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Chapter Text

“Claire, I have news,” my brother, Peter, tells me when I walk into his office. His suit jacket, normally stiff as a board, is unbuttoned and his navy blue tie is loose around his neck. I almost want to giggle at him–Peter’s the only one who dresses so formally to the office, a floor rented out of a large building that we share with other mid-sized corporate companies. No one makes him iron his suit to a crisp, and he does it anyway. 

I process what he said, and shift in my pointed flats. “News,” I repeat, somewhat glibly. Peter’s news is either never any sort of news at all, or guaranteed to ruin my day. Needless to say, he is not the guy that anyone wants to receive news from.

My brother, who started this company from the ground up, who took me in under his wing and developed my career alongside his, looks uncharacteristically nervous as he wrings his calloused hands together. “Wayne Enterprises is looking to acquire us.”

The admission hangs between us.

We’ve had offers before, but this is the first one that’s ever warranted a meeting.

I can’t tell if that’s good or bad news, so to squeeze his opinion out of him, I say, “Yay?” Logistically, I think, it could go either way. Wayne could either back the company like a shadow investor, to help Aurora invest in more efficient and more sustainable production, or the mega corporation could take over and kick our entire leadership org out, with only our payouts to soothe everyone’s workaholic tendencies at night. “What does Bruce Wayne want with a jewelry company, anyway?”

He sighs. “Not Bruce Wayne. He’s involved to a level, but for a company with good standing and growing prestige, like ours, the board handles the deal as low stakes.” There’s a weight to his voice. He honed all of my business acumen, and we both know that the only variable we can’t control is how the Wayne stakeholders will treat us. “They want us to be the main jewelry partner for their F1 team.”

I blink at him, at a loss for words. I don’t know the first thing about racing, and I definitely couldn’t tell you why we’d be a good acquisition for that alone.

Natasha, Peter’s near-twin with their 11 month age gap, joins us in his office, late as always. She’s carrying a thick magazine and plops it onto Peter’s desk. It’s a racing magazine, and I look closely at the sleek, black race car decorated with the Wayne Enterprises logo on the cover. Natasha folds her arms and looks meaningfully at me and Peter. “Wayne Racing. Newer to the F1 circuit, but they’ve made a splash in their first year. They’ve used all the best Wayne Tech engineers to make their cars, and started recruiting drivers for their academy years ago. If you think about it,” Natasha shrugs, her thick sweater falling off of her shoulder, “they’re doing us a favor.”

I say what Peter’s thinking, our instincts as identical as the shade of our chocolate hair. “You’re not worried they’ll shut us out?”

Peter looks off in the distance when he responds. “Not if we prove ourselves to them. That we’re not expendable.”

Natasha, Aurora’s head of brand marketing, turns her body to me. “Baby sister,” she sing-songs to my rolling eyes, “we have something to entrust to you.”

Peter turns his monitor to me so that I can see a rendering of a sell-sheet. “Nothing’s final yet. They’re just poking around, seeing what we’re really about. They like our numbers and our past few collaborations, so while I work through the conditions with finance, we’re going to test-run a limited collection of Wayne Racing pieces, with the campaign featuring their two drivers.”

I don’t know what they look like, but I can almost picture faces in the big spaces on the screen. The Wayne Racing logo is front and center, surrounded by the stars of the Aurora logo that I helped sketch in my first year of college.

Natasha hands me a thick packet titled Things You Need to Know about Wayne Racing. “I know how you like to study,” my older sister teases. “Read up. You’re going to run the collab. They approached us after the Dua Lipa photoshoot, so we know they love what you do.” Natasha also hands me a Wayne Racing badge. “You’re going to meet the drivers at the facility tomorrow, and get to know them. Design is figuring out how to execute the theme with such a tight turnaround, but most of this hinges on how the drivers sell it to our customers.”

Peter looks at her and puts a comforting hand on your shoulder. “They’re a big ship, but you can do this. We need you, Claire.”

Natasha grins. “You’ll like them, I think. They’ve got a nepo baby on the team, just like us.”

—

Natasha and Peter send me the contact information of the team principal, who I learn that I’ll have to meet with before I can meet the drivers, their respective managers, and PR liaisons. 

Their principal’s name is Barry Allen, and according to my copious amounts of research, he had just barely retired from driving for Speedforce Energy before Bruce Wayne convinced him to stay in the game to join his fledgling F1 team. It was a big deal for Wayne–firstly because Speedforce was the only American F1 team before Wayne Enterprises opened their racing academy, and secondly because Barry Allen was the most decorated racer in F1 history before he decided to hang up his helmet. When I dig deeper, I read that Barry Allen and Bruce Wayne were in a prestigious student org together when they were still in college.

Small world.

I wasn’t able to leave the office until later than usual today. After my meeting with my siblings, I had to take the train from Brooklyn to Midtown to meet with a reporter from the Times to give a small interview about our rise as a jeweler amongst the pop girls of now. It’s the kind of commitment that Natasha would handle over e-mail, but I’d always wanted Aurora to be a part of the zeitgeist, to become a name that could stand for more than just our jewelry quality. I put my best foot forward when I represent Aurora and our family. Always.

The interview was on my way home, but combined with my lack of groceries, my five-to-nine schedule doesn’t give me nearly enough time to read through Natasha’s research packet. I can get one thorough pass and a light skim, at best, and that’s without taking notes. At least, I thought I could get through the packet. 

Despite my sister’s confidence in my love for reading, once I’ve had a chance to settle into my couch with a hot cocoa and the Wayne Racing 101, my brain cannot absorb any of the racing terminology for the life of me. 

Fuck, I think, trying not to despair. I’m going to walk into that meeting tomorrow woefully unprepared, and my goal was to make it seem like I loved racing so much that the partnership was my idea, not theirs.

I do a full pass and then re-read the team structure again so that I don’t disrespect anybody when I meet them tomorrow, at least. To help soothe my anxiety about the absolute jumbled world of F1 that Peter has so graciously thrown me into, I decide to do Instagram research. If I can get an idea of what the Wayne drivers are like, I’ll know how to make Aurora jewelry look perfect on them.

I flip to the Wayne Racing org structure in the packet and pull out my iPad, my cocoa cold and the Traitors episode over and fully transitioned into a dating show that I don’t watch.

Team Principal - Barry Allen

(unofficial) First - Richard Grayson

(unofficial, seriously Claire, don’t use these terms unless someone on the team does first) Second - Tim Drake

I can’t help but smile at my sister’s voice so prominently ringing through each page. She clearly spent a lot of time curating this for me. Still, Natasha’s amount of research must mean that she knows much more about F1 than I could hope to know, and I start to feel like she should’ve agreed to meet with the team instead.

I text her, So, why me? Your notes are expert-level, Tash 😛

Natasha Young: ur going to be the one to truly make this a part of our legacy

trust yourself! good luck!

besides, pete’s got me in like a million meetings

love ya

go 2 bed, gotham rush hour from manhattan is the worst

I tell her that I love her back but ignore her warning to go to bed. I still haven’t looked up these drivers.

I check the @WayneRacing handle first, which has nine million followers compared to the measly 200 thousand on @WayneEnterprises. The feed is just the same two guys (obviously the drivers) in their racing gear. Over and over.

When I click into a picture of the two men side-by-side, holding up their Wayne Racing helmets, I tap the screen so that I can see their handles tagged. On the left is Richard Grayson, who stands taller than his teammate and more solid, and looks my age. He has a strong jaw and thick, black tousled hair. His grin is dazzling. Tim Drake in comparison is leaner, more boyish, with a mischievous lilt to his smile that tells me there’s a lot to him that he keeps hidden from the surface. The faces of Wayne Racing are both completely captivating, and their being handsome and the comments being full of fangirls really makes me feel better about the campaign.

But something comes back to me as I look through more pictures of the two. Natasha had said earlier that Wayne Racing had a nepo baby, like me. She’d meant it as a joke, but people love a family man. Neither Tim nor Richard have the last name Wayne, so I wonder what she means, until I finally bother to Google their names without the F1 search term attached.

Tim Drake, longtime Wayne Racing apprentice.

Richard Grayson, adoptive son of Bruce Wayne.

They’ve given me a lot to work with to keep Aurora in our family.

Chapter Text

My Uber to the race facilities in Gotham is running late. I’m supposed to meet Barry Allen in the lobby at nine, but I was hoping to get a ride at seven and my wait time has gone from 7:02 to 7:19. The commute without traffic is only half an hour from where I live in the East Village, but it can take an extra hour if the Gotham streets are clogged up, and there’s no telling when something odd can block off the bridge. Peter would never be late to a meeting with a new business partner.

I figure that, technically, they’re not my business partner. It’s the faceless VP over e-mail named Lorraine in their marketing department who’s in charge of approvals and paperwork, and I’ve been newly added to all of the threads that she kept going with Natasha to kick off the partnership. Once I’ve been acquainted with the team staff, Lorraine is going to leave most things to her direct reports who handle PR, and she’s going to shrink oversight to just the branding and final campaign review. Going from the small team at Aurora, where I already feel like our team continues to grow exponentially, to the myriad of people that I have to talk to in the Wayne Racing universe is slightly overwhelming.

I check my outfit in the reflection of my building window as my wait time shortens to three minutes. I tried to dress slightly nicer than I would at the office–I curled my thick brown hair into loose waves and pinned my bangs back, I’m wearing the nice white loafers that Natasha gave me for my birthday, and I ironed my dress pants, for once. It’s not very suit and tie, but I can at least pass as business-casual. I even made sure to wake up early enough for makeup, which I love to do but unfortunately tend to pass over in favor of extra sleep. I’m wearing the brown eyeliner that makes the brown of my eyes look golden, and my favorite berry-toned lipstick against my sharp cupid’s bow always warms up my complexion.

I also wore my glasses. To look especially smart, and not like my siblings gave me this job right out of college. They truly didn’t, and I had to intern for a few summers before they gave me associate, much less my promotion to manager, but I know the optics. I am a true nepo baby sister. Maybe Richard Grayson will sense that desperation to prove myself, being that he’s kind of in the same position. Winning over one of the drivers early on will make the end result of the campaign so much easier. Maybe it’ll help that I look pretty, too? I wonder if womanizing is a common F1 trait or if it’s just a stereotype in poor film adaptations.

When my ride arrives, I spend the hour-long commute reading the basic team profiles of the eleven teams in F1.

My brain processes it like this:

• Wayne Racing. New

• Speedforce Energy. Clear favorite but from Barry Allen’s accolades, mainly

• LuthorCorp Racing. A (worse) billionaire who took on racing as a vanity project

• Booster Gold. A legacy team that recently took on a celebrity name

• Olympic Racing. The only team with women on it

• Ferrari. Explains itself

• Aston Martin. +1

• Mercedes. +1

• Queen Racing. Innovation/engineering race pioneer

• Green Lantern Corps. Lots of guys from Nascar
• Atlantic Racing. Long legacy of racing

I’m going to be kind to myself, and not make myself memorize all of that right now.

The car pulls up to the huge pristine building at 8:39 AM while I’m scrolling the Wayne Racing profile again, and I flip my phone over and shove it in my purse as if Richard Grayson and Tim Drake themselves will be the ones waiting for me outside. 

As we creep up the long driveway of the Wayne Racing facilities, my Uber driver whistles from the front. “You work here?” he asks in awe, leaning forward in his seat to take in the modern architecture and the impressive Wayne Tech and Wayne Racing signage everywhere. 

I look out the window with him. “Just visiting,” I reply. “It’s really something, though.” The main building that houses all of their offices is long and oblique, outfitted with a full front of crystal-clear glass and royal blue accents. From where we are, I can see dozens of people milling about and starting their days, many of them wearing the royal blue polos that I’ve come to recognize as the team uniform.

“I watch all their races,” the driver, Gabriel, tells me. “That Grayson kid is the real deal.”

I smile at him when we come to a stop and thank him as I get out. “That’s what I was counting on.” I haul my work purse over my shoulder and make my way into the lobby.

I put on the laminate that my sister gave me yesterday, a small badge that apparently gives me full facilities access and media clearance. My name is printed on the bottom: Claire Young, Aurora Jewelry.

I thought that I would need to pick Barry Allen out of the many people mulling about the lobby of the Wayne Racing building, but when I step through the door, a tall blond man stands from his armchair facing the entryway and comes to greet me. He’s immediately recognizable. Barry Allen has had the same cropped haircut for the last ten years, something I noticed when I was looking through his career highlights, and dons the same easygoing smile that made him famous in and out of the F1 sphere. He looks young, almost like he could still be in his twenties like I am, but the deep set smile lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes give it away.

“You must be Olivia,” he greets me, with a firm shake. “Call me Barry.”

Barry is wearing tan slacks and a deep red t-shirt, but it’s mostly concealed by the black Wayne Racing windbreaker that he wears over it. I wonder if he misses Speedforce, if he feels at home here after spending two decades there. He towers over me as we stand side by side. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Barry.”

It took me a long time to feel comfortable calling people with seniority over me by their first names. Before my parents passed away, they raised us in a household of deference, teaching us that aging was a process to be respected. It was an especially Vietnamese thing for them, a value and a principle of our language that always made me second-guess who I was in relation to others. The line at which I became a peer to those older than me never really became clear until I started working a lot at my part-time jobs in college, and even in corporate I struggle not calling people by some sort of title. Peter and Natasha had always taken to it better than I had. Now that I’m fully alone, I’ll get some more practice with it.

Barry shows me how to swipe into the building using my badge before he leads me down a long white-tiled hallway decorated with Wayne Enterprises’ mottos and various racing accolades. “You joined us at a good time,” Barry tells me. “It’s almost the first race of the season, and the big guys have given you clearance to come along with us for as many events as you need.” I already have my ticket to Australia in two weeks. He leans closer conspiratorially, his blue eyes twinkling like aquamarines. “If you haven’t watched an F1 season beginning to end before, I would suggest coming along for everything. It’s on the company dime!” He laughs heartily at the bashful smile on my face. I’d be lying if I hadn’t thought about how insane it is that I’m allowed to be front row to an entire season of F1, even as clueless as I am. “Bruce is one of my closest friends. I promise I can say that.” As if sensing that he has to warm me up, he asks, “How did you end up here?”

We’re coming upon an archway with the words Training Facilities painted at the top, and I figure that’s where Barry is bringing me. “Aurora is my brother’s company,” I tell him, “and I’m in charge of the marketing for all of our collaborations. I heard that I was requested, actually. We’ve never done a collection with F1 before, and I can’t say I know the first thing,” I admit. If I can be vulnerable with anyone, I already know it can be Barry. He can give me cover when I inevitably look lost. 

Barry smiles at me as we walk through the archway into a garage, the sounds of car engines and tinkering immediately cacophonous. Wayne Tech is so advanced, I figure there’s probably some kind of sound dampener within the main building to keep the car sounds at bay. “We’re the perfect place to do it,” Barry promises me. “All other things aside,” he adds, because of course, someone as important as the team principal would know why they’ve picked up a stray for the season. “Come on, let’s go find our boys.”

Barry brings me into a room outfitted with huge 360-degree screens. There’s a single rig in the middle of the room, fashioned with a driver’s seat and a steering wheel, and in the seat is someone mid-simulation drive. I watch curiously as he turns the wheel and curses to himself, gloved hands clenching and unclenching as he moves them in a way that looks almost choreographed. He’s wearing a helmet, so I can’t tell if it’s Tim or Richard from where Barry and I are standing. 

I watch the mega-sized projection with bated breath, mind boggled by the scale of it all. This isn’t even a real race, or a real car. 

When the driver finishes and his time flashes on the screen, he smacks the wheel once before swinging his legs out of the seat to stand. I can’t tell what kind of smack it was—frustrated or elated. The driver pulls off his helmet and musses his own hair haphazardly, eyebrows knit together, and I figure it was the first one.

He glances up and sees me and Barry standing there, watching, and his face immediately melts into a closed-mouth smile. “Hi.”

I’m looking at Tim Drake, who is a few inches taller than me, but somehow shorter and younger than I expected. Without the aloof expression that he usually wears in racing press, he truly looks like a regular twenty-year-old boy. He has stormy blue eyes, maybe stormier after his digital race, and his hair is cropped closely on the sides. Tim walks toward us, and Barry puts a hand on his shoulder. 

“Tim, this is Claire,” Barry introduces. Tim looks at me curiously and gives me a solid nod of acknowledgment. “She’s studying up on us for a big Wayne Racing partnership, and she’ll be with us all season.”

Tim shakes my hand firmly as he searches my face, like he’s committing it to memory. He probably meets countless randoms working on partnerships. “Nice to meet you, Claire. Happy to have you.”

“This is our racing sim,” Barry explains, when Tim looks briefly at a window looking into the space. Tim nods and gives someone at a computer a thumbs up, and a three-minute countdown starts on the screen, prompting the user to prepare to drive. “It uses the specs of our cars and can be tailored to every driver to simulate every F1 track there is.”

I listen earnestly, but also get the feeling that Tim needs to start working again, so I glance at him to see if he’ll kick us out. Tim claps Barry on the shoulder before turning to me again. “I’d love to hear more about what you do, I’ve just gotta finish this session before our reserve drivers come in.” At that, I look at Barry, ready to go. “They’ve booked up the rest of the day. I’m sure I’ll find you both when I’m done,” he says, offering me a small smile. “Really nice to meet you, Claire.”

Barry ushers me out of the simulator room and walks me through yet another hallway, albeit smaller than the first one. “Tim is very serious about the racing sim, especially after the most recent upgrades,” Barry tells me. “The rush isn’t the same, I’ve found,” he adds, with a wistful look in his eye. 

I agree with him despite my lack of experience. It hits me for the first time that the most famous F1 driver in history is walking me around an actual F1 facility, palling around and joking with me like I have something more important to do than market some bracelets that don’t exist yet. It’s the kind of realization that dawns on me like a cold wave, reminding me just how serious this partnership is for me and my siblings. 

