Dick Grayson
Kari
Christopher Swanson, billionaire owner-and-CEO of mega-conglomerate Swanson Foods, was widely known as a doting father. Therefore, one might mistakenly believe that he would have some reservations about his infamously beloved and only son and heir moving across the country to attend university at a city where “supervillain attack” was a category for both insurance and PTO.
But that was where they would be very wrong, because Mr. Swanson was the kind of father that doted by giving his son every single thing he asked for, immediately and without reservations. Charles Swanson, Charlie to his friends—and Kari to his better friends that didn’t talk to the media—was well-regarded as the most spoiled nepo baby in all of Metropolis. And Lex Luthor lived in Metropolis. So when he said, “daddy, I want to go to Gotham,” the only real question was how big the security detail would be.
As it turned out, Gotham University, a prestigious university that had produced some of the world’s leading geniuses—as well as some of the world’s leading genius supervillains but shh—took security pretty goddamn seriously, given the Gotham of it all combined with the price of tuition. There’d been that whole Scarecrow thing like ten years back, and in the aftermath, they’d seriously beefed up security, enough that even Mr. Swanson figured security wouldn’t be a big issue. Kari would be safe and secure and educated, and everyone involved was just kind of surprised that his gap year had turned out to be just that, and not a permanent retirement from all things education.
Kari, for his part, was majoring in business communication with a stated intent to minor in “something, I dunno, like law maybe?” which was a very safe pick that should have been suspicious to anyone that knew him. Fortunately, everyone was too busy being relieved (university!) and worried (Gotham University!) about his life choices too really focus on the details.
His dad was extremely proud, since Gotham University wasn’t exactly easy to get into. While Kari couldn’t guarantee there was no nepotism involved, since his last name was Swanson, there at least hadn’t been any direct bribery or promises of grand donations to the institution. His dad would have, in a heartbeat, but Kari, unbeknownst to all but those closest to him, really didn’t like doing that sort of thing. He liked to try and do certain things with as close to his own merit as he could really get while also having constant access to the best of everything. Kari also suspected that Gotham U was easier to get into now than it had been fifteen years ago, y’know, before an ex-professor had went and done a terrorism on school grounds. But still, Kari’s grades had never been the best, so getting in was still a major victory on his and his father’s personal scoreboards. Coincidentally, the bright pink magical girl—known reluctantly as Super Senshi—occasionally spotted around Metropolis went quiet in the months leading up to the entrance exams.
That wasn’t just so Kari could study, of course. He needed to fade out. He couldn’t just vanish from one city and then show up in another city across the country. Proper groundwork had to be laid if he didn’t want it to be immediately suspicious to anyone with half a brain—Batman notoriously had significantly more than half a brain. And so, after fading his superhero half out in Metropolis, the first thing Kari did upon arriving in Gotham was start making his presence known—his presence as Charles Swanson, that is. He didn’t do interviews or talk shows, because this wasn’t the 1990s. He hit the podcast circuit.
Any rich kid with a thick enough skin could be internet famous, and Charles loved attention and didn’t appear to discriminate much between positive and negative. He was an influencer who famously didn’t take brand deals—“there is literally no reason for me to do that”—and he descended onto Gotham’s local micro-celebrity scene like a cloud of glitter.
Kari hadn’t really been intending to make any friends. Kari was well aware that one did not make friends with other influencers, one made connections. Kari was also well aware that, being a billionaire’s kid and therefore comically more wealthy than most of the struggling comedians and diet-juice-peddlers he was interacting with, he made for a very popular connection. He fully intended to be surrounded by suck-ups and leeches and useful alibis in a matter of weeks.
What he had not intended was meeting Dick Grayson.
The whole thing started as a joke. From the second he arrived in Gotham, people on social media and in podcast interviews had asked him about Dick, because of course they’d asked him about Dick. Charles and Dick had so much in common, both being internet personalities well-known pretty much entirely for already being super rich, and also as a side note for being super hot. One of the podcasters had done a good job on research and dug up a video from when Kari was in high school, where Kari had been freaking out because Dick Grayson had liked one of his posts. They played the clip, and Kari ran a hand over his face, playing the role of embarrassed over the most regrettable of teenage inflictions—genuine enthusiasm.
“It was a progress post,” Kari explained to the podcaster and the internet at large. “This was back when he’d put out that, um, ButtBlaster exercise routine? What a name, I swear no one had PR back then. Anyway, obviously I had to try it, but like… okay, this is maybe a little embarrassing, but I was super serious about it. I kept up with it for ages after it stopped trending. Dick Grayson liked my one year progress post, of all things.”
“You sound so adorably freaked out in the video. You kept mentioning how it wasn’t even the post with the pics. Do I detect maybe a bit of disappointment about that?”
“Well, I mean, obviously. If Dick Grayson liked my ass—well, the post containing my ass—that was like a whole different level of brag-worthy. C’mon. He was a male model.”
“For like, a minute!”
“You carry that title for life! It’s like the presidency!”
“You’re in Gotham now, are you hoping to run into Dick?”
“Well, from what I’ve heard about the busses, it’s probably inevitable.”
“Shut up, you know what I mean!”
“I mean, it’d be nice to get the Grayson seal of approval after all this time. I’ve been placing in Metropolis’s Top 10 Rears since I was eighteen—which like, a little creepy, but I worked hard for it so let’s agree to let it pass—but who doesn’t want to hear the master’s opinion?”
“So your ass is a work of art now?”
“Hey, you said it, not me.”
