Archive of Our Own ^beta

Womanizer.

Dog.

Slut.

They’re jokes. They’ve always been jokes. No one ever intends to be hurtful when they tease Dick, when they pat him on the shoulder and remark on his latest exploit, when they ogle him from behind. It’s a joke. No one actually means it.

Except for the ones who do.

Dick Grayson was a late bloomer, believe it or not. He was twelve when he had his first crush, fifteen when he had his first kiss, and sixteen when...when Liu showed up. It also happened so fast—a vertical slope with no handholds to keep him from slipping down, down, down.

Dick had never seen a black widow spider up close, but he had a firm understanding of their methods by the time Liu was finished with him. Seduce and destroy. Weave trust and break it, every last sticky thread. Dick was just one of her guileless victims.

On the fumes of teenage rebellion and in a mission to separate himself from Bruce’s cloying shadow, Dick was child’s play for her in more ways than one. He was an experienced Robin by that point, learned and raised to recognize evil when he saw it. He should have been smarter, seen through her bewitching act, but she was just so beautiful. So mature. So convincing when she wanted to be, and she certainly wanted to be.

She smelled like jasmine.

Dick was putty in her hands. He was clay to be molded, shaped with her hands into whatever she wanted him to be. She showed up in Dick’s room one night—said she just wanted to “talk.” Dick, the fool that he was, believed her.

“You’re so strung out, baby.” Her fingers trailed over the back of Dick’s neck like spider legs, her nails catching on the ridges in his spine. “When’s the last time you relaxed?”

“Uh,” Dick said intelligently.

“I can take your mind off it, if you let me.” Her voice was melodic, soft and crooning. Like she was convincing a toddler to go down for his nap.

Dick’s mouth was dry. He swallowed. “Not that the offer isn’t...tempting, but I don’t think—” Liu pulled her shirt off. Dick’s eyes widened.

“Still thinking?” she asked. She pushed Dick back faster than he could resist and climbed onto his lap, straddling his hips. “Or do you want to start doing?”

Dick was admittedly intimidated, and with good reason. He was sixteen, barely more than a kid. And Liu...well, she had to be in her mid-twenties, at least. She was everything Dick wanted to be: strong, independent, always in control. So when she offered to take something that Dick wasn’t sure he wanted to give, how could he deny her? She was an adult. She knew more about the world than he did. Robin doesn’t run away when he gets scared.

How could Dick ever expect to convince Bruce that he would be fine on his own if he wasn’t even brave enough to do this simple act?

And it’s not like Dick didn’t enjoy it. He floated on endorphins as Liu pressed him against the wall, licked into his mouth, moved his body where she wanted him. Directed him where she wanted to direct him. The ball was in her court, and Dick...well, he was just along for the ride.

As Dick arched against the bedsheets, Liu whispered filthy things between kisses, telling him how much she loved him, how she would make him a man. How no one in the world would ever love him as much as she did. She smelled like jasmine and sweat.

Having been a virgin before, Dick had nothing to compare this new experience to. Liu was the one with all the experience, and Dick trusted her in the following weeks. He was a kite and she was the line, steering him where she pleased. It’s normal to fuck your partner every night, even when you’re not really in the mood. It’s normal to wake up and find her having snuck into your room overnight, doing things to your body without your knowledge. It’s normal to feel loved and unbearably empty at the same time.

It took an embarrassingly long time for Dick to come to his senses, to realize that he was nothing more than a toy for Liu, that she never loved him in the first place. He was just a Waynetech key card with legs. If only he’d found out sooner, before the damage was already done.

Dick cried for hours that night, screaming into his pillow as her voice echoed in his head.

I love you.

I’ll make you a man.

What would you do without me?

Dick hasn’t forgotten her—not the feeling of her body against his, the scent of her hair, the sickly sweet things she would whisper to him as they laid together. Dick should be disgusted, thinking back on it now. She was manipulating him. She was taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable teenager, using him for as long as it was convenient for her. She was a grown woman sleeping with a sixteen-year-old; it was statutory rape at the least.

