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1
Dick knows for a fact that Zatanna thinks they’re all weird.
She just caught them all in a telepathic conversation, to which her response was, “I can't decide if that's really cool, or. . . really rude.”
They proceed to show her around the cave afterwards. As she’s chatting away with M’gann across the far end of the room, the rest of the team is slowly trailing behind. Wally shoves an elbow into Dick’s ribs, not-at-all subtly.
“Ow! What was that for?” Dick squirms.
“You calling dibs on the new girl, huh?” Wally says, eyebrows wagging. “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back. I’ll give you a fair shot, but if she says no, I’m asking her out.”
“Dude! How is that a fair shot?”
Wally proceeds to ignore him. “Still trying to work my way into M’gann’s heart. She’s a tough one, I can tell. Martian layers and all that. I think she’s really warming up to me, though. Hey, if you and Zatanna don’t work out—you could always take your chances with Artemis? Might help her lighten up, if you know what I’m saying.”
Dick shakes his head in a what’s wrong with you way and sighs. “Wally, not everyone appreciates your uninhibited approach to flirting.”
“Not everyone’s got it,” Wally gestures at himself. “She won’t hold it against you, but fine. What do you see in her?”
Dick watches as Zatanna laughs with M’gann across the room, tucking her hair behind her ear as her cheeks flare up with a sudden wave of pink. Must’ve been a joke that made her blush like that.
“Well, she’s really pretty,” Dick says absentmindedly.
She catches his glance from across the room and suddenly he feels M’gann’s eyes on him too. Shit. Did they hear his conversation with Wally? Has M’gann been listening in on his thoughts this whole time?
A brief silence follows, as they turn back to each other, seemingly unbothered by Dick’s lack of response.
Wally pats him on the shoulder. “That’s a good start, buddy. You’ll have to try a lot harder than that, though.”
2
“She is so pretty,” Dick tells M’gann one evening as they’re both wolfing down cereal for dinner.
Everyone else was assigned on a mission in Bialya. Simple recon mission, or so it goes. Dick is still nursing a leg injury from a run-in with the Riddler last week, and M’gann’s taking a week of brain-rest after a couple of telepathic attacks this month.
So, of course, it’s a night of rom coms and gossip. Clueless is on, which M’gann seems particularly fond of. She’s recited too many lines from too many scenes.
Dick would never tell a single soul about this, especially not Wally. But it’s actually kind of therapeutic. He gets why girls do this now.
“She definitely is,” M’gann agrees, opening a new pack of Froot Loops. “Why don’t you just tell her? I mean, when Conner told me I looked pretty it made me feel like the best girl on the planet.”
“It did?” Dick sits up. Gears start turning in his brain. It's like a lightning bolt has struck.
“Yeah, totally!” M’gann says.
Dick still isn’t convinced. “Can’t be that easy. Conner is a pretty straightforward guy. And that’s not an insult to him, by the way. But Zatanna and I are—”
“Both obsessed with speaking in weird codes and backwards words?”
“Well, yeah, if you put it that way.”
On the television screen, the main character seems to have a realization about the love of her life. M’gann claps her hands together and cheers. “This is my favourite part.”
Dick sits back and lets his mind work through the plausible scenarios. How to best ask out a girl. Or maybe just tell her that she’s pretty. So that she can return the compliment and go out with you. Or just kiss you.
“Just tell her how you feel, Dick,” M’gann says. “Honesty is always best.”
He nods, still practicing lines in his head.
3
He thinks about asking Bruce for advice. But it’s kind of awkward. Really awkward, actually. They never talk about these things. And these days, with back-to-back missions with the team, they’ve barely spent any time together without the masks on.
He doesn’t expect Bruce to be the first one to bring it up.
“So you and Zatanna—I take it you two are getting along well?” Bruce says, over dinner as Alfred’s pouring gravy over their roast chicken.
“Uh, yeah, I guess. We all are. She’s really cool,” Dick says, to an uncomfortable silence that follows.
Bruce nods.
“What makes you say that?”
He starts cutting through the chicken, “Oh, nothing. It’s just that Giovanni’s been telling me that you’ve all made her feel very welcome. And she talks about you, quite a bit apparently.”
“She does?” Dick leans forward in his seat, nearly knocking off Alfred’s arm and getting hot gravy all over the table. “Sorry, Alfred.”
“Yes. She says she wishes she got to spend more time with you. Even asked her dad to transfer her to Gotham High.”
Dick is blown away. Like, mind—blown.
How has he missed this?
“Is she transferring? Did you offer to pay for her fees? Will she have to wait ‘till next term?”
Bruce offers a tiny smile. Still doesn't break through the cracks of that stern expression, though. “Giovanni said no. Because it’s too far from their home, and the two of them can’t be too far from that house. It needs to be protected.”
“Protected?” Dick asks. “Like they need home security? Because you can definitely pay for that.”
“Let’s just say it’s more of a magical thing. I’ve learned not to ask too many questions to Giovanni. I think you should learn the same with Zatanna. Magic users can be dangerous, Dick.”
This is so not what he needed from Bruce today. He’s heard the whole ‘magic is dangerous’ lecture so many times, but now that Zatanna’s actually in his life? Oh, it’s going to increase tenfold.
“But, that’s not to say you two shouldn’t be spending time together. In fact, I invited Giovanni over for a drink tonight. He said he’d bring Zatanna, before we all head to Mount Justice this evening.”