Barry walks me towards the training gym, where dozens of pieces of equipment that I’m just as inexperienced with await. The gym’s wall is made of glass and is outfitted with a swinging door. We can see clearly inside before we step through, and Barry seems to have spotted who we’re looking for. 

On a setup nearly as tall as the high ceilings is a man doing pull-up reps on a pair of gymnastic rings. I watch breathlessly at the ease with which he does it, his muscles rippling and evident even under his loose tank. His back is to us, but I can see his face in the mirror as he swings his body upside down twice, using the momentum to jump down and turn to face Barry and me. I think my heart skips a beat. 

“Claire, meet Grayson.”

Chapter Text

I’ve met many celebrity crushes in my line of work. It just comes with the territory–I’ve hosted launch parties, been invited to award shows, been sent on blind dates. Sometimes it’s people I was excited to meet, like Dua Lipa, where upon reading confirmation from her management that she would come by our studio space to shoot some quick product images with her Aurora charm line, I skipped around the office for a week in a blissful haze. Sometimes, it’s people I didn’t realize were cool until I’d actually met them, and I left our meetings in a light-crush mode, like Skeet Ulrich for a Scream-inspired drop. I’ve never found myself like this: palms sweaty, mouth dry, heart thundering. That’s how I feel when I see Richard Grayson for the first time, and the weight of that embarrassingly hormonal feeling makes me want to throw up.

The primo Wayne Racing driver wipes his hands on a small towel and holds it out to me for a handshake, and I try to shove all carnal feelings deep, deep down. It’s not his fault that he’s sexy. My god, if my siblings were here… Peter would definitely regret his decision to send me, and Natasha would never let me hear the end of it.

Richard’s dark hair is shaggy and sweaty, so it almost hangs in his eyes as we make eye contact for the first time. They’re bluer in person than I could have imagined while I was looking through his Instagram. I have to crane my neck a little to look at his face, and when I take his hand to shake it, his grip is gentle but I can tell how strong he is. He’s broad and muscular everywhere, but especially his upper body. I’m fighting myself to not stare, and I’ve almost forgotten that Barry is standing there with us. When I remember, I pray the blush away and smile widely at Richard in what I hope is a dazzling, unbothered way.

I’m behaving well, and they will not regret inviting me to be here…

“What’s your name?” Richard asks me, still holding my hand even though we’ve stopped shaking. It’s warm, and calloused from all of the gymnastics equipment, I assume.

“Claire,” I say, letting go of his hand before it turns awkward. I turn to Barry and gesture at him to break eye contact. “Barry was just showing me around the facilities… I’m sure you’ve heard, but I’m from Aurora. We’ll be doing a jewelry line with your team.”

Recognition flickers in Richard’s blue eyes. “Ah, Kori mentioned something about that.”

“Our PR lead,” Barry offers. He checks his watch and makes a face. “Claire, it seems like time’s gotten away from me. I have to run to a few meetings.” I nod and smile at him, even though I don’t know what I’m going to do without him around. I guess I could ask to sit and watch the practice track, and work on some emails. We hadn’t really had a plan when I got here. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure out something for you to do. Maybe we can introduce you to a couple more people before lunch…”

Richard lays his towel around the nape of his neck and gathers up his phone and water bottle from the floor next to the gym rings. “Don’t worry, Bar,” he interrupts. “I think I can take Claire to lunch and introduce her to the rest of the team?”

The throwing up feeling is kind of back, but it’s less intense. Maybe it’s an exposure type of thing.

“I don’t want to take you away from anything,” I tell him, but Barry has a clear look of relief on his face, his unfounded guilt for leaving me now assuaged. It would help to get to know him better, I figure, given how deeply we’re investing into the campaign. I have little time before we have to draft the actual marketing plan, and I should maximize my recon.

Richard smiles at me again, kind and sure, and I get a feeling that I could follow a smile like that anywhere. “I wouldn’t want to do anything else.” Barry gives Richard a quick hug, and dashes out of the room while shouting a goodbye over his shoulder. Richard urges me to follow him through another swinging door into a lounge decorated with shiny black tables and sleek, gray leather chairs. “Give me a few minutes to change and throw my things into my locker. I’ll be right back.”

I find myself watching the Wayne Racing reel playing on the TV in the lounge for a few seconds, race day footage of Tim and Richard waving at the crowds before showing their cars crossing the finish line. The screen flashes to Richard waving a trophy in the air, smiling dazzlingly as he gets doused in champagne, and I pull out my phone for the first time all day to distract myself.

(the three musketeers) Peter: How is everything, Claire?

(the three musketeers) Natasha: are u having fun with the hot racecar drivers?

(the three musketeers) Peter: (eye roll emoji)

Let’s get dinner tonight. Won’t distract you.

(the three musketeers) Natasha: korean food pleaseee!

I thumbs-up Natasha’s dinner request and shoot off a quick I’m doing okay!

I exit my group chat with my siblings and start a text to my best friend.

Claire: Kara

Small problem

He’s really hot and I’m really distracted but I need to focus and lock in

Kara Danvers: Who????? Grayson or Drake???

Claire: Grayson!! Also, Kara, Tim is too young for us

Kara Danvers: Didn’t realize… redact that

So what now?

Claire: IDK, have to go tho. Call you tn.

Richard emerges from the locker rooms looking refreshed, hair still wet, but notably not sweaty, which I had no idea has its own look. He’s changed out of his workout clothes into a fitted black Wayne Racing t-shirt and straight-leg blue jeans. I put my phone away into my bag and stand, looking anywhere but at his face, but still letting myself pause on his features. I haven’t quite figured out how to be chill and serious around him in these past five minutes, but I think I’m getting there.

“Ready to go?” he asks, hands in his pockets. “Can I get you anything? Water?”

I shake my head and thank him for the offer. “I’m good. I am getting a little peckish, so I could go for lunch soon, if that’s okay with you,” I say. Richard gives me a small salute that makes me giggle, despite myself. He walks out another door in the lounge that I hadn’t noticed before, and it leads us into the garage again. “How can you remember where anything is? It’s a total maze,” I say, perplexed. 

Richard winks, “Drivers have a great sense of direction.” I look at him somewhat dubiously, and he chuckles. “I also spend twelve hours here a day.”

“Ah, I see, it’s the indentured servitude of it all,” I muse, and he fully laughs, a hearty sound that sends a warm feeling to my belly. It makes me feel less shy around this incredibly hot man, and I have hope for my professionalism throughout the season after all. The garage is loud, drilling and echoing conversations surrounding us, but the small moment makes it feel like no one else is around. 

“Dick,” someone shouts from the back of the garage. 

I raise an eyebrow at Richard. “Is someone mad at you?” I think the anonymous person will come over here, to air out some grievance, but they just wave at each other. 

“No,” he says, running a hand through his hair sheepishly. “My friends call me Dick.”

“You go by that, willingly?” I tease, nudging him by the shoulder. It comes out of my mouth before I can think twice, and then I get embarrassed, for being so rude and then also for touching him. Professionalism score, minus 200 points. “I’m only kidding,” I add. His face grows serious for a second, almost sad, and I feel so bad for hurting his feelings that I nearly give up and go, about to offer to wait for Barry in a corner somewhere. 

Then, in just a millisecond, he breaks out in another smile and shakes his head. “I know you were joking.” Relief floods my body and I make myself remember to stop joking around with my clientele. “But, please, I’m not used to people calling me Richard except for the press, so I’d like for you to call me Dick too.” Dick holds out his hand to shake mine, like a boy scout. “Promise we can be friends if you do.”

We shake, and it feels like an insurmountable win.

“Okay, Dick Grayson. Friends.”

Chapter Text

Dick walks me to an office at the back of the garage, and inside we find a red-headed woman fiddling with her black acetate-framed glasses while staring at a schematic of a race car. Her hair is pulled up haphazardly into a bun with a ballpoint pen acting as its hairpin, and she drums her fingers on the table, deep in concentration. My nose twitches from the loss of the smell of fuel now that we’re indoors. The office itself is somewhat small, for the amount of things that sit within it. There are two desks with huge computer set-ups and a couple of cabinets, but a huge table in the middle of the room with a miniature scale model of a race track takes up center stage. A die-cast car sits in a starting position, looking lonely and forgotten.

Dick knocks on her desk lightly to grab her attention. “Hey, Babs.” The woman doesn’t startle, looking up at us from her chair and turning away from her monitor. “This is Claire. She’s doing some research on the team. Claire, meet Barbara Gordon, my race engineer.”

Barbara Gordon is very beautiful, I have to say. Her hair, even in a pen-bun, is thick and silky, and her eyes almost glow like gemstones with the reflection of the computer screen. In a thick Wayne pullover and sweatpants, legs crossed criss-cross-applesauce, she’s still beautiful enough to stun.

Barbara smirks at Dick and says, “How humble of you to say, Dick. We all know she’s here to research you and Timmy.” She smiles at me good-naturedly, green eyes twinkling. “It’s nice to meet you, Claire. Feel free to come to me for anything you need.” Glancing at Dick again, she winks. “Especially if he gives you trouble.” Barbara tells me that she started at Wayne Racing in its early academy days as a performance engineer. Once Dick made it onto the main team, she came with him.

There’s an ease between them, as they exchange small ribs here and there. Without me needing to ask, Barbara explains what she does during a race as Dick’s race engineer, and we all have the collective feeling to not acknowledge that I’m just a noob trying to make a project that will make sense to the biggest of F1 fans.

Dick places a hand on Barbara’s shoulder and gives her a squeeze. “Babs is my eyes and ears on the track,” he concludes. When she looks up at him from her chair, something flashes in her expression as their eyes meet. I can’t even begin to grasp the nature of their relationship, a trust that life or death is hinged upon, and I can’t begin to decipher the way that she looks at him, either. I don’t want to assume.

My stomach growls ravenously, interrupting the moment, and Dick promises that he’ll take me to lunch. It’s so loud it practically echoes, even with all of the paperwork and equipment in the room acting as sound dampeners. “Would you like to join us?” I ask Barbara. “I have a company card,” I say to try to convince her. I figure that when you subject someone to such a noise, you invite them to lunch.

She waves the offer away gently. “Boy Wonder is definitely not letting you pay,” she assures me. “I have to stay behind and meet with Jonn, our strategist.” Barbara tells us to enjoy ourselves, and at the gentle dismissal, we walk outside.

Dick starts to lead me back towards the main building, the same way that Barry took when I got here a few hours ago. “You weren’t kidding when you said peckish,” he says with a chuckle. He checks his phone quickly before sliding it back into his pocket and turns to me as we walk. “Any preference for lunch?”

I think of all my favorite foods nearby that I can remember in Gotham, but I’m just starving. “The closest meal we can find,” I declare.

Dick pulls out his phone again, and hands it to me so that I can scroll through a menu. “Luckily for you, the Wayne Racing cafeteria has a burger that rivals even the best in Gotham proper.”

“Even–”

“Especially Penguin’s burger,” he swears.

The warm fuzzy feeling, without the nausea, resurfaces again in my chest at the quirk of his lips. “You’re a wonderful host, Dick Grayson,” I quip. “Who could imagine such a warm welcome for random marketing managers like me.”

“You’ll let me wear the cooler jewelry, then?” he asks, deadpan. 

I have to use my fingers to hide the smile fighting to break out on my face. “I don’t think it’s professional to make promises like that on day one. I’ll have to watch you race, first.”

“I’ll win in Australia, then, and I’ll wear all your favorites for the Aurora Wayne photoshoot.” His eyes blaze with competitiveness, even though we both know we’re just bantering, and it’s kind of stunning. He might be the most likeable person I’ve ever met. “You’ll style me.”

“Okay,” I say. “Don’t tell Tim, and we have a deal.”

Dick grins at me as we walk into the cafeteria. “What the kid doesn’t know about our grown-up agreements won’t hurt him.”

—

Wayne Racing has a cafeteria concept pulled straight from a Vegas buffet, paired with the aesthetic style of a Google campus. The entire racing facility feels like it came from three hundred years into the future, but stepping into the cafeteria feels like humanity’s somehow done enough good deeds to ascend straight into heaven. It’s pristine, and there are succulents everywhere, and it’s like I can get a whiff of every possible cuisine that exists when I close my eyes.

One of the biggest controversies from when Wayne Enterprises started the team was the amount of people that immediately jumped ship from the other F1 teams, especially from Speedforce Racing. I wonder how many of them took a facilities tour and left their jobs for Wayne as soon as they saw the daily lunch menu.

The food in the cafeteria is free, but Dick refuses to let me pay for my dollar-fifty sparkling water, just as Barbara promised. The older woman who swipes his ID badge before we sit down with our meals can’t hide the amusement on her face as he goes back and forth with me on the principle of hosting business partners and providing the refreshments. When I finally relent, he gives me a smug grin, and takes my tray from me so that he can carry it on the way to the table.

Dick swears that he can show me the “best seat in the house,” so I trail behind him nervously, prepared to catch our trays in case the amount of food he’s carrying actually bends to the gravitational forces that apparently apply to everyone but him. He walks straight out of the automatic sliding doors onto the outdoor patio of the cafeteria, which overlooks the practice track. No one is driving on it now, but the cafeteria is perfectly centered above the track so that you can see all of it, and get a bird’s eye view of any car taking a lap. In the sunlight and against the clear blue sky, the view is cinematic.

Dick sets my tray down and pulls out my chair for me. I take a seat and look at him, letting my eyes trail on him longer than I did earlier. “I’m supposed to be impressing you,” I say. “Given the stakes of me being here, and all.”

He sits down across from me and mixes his chicken and grain bowl. He shrugs. “You’ve already impressed me,” he says, taking a big bite of his food. He even eats handsomely–he doesn’t shove his food down his throat, or chew in a rush, or get sauce all over his perfect mouth.

I have no such reservations about eating, not while I’m this hungry, so I pick up my burger and take a bite so big that practically half of the burger’s already disappeared. I swallow and wipe my mouth somewhat daintily (for appearances and propriety). Dick was right–this is the best burger in Gotham, at the very least. “What’d I do to impress you?” I ask, leaning back in my chair slightly and drinking my sparkling water. Except for cleaning off this burger in less than two bites, I think to myself.

Dick pushes his bowl aside slightly, and leans onto his forearms to look closer at me. 

It makes my stomach twist a little bit. My heart picks up speed.

“We’re probably the same age, and you came here all by yourself to lead a huge project about a completely confusing world that you’ve never had to navigate, and you haven’t even blinked at all of the random stuff you’ve come across today.” He picks a fry off of my plate and eats it. “I think that takes a lot of guts. Maybe more than getting in a racecar and driving the same courses again and again.”

I can feel my cheeks pinkening. I cough, hoping that the flush subsides. “Speaking of work,” I say. “Tell me more about yourself. If I know you well, I can make sure that everything about the line really feels like you.”

His deep-set eyes close for a brief second as he sinks into thought. I take the chance to really skim his face–his chiseled jaw is so clean-shaven that I wonder if he grows facial hair at all, until I remember the Calvin Klein photoshoot that I came across featuring his five-o’clock shadow. That particular visual zaps me back into focus.

His eyes darken as they meet mine, like he’s preparing to talk about himself. For all the talking we’ve done today, it’s only been about other people, other things. I contemplate taking the question back to smooth over whatever conflict he’s feeling.

He bites his bottom lip lightly. “I’m twenty-six, I’ve been driving in F1 for two years, and I’ve lived in Gotham my whole life.” I nod encouragingly, like those aren’t just the facts that you can find from the Google summary when you look him up. I smile at him, hoping that he’s doing this because he feels comfortable. I’m not sure I could share much right now, either. “I’m sure you’ve read that I’m a nepo-baby,” he says with a tilt of his mouth. “Bruce adopted me when I was eight. Let me do almost anything I wanted, so long as I worked at it, and if I helped him with the Wayne Foundation when I could.”

I mull over Dick’s words, at him calling Bruce Wayne, ‘Bruce,’ and not dad. “I noticed that you’re also a small-time gymnast,” I add, thinking of how Barry and I found him earlier. 

He stretches out his arms wide, his pecs rippling under his shirt with all the strength that I hadn’t seen in his photoshoots. “I grew up an acrobat,” he says, shutting his eyes. “My parents were acrobats.”

I don’t ask what happened. I know they passed away, which is how Bruce Wayne adopted him, but it’s not a thing he should have to tell me on the first day of knowing me. 

“My parents died too,” I offer, to take the weight away from him. I purse my lips, hoping that this will help. We’re trying to build a strong working relationship, and I don’t want it to feel transactional. “My brother Peter’s raised us since. He’d only just graduated college,” I explain, “so he took a lot of odd jobs to get me through high school and to help our sister Natasha through the rest of college. He took a jewelry making class with a girlfriend, caught me drawing designs in my free time, and now we’re here.” My smile fades slightly when I look back up at Dick’s face, watching me earnestly. “I wonder what life would look like if it hadn’t happened, sometimes.”

He looks somewhat far away for a second. “Me too,” he says simply. “I wouldn’t have met Babs, though, and I definitely wouldn’t be driving F1.” His shoulders are more relaxed now, and I could be imagining it, but there’s a link between us as we sit in the brief pauses. “We grew up together, and she’s always been the smartest person I’ve ever known.” 

Maybe the history between them goes deeper than that. I’m not sure. I don’t need to know, I’ve decided. Whatever comes from my season with Wayne Racing will come to me of their own volition.

Dick and I stop our conversation, the small bits of food on our plates now cold, when we hear the loud echo of an engine bouncing against the building. When I look towards the starting line and the opening of the garage, a shiny Wayne Racing car is being loaded with a driver, helmeted and unrecognizable from here.

“That’s Timmy,” Dick says as the car takes off with a roar. I watch as the car accelerates and turns on a dime, wondering if there’s anything that I can notice innately. I wonder if there’s personality in the way Tim speeds up and turns his wheels, so that I can remember their unique driving styles as we go through the season. I’d like to eventually know the difference without having to look at anything but the way the car zips along.

