him knowing smirks that he sends right back, greatly disturbing the rest of the Titans. (They're teenagers, what can he say?) He smiles at her and she smiles back, but it’s confused. Friendly and confused. He tries not to think about it - he knows how fast Kori changes her attitude.

Kori rushes to stop Troia.

Dick wants to rush after her, but he can’t fly. He’s only human.

Mirage stops him, anyway.

Mirage pulls him into a tight, mocking embrace.

(“After all, you don’t need her. Not with me around to help you.”)

She’s pressed into him and all he can feel is her and her body and the rubble behind them. She’s whispering, her face tucked into the crook of his neck, tracing his earlobe with her lips, stroking his hair, rubbing a hand up and down his back. Up and down.

He’s young. Not as young as he had been with Liu, but still. He’s got the stupid 80s disco-suit and a mullet that everyone tried telling him was uncool.

She’s got her leg between his, her knee pushing upwards slowly and slowly, grinding, keeping him close so he can’t run.

She’s on him and, somehow, he feels 16 again. It’s an effort to push her off.

He’s angry. He can’t get her off fast enough. Even when he manages, even when she's metres away, he can still feel traces of her on his skin. He’s yelling, even though he doesn’t really mean to.

(He’s scared, maybe.)

Dick tells her that she’s crazy. That he doesn’t even know her.

(“You certainly seemed to the other night.”)

Because Kori was with him. Because they kissed and sunk into each other and he’d do anything to help her get those greedy hands off her and he was inside her and–

Because Mirage couldn’t exactly change how she looked, but she could change how other people saw her. She could trick, she could deceive, she could–

(“If we weren’t meant to be, seems to me you should have sensed the difference.”)

And Dick’s in shock. He’s in shock and he’s confused and he doesn’t know what’s happening because that was Kori. That was his girlfriend and he tries to hold on to the hope that Mirage is lying but she’s whispering details about last night that she absolutely should not know. Not unless she was there.

And Kori wasn’t acting like she usually does. And he brushed it off.

Fuck. How did he not realise?

He knew Liu was manipulating him. He knew that she meant nothing good and had only hurt him. But the sex was different. He’d agreed to it, no matter her intentions behind it.

But this? Dick asked for this, but not–

Not when it wasn’t…

Pantha calls him a slut. Pantha, jokingly, asks who was better in bed.

Kori or Kori?

Dick barely manages to throw her a disgruntled look. He wants to throw up. He looks into Mirage’s eyes - inky black, seeping into every crevice of her sclera. There’s a hypnotising ring of white. They flash green.

Fuck.

He cheated on Kori. He didn’t want to cheat on Kori, but he did, and she isn't even mad. She's upset, hurt, betrayed. But she isn’t mad. He knows what she’s thinking without her having to say it - that he should have known the difference.

Pantha spreads the rumour fast. The truth, he supposes. Kori’s hurt and Dick’s hurt but he can’t say anything about it because he’s the one that hurt her.

He’s meant to be a leader. He’s meant to be Nightwing.

He feels Kori’s hands on him and tries not to doubt that it’s really her.

It happens more times than Dick can count, so he doesn’t.

He lets people stare, he lets people flirt. He flirts back. He knows what their gazes mean. He’s known it since he was 16, maybe even before that. Maybe since he was a little kid performing in the circus, all eyes on him, centre-stage, he knew what he was for.

Wonder Woman - Diana - grabs the back of his neck and his arm, pulling him close. He tries to pull away but really only ends up arching into her. Bruce pulls her away and punches her. Dick is too shocked to be grateful. He’s more confused about how Bruce managed to punch Wonder Woman than he is confused about the kiss.

It’s not Wonder Woman. Another illusion - this time, Lady Spellbinder. This time, Dick can say he didn’t lean into it.

(Maybe it all happened too fast. Give it a few more seconds and he could have been kissing back, just as hungry as she was.)

Selina, eyeing him up and down. Pretending to fall so he’ll catch her, so she can drag him on top of her, pulling and pulling him in until his lips fall on hers.

(“This is not the right time for this.”

“When would be the right time?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I think I do. You like danger, I like danger. Let’s get dangerous together.”)

They’re in the rafters, being shot at from below. Dick ducks to avoid the gunfire. He presses into Selina and tries to ignore the way she keens and sighs, contently. Somehow, it’s louder than the shooting.

He wonders if she knows he’s her on-and-off boyfriend’s son. He wonders if it matters.

Harley ties him down to the bed.

There’s nowhere to go and awfully, horrifically, Dick thinks he might as well have fun while he’s here.

He flirts. He’s good at it. He doesn’t need to say anything, he just gives her a wickedly coy smirk. Harley’s way too neurotic and way too smart to fall for it, but it’s enough for her to take charge.

