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It’s easy to find Grayson, which is about the first time Midnighter can say that and mean it. All he has to do is follow the grumblings of the rough-edged amnesiac pretty boy hustling everyone out of their pool money, and it leads him straight to a dive bar in South Gotham, the kind of establishment that well-groomed socialite Dick Grayson normally wouldn’t be caught dead in. But well-groomed socialite Dick Grayson is nowhere to be found tonight: There’s only a stranger with a shaved head and a half-open shirt, hunched over a tumbler of whisky at the bar, the clean curve of a surgical scar cutting a path through the dark fuzz starting to cover his skull.
Midnighter slides onto the unoccupied stool next to him and flashes Grayson a grin, sharp with all his teeth. It’s a strange thing when that familiar face simply blinks back at him, unreactive. The computer in his brain starts running scenarios from the moment he lays eyes on his target. “Drinking alone tonight?”
Recognition flickers across Grayson’s eyes, and for a second M thinks Dick knows him—but then Grayson drops his gaze down M’s body and takes it back up again, slowly, and M realizes Grayson is recognizing something else entirely. “Not anymore, I guess.”
It’s strange: “Ric” has Dick’s face and voice and holds his body the way Dick did, but there’s none of those carefully constructed walls, none of the casual attentiveness and Bat-trained acuity that made it hard for M to believe he was pure undiluted human. He is much easier to read than Dick ever was, and M finds it as unnerving as he does intriguing. Part of Grayson’s charm was his unattainability; at least, that’s what Midnighter told himself. The person sitting in front of him is so open that M feels like he’s being served something on a silver platter. If only he can figure out what it is.
Tell me, Grayson, Midnighter thinks, grimly, taking in the ill-fitting clothes hanging loose off Grayson’s shoulders, the bitten-red of his lips. Who’s really under there?
He turns and catches the bartender’s attention. “Two more of whatever this gentleman’s having, please.”
Grayson grins, an easy, crooked thing that Midnighter has only ever caught glimpses of before. And given so easily, too. “Trying to buy my company?”
Midnighter accepts the tumblers of scotch the bartender passes him and slides one over to Grayson. He lifts the other and tilts it to his lips. “Depends,” he drawls. “Is it working?”
Grayson spends a moment looking at Midnighter with his head tilted, and that’s an expression Midnighter recognizes: He’s seen it on Agent 37’s face dozens of times before. But then Grayson grins and takes the drink, downing half of it in one careless swallow, and any ghosts that Midnighter sees flee into the night. “Yeah,” Grayson says, mouth curving. “Something’s working.”
Midnighter flashes Grayson a shark smile that doesn’t confirm anything, but doesn’t deny it, either. He turns on his stool to face the floor and props his elbows back against the bar. “You’re somewhat notorious around these parts, if I’m not mistaken.” He watches Grayson out of the corner of his eye, just in case this is some elaborate undercover plot after all. “Word is you can hustle god himself out of his pool money.”
Grayson barks out a laugh. He swivels his own stool around to watch the tables. “It’s not that hard, once you know the tricks.”
Midnighter raises a brow. “You seem like someone who knows his fair share of tricks.”
Grayson grins toothily at him. “It’s just math,” he says. “Once you know the angle and the distance between the cue and the ball, all you have to do is deliver with the right force.” He points around his drink at a heavyset man in a pinstriped shirt arguing with two other players. “Besides, Big Fred over there is always looking for a fight and favors his left side, so he’s an easy score most nights.”
Give it up, Nightwing, Midnighter once said, entirely mocking, when he and Grayson faced off over a shared target during their Spyral days. You’re not getting this one. I’ve got a computer in my brain. You think you can beat it?
Grayson just grinned at him, sharp and manic and infuriatingly gorgeous. It made Midnighter itch to punch his teeth out. Yeah, he said, completely free of ego. I think I can.
Midnighter tilts the rest of his drink down his throat. “You know, most people can’t exactly do angle and velocity calculations on the spot.”
Grayson frowns at that, and Midnighter sees something flicker in those clear blue eyes. Then he shrugs, like it’s nothing more impressive than a party trick you can do with your tongue. “Then I guess they can’t hustle god himself out of his pool money, can they?”
Midnighter chuckles. “No, I guess not.”
Grayson glances over at him. A slow smile spreads across his lips. “You seem to know who I am. But I don’t know who you are.”
Midnighter sets his empty glass down. “M,” he says. “A pleasure.”
Grayson grins at him. “Call me Ricky.”