I squint at the car. “If you were both driving, would I be able to tell?”

“Maybe,” he says, “but you can always check our helmets for our nicknames.”

“What’s yours?” I ask. From what I’ve read, their nicknames are practically call names–everyone in F1 and in the audience knows which nickname is referring to whom, and they can tell you a lot about each driver’s personality.

“Nightwing.”

I think for a second, totally stumped on what it could mean. It must show on my face, because his eyes crinkle at my clear confusion. “Does it have a meaning?”

“Do you know who Clark Kent is?” he asks. 

I nod. Clark Kent is Kara’s cousin, from their biological families. Even before I met Kara, though, I knew who Clark was; he’s one of the most successful journalists I’ve ever heard of, alongside his wife Lois Lane. Between them, they probably have dozens of Pulitzer Prizes. They live in Metropolis, but they travel so often for Lois’ investigative journalism that it’s not unheard of to see them around New York. “He’s my best friend’s cousin, actually. Kara Danvers.”

Dick’s eyebrows raise. “I’ve heard of her!” he says, pleasantly surprised. “For a long time, Clark reported on the personal side of corporations–on what they were doing for their communities, who their leadership was. That’s how he met Bruce. They became close friends, and when I came into the picture, he was around enough that I considered him an uncle. 

“When I started helping out with the Foundation, there was a cause that Bruce almost listened to the board on, to pull out funding. It was an orphanage on the outskirts of the city, and everyone was insisting it’d be cheaper to scatter the kids around Gotham, but I hated it. I thought it was wrong to break them up from the impromptu family they’d already formed, and their ward would have let them all stay for as long as they’d wanted, if she’d had the funding. I bugged Bruce about it until he agreed to hear me out,” he says, smiling to himself. “When Clark found out, he told me a story about a fable that his birth parents left him in a scrapbook, about a mythical bird that represented the permanence of justice and good, and how they always prevail even under the cover of night.” Dick looks at me like he’s looking deep inside of me, and the feeling sinks into my bones. I wonder if I’m seeing him as clearly as he’s seeing me. “It stuck with me as a kid. When I started driving, I wanted a name to represent the new chapter for all of our lives. It helps that Clark told me it’s a fast bird, too,” he grins.

“That’s kind of an epic origin story,” I tell him. "You're very cool," I say, surely. His smile brightens at me when I say it, if that's possible. I make a note to myself to ask him what his mythological nightwing looks like. “What’s Tim’s?”

Dick looks down at the track again, where Tim is making his eleventh lap, according to the counter above the garage. “Red Robin. We're just two birds of a feather.”

Chapter Text

Tim Drake is a methodical, persistent racer. That’s what I learn as Dick and I sit in the garage and watch him zoom, lap after lap. He’s come in for so many pit stops that I’ve lost count, and I’ve become completely noise blind to the smell of burnt rubber. My heart always skips a beat when he races off again, so close to us.

“He treats the actual circuit like it’s still the academy,” Dick explains as Tim’s voice comes over the radio, insisting to go again. Tim and his race engineer, Conner Kent (related to Clark Kent through his adoption), also grew up around the Wayne family; when Bruce decided to open the racing academy, Tim had somehow gotten Bruce to sit and watch him race virtually in Gran Turismo until he could convince Bruce to let him in. Conner gives Tim feedback on his drive, and when Tim replies over the radio that he wants to come in to tweak one more thing on his new car setup, a small groan echoes throughout the garage. Dick smirks, amused, but Conner turns back to the group and raises an eyebrow.

“Do we have a problem here?” Conner asks, his brow stern.

Everyone shakes their heads, looking away and pretending as if they didn’t do it in unison. The chief mechanic, Victor, doesn’t balk at Conner and waves him off. “Come on, Con, we all love Red Robin.”

“Just having some fun,” Cassie, the mechanic for Tim’s car, adds. 

I lean closer to Dick and whisper, “Tim really makes the most of this ship, doesn’t he?”

“He can’t help it,” Dick whispers back.

Conner pulls off his headset as Tim begins to come down the last straight. “He feels like he has to,” he says to me, even though I didn’t think he would have heard, but not unkindly. “It’s his first year as primary, and he only raced once as reserve last season. Robin’s just wired that way.” He gives me a small smile and gets up from his seat to talk to Victor and their lead strategist, Jonn, about the specs that Tim wants to change.

When Tim gets out of his car and comes deeper into the garage, he spots us and gives me a two-fingered salute. I smile at him, and he comes closer, looking between me and Dick for a few seconds. If Dick’s been my tour guide all morning, is he skipping training?

Tim doesn’t mention anything of the sort. “What did you think, Claire?” he asks. 

“I really can’t wrap my head around it,” I tell him. “I couldn’t look away.” Watching him race was watching true mastery on the track. 

Tim smiles at me, pleased. “Dick gave up his lap time today, so I’ve got plenty of time to run scenarios before Australia.”

I look at Dick, surprised, but he only shrugs, fully unbothered. “I also have plenty of time to drive in my new car before Australia.”

Tim punches his shoulder lightly. “You’re gonna regret saying that when I beat your ass.”

“And you’ll never forget saying that when I beat yours,” Dick quips.

“Are you both fighting again?” a smooth, dreamy voice says from behind us. When I turn to look at who it is, I see a tall, modelesque woman with deep bronze skin and perfectly voluminous curls. I recognize her from her profile picture on the email chains with Natasha: this is Kori Anders, the PR lead for Wayne Racing. Her lips are glossy and plump, and her eyes are a stunning shade of emerald green. She looks at me and takes my hand gracefully. “You must be Claire. I’m sorry I haven’t met you sooner–I’ve been stuck scheduling press for Melbourne all day.”

Is there a hotness requirement to work on this team? 

I shake her hand, still at a loss for words at how ethereal she is in person. “You’re gorgeous,” I marvel at her, because it’s honestly the only thing that’s on my mind right now.

Her cheeks turn the slightest pink. “You’re too sweet.”

“What’s keeping us from putting all of you into the photoshoot?” I say, half-joking, but serious about the fact that this is a gorgeous group of people.

Kori smiles at me and uses her clipboard to gesture between Dick and Tim. “I’m technically paid to keep them in front of a camera and for me to be behind it.” She still looks pleased, anyway, and hands me her phone. “I meant to find you to get your phone number. We’re going to arrange travel for you to come with us on our plane.”

I’m automatically inclined to reject her offer, even though it sounds like a much nicer option compared to sitting alone on a commercial flight for twenty hours. I hadn’t even been able to convince Peter to upgrade me to first class. The budget planned for me to follow Wayne Racing all season already exceeds what we spent last year on T&E for all of Aurora. Still, Peter’s not just my brother—he’s my boss, and I’m not sure if he’ll consider me traveling on Wayne’s dime as part of our standard procedure.

“Let me think about it,” I tell her. I type my number into her phone and send myself a text that says Kori Anders, so I don’t forget it later. “I really appreciate the offer,” I say, hoping I sound as grateful as I feel. “Just need to check with the team on the existing accommodation first.”

She nods at me, smiling kindly. “At the very least, I’m going to insist that you’re added to our hotel block. It’s security for us, and ease of work for you,” she says, matter-of-factly. “I’ll hop back on the email chain to reinforce that.”

“I’d listen to her if I were you,” Dick chimes. 

“It doesn’t seem fair that you have to follow us around the world on your dime,” Tim adds. “Aurora’s money or your own.”

“And I can vouch that we have the budget to spare,” Kori says.

I laugh lightly. “I’ll give your feedback to my supervisor,” I tell them.

I don’t want to make decisions without him, just yet.

Kori leaves us in the garage, and Tim puts his suit back on so that he can drive another lap. I don’t know what the financials look like, or how other teams do it, but the cost of the fuels and the tires that he’s burning through seems quite unfathomable. Maybe that’s the benefit of the billionaire owner’s son being on the team?

I check the clock again, and if I don’t leave soon, I’ll be stuck in the Gotham-NYC rush hour. Dick sees me checking the time, and asks, “Do you need to go?”

I nod, and he starts to get up to walk me out. “Thanks for today,” I tell him. “I’m looking forward to the rest of the season.” I turn my head slightly to look at him, but he’s already looking at me somewhat intently, so I get shy and look away. I think to myself that maybe it’s okay to harbor the crush, as hot as it’s already burning within me. I can be friends with him like this.

We get to the lobby, and I check my phone to see where my Uber is. “Can I see your phone?” Dick asks.

“Sure,” I say, watching him closely. The last thing I need right now is for him to find my texts to Kara, or god forbid, see her ask me if he’s gotten any hotter throughout the day.

He types something on the screen and hands it back to me. “If you need anything before Australia. Just let me know,” he says, with a smile. He runs a hand through his hair, and it’s dried to a perfectly messy medium length. I almost want to take a picture of him like this.

I take my phone back and smile politely at him. I can’t be flustered around him for the entire season, and that starts with curbing the fawning. Crush must stay internalized.

“I will,” I promise him.

The Uber pulls up, and he opens the door for me with a gentlemanly flourish. As we drive away, I look back and see him waving despite the tinted windows.

I text Kara.

Claire: I’m kind of fucked. 

——

My ride is to meet my siblings at the tofu soup place in K-Town. Peter’s already texted that he’s on the wait-list, and Natasha’s with him. It’s not common for him to leave at the same time as her; sometimes, Natasha and I think he outwaits us just to prove a point. Him being here early tells me just how nervous he is to hear about my day. 

I hop out just as the host calls out my brother’s name, and I scurry up to meet my siblings at the door. Peter puts an arm out wide and slings it across my shoulders as we walk in, and Natasha tugs on a lock of my hair once, playfully. I stick my tongue out at her but the three of us walk in together, a clear unit.

When we sit, Natasha and I next to each other, we start picking at the banchan. She always eats all of the fish cakes before I can even grab one, so we’ve taken to pre-emptively ordering a full dish of them. Peter takes a long drink of his water.

”Welcome to the Young family meeting,” he says from across the table, looking stern. I turn to Natasha, panicked. Did something happen while I was in Gotham with the agreement?

Natasha laughs at his expression. “I thought you said you weren’t going to scare her,” she says.

Peter’s CEO-face melts off, and he grins at me, looking ten years younger than his already-young thirty-three. His face has aged a bit since we started Aurora; the smile lines around his eyes are more prominent and much more severe on the tough days, and his lips are always pursed in a deeply thoughtful way. We order quickly, and he leans in. “How did it go?”

“It was great,” I say, tiptoeing around the Grayson of it all. “They’re really welcoming, and I’ll definitely get along with everyone during the season…”

“And enjoy the eye candy, I’m sure,” Natasha says from behind her glass of water, dodging my glare that she knew would be coming.

Our food arrives, the food here always coming out in a snap. Peter starts to blow on his spoonful of soup and shakes his head. “Of course not, Tash,” Peter chides. “Claire knows how much of a big deal this partnership is. Her head’s on straight.” He looks me dead in my eyes, his irises a dead-ringer for my own, and the mirror image is so intimidating that I almost shrink away from my brother’s gaze. He and I are typically two-sides of the same coin. What Peter needs from me, more than ever, is to perform.

Natasha, through a mouthful of food that she’s trademarked as her perfect bite (soup, tofu, some meat, rice, and kimchi), tsks at our brother. “Leave her alone,” she insists. “She gets it. They asked for her, remember?”

Peter looks somewhat chastened by our sister’s protectiveness. He scratches behind his ear, his only nervous tic that I can think of. “Finance and I have been running an analysis on the terms of their deal all day. It looks clean, so far. I think things will evolve, the more the partnership is fleshed out, but if Claire pulls it off, it doesn’t look like they need us to back off of running Aurora at all.”

My heart leaps for joy at what he says. It’s added some pressure, sure, but it also means that all of the work I’m about to pour into this season with Wayne Racing is going to truly pay off, and Aurora will be kick-started for good. I just need to stay clear-headed. The stakes weren’t this high with Dua Lipa or Black Canary, and didn’t require nearly as much pre-work. I’m kicking off a permanent partnership, an evergreen collection. I refuse to be distracted. Even by Dick Grayson.

Natasha finishes inhaling her food and nudges me with her elbow to point at my bowl, still half full. I start eating in earnest now that Peter’s given us the good news, and she flicks my ear affectionately. “Acquisition aside,” she starts, “we need to figure out how to set up Claire-Bear for success. What do you need before Australia?”

In the big forwarded thread from Natasha on my travel itinerary for Melbourne, I’ve already read that Wayne Enterprises has been taking care of the many logistics of my travel: my visas, my car transport, and even my hotel details have been laid out by Kori and her team. Of course, the issue of payment and which party held the responsibility hadn’t been cleared yet, and the offer for the team plane hadn’t been put out before today, but I think Kori gave me the OK to tell my siblings that Wayne would take me on.

“Permission to travel on their itinerary all season?” I say, hopeful.

I’m not usually very spoiled, but I think a crucial business deal like this one gives me some leverage to ask to be spoiled. 

Peter’s mouth scrunches to one side, his face thoughtful. “They’re our customers, technically. I feel like that sets a bad precedent.”

“They offered,” I add. “Kori mentioned that it’s for security and ease of content. This is the closest I’ve ever had to work on a partnership,” I tell my brother. I don’t want to plead, because it’s already hard to forget that my boss is my big brother, and the last thing I need is flashbacks to high school, when I would beg him to let us eat fast food for dinner.

“I vote yes,” Natasha says simply.

“I do too,” I say, thrilled at her support. I don’t add that we outnumber Peter, because he hates when we out-sister him.

My brother’s thick eyebrows furrow, like he’s still trying to convince himself. “I guess it would be considered part of the compensation in the contract,” he says, more to himself. Natasha steals the little fish that came with our meals from Peter’s plate and his eyes dart to hers in annoyance, but he softens. “Fine. Go ahead.”

I clap excitedly and my face breaks out into a grin. “Have I ever told you that you’re the best brother-boss that I could ask for?”

He can’t help the twitch at the corner of his lips when I say it. He pretends to look put-off, but he really is just a melty old softie in his core. “Make us proud.”

I promise to, as always, but for the first time, the promise feels like it’s teetering on the edge of a cliff. I don’t know how the next few months will go.

My phone chimes, and I look down to check who’s texted.

Dick Grayson: I had a great time meeting you today :)

Can’t wait for Melb

He’s the only thing that might push me over the edge.

Chapter Text

“Hey, you!” calls out a familiar voice, from the pitch dark living room, when I unlock my front door.

I yelp and drop my keys and my phone. I flick on the first light switch I can reach and pick up my things before stepping inside. The light I turned on is the light above the TV, so from where she sits on the couch, Kara is still dimly lit, all shadows. I have to squint at her in the dark.

“What the fuck, Kara?” I exclaim. “You scared me!”

Kara waves her copy of my key in the air, smiling coyly. I roll my eyes but want to laugh–I’d totally forgotten she had that.

“You said you were fucked!” she says innocently. She sits on the couch like a princess, legs tucked under her daintily.

I stare at her and shut the door behind me, turning on the rest of the lights. “I also said I was going to call! You know, you’ve kept track of that house key way better now than you ever did when we lived together.”

“I thought you could use some ice cream while we unpacked the Dick Grayson issue,” Kara says, padding over to my kitchen to take a pint of brownie Ben and Jerry’s out of the freezer.

“There’s no issue.” My nose crinkles.

Both of us know as soon as it comes out of my mouth that it’s a lie. Kara always sees right through me, even when I’m trying to convince myself of another truth. She also knows that the nose thing is my definite tell.

Kara sits on my blue couch, the one that we picked together, back when this was our apartment, before she moved to National City for a couple of years for her first post-grad job. Then she moved back to New York into her own place, because Brooklyn ‘speaks to her more,’ and California seemed like the kind of place she could move back to and ‘conquer in her thirties.’ (All her own words.) Kara peels back the protective film on the new pint of ice cream and sticks a spoon in it before wrapping herself in my huge green sherpa blanket, leaving one end for me to share.

“You know you need it,” she says, waving the spoon, packed with ice cream, in the air like a magic wand.

“Ugh,” I say, finally relenting. “Give me a second,” I tell her, before peeling off my slacks mid-living room and kicking them into my laundry basket by the entry. I’m happy to take off the work pants and to feel air against my legs again.

When I come back, Kara’s turned on the TV and I’m in my favorite off-season Valentine-themed fuzzy pants. It’s as if she never moved away.

I sit beside my best friend and sweep some blonde locks off of her shoulder before settling in next to her under the blanket. I rest my head on her shoulder and she feeds me a bite of dessert. I cozy up to her side; her body is always burning like a furnace.

“He’s really hot,” Kara starts.

“Tell me about it,” I sigh.

“You’re, like, the most professional person I’ve ever met.” I raise an eyebrow at her. “After Peter, of course,” she giggles.

“It doesn’t matter,” I insist. “I have to squash it.”

“Peter can’t disown you for having a crush,” she tries to convince me.

I put a hand up to stop her train of thought. “No, he’d fire me, which is probably worse.”

Okay, Peter probably wouldn’t fire me, but he definitely wouldn’t let me work with Dick or the team again, and that seems like a really embarrassing low for the baby sister of the CEO. I don’t want anyone to even notice that I’m attracted to Dick, because it could all get out of hand. Who knows what will get back to Peter? Worse, who knows what’ll get back to the execs at Wayne, who can decide at any point that it makes me a business liability? Peter basically said as much earlier at dinner. God forbid I did something that makes Dick decide he can’t work with me.

Kara stuffs her mouth with another spoonful of ice cream, and puts it on the table so that she can turn to me. I know this stance of Kara’s well. The couch-confessional-turn’s purpose: firstly to make her point, and secondly so that she doesn’t get distracted by Gilmore Girls on the TV.