But even now, Dick can’t help the tugging sensation in his chest when he thinks about her. For better or worse, Liu was his first love. She was his first everything. Dick surrendered to her parts of himself that so few others have seen, and she just threw it away. Like it was nothing. Like he was nothing.

It took years for Dick to trust women again after that—at least in the way he trusted Liu: heart, body, and soul. And she didn’t just take them; she kept them—locked them up and tossed the key.

She taught Dick an important lesson that summer: that intimacy is a trap waiting to be sprung. It’s a python waiting to sink its fangs in. Sometimes Dick is certain that Liu broke him in the same way children break their favorite toys, snapped in half and thrown away for the next desperate person to come use it. She wrecked him in every way that mattered.

When Dick opened up to his friends about it afterward, they high-fived him. They said he was lucky. And Dick tried his best to believe them, but thinking about Liu didn’t make him proud. It just made him want to vomit.

Then he started dating Kori, and things were better. Liu may have been Dick’s first love, but Kori was the first person who showed him what it feels like to be loved back, and that was a heady concoction all its own. Dating Kori was like dating an open flame. Her skin was always warm, wrapping him up like a heated blanket. Dick felt safe with Kori, engulfed in her strength so completely that it felt like the world could never hurt him.

Dick spent the latter half of his teenage years planning to be with Koriand’r for the rest of his life.

Their relationship, from beginning to end, was an intense, passionate one. That’s all anyone remembers about it now—the passion. The sex. And at the time, Dick was too bashful to correct them. He supposed they were half right, but that would be like calling a pumpkin spice latte plain old coffee. Or like calling Kori “pretty” instead of the most gorgeous goddess to grace this undeserving planet.

Neither Dick nor Kori minded what the others said about them. They could believe whatever they wanted, even if that meant forgetting about the depth of the love they shared, the bubble of safe intimacy that surrounded the couple like a woven quilt.

There were nights when just the thought of being touched made Dick nauseous, his mind flooding with memories that refused to stay locked away where they belonged. Nights when Dick would wake up to the smell of smoke because Kori’s hands were smoldering her pillow during a nightmare about what those warlords did to her. On those nights, they would settle for snuggling and watching cartoons until dawn.

They never talked about the nightmares, about the microscopic monsters coating their skin. As much as they both understood what the other went through, talking about it would make it real. It would give it a shape, a body, teeth.

So, they left the others to their misguided, single-faceted assumptions. After all, that’s what Dick and Kori were, right? Hot. Promiscuous. Passionate.

No one ever talks about the quiet moments, of sitting together on the couch with Dick’s head in Kori’s lap; of making pancakes together and somehow managing to set the griddle on fire; of going to the park at midnight and watching the stars from the monkey bars.

Kori was safety. She was love and power merged into one intoxicating potion. She was everything.

Then Mirage happened.

Dick should have known better. Goosebumps rattle up his skin every time he thinks about it, about what Mirage did to him. Touching him, using him, all the while wearing the face of the woman he loved. Dick is a detective. He was raised to notice what others would miss, yet he failed to realize that the person he was sleeping with was an imposter.

How do you come back from that? How do you apologize? How do you forget?

The Titans blamed him. Kori blamed him, and wasn’t she entitled to do so? Dick cheated. He let Mirage do this to him, let her use his body as a cheap backstab play. She victimized him, manipulated his mind and body for her own ends. She disgusted him. She made him want to claw his skin to bloody ribbons on the floor.

But as awful as Mirage was, Dick couldn’t shake the revolting notion that this was his fault. How could it not be? If he didn’t want it, he should have figured out the truth earlier. He should have fought. This was all his fault.

And when Kori broke up with him, Dick blamed himself for that too.

The months after the breakup were hectic. Desperate. Dick found himself more often than not wandering the earth in a haze, yearning for the connection he had lost. He had gotten so used to the feeling of being loved and cherished that he didn’t know how to function once it was gone.