(“Face it, sugar. I got something you want, and you sure-as-shootin’ got something I want. So, be a good boy and maybe… maybe Mama will give you a cookie.”)

He lets her think it’s her idea. He sighs, though he doesn’t really mean it. It’s a show - the exaggerated eyeroll, the slumping against his restraints. It lets Harley think she has some power over him. (“The things I do for Gotham.”)

She takes it as a yes. It’s the closest to a yes Dick’s ever given. She sits on top of him.

Bruce arrives on scene afterwards, thank God. But he still walks in on the aftermath. They’re fully clothed, but Dick’s suspiciously complaisant on the bed despite his (current) lack of restraints. They’re giggling and they’re tickling each other and Dick doesn’t even know what he’s doing anymore. But it’s easier than being tortured for information, and it gets Harley on their side, so he takes it.

(He’ll never forget how Bruce glared at him. With disgust, with distaste. With pure, unadulterated disappointment. Like Dick was subhuman. He’d never tell Bruce about Liu or Mirage but sometimes, sometimes, he wishes he would just know. He'd look at him and know and hug him and forgive him. That he would love him despite. It’s hard, he supposes. When you’re raised as a sidekick instead of a son.

Dick did have fun with Harley. He enjoyed it. She enjoyed it. It was good. It felt good. He ignores Bruce’s eyes bearing into him, and pretends he isn’t doing this just to feel something.)

All the experiences blur into one. It’s inescapable for him. A comment about his waist, a hand on his ass. The skin-tight suit doesn’t help, but being Nightwing is easier than being Dick Grayson.

Dick Grayson is Bruce Wayne’s son. And Bruce Wayne has a reputation.

Bruce Wayne sleeps with models and flirts with every woman at every gala. He gets shit-faced drunk and hires a boat and goes skinny-dipping and pole-dances and can’t make it out of an interview without at least feeling up the interviewer just a little.

Dick knows Bruce Wayne is not Bruce. He knows Bruce takes small sips of champagne for appearances before spilling the rest of his glass into some poor, unsuspecting potted plant. He knows Bruce flirts for the cameras and pays prostitutes to pretend that they’ve slept with him, returning home not to an empty bed, but to Gotham’s streets. But it is how the public sees him, and Dick is attractive enough that Bruce’s reputation has been unequivocally associated with him.

He’s not expected to be the heir to Wayne Tech, but he is expected to be Bruce Wayne’s heir. To flirt with the same women he did at parties, to take them home, to woo and bed them and get so drunk he can’t remember their names, let alone his own.

He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Dick knows who he is in the way Slade looks at him. How his teammates look at him, how the public does, how Babs and Kori tried so hard not to but did anyways. Because he slept around, because he cheated, because he, foolishly, fell for someone who could never love him back.

(Jason, 15 years old, calls him a lady’s man. It’s light-hearted, it’s joking, but said with an indescribable awe that makes Dick sick to his stomach. He knows, reasonably, that Jason’s too nerdy and young to really care about that kind of stuff. But then again, 15 is only one year less than he was when he was with Liu. He prays Jason doesn’t end up like him, that he stays young and innocent and 15 forever. 

He tries not to think that he cursed him.)

People talked about him when he was younger. They called him pretty and charming and an “attractive young man”. There was not an official countdown to his 18th birthday, but he felt a shift nonetheless. He felt it in the way the cameras got more invasive, in the way vaguely innocent compliments turned to “you might give your dad a run for his money for Gotham’s Sexiest this year”.

(Jason, 20 years old, back from the dead. He doesn’t talk to Dick anymore, but they still run into each other on missions. Dick hears the way he talks to Sionis - flirting dangerously and covering it with layers of snark. The way he talks to anyone older, really. Dick tries not to listen but he does and he hates himself, because this might have been his fault. Roy calls Dick and guiltily admits that Jason told him he’d slept with Talia. Talia.

Dick feels a strange emptiness.)

The third time it happens, it is the worst night of Dick’s life.

It’s raining. Heavily but evenly, providing a nice, steady thrum on his skin. He tries to focus on it. He can’t seem to grip onto anything tangible. He feels the rain, he feels the wetness in his hair and on his face. His suit sticks to him oddly. It’s going to be a pain to get out of. He feels the cold concrete on his back, and the warmth of a body against him. He feels nothing. He feels everything. He feels disgusting.

The circus - his home - is gone. His apartment is gone. The whole building. Bodies everyone, blood under his fingernails and he feels like Lady Macbeth, endlessly scrubbing evidence of guilt that will not wash away. He remembers Jason and scrubs harder.

Blockbuster knows who he is. He knows who he is, he’s taunting him, he’s killing people. He has killed people. Dick can’t stop it. 