“You’re not going to do anything to jeopardize this launch. Not to the product line, not to the marketing, not to that boy, and definitely not to Aurora.” Her eyes have taken on a blazing blue, her brows knitted together. It’s Kara’s inspirational speech face, a look that she’s told me took years to hone, copied straight from Clark’s. “You’re good at your job, and even if it goes poorly, why does Aurora need Wayne Enterprises? Is the best thing for your small, sick-ass business actually to be acquired by some huge conglomeration?”

I can’t help but smile at her, a small one tugging at the corners of my mouth. “I’ll make sure to remember that my cop-out for Peter is that we don’t need it to go well anyway.”

She shakes her head but smiles back. “My point is that there’s no outcome that ends the world. Besides,” she adds, “you won’t make a move unless he makes one first.”

I take a spiteful bite of the ice cream. “Why do you think moves are involved? I just met him.”

Kara holds my cheek in her hand and squeezes gently. “He won’t be able to resist you. You’re a dude magnet once you’ve got it turned on.”

My jaw drops.

“What?” she says. “Every time we go to the bar, you spot at least one guy you think is cute, and then he catches you making those pretty Claire eyes at him, and then suddenly, you’re kissing.”

“That hasn’t happened since college.”

“Maybe because you were dating one of those said bar guys for like three years,” she says smugly.

I pick up the ice cream from the coffee table and start eating it earnestly. “Let’s not rehash that,” I say through the brain-freeze. She’s right, I did date a guy I met at the bar for three years, but it doesn’t matter. It ended because he moved to London. My love life’s been barren since. 

We start watching the show despite having watched it a dozen times before. 

“Do you need me to plant-sit while you’re travelling?” she asks, eyes trained on the TV as Rory begins attending Chilton.

I make a face at her, eyebrows scrunching together, even though she’s not looking. “We both know these plants are fake.”

Her face turns beet red, and I can already guess what she’ll say. “Brainy started asking if I can come over again… and I figured your place is much easier to escape to if I get cold feet…”

I don’t tease her, because the fact that she’s admitting to wanting to see Brainy is a huge step in itself. Quinn, AKA Brainy, is an old friend of ours, who we met on orientation day in college. He works as a product engineer for Disney out of the Manhattan office. I’m glad for both of them that he reached out–Kara’s been running away from his love since she accepted the job in National City, and maybe this time she’ll slow down.

“Sure, why not?” I tell her, giving her a nudge with my head. “Just keep my freezer stocked for the off weeks that I come home.”

She promises, and her body loosens like she’s lifted a huge weight off of her shoulders.

Kara turns on her phone, and I watch as she starts to stalk the Wayne Racing handle, the same way I did just last night. She starts by scrolling the feed, then zooming in on Tim and Dick’s faces, then going to each of their individual profiles.

“Can you explain again why you guys got roped into this?” she asks, Dick’s face enlarged to just his nose and right eye as she scrutinizes his features. “The F1 part is awesome, but I don’t know how it ties into an acquisition.”

I shrug, because I haven’t had much time to piece it together for myself, either. “All I know is that someone liked the Dua campaign, and that Wayne wants to use us to do the same for the team.” I tap a finger against my bottom lip as I think out loud. “If I had to guess, they’re trying to legitimize the team and spread across more households into a different niche, and acquiring us gives them access to all of the other stuff we would do. Buying us just to make pieces for Wayne Racing just guarantees that they’ll have products to sell to regular people, season after season, and they don’t have to deal with royalties or stuff like that if they own the end to end costs. I’m just not sure what Peter sees in the deal. He seemed worried when he told me about it, but he’s pretty hellbent on making it happen anyway.”

“Maybe they’re good capitalists,” Kara jokes.

I look at her dubiously. “I mean, that’s the hope. If I knock this out of the park, Peter probably figures they’ll buy Aurora and won’t touch us.” My mouth droops into a small frown. “It seems like a big uncertainty to bet on, though.”

“Don’t think about it too hard,” she tells me. “You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it. For now, just enjoy whatever chemistry you must have with this beautiful man,” she says with a sultry, exaggerated tone. She turns her screen to me to look at a picture of Dick in a suit, attending a Wayne Foundation gala. “You’re hot, he’s hot. That tension’s probably going to make for an amazing reel.”

“Or it’s going to be horrible and unfocused.”

She shakes her head at me and finishes off the pint.

“Claire, you’re the smartest person I know, but I promise you can trust me on this one. I can tell you’re smitten with whatever he was like today. Just relax.”

I want to listen to her, but when I look at the photo of Dick again, the way my heart starts pounding does not give off relaxed.

Chapter Text

My last day in the office before I leave for Australia feels like we’re doomsday prepping.

I’ve had four meetings with Natasha this week on the other projects that I’ve been managing, like an analysis on our Instagram versus our TikTok analytics, or a category comparison between the different collabs and drops that we’ve done to put pen to paper on what’s worked for us as a company. Wayne Racing also isn’t the only collaboration that I have in the works–for one, we’re trying to lock down a launch date for our collection with Twilight, and it’s been pushed back like five times because there hasn’t been any confirmation on when the movie will be re-released in theaters.

I’m not worried that they’ll have trouble keeping things in chugging along while I’m gone, especially because I’m on a team with two other people, but I think Natasha feels responsible for asking me to drop my entire life and gallivant across the world, which sounds brilliant but is really difficult for someone with a rigid routine and many, many deliverables. My sister and I have had so many late night couch rants about the business that she knows that I take my work personally, so I can tell she’s decided to commit to carrying on as if I’m not even gone.

“And who’s your key contact there?”

“I’ve been working directly with her manager, Olivia,” I say, typing everything into a Word document for my sister to reference.

Natasha nods and scribbles haphazardly into her notebook. She moves onto a different project, pointing at the mini slideshow that I’ve made for her. “And that studio’s already approved the line.”

I nod. “Just waiting for folks to start receiving their PR boxes.”

“How do you remember all of this?” Natasha asks, setting her pen down on the table so suddenly, it scatters across the way and lands on the floor. She stares at her right hand like she’s contemplating setting her head in it.

I furrow my eyebrows at her, slightly concerned, but also really amused. I can’t fight the smile that spreads across my lips looking at her freaking out like this. “You definitely have more work than I do.” And it’s usually my job to be the paranoid one. “Pro tip: hand writing your tasks helps your brain absorb them better.”

“I need to take a break,” she sighs, downing the rest of her black coffee. I wince for her, because it’s been sitting there for a while, and it’s definitely cold and disgusting by now. It doesn’t even faze her, though.

There’s a knock on the door to Natasha’s office, and when she calls out for them to come in, it’s our brother. Peter doesn’t look surprised to see me, only takes a seat next to me to peer at our screens.

“You guys have been hard at work all week,” he muses. Compared to our very worn in faces, Peter looks like he just got a facial and a massage, all proper and perfect.

Natasha piles her wavy hair atop her head and clips it up. “Just want to be ready.”

“You guys were doing this stuff before I even started working here,” I point out.

“She just means you’ve been doing really great things,” Peter says. “Do you have a plan for Australia?” He looks at me expectantly.

Of course, I’ve learned from the best, and I do have a plan. “My main goal is just to figure out what their race weeks are like, so that we can slot in content creation and shoot time once the samples are ready. I also figured that I can start bringing pieces for them to wear during press and nights out, so we have enough content with them wearing Aurora casually.”

Peter grins. “Genius.”

I don’t want to ask, but I can’t help but think of my conversation with Kara. I get why Wayne Racing needs us, but why do we need them? I can’t think of any reason we’d willingly put our jobs on the line like this unless the payoff was huge. We’re small, but we’re still growing, right?

Maybe Natasha had a point, about Wayne actually doing us a favor by acquiring us. Peter wouldn’t have agreed unless the deal was a number he couldn’t say no to.

I just can’t stomach the idea of being cut off from the thing that we worked so hard on together. Working here was the best way to show Peter just how much I understood and appreciated his sacrifices. I just have to trust that Wayne Enterprises doesn’t want to buy us solely for our parts.

“Go home a little early today,” Peter tells me. “You’ve got a long flight tomorrow.”

—-

I wake up in the morning to a chime on my phone.

It’s from Dick.

Dick Grayson: See you soon. Just a tip: bring noise cancelling headphones

A 20 hour flight feels longer without them.

Then my phone pings again, and it’s from Kori.

Kori Anders: hi Claire! We’re so excited to see you today! Just bring your passport and the rest you can leave to the team. Sending a car for you in an hour.

I react to both of their texts with a heart emoji, and text Kori a quick thanks.

I haven’t exactly been texting Dick—I never even responded to his first text with more than a smiley face, and that was because Kara watched me open the texts again that night, and berated me profusely for leaving him on read.

“I know you’re trying to hide that you’re into him, but don’t just be rude,” she’d said.

I replied immediately, because she had a point. If Dua had texted me, it would’ve been obligatory to respond.

I fight the lingering sleepiness and force myself out of bed, pulling up my sheets so that the bed’s made in case Kara crashes here soon. She would have done it for me, but making the bed for Kara is probably one of the only reasons that could motivate me to do it. I put on my favorite loose blue jeans, even though I’d prefer my sweatpants, and a heather gray Aurora hoodie over my tank top that I wore to bed. The jeans are a compromise so that I don’t feel too underdressed for this long ass flight.

I pack the remaining essentials into my duffle bag: my work laptop, my iPad, my headphones. I might’ve forgotten those without Dick’s reminder. I throw in a travel size of my favorite powdery matcha perfume for good measure and zip up, timed perfectly to the call I get from the Wayne team driver as he pulls up in front of my building.

The drive to Gotham is short and sweet; we drive down a different road towards the Wayne Racing facility, which apparently has its own airplane hangar. I can’t help but think that I could spend a week on the property left to my own devices, and still not be able to find my way out. The driver drops me off straight in front of a plane with a set of stairs already stationed in front of the entrance, next to a big group of people gathered on the tarmac, preparing to board.

 I spot Dick immediately, and he turns and spots me, too.

His beautiful blue eyes light up, and my smile back at him is so immediate that it’s like it’s been switched on at the sight of his face. My body is attuned to his expressions like a motion detector. One twitch and I’m turned on.

He waves me over, and next to him is a tall woman, who must be our age but has perfect youthful skin, with dark loose waves and perfectly manicured, short red nails. Her thin, straight eyebrows sit beautifully on her perfect facial structure, framing her deep-set, hooded blue eyes.

I can accept that I’m here to work, but being here and constantly meeting beautiful people is starting to make me feel like I was sent here as punishment. It’s like this team is made of superhumans.

“Hi, Dick,” I say. I hold out a hand to the beautiful woman, and she takes it and shakes it earnestly. “I’m Claire.”

“Claire, meet my manager, Donna Troy,” Dick introduces, with a flourish. “We also grew up together,” he says. His tone tells me that he knows my first thought is that this team is peak nepotism. Not that I’m judging, but it’s a little intimidating to join a group of people who already feel like family.

Donna smiles at me, confident and soothing. Her cheek bones are so high that the sun catches the apples of her cheeks and make them shine like she’s wearing the most luxurious highlighter.  “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” she says. “I’ll keep him in line for you.”

“Funny,” I say, “because Barbara said the same thing.”

She laughs, a single, loud ha. “Spoken the way only two women who grew up with him could.”

Dick is looking between us, smiling, but also looking sheepish, a small blush dusting his cheeks. He looks so sweet, not much like the cool, easygoing guy that I’ve met, and I want to hug him. My body has much less chill than my brain, where my logical, rational self is telling me to say hi to everyone else before attaching myself to Dick like a barnacle.

The brain wins, and I tell Donna it was nice to meet her before turning away, my smile brightening so that it doesn’t look like a snub when I go to look for Kori. I pass Barry, Jonn, and Tim, and they all nod at me (freakily in unison) as I weave and bob through the dozens of team members preparing for the trip to Melbourne. Before I can find Kori, I find Barbara, red hair swept into a high ponytail and wearing leggings and a Wayne sweater that’s been cropped to fit off the shoulder. 

Barbara’s lips part in pleasant surprise when she sees me, walking over to give me a gentle one-armed hug. “Glad you made it, Claire.”

“I can’t imagine many people can say no to a trip on a private jet when the other option is economy for nearly 24 hours,” I reply.

Her lips crook into a smirk and she shrugs. “All that says about you is that you’re just as intelligent as I thought. Come on, I’m sure Kori’s looking for you.”

Kori is, in fact, looking for me. We find her at the back of the group, checking names off her roster and snapping pictures of Dick with Tim, arms around each other, so far away that they haven’t looked in her direction.

“These are for Twitter,” she tells me when she notices me watching. She shows me her screen and the pictures are so idyllic that it strikes a chord in me. They’re holding each other, laughing. Tim’s wearing his signature red and Dick’s in his blue. It’s the perfect image to give off that they’re unbreakable teammates. “Now imagine this image, but they’re wearing Aurora,” she teases.

“You read my mind,” I say.

She throws her hands up blithely, her eyes lit up by her bright smile. “I’m good at that.”

The rest of the team is dressed down, and I have a feeling Kori is too, but she’s still managed to outdress all of us in spades. She’s wearing these beautiful designer flats and the most perfect flared jeans I’ve ever seen, paired with a flowy purple blouse that makes her look like she’s heading off to vacation, not to work for upwards of eighty hours over a single weekend.

Barbara and Kori start telling me about their plans for when we touch down in Melbourne, our half-day off before race weekend begins with the practice laps, inviting me to come with them for a walk along the water and a lunch out. They tell me it’s the best way to fight off the jetlag.

Before I can agree, everyone suddenly starts picking up their bags, actually ready to board. Kori tells me to put a pin in the conversation and scurries off to find her things and Barbara does the same, both telling me they’ll meet me on board.

I pick up my duffle bag and my small carry-on is taken from me by one of the plane staff to load into cargo. When I step onto the plane, all the people that I know are seated, mostly together.

Kori, Barbara, and Donna sit together with Barry on my left, their seats facing each other in a quartet. On my right are Dick and Tim, who both immediately notice me and start insisting that I sit with them.

I join them, sitting beside Dick. I can’t even pretend it was reluctantly. I just wonder if he thinks I’ve been giving him the cold shoulder over text on purpose. I have the aisle, so Barbara is barely an arm’s length away. She winks at me, and her gaze darts past my face, behind me, lingering for a second before she turns back to her conversation with Barry. 

Tim is watching race footage on an iPad, and Dick is… looking at me. 

“Hi,” I say. I fidget in my seat, trying to get comfortable. I’ve never been particularly good on long hauls—Peter and Natasha are always embarrassed by the way I pace the aisles during our flights to Asia. I break the silence the way I know how: talking about work. “I’m looking forward to this weekend. It’ll be awesome for the collab.”

He raises an eyebrow, but nods. “I can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with,” he says, but I’m almost sure he wasn’t trying to talk about my job for the next twenty hours. I just didn’t know what else to say. Being nonchalant is really hard. The smell of his cologne is flooding my senses, earthy and sharp. “Did you bring your headphones?” he asks, leaning in closer. He whispers and the feeling of his voice against the shell of my ear almost makes me shiver. “Tim mutters to himself when he watches race recordings.” I pull them out of my bag and wave them at him. He mouths, “Nice.”

As if on cue, Tim starts mumbling what I think is race strategy to himself, and Dick shows me his wired earbuds to signal that he’s going to go on his laptop. I smile, tight-lipped, and just look out the window and put my headphones on to listen to music. 

Once we’re fully taken off, I pull out my iPad to read some emails and sketch, and Dick pauses his sitcom to lean in closer to me again, shoulder brushing mine. I still, and turn to meet his eyes.

Our faces are only inches apart.

“What are you doing?” he asks. 

Everyone else on the flight is fully in a zone by now–sipping their drinks, looking at stats for the race, chatting quietly. I almost feel nervous to talk to him, worried about drawing attention, but a quick look around tells me that no one even cares what we’re doing. Even Tim has dozed off, arms crossed, sitting straight up, brow furrowed. 

I turn my screen to him. “Just some charm sketches. We have a couple of movie license proposals soon, so want to throw some ideas in.”

“Let me guess… That one is Frankenstein.”

“Did the stitches and bolts give it away?”

He chuckles. “These are really cool. How’d you end up doing this?”

Guys ask me that all the time. It’s usually a thinly-constructed pretense, their way of pretending they care about what my job is, to hide that they actually really disrespect people with the word “marketing” in their title, or that they think it must be easy since it’s a “girly” job. It doesn’t mean that from Dick, whose blue eyes look so deep and earnest, framed by his long eyelashes and his gentle demeanor. He’s so focused on me, on what I might say.

Fuck. I’m into it.

I shouldn’t be. This is really unprofessional of me. The feelings in general, I mean. But we’re just trying to get to know each other, right? Given that I might need to know his life story to sell F1 jewelry.

“The design part isn’t really my main thing,” I tell him. “I’m a really talented rough sketcher. Our two designers are the ones who are really great at it, but part of understanding our customers and whatever we’re producing is being able to visualize it from the start, to have a path and an end goal.”

He nods, and I continue.

“Peter, my older brother, started taking care of me when I was in high school. He’d barely started his senior year of college, but our parents were gone, and I was alone. Natasha was in school abroad.” I realize as I’m rambling that this has nothing to do with my drawing. “Basically, Peter got really into amateur jewelry-making as a hobby while he was working his consulting job, and I was studying marketing and really liked to draw as a kid, so it all worked out.”

“That’s really sweet,” he says. He gets a faraway look in his eyes, and his wrist clenches where it sits near mine on the armrest. “Bruce was really into cars growing up. I almost started racing to keep that part of our lives with me forever, you know? Now that I’m here, I don’t remember what else there was that I wanted to do.”

“You belong to it, then.”

He gives me a crooked smile. “In some ways, I do.”

I think of the first day we met, only a week ago. Of the story about the noble nightwing, his racing nickname, and how one of the greatest journalists of all time saw that in him. I wonder if the name stuck for a reason, and if I’ll see it through the season.