Wally was there.

Wally listened when Dick wanted to talk, came over from Keystone when Dick wanted company, kissed back when Dick craved safety. Wally was like swallowing down lightning, sparks shooting down to Dick’s toes and buzzing in his brain. Dick wanted to count each of Wally’s freckles, chart them with his fingers and turn them into constellations. He wanted to stare into those emerald green eyes every day of his life.

But Dick was tainted, and Wally was perfect. He would always be perfect—more perfect than Dick deserved. You can’t mix mud with water without dirtying the latter, turning it into mush. Wally was too perfect to be mush.

So when weeks turned into months of stolen glances, fleeting kisses, a touch here and there, Wally wanted an answer.

“Come on, dude,” he said one night. “How many times do I have to ask before you give me a straight answer?”

They were both shirtless, lounging on Wally’s bed while some baking show played on the TV. It had been a quiet night, one of fuzzy socks and laughing and kisses that tasted like blue raspberry soda. Of tracing the lightning scars on Wally’s back and grinning when he shuddered.

“Don’t call me dude when you had your tongue in my mouth a minute ago.”

“You’re dodging the subject.”

“I’m not dodging anything.”

Wally’s eyes were bright, inquisitive, extraordinary. “Do you want to be with me?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Dick leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Wally’s. He tasted like electricity.

“Then let me rephrase,” Wally said once he caught his breath. He pushed Dick away just enough so he could look him in the eye. Their noses were a centimeter apart. “Do you want to be boyfriends?”

Dick answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

“It’s an easy question.”

“No, it’s not.”

“How about I make it multiple choice? You like those.” Wally counted off on his fingers. “We can be boyfriends, we can go back to being regular best friends, or we can keep doing whatever this is.”

“And what is this?”

“You come into my room and we eat pizza and make out until we get bored.”

“I thought you liked pizza.”

Wally sighed. “Dick, I don’t do casual hookups. And neither do you.”

“Maybe I do now.”

“Or maybe you’re lying to yourself because you’re scared of what might happen.”

Dick sat up. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“Prove it, then. Go on a date with me.”

How badly did Dick want to say yes? How badly did he want to have a solid claim on Wally instead of a shady fumbling over uniforms, avoiding any real conversation? “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Dick didn’t know how to explain to him that this was why. This —Wally, stubborn and too observant for his own good—was exactly what Dick didn’t want. Wally was like a life raft, a pleasant shock of static to chase out the demons and leave Dick wanting more.

Dick reached for his hand and held it in his. Wally was warm, just like Kori. “I want you, Wally.”

Wally searched Dick’s eyes until his own dimmed at what they saw. He nodded slowly. “But you don’t want to be official,” he finished. He tried to pull his hand away, but Dick tightened his grip, keeping him there. Keeping him close.

“I...Wally, I can’t. I would tell you why if I could, but I’m—it’s not—”

I’m dirty, Dick wanted to say. I’m not the kind of person who deserves to be in a relationship like this. And you don’t deserve it, either. This is me sparing you the pain of realizing that later on. He wanted to confess everything to Wally, right then and there. He wanted to crack open his ribcage and bare his heart, red and beating. He wanted Wally in every way he’d be allowed to have him. And if he was allowed to have nothing, he’d take that too.

“It’s okay,” Wally said before Dick could fumble over himself even more. He gave a reassuring smile, squeezing Dick’s hand. “No harm, no foul. We’re still best friends, right?”

Dick smiled back, but it lacked any real vibrancy. “Right.”

“Okay, then. No weirdness. And if there ever comes a time when you’re ready for this and we’re both single...we can try again. Maybe it’ll be different.”

But that time never came. Linda strolled into the picture soon after, and Dick was happy for them, really. Linda was a wonderful person and kicked Dick’s ass at game night every weekend.