And that should have been that. It wasn’t unusual for someone to talk about Dick Grayson, or Dick Grayson’s ass. Something that might be an uptick in Kari’s popularity would be barely a blip for Grasyon, who was a totally different tier of famous. He was never going to come on some random podcast to compliment Kari’s ass, and Kari wasn’t popular enough to warrant a question from anyone who landed an interview with Grayson. The clips generated buzz for a while, and Kari was ready for the whole thing to fade out, or to become part of his brand, whichever. What he wasn’t ready for, and could never have been ready for, was to get asked to be in a legitimate—sort of—video interview about the suffering of nepo babies (they hadn’t called it that, but it was obviously about getting the dark details of growing up wealthy; the kidnapping attempts, the dead parents, et cetera) on a pretty major YouTube channel, and then show up and suddenly Dick Grayson is there also.
Kari had just arrived, neither early nor late, since early didn’t fit his brand and the idea of being late to something made his stomach hurt, and there were already cameras going, which wasn’t super unusual. Probably some BTS roll for their paid members, or whatever. Kari thought nothing of it, until he came around a corner past the entry area and for some goddamn reason Dick Grayson was on a couch.
Kari was sure his shock showed on his face, but he was also sure it didn’t show for long. No one got very far in this—could you really call it an industry —if they didn’t have a good poker face. Of course, that also meant that Kari had no way to interpret the very brief and extremely mild raising of Dick’s eyebrows. It sure didn’t seem like he was surprised.
“Wow, um, Dick Grayson,” he was saying, focusing on being the film-appropriate level of flustered while hopefully not revealing the fact he was genuinely dying inside. “I had, uh, no idea you were involved with this?”
Dick Grayson was smiling a camera-perfect smile and shaking his hand, and saying his name like he already knew who Kari was, which was terrible, because it meant he’d probably been prepped for this. Kari couldn’t imagine Grayson would know him on sight otherwise. Seriously, it was stupid that he was even here, operating on anything close to the same level as Charles Swanson.
He’d thought it’d all be too far beneath Grayson for this to ever happen, despite, in retrospect, the obvious click-worthiness of it all. Grayson, in a reasonable world, would never have seen the original interview. People had tagged him in it, but people tagged everyone in everything all the time; it’s not like Kari watched everything people @’d him about, and he had like a factor of ten fewer followers than Dick did.
All of this flashed through Kari’s mind while he smiled and shook Dick Grayson’s hand, here in some stupid YouTuber’s stupid rented would-be film studio. Kari was considering buying it and turning it into condos while he made polite eye contact and polite, brief small talk in which neither of them mentioned the interview, thank God.
The eye contact was a pain too, because Dick Grayson was tall, and so Kari had to really crane his neck. He wasn’t totally unfamiliar with that; part of the problem here was that Kari was short as hell, and this was supposed to be a seated interview so he hadn’t bothered wearing platforms. That meant the cameras got to capture him in all of his 5’4 glory, shaking the hand of Dick Grayson, who had to be close to six feet. Taller in person, and his ass probably looked better in person too. Kari didn’t know, because he wasn’t going to be caught dead checking out Dick Grayson’s ass on camera.
He was being so nice, and Kari couldn’t figure out if that meant he was in on it or not, but he kind of had to be. All signs pointed to him being set up for a prank video featuring Dick Grayson, Best Ass On The Internet (in at least two ways, apparently). He didn’t even know if the interview was really happening or if this was the whole thing they’d wanted to catch on film. He was managing not to visibly panic or, god-forbid, show on his face how fucking mortifying this was and how much he wanted to run away and cry. He had absolutely not enough brain cells, in this moment, to figure out how to get out of the situation without summoning his security and making a whole-ass scene, which would make everything worse forever.
“We’re scheduled to start the interview in like fifteen, right?” Dick was saying to someone standing nearby—Kari couldn’t even process faces right now, everything was just cameras. “As nice as it is to have a chance to chat with everyone, I really do need to do something about my hair…” And just like that, Kari and Grayson were being lead off to separate rooms, thank God.
It wasn’t a real green room, because this was a YouTuber’s studio. It was very clearly a break room, but it had a door, at least, so Kari was sitting at the table—which had like six chairs at it, because this was obviously a break room— decompressing. Or, more accurately, continuing to compress, rapidly.
Should he just leave? That was a thing people did, right, when asshole YouTubers pranked them with cameras? They just left? They definitely didn’t just stay and do the fucking interview, right? He could probably call his dad’s lawyers and keep them from putting up any video of him awkwardly meeting Dick Grayson, but it wasn’t even worth it. Just like getting Grif over here to rescue him like a damsel in distress wasn’t worth it. A fuss would just draw more attention to the scenario. If Dick was in on it—which genuinely, he had to be, because literally why else would he be here and know who Charles goddamn Swanson was—that would just make everything worse, forever.
No, this was the worst, but if Grayson was in on it, he should probably just pretend to be completely fine with the situation. A little embarrassed, because he’d need to play the clown a little bit, but even clowns could accept the pie on their face with some dignity… right? That was maybe the move, right? To not even be ruffled? Now, if only he knew how not to be ruffled. His eyes were burning, which was a nightmare. He absolutely could not cry. He couldn’t even look the slightest bit puffy. One hint of being genuinely bothered, one drop of blood in the water, and it’d be a feeding frenzy. He’d be torn to fucking shreds.
Kari took deep breaths, mentally going over various trite sayings from his media coaching. He could do this. He was great at playing stupid, that was like, ninety percent of his whole thing! He could absolutely go out there and answer what were probably going to be a lot of really unpleasant personal questions in front of someone he’d thought was super fucking cool. He could get into his sordid life history and how his mom died, in a room with like fifteen people, all of whom were in on a joke of which he was the butt. He could.
And the worst part was? He actually could.
Dick
Dick Grayson was hesitating.