He promises to kill everyone Dick’s ever loved and cared about. Everyone Dick knows. People who walk past him on the street, people who utter his name, people who dare know he exists. Because he’s poison and, yeah, Blockbuster might be the one pulling the trigger but those people - their blood is on Dick’s hands.

And Tarantula is there. Catalina.

She’s there and she’s holding a gun, calm and steady.

All he has to do is move out of the way. All he has to do is let her kill Blockbuster.

(“It’s never gonna stop.

It’s never gonna stop.

Every mistake I make, every life I risk…

It’s never gonna stop.

…never gonna stop…

…never…

…stop it…

Stop.”)

He does. He moves out of the way. Sluggish, tired, jagged, as if he’s not in control of his body. But he is. He did this. He did this.

The shot reverberates through his skull. He can hear it, over and over. The click of the safety, the pull of the trigger, the resounding bang, a skull splitting, the splash of brain matter and blood on the stairwell.

He can’t breathe. There’s blood on his hands, and he can’t tell if it’s real or not.

He needs air. He goes to the roof. Catalina follows.

It’s raining and the steady thrum does little to comfort him.

He’s staring at his hands. The water doesn’t even do him the favour of washing the blood away. It seeps into the gloves, staining the suit. He will carry it with him forever.

He’s killed someone. So many people have died because of him but now, he has killed someone.

He’s failed Bruce. He’s failed Catalina. He’s failed… everyone.

She kneels next to him, tilting his head towards her. She smells like blood. He apologises and she shushes him. She is condescendingly kind. Dick doesn’t notice the way her eyes narrow behind her domino. She doesn’t notice how he traces a finger along his lips, slowly shifting him against the concrete of the roof.

He notices too late. This time, just this time, Dick tries to say no.

(“Don’t… touch me, I’m…

Poisonous, numb, I…

…killed him, we killed…”)

He says no. She doesn’t listen.

Dick wonders if anything has ever been up to him.

(“Querido, talk to me.

Everything’s alright, baby, it’s all okay.

Now, hush.

Quiet, mi amor, callado.”)

She’s killed someone. He’s killed someone. He knows he shouldn’t, but her voice is soft. She’s sitting on top of him, he can see her sitting on top of him. He’s not sure that he feels anything but the searing pain of her touch.

Catalina talks to him gently. Like he’s still worth something. He hates her. He might be taking her for granted.

So he lays there. He takes it. It’s what he’s good at.

He’s strong, but not like this. He could easily push her off. But he doesn’t. He lays there, and prays the feel of the rain will overshadow her touch. It doesn’t.

She’s taking off the bottom of his suit. The cold air stings.

(“We’re free now.”)

Dick wishes the roof would collapse, plummeting them to the ground and suffocating them in the rubble. Then again, he’s not sure he wants to die like this - with Catalina on him, surrounding him.

(It’s never gonna stop. Never gonna stop. Never.)

He follows her from hotel room to hotel room. He doesn’t want to, but he doesn’t fight her on it. She tells him that she’s cold with a devilish smirk.

He lets her. Every time, he lets her.

It’s punishment, he tells himself. Self-sacrifice. He ended a life. He shouldn’t get to live his. She tries to be casual. She jokes, and it all falls flat. He can’t look at her. He sees her and he hears the gunshot over and over again. He feels the warmth of her body. The cold of the rooftop. He turns colder and colder with it. He is not kind to her, but she takes it as a challenge.

He rants. Quietly and disorderly, he rants. Catalina thinks it’s about nothing. He rants about auditory processing and soundwaves and how he never told her not to kill Blockbuster. How he physically moved so she could.

He sleeps with her again and again and again.

It feels selfish to say no. To reject her advances is to be caught up in himself. What right does he have, with stained hands and a trail of bodies? He means corpses, but bodies works too. He’s not a stranger to sex, or violence. Truly, what's the difference?

Catalina gets him to drink. She gets him to do a lot of things.

He’s going to marry her. He’s got pen to paper, about to sign, about to marry someone that won’t even call him by his name.

Bruce calls him home.

The marriage certificate remains empty and, smiling, he’s Gotham-bound.

Bruce will ask him if he’s okay, because he’s obvious. Because people can tell that he’s tainted and disgusting and poisoned. That he mistakes a trail of cum as worse than a trail of blood because he's selfish. Because despite all the lives ended, all he can think about is her hands on him. He will lie. He won’t know how to explain any of it to him. He doesn’t want the rage Bruce so lovingly gives Jason every time he ends a life. He doesn’t want the disgust Bruce gave Dick when he caught him with Harley.

He will never talk about it. He will leave it all behind him. It is in the past.

(It’s never gonna stop.)

Dick will run, Catalina will follow

(Never gonna stop.)

They all follow.

(Never.)

Dick will always feel their bodies pressed against his.

(Stop.)

He never wants to feel again.