Linda and Wally’s wedding was beautiful, and their kids were only more so. Dick couldn’t be more proud of the life his best friend forged for himself. But he would be a liar if he claimed that he didn’t spend the occasional night lying awake in bed, wondering what could have been if he’d been braver. If he’d trusted Wally like he should have. If he hadn’t thrown away that beautiful, intoxicating spark.

It was Dick’s own fault, just like Mirage. Just like Liu. He torpedoed every relationship he’d ever been in, so what was the point in trying? He was better off accepting that love was a privilege he wasn’t entitled to.

He tried doing what others did, turning to strangers and doing whatever he could to regain that spark. There were blurs of nameless, faceless hookups, men and women who were just as lonely as Dick was. Who sought a connection to fulfill their own voids. Tequila. Skin. Sweat. Rinse and repeat.

Sometimes Dick would go to a bar and wake up in a stranger’s bedroom with no recollection of the night before. Sometimes he would call a time-out mid-coitus and they would pretend not to hear him. It didn’t matter; Dick always gave in eventually. It was easier that way. It made people happier that way, and isn’t that what heroes do? Making people happy?

“I heard sex with a gypsy is the best kind. Want to prove it?”

Dick endured the comments. He endured the groping. He endured it all and told himself he enjoyed it, that this was what he was supposed to do. This was normal, right?

Besides, Dick was used to it. Growing up as a Wayne in every way but on paper, he was fawned over constantly by Gotham’s richie riches. As soon as he hit high school, the cheek pinching turned into leering compliments, to snakelike eyes running up and down his body, to the occasional ass grab.

Once a governor’s daughter accosted him in a broom closet, drunk on strawberry daiquiris and smelling like a Bath & Body Works binge. Another time, some inebriated socialite slipped his tongue in Dick’s mouth and his hand down Dick’s pants faster than Dick could push him off. Dick didn’t even know his name.

Bruce, upon seeing how shaken up Dick was when Dick found him afterward, allowed them to make an early exit that night. Dick spent hours wailing on criminals until hours past dawn, channeling his frustration and repugnance into something productive. It was the only way he knew how to cope, back then.

Still, Dick has no right to complain. He knows he’s attractive. He’s always been attractive—has heard people talking about his looks when they think he isn’t listening, waxing poetry about every angle. He’s read magazine articles and watched talk shows, each making a blatant point of establishing Dick Grayson as someone whose job in life is to be stared at. They don’t care about his career or hobbies—not unless they can snap a steamy photo of him fresh out of the pool or a shot of him “sexily” standing in line at Home Depot.

He’s hot. He’s beautiful. He should be grateful for that, for features that people spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery to replicate every day.

But sometimes, secretly and in the deepest corners of his consciousness, Dick wishes he were born ugly. He wishes he had never been a performer, had never experienced the thrill of being in the spotlight so he could curb the addiction he seems to have to it. Maybe if he were a nobody, people would ignore him. If he were ugly, people would stop touching him, would stop talking about him like he’s a cheap sex doll. Maybe he could breathe again.

Dick never told Bruce about any of the harassment, but he wouldn’t be the world’s greatest detective if he didn’t have his own suspicions. Dick keeps waiting for Bruce to bring it up, much like Bruce is undoubtedly waiting for Dick to do the same. Odds are, neither of them ever will. If you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist.

Dick doesn’t want it to exist. Not any of it.

It’s easier with his family around. Even when romance fails him, Dick will always have familial love to fall back on. Bruce may be an emotionally constipated manchild, but Dick made a deal with himself a long time ago that he would never end up that way if he could help it. Over the years, the role has fallen onto Dick to be the emotionally available one, to make sure that no one has to be as alone as Dick feels.

When he’s with his siblings, Dick can pretend that life is perfect. Nothing gets Dick Grayson down, right? He’s impenetrable. He’s immortal. He’s the pillar for everyone else to lean against when they need it.

It’s how Tim sees him. How Cass sees him. Damian and Steph and even Jason, they look up to Dick. Even if they have no idea about the grit in Dick’s life, just having them close helps. Loving them and being loved back from them, it all helps make it just that much easier to endure the toils of existing.