It’s not like he never hesitated, but it was normally for better reasons than social anxiety. He could get shot at, all night any night, jump off buildings and trapeze without a moment’s flinch. But apparently, put him in an awkward enough social situation and suddenly…
The thing was, Charlie Swanson seemed like a nice enough guy. They’d never met, of course, but Dick was vaguely familiar with him the way he was vaguely familiar with any billionaire’s kid. Charlie was from Metropolis; his father was the owner and CEO of a privately-owned food megacorporation; he’d never had any major scandals; he was incredibly short. That last one wasn’t something he’d been particularly aware of it until they met in person, but it had been the first thing Dick had noticed. The second thing was that when their eyes had met, just for a microsecond, he had looked completely devastated. When Dick had finally managed to get them both out of there, Charlie had been expertly not looking like he was about to cry, to absolutely anyone who hadn’t been trained on microexpressions by Batman.
Dick did not particularly like that he was clearly being used to bully some kid who probably looked up to him. He was only doing this stupid video in the first place as a favor for a mutual friend, and hazing some Gotham new-kid had not been on the docket. He’d actually been contemplating the best way to ruin the entire situation for everyone involved, when he’d remembered “everyone involved” included Charlie Swanson, Innocent Bystander, and decided maybe he should take that into consideration.
To do that, he needed to actually open the door to the green room they’d shoved Swanson into. With a quiet exhalation, he reached for the doorknob.
It turned and the door opened in before he could grab it, and Dick was very suddenly looking down at Charlie Swanson again. More down, this time, because he’d been about to step out the door, only to stop abruptly when greeted with probably significantly more human person than he’d been expecting. It put them closer, physically, then they’d been while politely shaking hands for the cameras.
This time, the surprise was completely off Swanson’s face by the time he looked up to make eye contact. In its place was a movie-star smile.
“Oh, are they already ready for us?” Swanson said with an easy laugh. “I like just finished my hair two seconds ago; I thought we’d have more time.”
Swanson’s hair, which was blonde and long, down to his shoulder blades, looked exactly as pristine as it had when the guy walked in. He brushed a lock of it behind one ear, an obviously practiced motion. Faker than a Barbie, but Dick couldn’t exactly blame him for putting a thick coating of frosting on the shit cake he’d been delivered. There wasn’t really a polite way to say “sorry I memed about your ass so hard they decided to punk me about it.”
“Hey, look, I didn’t know they had this shit planned,” Dick said, because despite being equally fake in some ways, he also had remarkably little patience for bullshit.
Swanson’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed, lips pouting in a frown.
“Scout’s honor,” Dick said, holding up three fingers.
Swanson pointed at his upraised hand. “That’s Girl Scouts.”
“They seem like the more honorable of the two.”
Swanson snorted, then looked behind him, then looked back at Dick.
“Hey, so, weird proposition, but this room has a window.” Dick tried to think of how many weird propositions could start with a window. “I had just finished talking myself out of climbing out of it to make my escape, but if you don’t want to be here either, I saw a churro truck like not even five blocks away.”
“We’re on the third floor,” Dick pointed out, because it seemed like a serious concern for people who weren’t raised as acrobats.
“That’s fine,” Swanson said with a remarkably straight face. “I didn’t wear heels today.”
So it turned out Charlie Swanson had done gymnastics from elementary all the way through high school, and also had a preternatural sense for finding really good churro trucks.
He’d been fully ready to catch Metropolis’s most-notoriously-spoiled teenager the entire way out the window, but it had been unnecessary. Swanson was six inches shorter and probably fifty pounds lighter, enough that his lack of obvious musculature obviously didn’t pose a problem. He swung out the window, leapt to a nearby fire escape, and eased himself down it with the practiced smugness of the chronically underestimated.
Dick, who was less frequently underestimated but equally smug, didn’t need to be as showy with his own slide down the building as he was. But at the bottom, he was rewarded with bright eyes, a big grin, a subdued shushing, and a five block run to some really goddamn good churros.
“So, do you climb out a lot of windows?” Dick asked between bites of churro.
“Why, you a cop?” Charlie responded. Dick snorted. “No, honestly, most of the buildings I’m in are high rises. Kind of high stakes to go out a window on one of those… I don’t even like it when they open.”
“The windows?”
“Yeah.” Charlie shuddered. “I guess you probably don’t get this, what with the acrobat thing at all, but whenever a high rise window is open, I feel like someone is gonna somehow fall out of it. Doesn’t matter how completely physically impossible that is.”
“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’re not a huge fan of balconies.”
“What I really hate is other people standing on balconies. They’re gonna fall off! I have never once seen anyone fall out a window or off a balcony, for the record, but I’m convinced every single time I see someone lean on a balcony railing.”
“They shouldn’t really lean on those.”
“Okay thank you!” Charlie exclaimed, throwing his hands dramatically into the air. There was a churro hanging loosely out of his mouth, probably for effect.
“That must be a pain in Metropolis. Didn’t LexCorp patent those air seal windows?”
“Meaning they’re on every single building? Yeah. Honestly those aren’t even the worst, because they normally go onto balconies. Have you seen some of the old buildings here in Gotham? They have windows that like, tilt to open! No window should do that! I’m going to Gotham U, right, and some of the older buildings are fucked up, man.”
“Buildings without modern ventilation systems have to have windows that open to the outdoors,” Dick explained. “It’s a security thing.”
“Security for what?”
“Joker gas. Well, it’s not like he’s the only one; Gotham U had its own gas-related incident not that long ago, as I recall.”
Charlie winced. “Oh. Right. All the supervillains. Y’know, it’s weird, I’ve been here for a couple months now and I haven’t even spotted like, a single shady gangster. I hear about stuff on the news but I heard about stuff on the news in Metropolis, too.”
“That’s a good thing. You’re not here for crime tourism, are you?”
“No! No thanks, not looking to get gassed or hit by a comically large hammer or turned into a tree or whatever the hell messed up stuff the baddies here do.” Poison Ivy did not turn people into trees, but Dick could understand the concern. “I just thought it’d be more unavoidable. But no one other than my classmates even mentions it.”