“Can you show me what the nightwing was supposed to look like?”

I want to use it in my sketches for the line.

—--

After we’ve had our dinner, everyone’s brushed their teeth and are winding down. Tim’s put away his gadgets, Dick’s shuffling a deck of Uno, and I’m fighting the urge to get up and stretch in front of my hosts. Our friends across the aisle are tuned into our conversation now, eager for a group activity before what’s sure to be an uncomfortable sleep.

Kori is talking about a racer that she had a flirtation with last season, who’s been shifted up to primary of his team. He won’t leave her alone, she says, eager for us to touch down in Melbourne.

Donna raises an eyebrow at Kori as she tells her story. “Are you responding? You know that drivers are all idiotic fools. Sorry, Barry.”

Barry laughs at her and shakes his head. “I may be foolish, but I make my wife happy.”

“The rare exception,” Barbara shoots back with a slap on her armrest.

“Are you into drivers, Claire?” Tim asks, playfully. He doesn’t seem to take any of the teasing personally. 

I fight the urge to look at Dick, to see if he’s watching. “I can’t say it’s ever been my type,” I respond. As if I’ve ever had the chance to date a professional racer.

“I knew you were smart,” Barbara says, eyes glinting.

Tim nods sagely. “Noted. I will shoo away any bloodthirsty driver we come across through the season. They’re like hounds during the first race weekend, so keep your guard up during any afterparties.”

Donna says, “Tim will protect you.”

From over my shoulder, I hear the shuffling of the cards slow. “So will I,” Dick says. “Though I promise we’re not all bad.”

“Dick’s dated Kori and kissed Donna, by the way,” Barbara mentions. 

I flush, trying not to let it catch me by surprise. I still haven’t turned to fully look at him, but I can see him in the periphery of my gaze, also blushing.

“We were kids,” he mumbles.

“Okay, okay,” Barbara says, her merciless teasing letting up. “He’s a great person to have in your corner, too.”

I finally let myself look at him. 

Promise, he mouths. “I take care of all of my friends.”

Chapter Text

“Welcome to Melbourne,” Barry announces with a stretch, the first to get up when the pilot announces our landing. “I’m itching for some real food.”

“We’ll head to the hotel to get settled, and then get some time to ourselves before dinner, alright?” Kori announces to the crew, pleased by the loud affirmative cheer she gets from everyone, eager to de-plane.

I’ve barely been roused out of my nap, which took ages to fall into. I spent probably four hours watching everyone sleep and snore while I read from my backlit e-reader so that I wouldn’t disturb anyone with the light of my phone screen. Tim, who slept soundly despite his freakishly straight posture, looks like he’s ready to run a marathon. Dick slept too, his head leaning against the window of the plane, but he woke up before I’d been able to fall asleep. He pulled out a mystery book and used his overhead light to read as I read beside him, trying not to act too aware of his presence.

When I fully come to, my head is resting against the edge of my seat, surprisingly solid and warm. I stretch my neck and startle when I jam my head into the right side of Dick’s jaw.

“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” I tell him, standing immediately, shoving my things into my duffle bag and throwing it over my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Great, I just slept on the job. Worse, he’s too nice to complain about it to me. 

“You weren’t bothering me,” he says, getting up and stretching tall, to touch the ceiling of the plane. “Keeping still helped my meditation,” he says with a smile. I tell him I meant my assault on his chin, but he waves it off. Despite the long flight, his hair doesn’t look greasy, and his skin doesn’t look sallow. I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of polished wood and cringe, because I’m the stark opposite vision of him.

Side by side, we start to get off the plane together. “How long was I asleep?” I fiddle with the strap of my bag to keep my fingers busy. As we stand at the door of the plane, Australia welcomes us with a wall of hot air that hits my face like a gentle yet alarming wake up call. It quickly washes away the fatigue I feel from the somewhat unsatisfying nap.

“You only slept a couple of hours,” he says, looking at me with a furrowed brow. “Are you sure you’re up for lunch?” He holds a hand over his eyes to shield it from the sun, his hands digging in his bag before emerging with sunglasses. I do the same to ease my squinting, and we smile at each other for a second. Similarly prepared.

“My hunger always wins over exhaustion,” I tell him. He gives me another look, but my stomach growls, and I’m sure he can see in my face, even past the brown lenses, that I mean it. “How was the book you read?”

“Great,” he says, pulling it out of his bag to show me the cover. We get into the bus waiting for us and sit beside each other again. I don’t even know where Kori and Barbara are sitting now, and Tim’s gone to sit with Jonn. “I think I’ve already solved the murder, though.”

We push our sunglasses to sit on top of our heads at the same time, and even in the tinted window light, his eyes seem to sparkle blue. Like we’re in on something together, connected.

“Only a quarter in?” I shift in the plush bus seat, because of course, even the most basic of transports would be luxurious for the Waynes. I position my knees away from him. 

“I’d bet on it.” I try not to spend too long lingering on his crooked smirk.

I show him my Kindle screen, displaying the cover of the book I’m reading. “Well, it turns out this fantasy I picked up is a fantasy murder mystery, so let me know if you can figure this one out as quick. I got almost eighty percent through during the flight and I’m still lost.”

He asks me if he can take the Kindle, and I watch him click through the menus on the screen. He has to scan the screen before he figures out how to navigate to the synopsis, but it comes quickly and intuitively for him. I never would have taken him to be somewhat analog, behind the technology trends, but he seems savvy enough with it anyway.

Dick reads the synopsis, the prologue, and the first chapter. He reads like he’s a marathon speed reader. I wonder if everything he does is as fast as the cars he drives. “Do you really want to know who it is?”

“Mmm… Kind of.” To spare myself the anxiety. “You really know who it is from just that?”

“I’d have to read about fifteen percent of the book to be completely sure. But yeah, I think so.”

“How?”

“Bruce was obsessed with reading Agatha Christie.”

“Like, for bedtime?” 

“Yeah.” I stare at him for a second, unsure what to say. I guess it’s not weird, maybe just unconventional, but my parents definitely read me Curious George and Peter Rabbit until I graduated to chapter books on my own. I wouldn’t have pegged Bruce Wayne as a big bedtime story person, much less an Agatha-Christine-for-bedtime person. I hadn’t really thought of him as much other than an intimidating business figure, like corporate God.

“You didn’t find the prose boring? I would have imagined a kid reading the Hardy Boys.” I’m trying to imagine eight year old Dick Grayson in his jammies, listening to Death on the Nile read aloud by the richest man in America. I wonder if either of them took naturally to that dynamic. I feel like Peter transitioning from my big brother to my keeper was really awkward, but I was already starting high school, and I was just sad and quiet all of the time.

Dick shrugs casually. “I read a lot in between cities when I travelled with the circus as a kid,” he explains. “I think Bruce got my reading level results back one day, and graduated me to Poirot.”

“How long was he reading bedtime stories to you?” I ask, curious. More about Dick’s childhood than anything, because Bruce Wayne’s celebrity had never really loomed over me. I don’t care about who raised him, but I do care about how it formed him into the man he is today.

He hands the Kindle back to me. “Until the nightmares went away.”

My face must drop, because I wasn’t expecting him to say that at all. “I’m a horrible person,” I say, apologetically. I can feel a flush creep over my cheeks and down to my chest. I should have known better that his childhood might be a sensitive subject. I don’t exactly talk about mine.

Dick takes a good long look at my face as I squirm and he starts to laugh, shoulders shaking. No one pays us any mind. “It’s not a big deal,” he says. “You didn’t mean it that way.”

I put my face in my hands so I don’t have to look at him. “Noo,” I complain from behind my palms. “I’m supposed to be doing serious work and all I’ve been doing is insult you.”

Dick puts a hand on my shoulder, warm and grounding, and I drop my hands from my face. “You just say what you’re thinking.”

Which is not true, because I’m thinking about how sweet and smart and cool he is, and I really can’t say that, not with my job back home or the jewelry line I’m supposed to help plan, for a sport I’m a complete stranger to. 

“You’re way too nice to me,” I tell him. “Shouldn’t you be preparing for this huge race?”

“Talking to you, completely removed from racing, calms me down. That’s prep too.”

My lips fall into an involuntary pout. He’s not real.

Then I get a text, and when I check, it’s my brother.

Peter: Claire, glad you landed OK.

Have you had a chance to check your email?

I don’t respond, not right away, but the second text makes my heart begin to race. My body drops into some fight or flight response, and I feel myself tense up and put some more distance between my arm and Dick’s. I hadn’t even noticed how close we’d gotten over the drive.

I open my Outlook app, just to refresh and see what he’s asking about. If he needed me to check, even though I’m here, it must be a 911.

Subject: Lost Samples

Hi Claire,

Just checked on the delivery date for the samples planned for the music video shoot this weekend. The mail carrier sent us a notification today that it’s lost in transit.

Cannot move the shoot back and samples are crucial to feature given the timing of the theatrical re-release.

Can you please advise?

Thanks,

Dan

I groan quietly, under my breath. You’re joking, I think to myself.

The music video isn’t huge, but it was a huge part of the contract we signed for our partnership with a cult-classic rock musical from the 90s, prepped for a thirty-year-anniversary moment later this year. The pieces that our team designed barely had any production samples–I had chatted with the studio last week, and with everything else going on full blast for us right now, I don’t think anyone would have the time to make fifteen pieces, molded, welded, and assembled, before the music video shoot in two days.

This is fine. I can handle this.

Subject: Re: Lost Samples

Hi Dan,

Sorry to hear about the mail snafu. We can handle the insurance claim once the time period has lapsed (though fingers crossed they turn up!)

I am currently OOO for work travel, but I can coordinate with our team to have someone on-site for the shoot, with our design samples. They won’t be exact to final product like our production samples, but they are 99% there.

@Natasha Young can cover any details needed.

Thanks,

Claire

It’s been, like, less than a day. Some irritation flares within me when I re-read my response before sending it. Did Peter really need to ask me to read this?

My phone buzzes again.

Natasha: i told him not to text you

peter never knows how to chill

sorry claire. glad you landed safely. love u

stop responding

i will take care of it

call me later

Claire: I love you too. I’m sure he just wants to keep me in the loop

I defend our brother, with a twinge of guilt at the way my instincts jumped to immediate frustration. I’m on work travel, but I am also getting a huge break from our everyday lives for this. If Peter needs me, I should respond. I don’t even know when Peter got looped into this email chain.

I scroll through my Outlook emails again, almost compulsively, reading through everything even though everyone’s moved me to CC by now. Natasha has been on top of every chain so far, and part of me knows she’s right–Peter didn’t need to text me. But it’s fine. It wasn’t something I couldn’t handle from across the world.

I’m reading through an industry trend report on my phone, the amount of text feeling gargantuan on the tiny screen, when Dick nudges me with his shoulder.

“Everything okay?” he asks, looking down at my hands. “Are you working?”

I shut my phone off and try to get the urge to work right out of me. “My brother sent me an SOS. It’s fine, though.” I can just catch up on Monday. That way, I still keep a boundary, and my brother can learn to adjust to my longer response times.

“I’m glad,” he says. “If you don’t have fun this weekend, then we’re not worth working with, okay?” Dick says, making sure to hold eye contact with me. 

I nod, smiling despite myself. “Noted.”

Chapter Text

Our first two days in Australia were so chill, most people wouldn’t have guessed we were here for a Formula One race. I got lunch with the Wayne Racing team after we landed; we walked from the hotel to an Australian sushi place, where they serve handrolls in cylindrical, uncut roll style, handed over in a small paper takeaway bag. I learn that Dick Grayson prefers his sushi at an omakase (of course he would), and he learns that I can clear five Australian handrolls in two seconds flat. I’ll never forget his awe as I challenged him to a race and I inhaled my tuna avocados without so much as a hiccup. Barry ate enough to feed a kindergarten class and Tim tried desperately to keep up, tapping out after ten.

Kori and Donna took me shopping for weather-appropriate race outfits. Donna was actually looking for new dress shoes, having immediately regretted her decision to bring heels at all, and Kori helped me pick out a flowy cream linen outfit, with a blazer in classic Wayne blue.

For the first team dinner, I pulled out my Aurora stash from my suitcase, and brought out some classic chains for Dick and Tim to wear. Tim already wore a silver chain around his neck, so it seemed like an easy swap, but I’d yet to see Dick actually wear any necklaces or bracelets or rings. Wayne Enterprises must really need to diversify their portfolio if they’re banking on a guy who doesn’t wear jewelry to sell a whole line of it.

Still, it was easy enough to ask them to wear it, and they seemed to really appreciate the gifts. I snapped plenty of pictures of them in the jewelry to send back to the design team.

During yesterday’s practice laps, Barbara let me sit beside her as she and Conner worked over the headsets. I don’t know what I thought a race engineer did, but I quickly realize how much coordination and planning it is, aligning strategy with Jonn as they balance all of the stats of the cars and converse with Dick and Tim. Before the laps began, Barbara even tried to walk me through the schematic of the car, showing me all of the tweaks from the base Wayne car that were made for Dick’s particular rig, and I stared at everything, fascinated by the way she was practically speaking another language. I begged her not to quiz me, because I’m self-aware enough to know better than to take on all the intricacies of car racing and engineering, and there’s no way I’ll be able to remember things like what the suspension does or all of the different wings.

I adore her deeply for trying, but I resigned myself to clueless bystander, and let myself enjoy the rush of the cars racing through, instead.

All of the things Donna and Kori took me through during yesterday’s practice laps weren’t enough to prepare me for the sheer scale of what I’m seeing in front of me now, for the qualifying race. The VIP club, the viewing stands, the garage–they took me through the ins and outs of the Melbourne track, helping me understand where the team would be and where we would be watching with all of the Wayne Racing guests.

“This is crazy.” My jaw drops when we walk from the paddock into the garage, explosive cheers from the stands already setting the standard noise level. I almost wish I’d packed my earplugs. 

I haven’t been able to speak to either Dick or Tim for more than a few minutes since dinner last night. I’d sat next to Tim and Barbara, giggling over the silly bets Tim and Dick were making with each other over what pole position they’d be able to secure, and the two drivers excused themselves early to hit the gym together for a pre-race stress cooldown workout. It was their ritual, Barbara explained. Tim was so nervous for his first race in F1 last season that he’d asked Dick to go on a run with him, and they’ve settled their nerves together ever since.

 Kori looks at ease despite the chaos, fully in her element as she takes in all of the noise and the moving parts around us. She scribbles diligently on her clipboard as she surveys the garage, seeming to check that everyone is accounted for, before pulling out her phone and taking an Instagram story. She tweets next, and then I see her phone ring and she excuses herself to talk to some news outlet. Kori tells me to stick with Donna for the race, and I look at her, feeling comforted by her warm smile and the way she takes my arm to walk us up to the viewing area.

We pass Tim getting loaded in his car, and I see Dick emerging from his changing room, his race suit unzipped from the waist up, hanging by his hips. It’s a solid midnight blue, the Wayne Racing logo plastered across his chest in a bright yellow. Small sponsor logos decorate his shoulders, and I think to myself that maybe next season, Aurora will be there too. 

“So, qualifiers,” I say, trying not to stare at the swing of the suit from his torso. He’s fully dressed, but my brain is enamored by everything he does, and I’m trying to hate it. It’s distracting.  “You’re racing for—”

“Pole position,” we say at the same time. 

His face lights up when I get it right. 

“Our starting positions for tomorrow,” he adds. 

“Are you nervous?” I ask. I’m not sure if that question is taboo in this sport. He doesn’t look it—he looks like the poster boy of F1, looking prim and perfect and just the slightest bit wild, just like he does on the F1 promo for this Grand Prix, where he’s standing next to Wally West and Max Verstappen.

Dick shakes his head, standing confidently. “Sometimes when I first sit, but it fades as soon as I get my wheel.” 

“You’ll be great,” I tell him.

He gives me a crooked grin. “You haven’t seen me race yet,” Dick says. His blue eyes are brimming with excitement, all this energy just crackling and radiating off of him as he looks eager to get into his car. He pulls his suit up and slides his muscular arms into the sleeves, zipping up.

“Still, I know things. I have no doubts.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes once before being ushered away. I try to shake off the fuzziness it gives me. 

“Wish me luck!”

—

Donna brings me to the viewing balcony, reserved for Wayne VIPs. Kori is busy arranging the press schedule for tomorrow, and she won’t be joining us up here. Donna tells me to enjoy myself and eat as many free hor d'oeuvres as I can manage, because the competition for food will be stiff when even more sponsors and executives attend the actual race tomorrow.

I find a lounge chair perfectly situated above the starting line, with a prime view of the screen that will be following the racers down the track.

Tim did his best to explain the strategy for qualifying to me during dinner. Their goal is to make it through all three sessions, and to race a couple of laps as fast as they can. 

“We push it hard, so that we don’t have to keep going,” he’d said.

Dick elaborated. He told me that the slowest drivers in each session get dropped out before moving on to the next one, and that a lower pole position isn’t the end of the world, but it can definitely feel like a world of difference when you’re on the track, waiting for the grand prix to start.

I watch, with a Nightwing-themed cocktail in one hand and a Wagyu slider in the other, as the racers take off for Q1, the first session of the qualifying race.

I eat mindlessly as I watch, immediately finding Dick’s car as he gains speed, weaving between the Speedforce Energy racers and the Ferraris. The Wayne Racing cars have Grayson and Drake on the fronts and backs, and even with my squinty, sun-filled vision, I can clearly make out the Grayson decal as the one that takes up more space.

By the time Q1 is over, both Dick and Tim have cinched their way into the next round.

“Claire,” Donna calls out from the other side of the balcony. She’s holding out a glass of champagne for me as I walk over to her, and she’s speaking to a tall man, who looks to be about our age. I get a closer look as I take the champagne from her, and Donna introduces him. “This is our friend Garth. He’s known us since we were kids, too.” Us, as in, everyone in this paddock.

