i.
Dick is seventeen and the cameras are all over him, like flies.
"Yes," he says, smiling best he can. "I'm awfully grateful to Bruce Wayne for taking me in. Wayne Enterprises is a wonderful business that does so much for Gotham, and Mr. Wayne is always willing to go that extra step."
Reporters have follow-up questions, of course, but his agent deflects most of them. It's funny really, how he'd been in foster care less than a month ago, just another black youth lost in the system, and now he has an actual agent.
He's quiet in the car on the way back from the press conference. The agent - Gloria - hands him a bottle of water, but he doesn't drink it. Instead Dick runs it up and down his leg, grateful for something to do with his hands and for the cool feel of it against him. It seems he's going to have to be grateful for a long time.
Wayne Manor is beautiful as always. Of course, for the cameras, he has to pretend like it's his first time here, but of course he's been here before. These things are always staged. He walks up to the man of the hour, his supposed hero.
"Pleased to meet you, ," he says, grasping his hand like he's supposed to. Bruce's eyes are hard and flat and reveal nothing.
"Richard Grayson," he says. "It's good to have you here at last."
Call me Dick, Dick thinks but doesn't say, not yet anyway. It had been a joke nickname first, a thing that people threw at him until he learned to love it, to wear it like armour, but he still doesn't feel comfortable pressing the issue now. He's been Richard for this whole process. He can last another few minutes.
The cameras click click click like the snapping of pincers of insects, hungry. Bruce lays a huge hand on his shoulder and leads him inside the manor.
"Now kid," he says, and Dick bristles. He's seventeen, and has been floating in and out of institutions his whole life. He's been a man since he lost his parents. Kid is a little demeaning. "This was pure PR, you get that. Stock prices, corporate policy, you get it."
"Sure," Dick says easily, casually balling his fists inside his pockets.
"Yeah, well just don't start calling me Dad or expecting father-son bonding time anytime soon."
There's a lot Dick could say to that, but he doesn't. He simply stands and observes Bruce, this man who has so kindly fostered him to make even more money for himself. He's well-built, and brimming with a confidence, a strength. He works out, and Dick wants to know where the gym is, even though he's more into track himself. They couldn't look more different; Bruce stocky and white, with slick-backed hair and a stance that says I have money. Dick is wire-thin with deep black skin and short cropped hair that would grow into a wild, cloud-like afro if he let it. There's no way anyone could ever mistake them for father and son.
"I get it. Which room is mine?"
Bruce eyes him and smiles. "You have the second floor to yourself. Enjoy."
Dick doesn't smile back, not yet, but he does take his bag - a pitiful amount of possessions, all things considered- and walk up the winding staircase.
He dumps the bag in the first bedroom by the stairs and swears he'll investigate the rest of them later. For now, he falls into the bed that's as soft as his mother's hands used to be, and for the first time in years, Dick doesn't dream.
ii.
It doesn't take long, after he's woken again and taken the most powerful shower of his life that hits him like a flurry of scalding punches, to explore the second floor in its entirety. There's loads of bedrooms, their tight, smoothly tucked in sheets showing that no-one else sleeps here anyway, and a library, and a room with a fireplace and a chessboard in the centre of it.
When he gets downstairs, the place is empty, abandoned. He doesn't know where Bruce is gone, but supposes that's what it's going to be like, living with a billionaire with a reputation for not spending many nights in his own bed.
Dick grabs the phone off the counter and dials for a pizza. He knows that there's probably a chef around here who'd cook anything he liked for him, but for now, a large pepperoni that's not going to be out of his own pocket is enough.
iii.
That night, as he's tossing and turning, unable to sleep and cursing himself for taking a nap in the middle of the day, someone giggles against his door. Bruce doesn't strike him as a giggly guy, which means it's someone else, a stranger.
He shoots up in the bed, grasping for his knife that he slowly remembers isn't there. This isn't the streets, or even foster care. He doesn't need a weapon here.
Dick pads over to the door and opens it. A hispanic-looking girl bats her drunken eyelashes at him.
"I think I lost Brucie," she says, and steps forward. She smells like alcohol and perfume, and she runs a long fingernail down his chest. "But you're delightful too."
"Try the third floor," Dick says, stepping out of the range of her hands, and closes the door gently. He waits for the slow sound of her footsteps retreating from the door, and then lets out a breath.
He gets back into bed, thinking about how does someone go about losing a girl in the distance between the front door and the bedroom. Unless there were other girls present. Or boys for that matter.
He pictures the girl, her sharp brown eyes melting in pleasure, those long nails running down Bruce's muscular back. He pictures her panting, and Bruce too, his breaths coming quick and tight like he can't get enough air. His imaginary Bruce makes a low sound, an inherently inpatient and greedy noise, and Dick is vaguely aware that he's running his own hand over his cock, which has grown hard at this vivid imagery.
Bruce, finally out of those bloody suits and naked and eager and rough, pushing Dick down with those hands. Dick felt the strength of them today when Bruce lay his hand on his shoulder today, and now he imagines it tenfold, holding him down and Bruce thrusting against him from above.
Dick realises with a slight panic that he's replaced the Hispanic girl in this fantasy with himself, and that he's frantically tugging at his own cock to the image of himself and Bruce doing it, but can't find it in himself to stop now. He furiously jerks his hand over and over, the other hand scrambling for something to grab onto in these too-soft silky sheets. His hips buck up urgently, and then he comes, all over himself and these pretty, expensive sheets.
Exhausted now again, he sinks back down without even cleaning himself off. He'll do it in the morning.
iv.
"Dick," someone says. His eyes snap open and he instinctively pulls the covers further over himself, hiding the evidence of his little fantasy that's still coating his legs and stomach.
"I'm flying to Ireland for a business deal," Bruce says from the doorway. "I won't be back for two days."
"Okay?" he replies from under the blankets, baffled why Bruce didn't just get one of the staff to tell him later.
Bruce watches him from the door, and then nods, and then he's gone again, and Dick throws himself into the shower, washing away the cum and trying not to feel disappointed, because that's truly ridiculous.