“You see it when you know where to look. Like, you don’t take the subway, so you wouldn’t know there’s gas masks under all the seats. The taxis all have shatter-proof glass dividers. Plus there’s the insurance policies…”
“Yeah, but I’m from Metropolis; we already have acts of villainy and superhero collateral in all our forms. But even then, when I said I was going to Gotham U, everyone back home was like, ‘whaaaaat, are you crazy, Poison Ivy is for sure going to murder you.’ Actually one of my friends is deeply concerned that Poison Ivy is going to murder me, specifically.”
“Because of your dad’s company?”
“Absolutely, yeah. I mean, my dad’s cool, but I think grandpa is directly responsible for the extinction of like, multiple species of corn. I don’t think she’s like, a huge fan of mega-farms conceptually, and that’s without getting into meat processing plants. Plus I’m a man and also a billionaire.”
“Are you? Like, independently.”
“Mmhmm.” Charlie said this casually, as if he was admitting to owning an iPhone. “Now, anyway. It’s stupid, really. Mom left everything to me, but the law was all ‘nooo children can’t possibly handle finances’ as if I didn’t have budget training in elementary school. It was in a trust with an executor, and by the time—”
“By the time you inherited it, the executor had been investing it so it was—”
“Like twenty times bigger than when it started.” Charlie laughed, and Dick couldn’t help chucking too. “Is that what happened to you? I always thought it was Wayne money. Um, no offense.”
“None taken. Everyone thinks that. But no, actually, it was a trust. Bruce’s butler is very good at asset management, it turns out.”
“Wow, I wish my butler could do that.” Charlie snorted. “I’m joking. It’s obvious I’m joking, right? I don’t have a butler.”
“Me neither. After Alfred, I’m ruined for them.”
Kari
As it turned out, Dick Grayson was taller and cooler and super fucking nice in person, actually. And, yes, his ass was amazing. Now that there were no cameras, he had to at least look. Subtly.
Like, yeah, sure, okay, this was definitely fully happening because Dick felt bad about being used to haze the new kid, but, like, he felt bad about being used to haze the new kid. Kari hadn’t been sure at first, but the escape out the window and frantic dash to the churro cart had made it clear that he wasn’t in on it. And most people would have been in on it, or maybe mildly annoyed at being manipulated if they weren’t, but still ultimately join in on the joke. Kari made a great punchline, and he knew that about himself. He wouldn’t have even blamed Dick that much for laughing.
He would have been maybe like incredibly hurt, deep on the inside where secrets happened, but he wouldn’t have blamed Dick.
Instead, Dick Grayson had, incredibly, been one hundred percent down to climb out a third story window and then get churros. And now they were just kind of… hanging out? Kari wasn’t sure why Dick was sticking around not just leaving, other than, he supposed, residual guilt. Which was deeply unexpected but totally welcome. The whole thing felt surreal. Like, he kept forgetting the person he was talking to was Dick Grayson, internet person, and not just like, a cool guy he’d met in class or at a party.
Grif had not been informed Kari had left the building, but he had his location on and had pressed his “everything is chill don’t worry” pattern on his pager. It was fine. Everything was fine, and cool, and he was hanging out with Dick Grayson like that was a normal thing to do.
They had a lot in common. And not just the obvious stuff like rich parents and other, different, dead parents. Dick had been either honestly interested in or very good at faking interest in Kari’s gymnastics training, plus the archery, the horseback riding… It seemed like Bruce Wayne took a similar approach of throwing hobbies at Dick to see what stuck, because his high school electives were just as eclectic. The two of them even had (half-hearted) plans (that Kari wasn’t putting much stock in) to go to an archery range sometime. Of course, Kari would literally drop anything anytime to actually do that, but most of the time when people said “oh, we should do that sometime,” they meant “that’s fun to imagine. Do not follow up on this.” Kari respected that, because he also did not want people following up with him about half the shit he agreed would be fun to do sometime.
It would be super cool if Dick Grayson did, though. Dick Grayson could follow up about any stupid shit that Kari said, ever. But he was being very normal about this, so he did not say that or even imply it. He didn’t want to come on too strong when this was basically a pity-hang.
Of course he’d love for it to turn into more, if possible. Dick had grown up in Gotham, and he was the exact kind of native connection that Kari had been really hoping he’d make at some point. Except he was way better, because he was also independently wealthy and therefore probably not humoring Kari out of a desire to sap as much money and goods out of their friendship as humanly possible. And also because he knew stuff like which places were more likely to have paparazzi and which restaurants would throw out anyone they saw taking pictures. And also still knew stuff like “oh, hey, we’re actually really close to Finger Memorial Park,” which turned out to be a really nice, much smaller park than Robinson Park, that was mostly just a singular wide-open green space and some shady trees, dotted with benches and tables and chess boards.
Of course both Dick and Kari played chess. Because this was the perfect day and the perfect hangout and Kari was framing it in his mind for the next time he got drugged by Scarecrow and it didn’t even matter that this was a one-time thing because it was that awesome.
Dick was currently playing chess a lot better than Kari, which was honestly no surprise—Kari had never been treasured for his mental acumen—but chess lessons were another fun thing to have in common with someone. No one got sent to chess lessons by their mom—or adoptive not-dad, in Dick’s case. Kari had gone to rich-person private school in Metropolis and still hadn’t had a lot of people to share that particular childhood anecdote with.
“This is taking me straight back to elementary,” Kari said as he glared at Dick’s bishops.
“Did you lose spectacularly then, too?”
“Yes.”