If I’d known Wayne Racing was such a family affair, I would have requested a tutor.

Garth wears a fitted blue cashmere sweater, the fabric taut over his broad shoulders and complementing his thin waist. He has a swimmer’s build, familiar to me because my boyfriend in high school was a backstroke state champion, long limbs and narrow hips. His hair is thick and dark, flowing freely to his ears, but not as long as Dick’s. It looks unstyled, like he rubbed it dry with a towel in a hurry and came here. When I take a look at his eyes, they’re purple–the color of the purple sapphire that Peter and Natasha gifted to me in my graduation ring. They’re impossible to look away from, actually. He looks kind of familiar, but I can’t place it. 

“Hi, I’m Claire,” I say, politely. I shake his hand, and he grips it like he’s holding a baby bird, shaking once before dropping it.

He nods once. Donna did enough introducing for the both of us, I guess. Donna beams at us, so I figure that this must be normal for him, and not because he doesn’t want to be here. “How are you enjoying the race?” he asks, almost sounding like he doesn’t expect a real answer.

“It’s amazing,” I say. “I’ve never watched F1 before, much less in person.” I look between him and Donna, feeling the awkward tension surrounding us like we’re trapped in uncomfortable-silence-jello, and Donna gives him the breakdown of who I am, and how I’ll be traveling with the team for most of the season. “So what do you do, Garth?”

“I swim,” he says. “Freestyle on Team USA.”

“Last year’s top gold medalist,” Donna says proudly, beaming. 

Garth looks bashful, but a small smile graces his lips. I feel a small rush of satisfaction at guessing correctly that he’s built like a swimmer. Finding out that he’s a swimming Olympic gold medalist really feels like I knocked that one out of the park.

Donna walks away, distracted by someone in a fancy suit calling her name. “You have beautiful eyes, by the way,” I tell him. “Matches my ring,” I say as I hold up my hand to show him. 

He doesn’t say anything, but he does smile again, and I think that’s good enough. Those are probably few and far between. If he’s practically a part of the Wayne family, I want him to like me.

We both watch the start of Q2 together, and I gasp when a car from LuthorCorp begins tailing Tim, riding him closely. I watch Tim’s car narrowly avoid clipping the wall on a turn, and I can only imagine the knitting of Conner’s brows as he’s taking Tim through it. I feel like I understand the offensive part of racing, but this just feels plain aggressive.

“Who is that jerk?” I ask, more to no one in particular, but to my surprise, Garth answers.

“That’s the Joker,” he says. “Jack White.” Garth watches the race without any concern on his face, but his voice reveals a smidge of distaste. “He’s not really known for his sportsmanship.”

I scowl, even though Tim’s recovered. “He seems busier messing with his competition than actually racing well.”

“I think he gets off on getting grid penalties,” Garth says. I make a face at that, and we both turn to look at each other, and he lets out a small laugh when he sees the disgust. It’s a soft, understated sound. We share a smile, and it feels good that maybe I’ve made another friend.

I hear the announcers call out Wally West’s lap time as he claims the fastest lap, and Charles Leclerc follows closely behind. When Q2 ends, Tim has made it through with the tenth fastest time, and Dick is fourth. The VIP balcony explodes in cheers when the times are posted on the screens, excited for Dick but especially thrilled for Tim and his first race here.

To my absolute dismay, Jack White is in ninth.

I’m not a traditionally competitive or sporty person, but today, I know what it’s like to feel the fire of rivalry and competition in your bones. It’s only taken qualifiers to decide the course of my season: I do not like Jack White and will not be engaging with Luthorcorp racers.

I tell Garth this, and he laughs again.

He nods calmly. “We do what we must to get through the season.”

—

At the end of the third qualifying session, Tim’s secured P9, and Dick has moved up to P3. Wally West from Speedforce Energy maintained his lead as opening pole for the race tomorrow, and P2 is held by Max Verstappen of Queen Racing. 

Donna brings me to the garage as everyone on the balcony post-games the race, and we stand with Barbara and Conner as Jonn and Barry welcome Tim and Dick back into the garage.

Dick whoops as he comes back from his car, slapping Tim on the back with an elated grin on his face. “Amazing drive, Robin!”

Tim, who already looks like he’s calculating all the ways he could’ve raced differently, looks like a load’s lifted off his chest at Dick’s praise. “Thanks, Nightwing.”

“Great way to start our weekend,” Dick says, unzipping his suit. “Everyone, brilliant job.”

The already heightened energy in the garage gets even sweeter as everyone congratulates each other on a job well done. Barry whistles for everyone’s attention, excusing us for the day, but not before excitedly shaking Tim’s shoulders and praising him for his first qualifier as primary. I watch as Dick looks like he’s bursting with joy, the post-drive high looking very real. No one explicitly congratulates him, but I don’t think anyone needs to–celebrating Tim and celebrating the team seems to fill his cup anyway.

“Makes all our time with our car this morning worth it, doesn’t it, Grayson?” Barbara asks. She removes her headset and shakes her red waves out of her ponytail, looking pleased.

Dick comes over to me, waiting at the back near Kori, and he wraps me in a quick hug. My nerves are on overdrive at the contact, but settle when he squeezes and lets go. I congratulate him on a race well done. “Not that I know what the bar is, but you set it really high,” I tell him.

“Don’t forget our deal,” he says, teasing. “When I beat Tim tomorrow, you’re going to let me wear the nicer stuff.”

I roll my eyes with a smile. “I could never forget a promise to such a hotshot.”

His cheeks redden. “I heard you met Garth,” Dick says, tone light.

“He’s sweet,” I say. Shy at first, but he has this calming energy about him. The discipline of an Olympian, I guess. I think of the routines that Dick has, the ones I’ve noticed since we’ve flown to Australia and he started prepping for race weekend. It’s not hard to see why they’re friends. “How many childhood best friends do you have?”

His eyes dart around the room, and I can tell he’s starting to realize just how many people here he grew up with. “Not too many, but definitely a handful.”

I laugh. “You basically stayed friends with your entire kindergarten class, Dick. Everyone I’ve met in the last two weeks has grown up together.”

“You fit in perfectly,” he says, obviously trying to flatter me. I give him a look, and he puts his hands up. “Just remember, I’m your favorite.”

“You wish! You’re my job, remember?” I tease.

But he’s not wrong.

—

Natasha calls me as soon as I get back from the track and hop out of the shower in my hotel room. She Facetimes me, having kept up with qualifying through Twitter update account, and she tells me that she didn’t realize Dick and Tim were good.

“Clear fan favorites, by the way,” she tells me, sending me tweets from F1 stans who are obsessed with Dick’s haircut and fangirling over Tim’s rookie debut. I can see from the bookshelf behind her, full of finance books and philosophers’ texts, that she’s at Peter’s house.

I hear my brother in the back, talking to his best friend. Harry’s joined us for Saturday dinner for as long as I can remember, and Natasha turns the camera to them, telling them to wave. I tell her it’s late in New York and that I can’t believe she stayed up for the race, but she waves me off and says they stayed up to marathon the Matrix movies.

“Claire! Have fun in Australia!” Harry calls out from the background. “I’m jealous!”

My sister turns back to me and starts telling me about the latest office drama, failed intern dating. But I can’t help but try to listen to Harry and Peter, talking loudly but at a volume that I’m sure they think is quiet.

“This is huge,” Harry says to Peter. “Wayne’s no joke.”

Harry would know. He’s an Osborn, and his dad’s company is a major government contractor. They’re not exactly competitors, but Wayne Enterprises and Oscorp certainly engage in some friendly industry rivalry.

“You have no idea,” Peter tells Harry. Natasha has transitioned into screen-sharing her Tiktok feed with me, something that we do often when we’re apart. I’m not trying to ignore my older sister, but I’m desperate to hear what Peter thinks of me being here, of the deal in general. “Everything’s hinging on this.”

Everything? I think to myself. Like, the company itself? Or just our involvement in it?

I don’t know what I’d do if it was gone. Would I go into marketing somewhere else? Would we try something new, together as a family? Should I be preparing to pivot industries? 

Fuck, I think. I wish Peter had just told me what this is really about.

“It’ll be fine,” I hear Harry reassure my brother. “Claire’s never let you down.”

My stomach turns slightly at that, at the pressure it puts on me, even though it’s glowing feedback from Harry, who’s always been one of my favorite people.

Peter sighs. “I know. It just can’t be different this time.”

I know when I thrive. It’s when I bat away any distractions, when I cut the noise and zero in on what Aurora needs to succeed. Dick Grayson is noise. Unprofessionalism isn’t the issue anymore—it’s the idea that a slip up could put Aurora at risk, and we need Wayne Enterprises, whether or not I understand why.

How do I keep him at a distance and get to know him well enough to make this work?

Chapter Text

I spend thirty minutes trying to pick an outfit for our post-qualifying dinner.

Some things feel too business-y, others too casual, one too sexy. I’ve been sitting next to Dick a lot, and I’m worried that cleavage suggests that I’m trying to cross the line and seduce him. Not that any normal person would think that, especially not a gentleman like him, but I’m fighting the balance between how much fun I’ve been having and the reminder that I’m here for work. Everyone here knows each other so well, I don’t want to risk becoming the butt of a joke.

At some point, I decide to feign heat stroke, and text Donna, Barbara, and Kori in a group chat to excuse myself. I can use the time to work on my actual job, which during the excitement of today, I’ve forgotten isn’t “Formula One Groupie.”

Claire: I’m so sorry, guys. I don’t think I can come to dinner! Not feeling great after all the sun…

Kori: that’s awful! I’m so sorry, Claire!

Barbara: Let us know if we can bring you anything

Donna: Here’s a picture of the menu–text if you want us to bring back takeout.

Claire: You’re the best. Thank you <3

I feel kind of shitty about lying, because they’re being so sweet to me. I just feel…really overwhelmed, actually. After talking to my sister, after realizing how fast Formula One cars actually are, after hugging Dick Grayson in his race suit. I just want to be alone for a little bit before I’m thrown headfirst again into tomorrow for the grand prix. 

I pull out my laptop and open my email, and lose myself in the random Teams messages and emails from people who forgot that I’m overseas this week. I read through all my email chains, even ones where Natasha’s stepped in, just so that I’m caught up. A lot is dependent on the Wayne Racing collection, but in the meantime, this is what matters.

I don’t even have preliminary sketches yet. I don’t know what F1 looks like as jewelry. Other than Dick’s Nightwing call symbol, I have nothing to offer the designers, and they haven’t sent me anything, either.

After an hour of reading, twenty minutes past the team’s dinner reservation, I hear a knock on my hotel door, and get a text from Dick.

Dick: I heard you were feeling under the weather.

Dick: Tim is worried, so we’re sending you some Gatorade and ibuprofen.

My chest warms at the thoughtful gesture, and then I feel bad again for being a dirty liar.

I open my door to a room service tray with exactly that, and a family-sized bag of gummy bears, too.

Claire: Thank you. That was really sweet.

Claire: How’d you know that gummy bears are my favorite candy?

Dick: Lucky guess. We have another thing in common.

I take the distraction as a good reason to put my work away, and I call Kara. It’s the crack of dawn in New York, but I know that she’s taken to running in the morning, and hope that she’s awake.

“Hi, hottie,” she says when she picks up. I can see that she’s still in bed, nestled in her pastel blue plaid sheets, rolling over onto her side to turn on her bedside lamp. She doesn’t yawn, but Kara’s never looked tired in our ten years of friendship, so I can’t tell if she was already awake or if I’ve woken her up.

“Were you sleeping?” I ask, guiltily. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head. “I actually stayed up all night reading the newest Ali Hazelwood.” Her unguilty pleasure. “How’s your first Formula One weekend going?”

I laugh. “Felt a little overstimulated. I’m skipping team dinner.” Hearing her raspy voice and her loud laugh is a balm for my discomfort. “I’ve been catching up on work.” I tell her about how I overheard my brother with Harry, how I feel like I’m standing at the precipice of something I don’t understand but I’m so desperate not to screw up.

“Can I tell you something crazy that I learned?”

“What’d you learn?”

“Jewelry is banned during F1 competitions.” She says it almost conspiratorially, and I can imagine her on her laptop at the library, doing endless deep dives into F1 on the fan forums and on Twitter when she’s supposed to be writing a new article.

I frown. I hadn’t known. “I mean, I guess it’s a protective rule.” It makes sense from a safety standpoint; now that I think about it, I’ve noticed that Tim always drops his chain into a jar for Conner’s safekeeping before he starts a drive.

“But don’t you think it’s weird to acquire a company and have your racers advertise something they can’t even wear during the race?”

“Are you trying to make me feel better about Peter freaking me out by dissing on Wayne Enterprises?”

“Maybe?” Kara grins at me shamelessly.

She has a point, though. I don’t get it. I’m sure Kori and the rest of the Wayne Enterprises team have bigger plans for Dick and Tim, and their team’s popularity. I’m having fun anyway, right? It certainly changes the way I’m allowed to approach the campaign. I must fade away, because Kara clears her throat.

“Okay, fess up. What’s wrong?” she asks. “Your frown is really killing the buzz from this last smut scene… This is about Grayson again, isn’t it?”

“I’m just so distracted,” I tell her. “It’s weird. I don’t recognize myself around him, and with the stress of screwing up, I feel sick.”

“Are you skipping dinner right now?” she asks. She ignores the Dick Grayson of it all. It makes me feel that maybe I’m overreacting, but I can’t remember the last time a man made me feel this way.

I blink at her, but it doesn’t seem to carry as much weight through a phone screen. “Maybe? I had a sandwich from the lobby restaurant delivered to my room.”

“This is serious,” she says.

I frown. “It’s just attraction. It can pass. I just need help getting there, is all.”

“You’re skipping dinner so that you don’t have to confront how attracted to him you are. I feel like you’re really prolonging it,” she tells me. “You never pass up free food.”

I huff and throw myself back onto the gloriously fluffed hotel pillows. “How would confronting it even help me? It just sounds like a surefire way for it to always loom over me.”

“It’s going to anyway,” she chides. “But nice try.”

“Much like your relationship with Brainy?” I shoot back, turning the tables on her.

She humphs, unbothered. “You thought that would get me, didn’t you?” Kara looks at me again, and her expression softens in the sunrise that filters through her curtains. It washes pink and orange across her face. “Have you tried just talking to him without focusing on how much you like him? Be his friend. Let the universe take care of the rest.” She pauses for a second. “And me, obviously. You still have to tell me everything.”

——

I’m nearly caught in my petite lie when I wander down to the lobby again for some snacks.

The hotel lobby is grand and ornate, a five-star property with clear architectural investment and expensive decor. The elevator spits me out between the two marble staircases that lead to the bar located on the mezzanine, and I’m completely distracted by the twinkling lights of the large chandelier with a diameter that spans the entire space. The lobby itself is practically walled in glass, so the cityscape looks brilliant in the nighttime as it gleams and shifts colors in the distance. It reminds me a bit of New York, though I guess any city with bright lights would when I’m feeling homesick.

The lobby convenience store is located down a rustic hallway paneled with shiny hardwood floors, just behind the staircase up to the bar. Noisy conversations spill over the railing into the hallway where I walk, and it’s a busy night as Melbourne’s buzzing with the crowds anxious for tomorrow’s race. 

I wander into the convenience store, mulling over my options as I stare at the rainbow of candy waiting for me. I pick up a pack of Nerds Clusters and then turn to contemplate chips, before I hear someone clear their throat behind me from the drink fridge. 

I turn, startled. It’s Dick, whose face lights up when our eyes meet. 

“Are you feeling better?” he asks, as I see him look at the food I’m clutching by the handful. He’s generously not suspicious and doesn’t suggest that I was faking my illness. 

I nearly put back the Nerds but decide to just own it. “Definitely,” I say. “It was nothing that a nap couldn’t fix.”

He smiles sweetly. “Come have a drink with us,” Dick proposes. 

I’m nervous that if more people see me, they’ll eventually glean that I’m a huge lying liar who never had to skip team dinner at all. “Who’s us?”

“Well, most of us.” Which surely means Kori, Donna, Barbara and Tim… “And, my best friend, Wally. He races for Speedforce.”

I want to be surprised, but of course. “Your best friend is Wally West?”

Wally is the only racer that I recognized when I started my F1 research. Verstappen, Hamilton, Leclerc, those were names I knew, but Wally West is unmissable.

“Honestly, I’ve known most people in Formula One since I was a kid… Small world, you know? Barry’s married to his sister, Iris.”

I did not read their Wikipedias thoroughly enough.

I also don’t want to decline Dick’s invitation, because with how close they all are, I doubt that he wouldn’t mention seeing me here, out of bed. I also think that Kori would come to check on me, and it would be very hard to say no to her.

“You don’t think I’m underdressed?” I ask, looking pointedly at his outfit. He might be wearing a hoodie and black jeans, but I am still wearing my fuzzy pajama pants, my hotel-provided slippers, and my thermal long-sleeve.

He seems to sense that I’m trying to get out of it, that if I were to open my hotel room again, I wouldn’t be emerging until breakfast tomorrow like a common hobbit. He laughs at me and shakes his head.

He must be lying, but he says, “The polka dots are very chic.”

That’s how I find myself in a U-shaped booth at the hotel bar, squished between Dick on the end of the seat, and Barbara, who’s also dressed down in a comfy flannel and loose fitted jeans.

Pointing her chin at Dick, Barbara asks, “Did this one force you out of bed?”

Barbara and the other girls of the group have already doted and fussed over me plenty, making sure to share their appetizers (Donna had plenty of fries to give) and ordering me cold, but not iced, water (ice is bad for headaches, Kori claims).

Dick feigns offense. “I would never,” he says. “I found her in the lobby grabbing snacks.”

“You poor thing,” Kori says, putting a hand on mine from across the table.