~*~
“Ricky” downs two more scotches and a vodka tonic, then suggests to Midnighter that they “get out of here,” an activity that seems to primarily entail stumbling out of the bar and into the unlit back alley behind it. M follows more cautiously behind him, scanning the shadows for any unwanted guests before he lets the door to the service entrance swing shut behind him. Grayson slumps against the brick wall of the laundromat next door and digs in the pockets of his too-tight jeans for a cigarette. He sticks it between his lips and glances up at M. “Got a light?”
M pulls a lighter from his jacket pocket, walks up to Grayson, and flicks it on. Grayson grins at him and bends in to light his smoke. He straightens and takes the cigarette between his fingers, exhaling a cloud into the brisk night. Then he leans forward and presses their mouths together.
Grayson tastes, predictably, like alcohol and tobacco, with the slightest hint of something bittersweet underneath. Midnighter gets a hand on his hip and slides it up his side; Grayson groans against his mouth. He’s thinner than the last time M saw him, ribs jutting against skin. M curls his fingers and presses the tips in between the bones, and Grayson jumps, slightly, before pressing himself closer against M’s chest.
M settles his other hand on Grayson’s slender neck and slips his thumb under Grayson’s chin, using his hold to guide Grayson back. Grayson breaks the kiss and blinks up at M with a dazed look, mouth swollen and pupils blown. M swallows. “You hungry?”
Grayson blinks again. The haze clears from his eyes. “What?”
Midnighter steps back and shoves his hands into his jacket. “C’mon,” he says, turning toward the street. “I know a good place not far from here.”
~*~
“So.” Grayson’s hands fiddle with the chopsticks on the table, but his eyes are intent and narrowed. “I have to ask.”
The late-night dim sum house Midnighter has taken them to is bursting at the seams; the combined cacophony of the drunken conversations of the patrons, the clatter of the food carts, and the rapid Cantonese of the servers is loud enough that M is confident no one will overhear them. He takes a sip of his chrysanthemum tea. “Shoot.”
“I’ve got this…family,” Grayson starts, hesitant, like he doesn’t know whether that’s the right word for them. “I’m not in contact with them anymore, but they keep trying to change that. You’re not one of them, are you?”
Ah. Now they’ve come to why M is really here—or at least, why he tells himself he’s really here. So he doesn’t remember who’s who in his motley crew of altruists. He thinks of Grayson’s grim-faced clan, how none of them seem to be able to take a joke like he can, and has to swallow down a snort. “Definitely not,” he says; then, “You wouldn’t know if I was a part of your family?”
Grayson’s expression turns sheepish. He tilts his head and gestures to the surgical scar on his skull. “I had an accident,” he explains, blunt. “Don’t remember much from before it happened.”
Midnighter traces the curve of Grayson’s scar with his eyes and feels something like rage stir in his stomach. He forcefully tamps it down and reaches for another sip of his tea. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Grayson shrugs. A server pushes her cart up to the table and asks, “Xiao long bao, cha shao bao, shao mai?”
Grayson perks up. “Liang ge xiao long bao . Xie xie .” The woman tongs over two bamboo baskets, stamps their card, and rattles off.
Learned memory still intact. “You speak Chinese?”
Grayson shrugs again, smile strained. “I guess I do.” He grabs a dumpling in his chopsticks and pops it wholesale into his mouth, apparently uncaring that it’s filled with hot soup. “Fuck, that’s good.”
Midnighter takes a dumpling of his own and eats it like a civilized person, draining the soup into a duck spoon and sipping at it before dipping the vessel into the vinegar and ginger sauce. Grayson watches him with a twinkle in his eye that is undoubtedly amusement. M moves down the checklist in his head. “So. Ricky. What do you do for a living? Besides hustle old-timers at shady drinking establishments.”
Grayson smiles. “I drive a cab,” he says. “I guess I still remember where everything in Gotham is pretty well—like, really well. I don’t think I’ve needed GPS once since I started.”
Spatial memory still intact. “That’s impressive,” Midnighter says. Dick would have known the streets of Gotham better than the back of his own hand since his Robin years. “Even for a native.”
“Yeah, well.” Grayson frowns, a little distant. “I guess I got around a lot—before.”
The computer in Midnighter’s brain crunches its last calculations and makes a carefully weighed decision. He reaches for the teapot and refills Grayson’s cup. “Late night strolls around the city will do that for you.”
Grayson blinks, and there —it’s like a light switch flicking on behind his eyes. Analyzing a situation was always instinctive for Grayson; he could forget his own name—he has forgotten his own name—but he wouldn’t forget that. “Yeah,” he says, slowly. He takes in Midnighter’s slicked-back hair, the dark leather of his jacket, a slight frown tugging at his lips.
Midnighter watches him, waiting—
“This is nice of you, you know.”
Midnighter raises a brow. “What is?”
“Buying me dinner, before.” Grayson pops another dumpling into his mouth and grins. “Well. You know.”