Dick laughed. It was a good sound, one that Kari could get used to hearing. He liked making people laugh—in a cool, fun, friend way, not in a sociopathic Joker way—and he was really riding the ‘new friend’ high. Again, not that he was going to be totally presumptuous about Dick’s intentions and call the two of them friends. Just because Dick hadn’t wanted to embarrass Kari on video, and had climbed out a window with him, and had eaten churros with him, and then had talked for like thirty minutes while walking down random streets with him, and then had taken him to a park and was playing chess with him, didn’t mean he wanted to be friends, necessarily. This was a pity-hang. Kari had definitely given pity-hangs in the past, he knew what was up.
“You know I’ve got you at this point, right? You have to know.”
“My mom taught me to fight every fight to the bitter end.”
“Did she play chess, or was that just a very dark comment?”
“Yes.”
Kari did lose, but losing was what he was best at. Everyone had a great time when he lost, generally speaking, because beating a billionaire made one feel better about oneself. Kari supposed Dick probably didn’t need the ego boost, though.
“What made you want to go to Gotham U, of all places? I understand wanting to get away from family, believe me, but Gotham? Not Harvard, not Yale?”
“Okay, first off, thank you for believing I could get into Yale. Second off, that’s kind of why, actually. Like, I’m not Yale-smart, but when your daddy runs a multi-billion-dollar private enterprise that feeds half the country, you don’t get to go to like, UCLA. Gotham is Ivy League. Technically. Ivy League with an asterisk. And that asterisk means they have lower standards.”
“You could have gone to Yale.”
“Your faith in me is doing wonders for my self-esteem.”
“Any of us could go to Yale,” Dick pointed out. “Because of the obvious?”
“I don’t want my dad to bribe my way into university. I actually worked really hard to get into Gotham, y’know.” This was true. It wasn’t that Kari was stupid per se—he liked to think, anyway—it was that applying himself did not come at all naturally. When he wanted things, they happened, with one notable exception that was no longer an exception, actually. But he’d worked hard for that, too. Sort of. For a definition of ‘worked.’
“That’s… pretty cool, actually.”
Kari looked up, sharply, expecting some form of mockery to show on Dick’s face. Instead, he caught Dick looking up and away, rubbing kind of awkwardly at his nose. Kari looked away just as quickly. He absolutely could not handle this if Dick started being cute. He was barely hanging on as it was. If Dick Grayson started saying he was cool and making faces like he meant it genuinely, Kari was going to combust.
“Wanting to get in without any help, I mean. I get it, trust me.”
“Yeah?” Kari said, a little hopefully. It would be cool if they had that in common, too. A lot of people in their circumstances wanted to prove they were more than daddy’s money, but not very many went about it in particularly healthy or ethical ways. “Well, I guess it must be different, getting thrust into this kind of existence when you’re already like, mostly formed.” Dick had become Bruce Wayne’s ward as a teenager, after the tragic death of his parents. Kari had been born into the world, golden spoon tucked firmly between his teeth.
“Don’t get me wrong, it was great at first. Still is. Surreal, but great. But that doesn’t mean you want it to be the only thing about you that matters.”
When Kari smiled this time, he could feel the realness of it tugging at the corners of his lips. That was a little dangerous, wanting it to be real. But if he held on to the impermanence of it all maybe it could be real for the rest of the afternoon, and that would be just fine.
Dick
Charlie Swanson had a smile that was not like the smiles he gave to cameras, and a personality that was not like the one he posted online. This wasn’t unusual at all; in fact, Dick was pretty sure everyone who managed to be online and sane at the same time did a version of this, let alone ones that also had to deal with paparazzi and thinkpieces. He would know. But Charlie’s real smile came as something of a relief, mostly because Charlie’s fake smile reminded Dick very uncomfortably of Bruce’s, and everyone who knew him hated that smile.
Instead of the cheerful, spoiled brat he portrayed online and in front of flashbulbs, Charlie was energetic but thoughtful. He had a lot of hobbies and very clearly wanted someone to talk to them about. He was away from the nest for the first time and a bit insecure about it and trying very hard not to seem insecure about it. Nineteen had only been a few years ago for Dick, and he remembered that feeling more than he’d like to admit. Although, Charlie’s foray into the unknown seemed to involve more time on podcasts and less time expanding YA versions of the Justice League, but still.
“…glad they eased up on the first-year-on-campus rule, honestly. I’m sure dorm life would be illuminating and all that, but dad was stressed enough about me coming to Gotham without him having to rely on dorm security.”
“Let me guess, you’re up in Gotham Heights?”
“Pffft, yeah right. Like I’m commuting that far every day. No, there’s some decent high security condos not far from campus. It’s a mix of students whose parents are still gun-shy from the Scarecrow thing and like, I dunno, businessmen or something. I guess the financial district is nearby?”
“It is.”
“See, I should get you to draw me a map. It’d be a lot more helpful than the one on my phone.” It definitely would be. Dick thought Charlie might be joking, but he was considering it. It seemed like Charlie was sticking closely to the borders the wealthy had drawn for themselves, but in Gotham, it was very easy to take a wrong turn and wind up some place a guy who looked like Charlie absolutely should not be. His light frame and short stature could easily have him mistaken for a much younger kid, or even a young woman, especially from the back—the hair wasn’t helping there.
“I guess you haven’t done a lot of exploring, then?”
Charlie pouted. “I really want to, ” he said, his voice coming out kind of petulant and a little sulky. “But I don’t want to drag along a security detail the whole time, and I also don’t want to not have a security detail and wind up needing one. I don’t want to just go to the tourist spots, either. I’ve been hoping to hit it off with some Gotham local in class, but so far, no luck.”
Dick raised his eyebrows. “Seriously? No luck? You?”
“Once again, doing great things for my self-esteem here.”
“Maybe climb out a window to escape class with them,” Dick suggested. “Worked on me.”
Charlie had this thing he did where he pulled part of his bottom lip between his teeth and chewed at it. It was impossible to say what it meant, since he didn’t have enough to go off of, but so far it seemed to correlate with moments where he didn’t have anything immediately clever to say.