“Tonight? You mean after dinner tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, shit—” He hears Bruce take a deep breath, and he quickly corrects himself, “Sorry, sorry. I just meant I need to change into something better. More presentable. Zatanna always looks so pretty and I’m still in my gymnastics gear—”
“Yes, even after I keep telling you to clean up before dinner,” Bruce mutters, the sound of a knife hitting a ceramic plate.
“I’ll be right back!” Dick runs to the showers and tries to remember which cologne M’gann and Artemis like best.
4
Dick has had his fair share of terrible pick-up lines. He can admit that. Not that anyone’s keeping score.
Except Wally.
He’s in stitches by the kitchen table, laughing at the fact that Dick let a couple of his practiced pick-up lines slip through their telepathic mind link earlier during the mission.
“Come on, Wally. They weren’t that bad. And if they were, least I didn’t actually say them out loud. Which is more than we can all say for you.”
Artemis decides to join in on the fun. “Zatanna! How about you say my name backwards, and I call you mine?”
Wally pulls her in for a hi-five, “Oh my god, I totally forgot about that one!” They both start cackling like a pack of hyenas and if Dick’s reading too much into this, it looks like they’ve been getting more and more comfortable around each other.
He doesn’t like what’s going on.
Conner then walks up to him and nudges him, mid-whisking a bowl of cream frosting. (Fourth attempt at making cupcakes this week. It’s his new thing.)
“Zatanna, if you ever need an assistant, I follow orders and can be as pretty as your smile.”
Wally and Artemis stop laughing for a split second, look at each other, and start tumbling into Conner next.
Dick throws his arms up. “Come on, guys. Conner, really? I expect it from these two but you? You never bully anyone!”
“No, you’re right. You’re my first, actually.” He smiles innocently.
“Oh, I know Dick would so love to be—” Wally starts, but Dick knows the end of that joke and storms out of the room.
5
Turns out, it doesn’t take much for Dick to finally get the girl.
All it took was for them to 1) save the world from potential destruction, and 2) be in each other’s vicinity at stroke of midnight at New Years. And well, so much for trying to follow M'gann's advice on being straightforward. Zatanna has that whole thing on a lock.
She pulls him in for a kiss out of nowhere, and boy, Dick never knew she had the upper-body strength, but he's not complaining. It feels so good, despite the initial crashing-of-lips thing, and the fact that it's still so surreal.
It also ends far too soon.
They both look like some version of a deer in headlights when they pull apart.
“I, um—sorry!” Zatanna starts, stuttering. “Was that a little presumptuous?”
“Sumptuous, actually,” Dick says, failing to contain a chortle as the words come out. Zatanna joins him in the laugh.
Oh, semiotics. They never fail to entertain him.
“Perfect!” she blurts out, smiling with a blush that spreads all the way to the tip of her nose. It’s ridiculously adorable. “I wasn’t sure if we were, you know. We both like to mess around. I didn’t know if—in case you were just, messing around. It seemed a little precarious. But I think I’m feeling more carious now around you now.”
“You’re stealing all my lines,” Dick says, impressed.
She shrugs. “Oh, only the good ones.”
Dick wants to kiss her again, but Batman starts to usher them all out of the room for the much needed debrief. Zatanna’s hand brushes against his lightly, before waving him off to regroup with the girls.
“Well done,” Kaldur says, in that calm voice that still makes him jump. "It is not difficult to notice that the two of you share something special."
Dick’s still trying to get a handle on his heart rate, but appreciates it. “Thanks, man.”
“For the most daring person I know, the amount of caution you've shown in your romantic pursuits has been admirable. But I see perhaps, you've finally been outdone,” Kaldur says with a wink, strolling off with Raquel.
He’s a little bitter when the next time they see each other in the cave, Zatanna gets whisked off for a girls’ night celebration with Artemis, M’gann and Raquel. He doesn’t even get the chance to tell her how pretty she looks in that purple dress that makes her look like that princess from Hercules. (M’gann made him watch the movie.)
You can tell her next time, M’gann tells him telepathically, and this time, Dick doesn’t chastize her for staying on the line.
+ 1
The first time Dick actually tells Zatanna she’s pretty, is when she’s on the ground with a nosebleed in the middle of the Bialyan desert. (Somehow, they always end up in the Bialyan desert.) Nothing's happened since the first kiss. They're both still hovering around each other, but in between missions, team bonding and family business, their whole unspoken thing has taken a backseat to everything else.
She’s just singlehandedly taken down Queen Bee’s army and the entire team was floored by the way she was practically shooting lightning bolts of magic out of her hands.
It’s never happened before.
Dick’s crouched over her, carefully helping her drink water out of his flask. She chokes on it, after drinking too fast, and now she’s a mess of blood, sand, sweat and water. And maybe some gunk from the mutant locusts that exploded all over them.
“I shouldn’t be drinking your water,” she says weakly.
“Don’t be silly. It’s all yours.”
She frowns and shakes her head. “Dick, we’ve run out of supplies. You’ve been giving out all of yours to the team.”
Dick has been feeling lightheaded today; three weeks of depleting supplies out in the desert has finally caught up with him. But he’s still okay. He’s just worried about Zatanna. That spell took everything out of her.
“I’ll get you cleaned up,” Dick says, gently. “Superboy will carry you back to base and we’ll wait for the Bio-Ship.”
Zatanna says softly, with a coy smile, “Am I not pretty enough for you like this?”
Dick scoops her up, knees buckling slightly, but he sees Conner marching over towards them and feels a wave of relief. He looks at Zatanna and kisses her nose, “You’re always too pretty for the rest of us, Zee.”