Donna pushes a slider towards me. “Claire, you must be so hungry.” Tim nearly protests, looking like he was eyeing it, but she shoots him a look and I sympathetically give him the fries.

I did eat a full dinner, but looking at the food that they’re so generously offering me, I have to admit I am pretty peckish.

Barbara bumps her head on my shoulder gently. “Glad you’re here.”

Wally West arrives then, and despite his laidback style, he radiates star. Not unlike Dick, who’s so handsome there was no way he wasn’t famous, Wally has an aura about him that projects such confidence and nonchalance that it’s hard to look away from. Dick gets up to eagerly pull him into a bear hug, and the two men squeeze each other tightly as if they haven’t seen each other in years.

Wally sits down next to Donna, across the table, but leans closer and shakes my hand. He flashes me a crooked smile with flawless teeth and says, “You must be Claire. I’m Wally.”

‘You must be Claire’? Do I stick out like a sore thumb? 

I must say it out loud, or some iota of my starstruck feeling must show on my face, because Dick quickly says, “I told Wally about the Aurora partnership.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Wally,” I say, the shyness disappearing when he smiles at me again.

Dick clears his throat. “Great drive today, Wal.”

We all cheer to that, clinking our glasses. Tim teases me for my water glass, but I’m already fighting enough lies, so I can’t exactly order a gin and coke.

“First pole in the first race,” Barbara says warmly. “You’re having no issues living up to big brother, huh?” she teases.

Barry is absent from the group tonight, and even though they’re related by marriage, I can see some of the Wayne team principal’s humility in Wally’s smile.

Tim says, “Out of principle, I shouldn’t root for our rival team, but out of friendship… I watched the highlights and that was awesome. How’s your new car?”

The conversation quickly goes deeply into car specs and engineering mentions that I can’t quite wrap my head around, despite trying desperately to keep up. I resolve to watch Barbara talk about it instead, as she, Tim, and Wally all discuss the slight adjustments they’ve made to the bodies of their cars to shave off milliseconds on their lap times. It’s such a family chat that it doesn’t feel like Wally isn’t a Wayne racer, and they talk details and mechanical terms as if they’re talking about Monopoly strategy.

“The track warmed up my tires way quicker than I was expecting,” Wally says, leaning back and talking with his arms behind his head. “Something to look out for tomorrow. Helped my lap time, but couldn’t get off of my first set of softs fast enough.”

I did learn that during the practice session: soft tires and hard tires. Soft equals fast, but also less time between pit stops.

“Jason barely stopped during his qual laps,” Tim notes, and it suddenly goes quiet. Dick, as awkward as I’ve ever seen him, drinks from his whiskey glass like he doesn’t know what to say. I don’t think I remember who Jason is. Barbara clears her throat and opens her mouth to say something before Wally beats her to it.

Wally breaks the silence with a simple, “Yeah, he’s been working on that.” Dick and Wally smile at each other again and whatever hangs in the air between the group is broken. I’ve noticed a never-ending volley between the two–always picking up on the other’s serve. They’re perfect complements. “Claire, what did you think? I’m sure Babs and Conner have been trying to teach you plenty from the garage.”

Dick shifts in his seat slightly, and I feel his warmth through my fuzzy pajama pants somehow, hyperaware of the fabric separating our thighs. We’ve shoved a lot of people into this booth, and he and I are hip to hip. He looks at me and I can feel his gaze as he waits for me to reply to his best friend.

“I literally feel like I’ve entered an alternate universe,” I confess. “But I spent today’s race watching with Donna on the Wayne viewing balcony, and that was amazing. I completely understand why people are so desperate to come to every race they can.” 

Barbara says, “Watch from the garage tomorrow. We’ll find you a spot near Con and me. Then you’ll really get it,” she winks. She did promise that I would end the season with enough F1 knowledge to start applying to associate engineering roles, and Kori agreed that it’d be best for me to alternate between garage and viewing areas throughout the races.

Donna gasps quietly, straightening up in her seat. “That reminds me!” Everyone turns to her curiously. “Garth thinks you’re beautiful,” Donna tells me. I blush, and I’m sure I’m turning scarlet. That was the last thing I expected her to say. I’m sure she must be exaggerating, or that she did that thing that Kara does, where she asks a leading question and then fills in the blanks with a statement that’s objectively true. This statement being that I’m beautiful, I guess. “He’s coming to the race next week–what if we set you up for dinner in Japan?”

I want to look at Dick’s face, but we’re all knee to knee at this table, and I don’t want to draw attention to my reaction. I watch his fingers as they tap on his glass.

“That’s perfect,” Tim says. “Racers aren’t your type anyway, right?”

Oh, Tim, if only you knew.

Kori claps her hands together, delighted. “Oh, this will be so cute!”

Chapter Text

Dick walks me to my hotel room after drinks. Wally and the other Speedforce team members are staying at the other wing of the hotel, and once he got up to head back, the rest of us called it a night, too. Dick walking me is purely coincidental and convenient, given that he and I are the only team members on the same floor, while the others have to take a separate elevator to get to theirs.

“You really had fun today?” he asks gently, while we’re in the elevator. He seems to be giving me grace to admit that I hated it, but I didn’t.

I shake my head, laughing a bit. “I really did. Were you expecting I wouldn’t?”

He shrugs, pulling at one of his hoodie strings. He tugs to the rhythm of the elevator music, playing an Ed Sheeran song so quietly that the lyrics are nondescript. “It’s overwhelming. I can’t imagine how much, navigating it alone.”

They’ve done a lot to help me, to welcome me. I’ve been trying really hard to seem like I know exactly what I’m doing, but I’m in a new world, outside of concerts and films and studios. “I thought I was doing a good job hiding that,” I confess. “But you saw right through me.”

I’m not sure if it’s because he just naturally does that, like a radio tuner for people feeling completely out of their depth, or if it’s because he was truly looking at me. 

“I’m here for you. Through all of it,” he says. “You’re stuck with me.”

He holds the elevator door for me when it stops on the eleventh floor. Our hands brush as the door starts to slide closed a touch too quickly, and the hairs stand up on my arms. I’m hyperaware of him beside me as we walk side-by-side down the lush, carpeted hallway. I look at our feat to try and quell the noise in my head, of all my anxieties blaring simultaneously with my unspeakable attraction to him. I stare, his white Converse beside my white hotel slippers, moving in sync despite the advantage he has on me in height.

“I’ll be especially stuck with you if the acquisition goes through,” I point out. “Maybe I’ll ask to be recused,” I say, with a small smile.

We arrive at my door, room 1115. I scan in with my keycard and enter backwards, unable to look away from him, leaning against the door to keep it open for a bit. He doesn’t peek inside, ever the gentleman. I wonder if his room is messy, or as neat and tidy as it was when he got it. Knowing what I know about him, I assume it’s the latter. 

“You can’t get away from us so quickly,” he says, standing outside the door, the frame acting like an invisible force field. The tips of his shoes are notably not even a centimeter across the line. “I’m only a few doors down if you need me.” His voice is quieter now, as soft as his lips look. “Good night, Claire.”

My brain doesn’t manage to say it back before he turns and stops at his door, 1111, and steps inside.

—

Barbara and I are the first ones at hotel breakfast the next morning before the grand prix.

We go down the line for our continental breakfast together, though it’s really luxe for free hotel fare; there’s tater tots topped with creme fraiche and caviar, chilled crab legs, and even wagyu-and-egg platters.

“This is like Nobu brunch,” I murmur at her, as she contemplates which type of smoked salmon she wants: pepper-crusted, lemon and herb, traditional, maple-glazed.

My plate is already full, so I just trail along with her to keep looking at what’s available.

She piles each type of salmon high on her bagel with cream cheese, balancing it with ease. “This place is the best for food on race weekend. Especially since it’s the first race of the season.” I sit down across from her at an open table and she digs in, humming happily when she takes a large gulp of her cucumber melon juice.

She pulls out her tablet and her stylus, scribbling notes onto images of graphs and statistics I don’t understand. She holds her bagel in her left hand and writes with the other. Barbara is dressed in her team gear, her Wayne polo and her sleek black pants, and it attracts some attention in the already-busy breakfast hall of the hotel, filled with race professionals and fanatics.

I pick up a crispy piece of bacon with my fingers, the darkest I could find on the tray, and crunch on it as I watch her. “What are you doing?” I ask curiously. I got up extra early to be ready for the race, even though it’s early, so that I’d be okay to head to the track early in case there were any pre-race rituals that I could watch. I lined my brown eyes in my favorite matching brown eyeliner, put in my contacts and packed my bag with my favorite eye drops. I’m wearing the Wayne-blue outfit that I picked out with Donna and Kori and even buffed out the scuffs on my sneakers.

“I’m going through the telemetry from yesterday’s quals. I do a read, Dick does a read, and then we share notes. He catches some things I can’t sometimes.” A piece of hair comes loose from her ponytail, and she blows it out of her eyes with a huff.

“I didn’t know he loved the mechanics and the physics of it so much, to keep up with your knowledge.” I’d understood him as a skilled driver, but I thought the physicality was what came innately to him, not the academic part. But it makes sense, with how tactical and thorough he is.

Her lips quirk as she thinks of him, the fondness behind it evident. “I did say sometimes. Dick loves to know all things, so that he’s never caught by surprise.” I wonder if she’s referring to things other than driving and Formula One cars, to things from their decades of friendship. I’m not sure I’ll ever be privy to the depths of their relationship. I’m not sure if I could ever compete. “Do you want to see?”

“I won’t pretend I’ll know what you’re talking about,” I tell her, moving onto another piece of bacon.

She shrugs with a smile, her green eyes warm. “I’ve been told I’m a good teacher.”

Dick joins shortly after, and Barbara’s gone as far as walking me through the changes they’ve made to the latest version of Dick’s car, and what he’s hoping to pay attention to during this race to know what else needs changing before the next circuit. Non-standard adjustments and new parts all need to be approved by the FIA, and Barbara tells me that while being patient comes easy to them both, Tim’s taken the wait quite personally in the past, while he was the reserve driver helping with the dev.

Dick watches us carefully as Barbara teaches me about sector times and Dick’s previous lap stats in Melbourne. When she takes a break, either to let herself fully enjoy her breakfast or to relieve me from what probably was a constipated-adjacent look of confusion, he leans closer.

“I thought you should know,” he says, quietly. “Bruce will be at the race today. He’ll be watching from the garage with you.” I stiffen, slightly. I’m sure it’s not a secret to the rest of the team, so I wonder why the cover. “You might be a little nervous, so I just thought you could use a warning.”

It nearly blows me away that he would know that: 1) I would want to hide my discomfort, hence the whisper, and 2) I would want a warning that I’d be meeting Bruce Wayne.

Lots of emotions swirl through me, aside from the stress, but I push it aside. “Thank you,” I murmur back.

“Don’t let the old man scare you,” Dick says, smiling, giving me a small lifeline in all the uncertainty.

All I can do is breathe through it, right?

—

“Someone’s excited to meet you,” Kori says, picking a stray thread off of her flowy maxi skirt as her heels click on the concrete floor of the race garage. The roar of the race is fully underway, and she and I are the last ones to arrive at the track, all teams finishing up their car checks with their primary engineers. I hear Victor shouting platitudes and directions at his team like he’s a football couch, prepping them for their pit stops. Jonn is seated between Conner and Barbara at their monitors, all wearing their radio gear, and behind them, at a table facing a wall with even larger screens streaming every angle of race footage, broadcast and closed-circuit, is a broad man in an impeccable suit.

I can hear my heart pound in my ears when Kori leads me to Bruce Wayne in the garage. Donna is already gone, off to manage Dick’s social and reporter-related obligations. Kori and I take our seats at the metal stools across from the mega-zillionaire, the catalyst for all of this, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I think I’m staring. I do a full analytical sweep of his dark, slicked-back hair, his strong jaw, his strong looking hands. It’s weird to see a man in the flesh who’s always been spoken of like he’s a myth.

Kori clears her throat, a delicate sound. “Hi, Bruce. It’s good to see you.” Bruce almost smiles at her, and his eyes meet mine, clearly unfamiliar. “Have you met Claire Young?” Kori asks, putting a hand on my shoulder. “She’s here with Aurora, for the season.”

I put out a hand and he shakes it firmly, and his hands are calloused, like Dick’s.

“It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

“Please, call me Bruce.” His eyes flick to my wrist, and he says, “That’s a beautiful bracelet. Is it Aurora?” Bruce Wayne’s voice is gruff, like he doesn’t use it much, though given that he’s a CEO and he’s been on the news so much, I know it’s not true. 

I glance down, having worn it for so long without taking it off that I nearly forgot about it. “Yes, actually. Thank you.” Peter had said before that we were part of the deal independently of Bruce Wayne’s assessment, that we were a simple buy. It surprises me that Bruce knows who I am, or what I’m doing here, a bit. Maybe I should feel more chastened for underestimating the man who raised Dick.

He looks for longer, appraisingly. “Did you know that the celtic knot represents some of my favorite things? Unity, loyalty, eternity.”

“I did,” I say. “My dad was adopted from Vietnam by an Irish family, and it was the first thing they shared with him about their culture. It stayed with him.”

And it stayed with us. The celtic knot bracelet was the first thing that Peter approved to produce at scale, outside of our basic chains and rings. It’s kept our parents close to our hearts after their deaths; we all have our own version of the design, Peter’s a ring, and Natasha’s an anklet. We couldn’t afford to keep our childhood home after they passed, due to an incomplete will, and we split their belongings between the three of us like rations.

Bruce and I watch together as the countdown begins for the race to start, and his presence itself is pervasive, like he could be anywhere at any time. I’d never been scared of him, or intimidated, or overly impressed, but I see it now. He holds the key to my future, and whether he means to or not, his opinion of me makes me nervous.

—

The Wayne Racing team is a well-oiled rig during the Grand Prix.

Jonn is calm and collected as he watches Dick and Tim’s cars shoot off at signal of the red light countdown. He observes and listens closely when Barbara and Conner read off tire temperatures and lap times, and I try not to make a commotion when I hear that Tim’s gotten his first green sector. It’s hard not to smile when he cheekily states that he’s gunning for a faster lap regardless.

Dick, currently in P3, has been pressing closely behind Max Verstappen, who hasn’t slipped from where he started as P2. We’re in the last third of the race now, and Wally hasn’t even been challenged from first, and every position after fifth seems like a total crapshoot.

“Take me through this turn, Babs,” I hear from Dick’s radio transmission, which is being transmitted live to us in the garage. I know that the public broadcasts flick between which channels to air, but it’s still weird to hear their conversations spoken out loud. “Need to pass him.”

I watch Max Verstappen’s car from the overhead footage, where it looks like he’s trying to find a way to overtake Wally, whose car is simply flying. Wally goes in for his first pit stop and Verstappen pulls into first, and Babs says, “He’s pushing those tires if he’s skipping this stop. Yours are doing okay. Watch him on the next turn and you’ll have an opening.”

She guides Dick through the sector as Wally comes out of his pit stop, and Nightwing slips into second, as promised.

Suddenly, Conner says, “Tim, keep it TIGHT.”

I turn immediately to search for Tim’s car in the hubbub for points in sixth to tenth place. The Joker is trying to edge his way into Tim’s corner, to disrupt his turn and make him go wide. It works, and it costs Tim a crucial fraction of a second, but the Joker doesn’t gain in position. I look at Bruce, and his jaw is clenched, the muscle on his right cheek bulging slightly.

“Fuck!” Tim swears. “How’s Nightwing doing up there?”

“He’s fine,” Jonn says. “We’re going to have you hold onto that position, Robin.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

A car suddenly breaks through the tight line of racers holding their positions, so close to obtaining their first points of the season. It’s a mere flash, but I recognize Speedforce Energy red. It expertly weaves its way into a higher position during the straight and protects itself during the turn going into the last lap.

“He’s going to pass Verstappen,” Kori says, eyes wide.

I wrack my brain for the name of the other Speedforce racer, but he wasn’t with Wally yesterday, so my mind comes up blank.

I almost forget about Dick and Tim, so sure they’re safe in their positions now, but enthralled by this last-minute shake up. I can feel Bruce Wayne leaning onto his elbows too, to get a closer look at the screens. They’re driving the very last sector of the race.

Barbara looks at Jonn. “Nightwing, he’s going to try to pass you, but hold tight behind Wally.”

Slipstream, when the car in front reduces drag and helps the speed of the car following. Dick won’t use it to try to pass Wally, but their cars aren’t in a line that the other racer can use to overtake Dick.

When the checkered flag comes down as Wally crosses the finish line, Dick’s successfully protected his position.

“In P1, Wally West has secured twenty five points for Speedforce,” the commentator says on the live broadcast that’s overtaken our feed. “Grayson in P2 for Wayne, and Jason Todd has climbed up from P10 to the podium in P3.”

The garage explodes in celebration.

——

There’s no doubt in the world that Wally West and Dick Grayson are best friends as they stand on top of the world, spraying champagne at each other like little boys with water guns.

I watch Barry hug his brother-in-law fiercely, squeezing him tight as they both hold each other and look each other in the eyes. There’s so much pride in Barry’s face as he looks at Wally and Dick, his successor and his protégé. 

Barry and Dick rush down from the podium celebration, into the rowdy circle we’ve formed with the rest of the team from the track level. Tim, who finished P7, is gulping down his third electrolyte drink, but shoves it into Conner’s hands to run up to them. He gives Dick a hug, and Dick makes his way closer to me.

Dick pumps his fists when he gets to me, and grins when I congratulate him. He picks me up suddenly by my waist and spins me around, and my cheeks hurt from how hard I’m smiling. I think to myself that I should film this for Aurora, for the campaign. When he puts me down, it feels like time freezes for a second, and his hand lingers on my side.

