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parlor tricks
High noon, and Dick hangs upside down, hands and feet bound, suspended in a net in a shadowy alley where Zatanna finds and observes him from her comfortable perch on the ground.
“Hi,” he says, a little exertion in his voice, a little red in his cheeks, a little smile on his face.
Zatanna returns the greeting and squints through the net. “No utility belt?”
“Big bad took it,” he says with an upside down shrug. A bead of sweat travels down the length of his neck and face and disappears into his hair. “A little help, Zee? That’s why I called you, remember?”
“Oh, I remember,” she says, poking her finger into his cheek. “But you look so cute in this position. I think I’ll stay and admire it for a bit.”
“You’re diabolical,” he tells her. “And you call yourself a hero.” But he plays along and pretends to straighten up, blinking a few times to keep her in focus, and she can’t keep back the grin that stretches across her face. “What do you want?”
“Let me think,” she says. She steps back and circles him, takes in broad shoulders, muscles strained and pushing against the shiny black of his uniform, sweat beading and sliding down his face and neck.
“Don’t think for too long. I’m starting to feel light headed.”
“Yes, I’ve heard I have that effect.”
He laughs. “Decided yet?”
“Why, yes, I think I have.” She taps her chin with her finger and says, “I’d like to know your name.”
She can almost feel his eyes narrowing at her through his domino mask, even as the corners of his lips tilt upward. “My name,” he repeats.
“Your name. And I’ll release you. But if you don’t want to give it to me, I understand. I’ll just leave you here to call the next person on your SOS list.”
He’s fully grinning now, playful and sweet and Zatanna doesn’t know she’s leaning closer to him until she can count the freckles on his nose.
“What’s it gonna be?” she asks in a whisper.
“Dick Grayson,” he says immediately, without a second thought.
She feels something swell inside her as she leans back and snaps the cord holding him up. He falls, hard, to the floor and she unties the ropes around his wrists and ankles. She’s getting to her feet when he grabs her hand suddenly and pulls her back down.
“I don’t have an SOS list,” he says. “You were the first person that came to mind.”
She smiles and lets her hand trail over his forehead, and she tucks a lock of dark hair behind his ear. “While we’re confessing, I already knew your name. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
She’s out of the alley before he can even get to his feet.
.::.
Sunrise, and Dick is pressed against the side of a warehouse on the waterfront, encased in high-density polyurethane foam up to the neck, and Zatanna leans against the wall beside the hardened foam and smiles at the exasperated look on what she can see of his face.
“Hi,” he says around a sigh.
“I’m starting to think I’m the only person on your go-to list,” she tells him.
He stares out at the water. His jaw is set, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “You’re number two on my speed dial.”
“And who’s number one?”
He turns his head with some difficulty and faces her.
“And you don’t want Daddy finding you like this,” she says. “Well, I can respect that.”
“What’ll it be this time?” he asks, and despite himself there is a smile threatening to brighten up his sour face.
“Let me think.”
“Don’t think for too long,” he warns. “My arm itches.”
“You’re so cute when you’re completely helpless,” she coos.
He laughs. “Got it yet?”
“I think I do. I would like to see your face.”
“My face,” he repeats, and she gets the feeling that underneath the mask, he is scanning her every feature.
“Your face. Or I could leave you here to the next person on your speed dial.” She pushes off the wall and circles around to stand before him, hands on her hips, waiting. She steps closer, close enough to feel his breath come out and touch her face, close enough to smell the city on him, exhaust fumes and cigarettes and the night.
“Okay,” he says.
She reaches up and peels the mask away, and bright blue hits her like the sun rising behind them.
She feels her smile when she sees his, and the corners of his eyes crinkle like they’re smiling too. He starts to say something and she shushes him, and they stand in silence until she takes a step back and puts his mask back on for him and breaks through the foam with a word whispered backwards.
He stumbles and she shoves her shoulder under his arm and pushes him back to the wall to regain his balance, and he puts his arm around her and squeezes.
“You’re actually number one on my speed dial,” he tells her. “I just didn’t want to tell you at first because it would make me seem like a sap.”
“While we’re on the topic of confessions....” she trails and he gapes at her until she can almost see the blue even through the opaque white.
“How the hell—?”
“I stalked you in your school once,” she says. “But I wanted you to show me yourself.”
They watch the light break over the water and she lays her head on his shoulder, then she leaves him standing on the waterfront, staring after her.
.::.
Midnight, and Dick is in shackles, his arms stretched out, each hand cuffed and linked to a pin in the ground by long, thick chains, his legs bolted to the wall behind him, and Zatanna stands in the doorway of the abandoned apartment and clicks her tongue.
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” she says in response to his meek, “Hi.”
“I would’ve thought you’d like the idea of me in chains,” he says.
“It had definitely crossed my mind.” She steps into the room and looks around, at cobwebs and shadows and the even coating of dust on the floors, the walls. “Very creepy.”
“Villains aren’t known for their hospitality, unfortunately,” he says.
She crosses the room and places her hand flat against the blue emblem on his chest, and he isn't hiding his smile so why should she hide hers?
“What do you want now?” he asks, and it’s a whisper, brushing against her face, warm and soft.