After all, isn’t that what being a Robin is all about? Family. Love. Protection.

“That’s what I love about you,” Barbara said one afternoon. Dick had just finished up a patrol and stopped by the Clocktower to share the cupcakes a thankful bakery owner gave him after a foiled robbery.

“What?” he asked around a mouthful of crumbs and strawberry frosting.

“How much you care. You love like it’s a mission. I always liked that about you.”

Dick shrugged. “It’s part of the job description, right? That’s what heroes do.”

Babs shook her head. “No, it’s not a hero thing. It’s a Dick Grayson thing.” There was a dab of chocolate on her nose. Dick wiped it away with his thumb. She caught his wrist before it could retreat, her eyes earnest behind her glasses. “I don’t think you could run out of love if you tried.”

Dick didn’t tell her how wrong she was at the time. He didn’t want to burst her bubble. She had no idea of the things he had done, how he’d broken Kori’s heart. How he’d broken Wally’s. How he’d given up on love more times than he could count, because who could ever want someone like Dick? Who would subject themselves to that for more than a night at a time?

Apparently, Barbara would. When they started dating officially, Dick waited for some switch to be flipped, for her to realize how much better she could do than him. The two of them had crushed on each other all throughout their awkward preteen years, but hadn’t Babs figured out by now that things had changed? She was the smartest person Dick had ever met; she should have seen it.

Even if Barbara didn’t wheel away screaming as soon as she spent enough time with Dick to realize what she’d been saddled with, it wouldn’t matter for long. Pretty soon she was going to get suspicious about the lack of physicality in their relationship and ask questions. After all, Dick Grayson was infamous for his sexuality, right? That was his specialty.

But as the weeks went on, nothing happened. At all. Barbara saw how tentative Dick got when the subject of sex came up, so she just...backed off. Like it was no big deal. Without a single complaint. She backed off for months of dating, never even bringing up the subject until Dick did himself.

She never acted like it, but deep down, Dick knew she was disappointed. And the fact that Dick was making her wait so long...it was stupid, wasn’t it? Dick knew he had nothing to worry about, not really. He loved sex. He loved Barbara. The rest should have been meaningless.

How was Dick supposed to confess to Babs that he didn’t know how to love without the pain that comes with it? How could he let loose the tempests swirling in his soul, fighting to drag him down with memories he would give anything to forget? Dick wanted to love and be loved so badly it physically hurt sometimes, like there was a cavern in his chest where someone had scooped out his lungs with a spoon and left him empty. But every time he thought he got closer to filling it, only dirt and rot could be found.

Dick was damaged. The best he could do was try and be good enough for Barbara, give her everything she deserved.

So he stopped fighting it. He asked, she agreed. They went to bed and Dick tried to enjoy it, he really did. He loved Barbara. He loved her big brain, he loved the way she laughed, he loved her firecracker personality that reduced him to a puddle of goo. He loved her with every part of himself, every molecule.

Then again, he should have known better than to keep secrets from someone who knew everything in the world. Barbara must have sensed that something was wrong because she called a time-out not long after they started, sitting up and giving Dick a firm look.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

She shook her head, her eyebrows furrowed like she was piecing together the puzzle that was Dick Grayson. “No, something is off. What is it?”

She was persistent, just like she’d always been. It didn’t take long for Dick to break and tell her the truth—all of it. About Liu. About the real reason Kori broke up with him. About Mirage and what she did to him. Dick tried to smooth over it and move on, but Barbara pumped the brakes.

“Dick, wait. That’s some...some pretty heavy stuff.”

“It’s fine, let’s just move on.” He tried to kiss her again, but she planted a hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t think we should. Dick, that—that sounds like sexual assault.”

“It wasn’t.” Dick made his own choices. He chose to give in to Liu. He chose to sleep with Mirage. He chose this.

Barbara was patient as ever. “Have you told anyone else about this?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should.”