“Is that what worked on you? I thought it was the churros.”
“It was neither, actually; it was losing at chess.”
“Oh hell yeah, I’m great at that.” Charlie stretched in a way that was vaguely feline, all curved spine and stretched out limbs. The grabby-hands probably also helped the cat vibes. “Do you need me to lose a couple more times to seal the deal?”
“No, you’ll probably need to lose at a bunch more things.”
“Is there an arcade near here? I bet I can break a record for most games lost in under fifteen minutes.”
“There’s a record for that?”
“If there’s not, there’s about to be.”
Kari
Gotham was literally the best, because there was a fucking arcade nearby, and Dick was also the best because he knew where it was. What kind of a city still had arcades?! They were all ancient and extremely sticky, as was the carpet. Kari suspected he got asbestos and lead poisoning simultaneously upon walking in the door.
He for sure had to bring Grif here. Sometime when Dick wasn’t also here, because he was trying to keep the fact he had private security at least somewhat on the down-low. Not for security reasons. He was just embarrassed about it. It had been easier when he was in high school, hanging out with the same people he’d known since elementary. Now everyone was new and every little thing that made him different felt like a serious social risk. Plus, Grif scared most people. It was his face. And body. And everything about him.
He was a sweetheart, honest. Except for when he needed to not be, and then he wasn’t, at all.
Dick was really good at fighting games, because of course he was. Kari lost to him at three of them and also a motorcycle racing game featuring motorcycles built for someone a bit shorter than Kari and therefore stunningly shorter than Dick. The fact he still won despite that was humiliating, but not in the way that hurt.
“This is the best Tuesday I’ve ever had,” Kari declared after turning in a number of yellow paper tickets for a ring pop.
“Seriously? You’re a billionaire. You could build this arcade in your fifth guest room.”
“Yeah, and it would fucking suck, because it’d be in a billionaire’s mansion,” Kari said, rolling his eyes. “We have the in-house movie theater, but no one ever wants to use it except guests, because seeing movies in a theater alone fucking sucks. Imagine spending a Tuesday in the arcade you built in your own house because you couldn’t just go to the normal arcade with friends. Seriously. Imagine that.”
Dick held up his hands in surrender. “Alright, yeah, fair enough. Did you not have friends to go to arcades with back in Metropolis?”
Kari shot him a wary look. “I had the normal number of friends, and we did the abnormal things that you get to do when you’re super rich or friends with someone who is. I’m not the sad, lonely billionaire.”
“You said losing ten games in thirty minutes in a sticky arcade was your best Tuesday.”
“Hey,” Kari said, pointing at his hand. “I got a ring pop. I won this ring pop from famed arcade game Stinky Feet. I earned it through the sweat of my brow and the squirt of my tiny water gun.”
“And that makes it the perfect Tuesday?”
“I didn’t say perfect.” The realm of perfect was vast and unexplored and probably involved doing things Dick was very much not interested in, and also that Kari couldn’t do for a number of reasons. “I said best. For instance, I saw a gyro place next door. I’m willing to bet those are not perfect gyros, but I bet they’ll be the best ones I’ve ever had on a Tuesday after winning a ring pop from Stinky Feet.”
“Oh,” Dick said, with a grin that nearly knocked the air out of Kari’s lungs. “I have great news about those gyros.”
The gyros were maybe perfect.
Oh, probably not in a technical sense when judged by professional gyro-makers from Greek or whatever, but the pitas were big and warm and held up very well to the excessive amounts of meat, onions, and tsatziki. The fact that they were so not a good date food was helping the vibes; Kari didn’t feel compelled to look pretty when horfing down a gyro the size of his head in a smoke-filled room that smelled of roasting meat.
“Am I gonna get food poisoning?” he asked Dick about 75% of the way through his feast. Dick was eating a similarly large gyro without much more grace.
“Kind of late to ask that,” Dick pointed out.
“I would eat it either way, I just wanna know if I should be ready.”
“You’ll be fine.” Dick glanced towards the C food safety rating on the wall. “Probably. I’ve eaten here a ton and never get sick.”
“Good enough for me. Man, I wish this place was closer to campus!” Their little journey had originated in a pretty nice area of town, but now they were in a neighborhood that could be politely described as “sketchy.” Kari was noticing that Gotham seemed to turn from chrome to dilapidated brick and rusty metal pretty fast when you weren’t looking, which was probably why Grif hadn’t let yet him explore the town wholly on his own. Kari had plenty of tricks for escaping Grif’s notice when he had to, but that was for emergencies. Bright pink emergencies with ribbons, which he was avoiding like the plague for as long as he could. Batman hadn’t loved having him in Gotham, last time.
“If it was closer to campus, it wouldn’t be this good,” Dick countered. “The financial district ruins all restaurants. Nothing but bougie chains and upscale coffee shops.”
Kari liked bougie chains and upscale coffee shops, but he did not volunteer this information, because Dick was super cool and this hang-out was going great. He was thinking he had decent odds of getting Dick’s number, or maybe at least getting friended back on something that allowed DMs.
“It’s kind of weird it’s not more popular here, considering the sticky arcade and amazing-if-dingy gyros.”
“Gentrification is weird and spotty in Gotham. This neighborhood is pretty safe, because there’s public housing and no place where they can stick a parking garage.”
“Underground?” Kari suggested, because Metropolis was mostly made up of underground parking garages.
“Those don’t do well here. Ground’s a bit… wet, in Gotham, kind of in a general sense.”
This made sense, what with the lake and the rivers and the swamp not super far away. Gotham had to make do with above-ground parking, then, which Kari imagined could be a lot more annoying. Zoning laws and shit, things he was learning about in school and trying to actually maybe retain this time.