Midnighter fights the urge to throw the teapot at Grayson, just to see how he’d react. “Eat your dumplings,” he says instead. “You look like you need it.”
~*~
Midnighter expects Grayson to call his ruse the second they step out of the restaurant. Instead, he turns to M with a grin that is about as lecherous as anything that crosses Dick Grayson’s face can be. “So. Your place or mine?”
He takes Grayson back to the loft where he’s staying downtown, a safehouse that Grayson himself once recommended he buy, If you’re gonna keep insisting my place isn’t good enough for you. Grayson comes in through the door, takes in the high ceiling and open floor plan, and lets out an appreciative whistle. “Nice place.”
“Not mine, but thanks.” Midnighter shrugs off his jacket and throws it up on the coat rack. He turns to find Grayson watching him, head tilted, mouth curled in a smile. He hooks his fingers in M’s shirt and tugs him to the couch.
M falls back onto the couch and lets Grayson settle in his lap, knees boxing in his thighs. He runs his palms up Grayson’s back and watches Grayson exhale, eyelids fluttering at the touch. Grayson grins at him and slinks down to kiss him. He’s loose-limbed and pliable in M’s arms, and every time M strokes a thumb down his throat or scratches at the exposed skin under his ridden-up shirt, he shivers and groans, like he’s never been touched before. It’s intoxicating, like usual, like always. But when Ric begins to pull at his belt, he breaks the kiss and stays Grayson’s hands with his own.
Grayson swallows. His eyes search M’s. “We’ve done this before,” he says, almost a whisper.
This Grayson is so much more vulnerable than the one M knows, so much more uncertain. “Yes,” he says. The endless analytics churning in his head are useless. M knows what’s in front of his own eyes, what’s under his own hands. The truth settles, cold, into his stomach.
“I knew it.” Grayson’s hands twitch, but he doesn’t pull away. “I knew I remembered you.”
M sighs. “Grayson—”
“Damn it.” Grayson shoves back, stumbles to his feet. “You knew him. Me.” His voice drops, as if he’s afraid someone will overhear. “Nightwing.”
Midnighter considers explaining Agent 37 to him and decides that he doesn’t need to cause any more damage than he already has. “Yes,” he admits, reluctantly.
Grayson narrows his eyes at him. “I remember,” he repeats. His expression is almost pained. “We worked together. I can’t—I don’t know why, but it was—” He stops and swallows, and Midnighter remembers the layers of masks, both literal and figurative, that Grayson never let down during his time in Spyral, the blisters that formed on his skin under the hot desert sun as he carried that baby to safety. “And you”—Grayson makes a face—“you’re married .”
If Midnighter had less control over his own body, he’d wince. “In a long-term relationship,” he corrects. Or at least, he was.
It’s the wrong thing to say; he knows it before the words even come out. Grayson’s expression shuts down like a shop going out of business. “Wow,” he laughs, dark and bitter and wrong, wrong coming out of Dick Grayson’s mouth. “Everyone talks about Dick Grayson like he was some kind of paradigm of perfection. But he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, did he? At least, not enough to not be a homewrecker.”
Midnighter’s fist curls on the couch. He finds himself irrationally angry, like he’s listening to someone spew bitter things about Dick Grayson when they have no right to even have that name in their mouth—only the mouth belongs to Dick Grayson, too. Strange, M’s instincts mutter, unhappy with the mixed signals, the confusion. Strange, strange, strange.
But it’s not Dick Grayson staring down at Midnighter, eyes glittering and chin defiantly tilted. He looks like Dick Grayson and sounds like Dick Grayson and moves like Dick Grayson, but he’s not—not the infuriating, breathtaking, impossibly stubborn man Midnighter feels—feels something for. The person looking back at M is wrung-out and broken; he needs help but he will never accept it. M realizes, with grim finality, that this was a mistake. He thought he could be objective; he thought he could come to Gotham, the city that never stops throwing punches, and look this empty version of Grayson in the face, evaluate whether or not he’s fit for recruitment, without letting his own softness get in the way. But he can’t. For all of his superhuman enhancements and fight-computer brain, this is a battle he’ll never win. He should know that by now.
Grayson takes M’s extended silence as a concession and scoffs. “What happens now?”
Midnighter looks up at him. “What do you want to happen….Ric?”
Grayson’s mouth twists. He looks Midnighter over, eyes dark. “We can fuck,” he says. “Or I can go. There’s nothing here for me otherwise.”
The computer in Midnighter’s brain rambles on, utterly unhelpful, and all he’s left with is the memory of that night—the way Dick shivered as M pressed him down against the mattress with a hand to his bare chest, the moans he muffled in M’s neck. He swallows.
“So,” Ric says, expectant, challenging. “What’ll it be?”