Dick shook his head. The rest of him shook, too, tremors making his hands twitch. “No. It’s—I want this, okay? I want this. With you. I want to forget.”

It was a long night. They stayed up and talked for hours, even after sunbeams crept in through the window and cast shadows on the walls. Barbara tried her best to stay calm and reassure him that none of it was Dick’s fault, but Dick saw the disgust behind her eyes. The pity in her voice.

When Tarantula happened, Dick remembered those eyes. That pity. So, when his entire life fell quaked to pieces with him as the epicenter, he kept that part a secret. He didn’t tell Barbara about how the gravelly roof scraped his back with every cant of Catalina’s hips, leaving marks on his skin. He didn’t tell her how many times he said “no” and “stop” and “don’t touch me.” He didn’t tell her about the tears that mixed with the rain and congealed into a salty mess on his face.

“It’s okay, baby,” Catalina said as she did it. As she took the last thing he had to lose. “You’re with me. No one can hurt us.”

And Dick, gone as he was at the time, believed her. She wouldn’t hurt him. Blockbuster hurt him. She hurt Blockbuster. Catalina was okay. And Dick felt so safe at the time, sheltered away in his head where nothing bad could reach him, that he let himself stay that way for hours. Days. A week. He didn’t want to come out of it.

And when he finally did come out of it, he wished more than anything to go back.

Barbara broke up with him—said he was too reckless, too cold. She was gone. Why would she listen to what he had to say, now? Was there even a point? Dick let the rooftop stay a secret, one only he and Tarantula shared. No one else needed to be dragged into Dick’s cesspool of a life.

He could only imagine what people would say about him if he ever did come clean.

“Men can’t be raped by women.”

“He’s a superhero and didn’t even try to fight her off? He obviously wanted it.”

“He probably just feels guilty and wants something to blame it on. What a jerk.”

It doesn’t matter, anyway. Everyone talks about the skin-tight Nightwing suit, how it clings to his muscular frame like it’s been vacuum-sealed, but nobody stops to wonder if Dick feels like his skin is crawling, every minute of every day. No one asks about how he wishes he could shed it like a reptile, leave it all behind so he can escape the dirt. The poison.

Years later Dick faked his death, and...is it bad that Dick felt more comfortable in his own skin during his time as a spy than he had in his entire life?

Behind Spyral’s Hypnos technology, Dick was a ghost. He had no face, no identity. How could he admit that being legally dead had him feeling more like himself than ever before? Yes, being away from his home and his family was agony, but...he could breathe. He could exist.

No one recognized Agent 37 if he didn’t want them to. Agent 37 was never raped. Agent 37 wasn’t the “hottest Wayne boy.” It was a fresh start. It was a chance for Dick to embrace himself in a way he’d never been allowed to in the past, so mindful of the eyes trailing him wherever he went.

When people flirted with Agent 37, he didn’t have to worry about them sneaking him back to their hotel later. He didn’t have to endure the “compliments” behind his back, talking about how hot he was and all of the things that they would do to him if they had the chance. He never stuck along long enough for them to do so.

With Spyral, Dick was allowed to have fun. He embraced the sexy spy life, goofing off and meeting new people and being able to show himself off without consequences. For maybe the first time in his life, Dick was comfortable with the teasing that came with it. The girls at St. Hadrian’s watched him like hormone-infested hawks, gawking at his physique, but Dick found that he didn’t mind it. He was in on the joke. He had control.

He didn’t have control with Liu. He didn’t have control with Mirage or Tarantula. He didn’t have control when he was unmasked by the Crime Syndicate, bared for all the world to see. Has Dick ever had control over his own life? Or is he just a tool, an object for others to orchestrate for their own desires?

Nightwing has always been a mask to protect Dick Grayson—to keep him sheltered while allowing the best parts of himself to shine through. But what happens when there is nothing left to shelter? What happens when Dick Grayson isn’t a person, nor a hero, but a doll to be manipulated at the will of another?

What can protect him then?