College was hard, and he hadn’t even started really re-maintaining his super-sona at this point. But he was trying to do the down-low for a while. He wanted to procrastinate on whatever trouble Batman would give him when he realized the pretty pink princess—a much better name that he should have gone with before the newspapers could name him—had come back to Gotham, or potentially never left.
Dick
It turned out Charlie had never been to the Gotham Botanical Gardens. It turned out Charlie had never actually even heard of the botanical gardens, which was both outrageous and completely understandable.
It came up because they had been discussing the failed gentrification of the area, and how everyone had known from the start that it was a pretty lost cause, because the botanical gardens fail to get the kind of tourist footprint as, say, the zoo or even some famous crime spots. The lack of parking meant you had to bus in or take a cab, and both were notoriously unreliable in Gotham. Not even their fault, really. There were a lot of disturbances both above and under ground.
It doesn’t occur to Dick until they’ve already arrived at the Gardens, and Charlie is running around cooing over butterflies and making chattering friendship with strangers—a serious feat in Gotham—that this day has gotten a little out of hand.
It wasn’t like he’d had plans, although he was normally taking a nap around this time. Canceling that stupid video interview had left his schedule wide open for once. However, rescuing the sad little new kid from the big bad YouTuber had really taken a turn at some point, and he couldn’t pinpoint precisely where. Probably sometime around the churros, or maybe the chess game.
Making friends was a somewhat dicey prospect when you spent your nights the way Dick spent his, but on the other hand, they meant for great cover. Charlie seemed like the sort of guy who would instantly answer “he was with me” if called by the cops for an alibi. As someone in training to take over a mega-corporation, he probably understood the concept of being too busy to hang out. He was a little starstruck but hiding it well, which meant he probably wouldn’t be too pushy or demanding.
Another part of Dick didn’t like that he had to weight the pros and cons of being around someone he obviously got along with well. It made his internal monologue sound a little too Wayne-y for his personal tastes; he’d left Gotham for a reason, after all, and only come back because his replacement had… well… he’d needed to come back. But the fact of the matter was, Nightwing could probably make use of having another spare billionaire on hand, their friendship would make waves online if they decided to publicize it—although it was a matter of time before someone caught them; for all Dick knew they were already posted online—and, most importantly, he maintained, Charlie and Dick got along. He could make friends. It could be normal; it didn’t have to be a whole bat thing.
Kari
Kari was steadfastly maintaining to himself that this was not, no matter how it felt, a thing.
The Gotham City Botanical Gardens were surprisingly nice for being in inner-city Gotham; the crowd was eclectic and diverse, matching the neighborhood, to the point that Kari felt both out-of-place and relaxed. It wasn’t as objectively nice as the massive gardens in, say, the Metropolis airport, which boasted one of the largest indoor gardens in the world (they had an ongoing rivalry with Singapore), but it had a subdued charm that couldn’t be matched anywhere in Metropolis that Kari had experienced.
Kari was distracting himself with a friendly redhead who was teaching him facts about some of Gotham’s native flora. The distraction was deeply necessary, as was the heterosexuality of his casual, charming, friend’s-little-brother flirtations with the older woman. If he didn’t distract himself with bare shoulders and red lips, he’d for sure wind up dwelling on the fact that Dick Grayson, the actual Dick Grayson who he’d had a huge crush on all through high school, had brought Kari out on what felt terrifyingly like a date.
They’d had churros. They’d walked to a park. They’d gone to an arcade, had lunch, and now they were at the botanical garden just because Kari hadn’t heard of them and they were nearby. Suspiciously like the two of them didn’t want the hangout to end, despite copious opportunities to slip out politely. Also, what kind of straight man takes someone to a fucking botanical garden ?!
But that line of thought absolutely could not be endured, because Dick had never given even the slightest hint of bisexuality online or in person, unless one counted knowing where the Gotham City Botanical Gardens were. And that didn’t even fucking matter, because Kari had a lot more going on in his life right now versus when he was in high school crushing on the unobtainable and safely distant. Charles Swanson, billionaire heir apparent, was a young man with multiple dark secrets.
He knew most people online thought he was gay, but in his day-to-day life, he wasn’t even out as bisexual, which he was pretty sure he was. His dad probably wouldn’t care, but it would definitely cause a micro-scandal, and Kari just wasn’t ready for the gossip circulating about him to be something personal and real. He’d given the gossip rags so much more interesting things to talk about that his mom only came up as a parenthetical on occasion, and he’d gotten blissfully used to them no longer twanging on his nerves.
Moreover, absolutely no one knew what he got up into alone in his apartment, save perhaps the cleaning staff who bustled through once a week and may have—despite his best efforts—at some point located the clothing hidden inside the suitcase in his closet. And not even those with the stated task of cleaning up his things every week knew the biggest problem of all, that he was some kind of fucking magical girl and would occasionally fight crime in stilettos.
So, all in all? He was not set up for a date, least of all with Dick Grayson, someone equally famous and with probably nearly as much to lose and, again again again, Kari couldn’t forget, was in all likelihood not even interested in Kari as a friend, and this was absolutely all in his head. Keeping that in mind, Kari pushed every other thought into the back corner of his mind and shoved it into its own Suitcase of Terrible Secrets, and focused on the vague femdom/mommy vibes of the beautiful woman explaining to him the plights of the American Chestnut.
Dick did eventually come rescue Kari from the situation, which did not warrant rescuing because “learning about endangered trees from a hot M?ILF” is not a threat or even a problem, but Kari had gotten in enough compulsive heterosexuality to get his head back on his shoulders. Even if he was walking down a flower-filled path with one of the hottest internet celebrities on the planet, purposefully not thinking about how this situation felt like one of the fanfics he absolutely had never read ever.