“Let me think,” she whispers back.
“Take your time. No one’s tied up in chains or anything.”
“I think I’ve got it,” she says. “I want a memory.”
His smile falters for only a fraction of a second and she wouldn’t have caught it at all if all her attention hadn't been on his mouth at that moment.
“A memory,” he repeats.
“Yes,” she says. “A memory. Tell me something from your childhood.”
He hesitates, and she sees him glance at the chains holding his arms straight out as though deliberating whether it’s worth it or not.
“Or I could leave you here and someone not as nice as I am could take advantage of a handsome young man in chains,” she says. She presses against him and places her chin on his chest, looking up at him, and she can feel his heart beat fast through their clothes.
“I remember cotton candy,” he says. “I remember making it with my dad at the circus, and he was teaching me how to spin it onto a paper cone. You have to spin the cone and while you’re spinning that, you circle the cone around inside the machine. He said, ‘it’s like the way the earth spins by itself but also circles the sun’. I hadn't known that the earth spun around the sun, or that it spun on its own axis, I must have been six years old. And I pictured the earth on a cone and someone spinning it around and circling it around the sun, like it was cotton candy and some big thing was getting ready to eat it.”
He laughs a little, but it’s quiet and kind of sad, and she whispers the words that turn the chains into loose threads that he shakes off to wrap his arms around her and pull her close.
“You were a pretty dumb kid,” she says, and his chest rumbles under her cheek with another laugh, and when she says, “I’m sorry about your dad,” he is still.
“How—?” he begins, but he shakes his head.
She tells him anyway. “You always knew what to do, what to say to me when Fate took my dad. You were great. Almost too great. I just guessed.”
He pulls back a little to smile at her. “You’re full of surprises, Zee,” he says.
“Or maybe you’re just too easy,” she teases.
He looks at her like he’s thinking about kissing her, and she’s definitely thinking about kissing him, but they end up sitting on the floor of the dusty room with moonlight blasting in through the broken window and collecting in the shattered glass on the sill that glitters like a hundred little diamonds. She gets up to leave and she feels his eyes on her until she’s across the street and around the corner.
.::.
Sunset, and the city is colored orange and pink and purple, and Dick is flat on his back on the rooftop of a high rise, his arms and legs held to the ground with magic that crackles and snaps, and Zatanna watches from behind the stairway that leads into the building, her hands out controlling the force of the binds.
He struggles for a minute, then collapses back onto the ground, breathless, and stares up at the sky and all its shades of orange until she’s thinking about letting him go, and then he says, “Computer, call Zatanna.”
Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She picks up with a quiet, “Boy Wonder.”
“Zee,” he says, his voice measured and even. “How is my favorite magician?”
“Busy,” she says. “I’m going to have to call you back.”
“Wait,” he says, but she’s already hung up.
He stares up at the sky some more, and she waits for him to call someone else, but the minutes tick by and she realizes he isn't going to call anyone. He’s making himself comfortable, as comfortable as he can get with his arms and legs stretched out and bound to the concrete. She hears a deep sigh, some humming, and then the sky darkens, goes from mostly orange to mostly purple, and when she thinks her face is going to split in half from all the smiling, she lets him go.
He gets up gingerly, looking around, and she steps out from behind the stairway.
He stares, mouth agape, in shock. And then, he starts to laugh. “No way, I should’ve known,” he says. “You’re never too busy for me.”
“That’s one way to put it,” she says.
He closes the distance between them, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. “So you brought me up here. Why?”
“It was an experiment,” she says. “I was testing out a hypothesis.”
“An experiment.” His mouth tilts up into half a smile. “That sounds interesting.”
“The outcome was,” she tells him.
“What was your hypothesis?”
She slides her hand out of his grip and circles him, crossing her arms. “That maybe the reason why I always get called to bail you out of the weird positions I find you in is because you don’t call anyone else. That I’m not just your first choice, I’m your only choice.”
His hand darts out to grab her waist as she starts another revolution and she stops, watching, waiting.
He says, “Maybe that’s because I trust you. Because I can count on you.”
“That’s what I concluded,” she says.
“And are you happy with your conclusion?”
“Maybe. It means I still have to bail you out, though. It’s tough work, pretending to be put out that I have to get you out of chains.”
He laughs, and it dances in the air the way his laughs used to when he was still Robin. “I might deign to stay in chains a little longer for you, if that’s what you want.”
“There’s the silver lining I was hoping for,” she says, and he kisses her. It’s not unexpected, she sees it coming a mile away waving a red flag, but it’s still soft, it’s still sweet, it’s exactly what she thought it would be.
They’re sitting on the edge of the building, and she’s holding his hand on her lap, when he says, “I may or may not have guessed that the magic holding me to the floor was yours, and that you were conducting an experiment.”
She raises her eyebrows, impressed. “How?”
He shrugs, the city lights bright on the shiny black of his mask, his suit. “Felt like something you would do.”
“While we’re confessing, it wasn’t an experiment so much as just wanting you to say it.”
He smiles, and she smiles, and they stay on the rooftop until dawn breaks through the darkness and they leave together.
.