The racer who placed in third, Jason Todd, shoves his way past Dick when Flashpoint Energy gets off the podium and makes their way to their own crowd of celebrants. I stare at his back as he walks away, his emotions looming so large that they take some of the oxygen with him. His race suit is unzipped to his mid-abdomen, and the speed of his walk makes the fabric and the bone-white front pieces of his hair flutter in his self-made wind. He’s broken the moment between us, that’s for sure.

“What’s that about?” I ask Dick, who’s also looking the same way, even though Jason Todd has long left our line of sight. “Third is still great, isn’t it?”

A muscle in Dick’s jaw clenches, his eyes melancholic. “He’s my brother.” He tells me almost like he’s confessing it, like acknowledging Jason as his brother is one of those curse words you can’t speak aloud, his personal Macbeth. His eyes flash towards his adoptive father, something sharp in his expression framing them. My eyes widen, but I’m only slightly surprised, more by the hostility than the relationship.

I think of Bruce Wayne, standing only ten feet away, and I wonder if he’s watching his two sons avoiding each other. He must have been, because he approaches as soon as Jason is gone from our periphery, and sets a solid hand on Dick’s shoulder.

“Good job,” Bruce Wayne tells Dick. Like it’s difficult for him to say, or maybe like it’s foreign, buried beneath decades of corporate speak and business jargon. Kind of like he’s not sure he wants Dick to be here at all.

A smile crosses Dick’s face quickly, but there’s restraint behind it. It’s not the same joyful expression I’ve seen over the past few days, when the sight of his pearly whites is so infectious that the entire room can’t help but to follow suit. “Thanks, Bruce.” His eyes dart to the beer in Bruce’s hand, which is practically untouched despite the fact that he’s been nursing the glass for the entire race. “Can’t handle your alcohol anymore, old man?” he asks, smoothing over the air between them, crackling with the absence of Jason Todd.

Bruce clears his throat, but something softens behind his eyes. “Go to your press time.”

Dick puts a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. Dick obeys his request, and I follow.

“I think he likes you,” Dick says.

I roll my eyes, but something inside my chest thumps, tender. “He didn’t say any such thing.”

Dick taps a finger to his temple, smug. “You’re forgetting who knows him better than anyone else in the world. Take my word for it.”

++++++

POINT RANKINGS, PODIUM:

WALLY WEST - 25 Points

RICHARD GRAYSON - 18 Points

JASON TODD - 15 Points

Chapter Text

The next race is in China.

It’s a whirlwind and a blur for me. I don’t even really have time to watch the race. I sit on the viewing deck for both the Sprint race, the qualifying, and the GP, but instead of watching diligently, I’m busy catching up with my Aurora work. I’m approving images and copy for our website, trying to get concept proofs of the Wayne Racing collection. I’ve also sent over the sketches I’ve done of Dick and Tim’s driving nickname charms, and have been waiting patiently for the designers to send pictures of their first sample. I’m also trying to somehow call licensors from across the country, and in some cases, staying up through the twilight hours in my fancy hotel sheets to get on the phone with them.

It’s not what Natasha wanted for me, but her response times were growing longer and longer, meaning that she’s been getting busier and busier. I completely miss Dick’s P3 finish, but I learn from his stan accounts that his favorite post-race vice is a cold can of Diet Coke, so I wait for him to come back into the garage before his press segments so that I can be the first to give him one, fresh from the team cooler.

Dick’s face lights up when he sees the soda can, and he pulls me into a hug before he’s even had a chance to unzip his fireproofs. The material feels like it’s lighting me on fire in all of the places that it’s touching my bare arms, and the small patch of skin on my waist where my shirt’s come untucked. 

“Congrats, Nightwing,” I say against his shoulder.

He pulls back from the hug, but just barely, and his nose is inches from my face when he thanks me.

I shut myself in my room again after that to cool off.

After the race, trying to pull me away from work, Kori insists I come to a party to celebrate the first two races of the season. It’s hosted by Flashpoint Energy at the fancy hotel that their team is staying in, and since it’s not walkable, I have no excuse to put off getting ready. I borrow a long, midnight blue silk gown with a sequined bodice reflecting light in the shape of constellations out of Donna’s closet.

I feel beautiful, especially with Kori helping with my hair and my makeup, but my brain is running a million miles a minute about work.

“Earth to Claire?” Barbara asks, in her own sleek black gown.

“Am I the only one who didn’t get the evening dress memo?” I say, snapping out of my jewelry-induced fugue state. “I would have packed one.”

Kori is strapping on her heels but stands. “That’s my fault, Claire. I made sure the team stylist brought enough options for you when I realized,” she says, gesturing at the dress I thought belonged to Donna.

I see. Another way the Waynes roll deep.

I scrunch my nose at the women, feeling like I’m imposing again, but shake it off. “So this party fare… they have to have xiao long bao, right?”

—

The music is so loud in this club, I can’t hear myself think. I’ve already lost track of my friends, and we haven’t even seen the guys yet. They came earlier than we did, to meet up with Wally. I have had some great finger foods, including a xiao long bao, though, so I stand near the bar and try to order a drink to distract myself.

I look closely at the Speedforce special cocktails, though I can’t say that I’m too keen on an energy drink cocktail at the moment. The whiff I got from the glass of the person standing next to me is already enough to remind me of my college days, when I downed sugar-free Speedforce as a chaser for my shots of tequila.

I lean on my elbows to get the bartender’s attention over the noise.

“May I please get a strawberry margarita?”

I mean… It’s still red.

Now that I’m sitting and sipping on a drink, I finally have the time to search for my friends in the crowd. Donna and Dick are side-by-side as they chat with Wally and Max Verstappen. Tim is across the room with Jonn and Barry, talking to some other drivers I recognize by face but not by name. Barbara is with Conner and Victor and she’s holding up her glass to clink against theirs while Conner pretends to hesitate when he downs his shot.

I keep scanning the room. No one knows me other than them, and they’re preoccupied, so I’m just people-watching, I guess.

Jason Todd is dressed like he’s kind of undressed: he’s not wearing a proper suit like some of his peers. Though some of the drivers are in nice t-shirts or knit shirts now, they at least showed in suits for the cameras. He looks nice but also like he did it on purpose. I see him lean down toward an Olympic Motorsports driver with choppy orange layers pulled into a high ponytail, whispering into her ear as she smiles up at him. He’s not wearing a tie or a suit jacket, and his white shirt is unbuttoned to his collarbone, the sleeves are rolled up to his forearms.

I can’t help but notice how every member of the Wayne team doesn’t speak to him, but they all sneak looks. He also looks, but stops when his eyes catch Dick’s. I see Barbara notice, and she takes Dick’s hand and pulls him back into the conversation they’re having.

I hear a crowd of clamoring reporters near the entrance, shutters going off as they try to capture whoever is coming through the doors. I take a seat at a plush bar seat while the bartender shakes my cocktail, and watch as Lex Luthor walks through the door with his two drivers in tow. I wonder to myself if it bothers Lex Luthor that the press is using such big cameras, because the flash is sure to bounce right off the reflective surface of his bald head and ruin the photos.

Even without the F1 of it all, I’m not a big fan of Lex Luthor.

 The gangly, lanky man with too much hair gel is Jack White, who I recognize on sight after his annoying qualifying race in Australia. Beside him is a handsome man in a pinstriped suit, with neat blonde hair and a lopsided, smarmy smile. I did my research, and I know now that that must be Harvey Dent.

I watch them for a few moments, as they preen at the cameras behind their ringleader billionaire. I roll my eyes when I see them pose. It’s not even their party.

“You look beautiful,” I hear from behind me as I nearly startle and choke on my drink. The margarita burns its way down, but I don’t need to turn to know who it is.

My cheeks warm, and I hope the blush masks it when I greet him. “Hi, Dick. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

Which is an understatement, of course. He looks like a prince in his perfectly tailored suit and his tousled hair, his smile washing over me like a drizzle of warm honey.

“Are you having fun over here, by yourself?” he asks, taking the seat beside me. He turns his body to look in the direction that I am.

My nose wrinkles. “Just scoping out the competition.”

He chuckles. “Lex Luthor fancies himself a social rival, of sorts, to Bruce. Took over this team and plastered his name all over it when Bruce announced that Wayne Enterprises was opening the racing academy.”

“Were those guys always so slimy, then?” I ask, looking at the Joker and at Harvey Dent, who I’ve learned is nicknamed Two-Face, for his real-life charm and unpredictable ruthlessness on the track.

Dick turns back to the bartender, telling me clearly that he doesn’t find the LuthorCorp drivers worth his time. “Unbelievably so.”

I down the rest of my drink and set my glass back on the bar, sighing loudly. I’m full and have somehow wasted my social battery by eavesdropping and spying on everyone here. “I worked too much today,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I didn’t pay attention to your finish.”

He shrugs lightheartedly. “You’re going to be around for plenty of races. I’ll do even better next time, when I know you’re watching.”

I roll my eyes at him as my lips tug into a smile. “You always suck up to me.”

“It’s only polite to be kind to your team’s hostage,” he jokes. “Besides, sucking up would imply I don’t mean every word I say.” Dick stands and stretches up tall, the length of his arms pulling at the buttons on his jacket. He stretches out a calloused hand to mine and asks, “Should we celebrate with a dance?”

I don’t dance and tell, given that it would reveal how much I like being around him, but it’s a pretty good way to end my night.

+++

POINT RANKINGS, PODIUM:

MAX VERSTAPPEN  - 25 Points

WALLY WEST - 18 Points

RICHARD GRAYSON - 15 Points

Chapter Text

We don’t have time to go home before the Japan GP. Suzuka is one of Tim’s favorite tracks, I learn, and he’s thrilled to finally race it after endless simulations. Barbara and the rest of the strategy, mechanics, and engineering team have all left Shanghai earlier than us to make sure the garage and the cars are status quo. Kori went along with them to take care of brand-related business. I’ve adjusted to the team’s travel schedule and the constant flights are getting easier for me–I rolled out of bed today without any huffs.

Donna gives Dick a side squeeze as we check out of the hotel, suitcases surrounding us in a wide halo. “Good start to the season, boy wonder.”

He grins at her, cheekbones high and sharp in the daylight as we roll our things outside to get into our car for the airport. “Thanks, Wonder Girl.”

She smiles at him, all the history of the nicknames between them showing on their faces. It’s funny–seeing them next to each other like this, with those conspiratorial looks, you’d think they were siblings. Their affection is loving and familial, second nature to them. 

In the car, which is really a mini-bus, Tim sits next to me. He asks me if I’m happy with the way he styled our jewelry for the party.

“I tried to pick a shirt that acted more like a blank canvas so that the accessories could shine,” he tells me earnestly. 

Tim looks pleased when I promise it was perfect.

“You,” Donna says, pointing at Tim. “You’re going to need to stop swearing over your radio before they start implementing a fine.”

I can tell he’s fighting a grin. “I didn’t realize you were my manager, too, Donna,” he says, sweetly, cheekily. He’s so responsible and focused most of the time that it’s a pleasant surprise to see him be an endearing little shit. 

“You won’t hire a real one.”

“Don’t need one! You’re watching over me, aren’t you?”

She wrinkles her nose at him and shakes her head. “I wouldn’t be, if it weren’t for how much Dick loves you,” Donna says.

Dick, Tim and I all exchange looks. We know she’s lying.

—

Our flight to Japan is delayed by a couple of hours, and I’ve found myself a large cushioned chair to camp out on, the rest of the Wayne group to my back. Donna joins me to my left eventually, telling me she needs a break from work (the work being Dick) and that being around me has been a great reprieve. We sit side by side and sip on our hot teas and both pull out a book to read.

At some point, the book is forgotten, and I’m staring out the window of the airport onto the tarmac, watching as planes pull into gates and as suitcases load and unload from the cargo hold. It’s sprinkling, the mist spraying against the windows of the boarding area before collecting in droplets and running down in rivulets. I watch and imagine that I can hear the pattering.

“What’s on your mind?” Donna asks, the melodic lilt of her voice stirring me out of my thoughts.

I turn back to find Dick’s face; he’s busy playing a game of cards with Barry. “I didn’t know about Jason Todd,” I say. “Should I have?”

I thought that I was prepared when I joined them. I’d barely had any time, but Kara and I did copious amounts of research, both professional and nosy. I knew that Bruce had adopted Dick, that he’d taken in another boy as his ward, I knew that the racers had all grown up closely together even before the racing academy. I’d had no idea about the estrangement, or that Jason was a driver on this team before Tim, and I want to say that’s on me. And now I’m here, rudely trying to dig it up?

Donna looks back at Dick. “They haven’t talked about Jason much since it happened,” she says. “Him or Bruce.”

“You mean since he left the team?”

Donna turns to me and smiles. “I’m sure he’d tell you if you ask him.”

—

I’m a bit restless in the hotel. No one has plans, everyone is just trying to unwind from the weekend we just had before we dive headfirst into the next one.

Peter’s only texted me once since we left China, and I wonder if he’s finally let himself sleep at a normal hour, or if Natasha’s convinced him to stop screening all of her emails through me. Kara’s asked me before if it bothers Natasha to constantly be edited by her younger sister, but Natasha is okay with it because she knows that Peter is just like that, unable to let things go without a double check. It used to be a huge source of contention in their relationship, but after she studied abroad, she learned to let a lot of things go. I find myself checking for work more often than I should, and more than I thought I even would care to. I think I miss it.

I try to fight the word off before it strikes me and settles deep into my bones. Homesickness is a longing that only hits me hard if I acknowledge it, one of those things that’s only turned on in my consciousness if I let it catch me. Instead, I let the echoes of Peter’s voice in my head battle away the homesickness instead: Claire must be responsible, Claire needs to succeed, Claire will get it done.

It’s easy to drown out the wistfulness that way.

I change into running shorts and a t-shirt. I’ve only been to Japan once before, with our parents on spring break. It must have been our last trip together as a whole family; I was in middle school, Peter a year or two into undergrad, and Natasha in her senior year of high school. 

The team, being newer to the F1 circuit, didn’t bother trying to book in the hotel next to the circuit. Instead, we’re just about an hour away, in Nagoya. There’s plenty of tourists here for the race, and I’m excited to sightsee. 

I’d never liked running much at all growing up, but my parents had always wanted me to be more active: they were fans of all sports, it seemed, and spent every season of the year trying something new. Skiing, surfing, marathons. When they passed, and Peter took me in, we bonded by running together. I don’t know if I love it now, but it calms me, and that’s enough.

I run for an hour, winding my way through the streets and trying to drown out the nagging feeling that I should be working, or that I’ve gotten too close to Dick, or that I shouldn’t be here at all. When I find my way back to the hotel, I take the elevator to the gym so that I can do my cooldown stretches.

Dick is standing at a rack, and I catch myself swallowing hard when he sits deep into a squat with the bar loaded with plates I know that I couldn’t even attempt to lift. He’s wearing short blue shorts and a blush rises to my cheeks when I catch a glimpse. He’s looking squarely at his own form as he does his reps, but when he comes up on the third and re-racks his bar, he catches my eye through the reflection and I nearly choke on my own spit. Dick gives me a casual wave and the corner of his mouth lifts in a smile as he wipes away his sweat.

Great. He just caught me staring at his ass. I’m going to ruin the future of my family business because I’m going to get sent to Wayne HR for being indecent towards my subject.

“Hey,” he says. “Getting in a workout?”

“I thought I’d cool down from my run.”

“Cool, I’m just about finished, too. We can stretch together.”

Dick borrows two of the complimentary yoga mats from the corner of the hotel gym, setting them up for us near the mirror. He moves his water and his phone, then waves me over and puts down a towel for me to put my things down, too.

“Thank you,” I say as we sit on the ground beside each other. We stretch our legs first, and I watch him and follow his lead. “I’m not very good at stretching.” I blush when I realize it sounds like an excuse for him to show me how to stretch our bodies.

He doesn’t seem to care. “What’s giving you trouble?”

“My hips.”

The two of us pull our feet together in a butterfly stretch. “I’m sure you know this one.”

I nod. Dick pushes down on my knee gently, and I try not to react at the feeling of his warm hand on my skin. “It doesn’t feel good enough?” I shake my head, and Dick shows me a stretch that’ll loosen up my hips even more, his own cooldown forgotten. He sits with his knees pulled up, arms hanging off of his knees, and watches me. “What’s on your mind?” he says, eyes scanning my face.

I wonder how he can read me every time. “Why doesn’t Jason race for Wayne anymore?” My eyes search his face, bracing for him to shut me out, for a sign that I’ve finally said the wrong thing to him.

Dick scratches the nape of his neck like he’s thinking it out, how to tell me. “You know how Tim only raced once last year as our reserve?” I nod, and Dick continues. “Jason was the primary racer he was filling in for. You’ve seen some of it so far, everyone loses themselves in the track, one way or another…” He closes his eyes, as grim and serious as I’ve ever seen him. “I always find my way back. Jason is a hungrier racer than I am. He’s closer to his car, everything melts behind. Sometimes his style clashes with some others. There was a big crash last year, and he almost died. He got in an argument with Bruce about his recovery timeline, and then stopped calling. Stopped answering. I didn’t know he was ready to come back to racing until the pre-season rosters dropped, and there he was in the announcements, his name right beside Wally’s.” Dick smiles meekly, trying to hide the pain of it all.

I put a hand on top of his arm. “Do you miss him?”

“Of course. I never wanted him to leave.”

I don’t want to intrude on their family affairs, but I say it anyway, figuring I owe Dick my own candid thoughts in return. “Have you talked to Bruce?”

“As best I can,” he shrugs. “He’s hard to get through to. I can’t tell if he knew about Jay joining Speedforce, and I haven’t had the time since the season started to ask.”

“You’re trying your best,” I say, trying to comfort him.

He puts a hand on top of mine, a funny, awkward limb sandwich as we sit on the ground of our small hotel gym. “Thank you.” Dick’s eyes are bluer than ever when they meet mine. “For being here, and for being my friend.”

I don’t think he knows how it makes my heart squeeze.