They were wandering somewhat aimlessly when Dick got a text. Kari had been taking advantage of the lapse in eye contact to study Dick’s face more than was socially appropriate, and he caught the way Dick’s eyes hardened and got a glint to them, the curve of his lips becoming a stern line, even if briefly.
“Sorry,” Dick said, glancing his way, eyes and mouth already back to Amiable and Charming Goofball. Kari wondered if his face did that. It didn’t bear thinking about. “Duty calls.”
Kari had no idea what constituted duty for a guy who made his living off of already being rich and famous, but he could imagine it was something important from Dick’s momentary expression. Plus, he’d kind of expecting Dick to pull out an excuse to leave, like, five hours ago. He nodded.
“Sure, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the… day.” That sounded so lame. “And the rescue,” he added, which was more accurate.
Dick waved away the gratitude with a brush of his hand in the air. “I had a good time. You follow me on Insta, right?”
Kari didn’t know how he felt about the fact Dick had either known that or assumed it. His stomach was doing weird things. “Who doesn’t?” he joked, in a desperate last-ditch attempt at emotional survival. This failed as he watched Dick pull up the aforementioned app, search for Kari’s name, and hit the follow button. Kari might have been turning a weird color. He was focusing on maintaining a normal facial expression. What the fuck constituted a normal facial expression in this situation?!
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and our busy rich-guy schedules will line up again,” Dick suggested, and it was just vague enough that Kari could immediately assure himself that it was one of those ‘we’ll do lunch sometime!’ situations, which calmed him down somewhat. Following someone online didn’t mean shit. It was just a form of public networking. It was a final bone to throw someone who’d been in an embarrassing situation.
“Yeah,” Kari agreed, relieved to find his normal smile again. “Totally!”
Dick
Dick’s schedule was, in fact, extremely busy, what with staying up all night trying to help Batman hold down Gotham, while leaving plenty of allowance for Batman’s plausible deniability that he had any particular thoughts or emotions about once-Robin-now-Nightwing being back in town. Oh, and also spending his days trying to be an emotional support dog to someone who didn’t like emotions or support, and only mostly tolerated dogs.
But he’d been keeping an eye on the YouTube channel responsible for Charlie Swanson’s shitty day, and he saw the video go up not a week after their aborted interview. He sent it to Charlie on Insta while the view count was still taking the time to register clicks. It featured an edited-down version of their introduction, Dick’s excuse to go to their would-be dressing rooms, and some very annoying footage of the two of them scurrying down the road together, clearly shot out of a window on the same side of the house they’d climbed down. At least there wasn’t any footage of them scaling the side of the building, he supposed.
“We can get it taken down,” he suggested via DM. Dick knew he could do it no problem, and imagined Charlie had similar avenues. There was only a few minutes delay, despite the fact Charlie should probably have been in class—might have been, honestly—and then:
“we can get out in front of it
if u dont mind”
Dick didn’t mind. In fact, he was a bit curious to see Charlie’s idea of “getting out in front of it,” considering the video had unsubtly implied that the two of them had run off to find a cheap motel, more interested in each other than the promised interview. Dick only had to wait twelve minutes before he found out. Onto his feed came Charlie’s newest picture: a selfie Dick remembered taking only vaguely. Charlie was front and center, the camera low and his jawline looking flawless despite that—kid knew his angles. He was pointing up and back with his thumb, looking starstruck, at Dick, whose face, neck, and most of his shoulders were fully visible despite the fact he was standing most of the way behind Kari. There was the end of a churro hanging out of his mouth. Charlie had caught the exact moment he’d glanced down at the camera. Dick suspected he took pictures on rapid-fire.
There was a caption that read “Dick Grayson is taller and nicer in real life, somehow,” and in the description there was a somewhat creative and tragic retelling of their day together, detailing how the interview had been a set-up to embarrass him, and Dick had heroically swept in to rescue him. It didn’t mention the details of what they’d done or where they’d gone, making it seem more like the pity-hang of an older brother’s friend than anything else. Swiping to the right, Dick saw that the second picture in the story was just a screenshot of the “mutuals” indicator next to Dick’s username. It had been decorated with star-eye and screaming face emojis.
As expected of an internet native with millions of followers, Charlie had instantly swung the reaction from “gay hookup” into how nice Dick was and even a seemingly mask-off honest confession that he was having trouble adjusting to Gotham after spending his whole life in Metropolis. Typical “kid away from home for the first time” stuff, painting Dick as the older-brother’s-cool-friend type who’d had compassion for the awkward new kid and helped him out. It wasn’t entirely false, which was exactly why it worked. Abruptly, Charlie had all the sympathy and Dick had all the praise, with posts online holding him aloft as an example of “non-toxic masculinity” and “bro support.”
It did mean their budding friendship was a bit more public than Dick suspected either of them had really wanted, but given the level of celebrity surrounding both of them, that had been inevitable sooner or later. In “getting ahead” of the video, Charlie had also incidentally—or, Dick suspected, not incidentally at all—solidified any future hang-outs as purely Dick taking Charlie under his wing—pun not intended—and showing him the social ropes of Gotham. Given the rumors that circulated around Charlie’s sexuality, which weren’t so much rumors as extremely common assumptions, this was admittedly a relief for Dick, who was just old enough to not want an excess of untoward assumptions about his intentions towards a nineteen-year-old who still looked underage. Or any awkward attempts at topic-breaching by Bruce, which he’d already experienced once as a teenager when Bruce had picked up on the awkward will-they-won’t-they between Dick and Barbara.
Dick appreciated the foresight. Enough that he felt fully confident when, a few weeks later, after he’d been forced into taking a few nights off after a not-even-that-bad shoulder injury, he sent Charlie an invitation to the archery range they’d talked about. Charlie had gone to all the trouble of pre-emptively protecting Dick’s reputation, after all. It’d be a shame to waste it.