Work Text:
Dick wasn’t sure where he was, but the LED lights lining the ceiling and the familiar, mismatched training equipment gave him a hunch.
The Titans’ old training room.
Back when the team was new. Back when he was younger and restless and desperate to be something that wasn’t Bruce’s shadow.
He lay on the matted floor, lungs burning, chest tight like he’d just finished sparring. He didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. He just knew he couldn’t catch his breath.
Then he heard a laugh.
Warm. Easy. Familiar in a way that settled straight in his chest.
Dick turned his head.
Roy.
His Roy.
Roy looked as breathless as he felt, red hair damp and sticking to his forehead, skin slick with sweat. He was grinning, talking fast about something Dick barely registered. All Dick could see was the way Roy’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. The way his presence made everything else fade into background noise.
Before he could think better of it, Dick reached out, fingers tangling in Roy’s hair.
He kissed him.
Roy hummed in surprise, the sound vibrating straight down Dick’s spine. He leaned in without hesitation, deepening the kiss, and Dick felt like his skin had been set ablazed. Like this was inevitable. Like it had always been waiting.
Roy pushed him back onto the mats, hands sliding to Dick’s waist, drifting upward-
Dick woke with a sharp inhale, bolting upright in bed.
He froze.
No LEDs. No mats. No Roy.
Just his apartment in Blüdhaven, dark and quiet.
Dick dragged a hand down his face. “Fuck…”
The dream was back.
It had been years since he last had it. Back when they were younger, when everything was louder and messier and his crush on Roy burned hot and obvious, at least to his subconscious. The dream had first appeared, later fading as real life moved on.
The crush never turned into anything. The dream stayed a dream.
When he and Kory started dating, it disappeared entirely.
He’d thought that meant he’d grown out of it.
Then he and Kory broke up. Mutual. Kind. She wanted a life more in tune with her Tamaranian roots, and he couldn’t quite follow her there.
Two days later, the dream returned.
He dated. He hooked up. He let himself crush on other people. And as long as there was someone occupying that space in his life, Roy stayed gone.
But the moment things went quiet, the moment there was no one else-
Roy came back.
Always Roy.
Like his brain had marked him as unfinished business.
Dick lay back against his pillows, staring at the ceiling.
He was just a man.
A man being haunted by a childhood crush he never quite learned how to let go of.
He closed his eyes, immediately regretted it. His mind betrayed him with ruthless efficiency, replaying Roy’s mouth, his hands, the heat of it. Dick’s breath hitched, body reacting before his common sense could catch up. His hand drifted, stopped short at the elastic of his pants.
He let out a quiet, humorless laugh.
“No.” He muttered to the empty room. “Dick… You don’t get to have him.”
The words felt rehearsed. Like he’d said them before. Like he’d need to say them again.
He swung his legs out of bed and stood, putting distance between himself and the thought before it got any worse. A cold shower. Reset. Reboot the system.
He was fine.
Everything was fine.
He just needed someone new. Someone present. Someone real.
Someone who wasn’t Roy Harper.
-------------------
Dick learned how to carry it.
Like everything in his life.
He learned how to smile at Roy like nothing was wrong. How to joke, how to spar, how to sit shoulder to shoulder without leaning in. He learned how to keep his hands to himself even when every instinct screamed otherwise. He learned how to swallow it down and relabel it. “Nostalgia”. “Habit”. “A leftover crush”. Anything but what it actually was.
Roy made it harder just by being Roy.
By glancing at Dick a second too long. By touching his wrist when he laughed. By looking at him like he was something familiar and necessary. Roy never pushed. Never asked. He just stayed. Steady. Present. Like he was waiting for Dick to stop running in circles.
Which, somehow, hurt worse.
They trained together sometimes. Old habits resurfacing, bodies remembering patterns their minds pretended they’d forgotten. Every spar ended the same way. Breathing hard. Foreheads almost touching. Roy’s grin softer than it had any right to be.
“You good?” Roy would ask, quiet.
“Yeah…” Dick would lie, stepping back first.
Roy always nodded. Acceptance without satisfaction. The kind that said “I hear you” and “I don’t believe you” at the same time.
The thing was, Dick knew.
He wasn’t oblivious. He saw the way Roy looked at him when he thought Dick wasn’t paying attention. Felt the weight of the unsaid every time their hands brushed. He knew Roy would say yes. Knew he probably had been ready to say it for years.
That was exactly why Dick wouldn’t let himself ask.
Because Dick Grayson ruined things. Because wanting something didn’t mean you were allowed to keep it. Because every time he loved someone, the world took notes.
Roy deserved someone who wouldn’t hesitate. Someone who wouldn’t wake up from dreams shaking and guilty and afraid. Someone who wouldn’t turn longing into penance.
So Dick stayed just out of reach.
And Roy, maddeningly, stayed anyway.
-------------------
Dick was avoiding him again, and Roy knew.
He always knew.
What he didn’t know was why.
Sometimes they were good. Easy. Laughing like nothing in the world could touch them. And then, without warning, Dick would disappear. A few days. Sometimes longer. No fight, no explanation. Just absence.
Then Dick would come back, bright and familiar, talking like nothing had happened.
Roy learned early not to ask what changed.
At first, he’d call it out with a look. A raised brow. A pause that waited for Dick to notice. When that didn’t work, he tried words. Careful ones. Gentle ones.
Those stopped too.
Not because Roy didn’t notice anymore.
Because he noticed everything.
Dick dated other people. Roy watched it happen from a polite distance, wearing an expression that never quite crossed into jealousy. Something adjacent to it. Something quieter. Supportive, even.
Patient.
Like someone who had already decided to wait, and was committed to pretending it didn’t hurt.
It did hurt.
It hurt constantly.
But Roy stayed. Because leaving felt worse. Because whatever Dick was running from always seemed to circle back to him eventually.
And because if Dick ever turned around and reached for him for real, Roy didn’t want to be the one who wasn’t there.
Maybe he was delusional. He’d considered that.
But it was fine. He was only hurting himself. No collateral damage. No one else had signed up for this waiting game.
He told himself that choosing to stay was the same as choosing hope.
That there was an ending somewhere ahead of them. Something solid. Something honest. He trusted that, even when he couldn’t see it. Especially then.
All it would take was Dick talking to him.
Just once.
Really talking.
-------------------
One night, after a mission that left them scraped raw and exhausted, Roy pressed a beer into Dick’s hand.
He didn’t look at him when he spoke.
“You know.” Roy said, voice easy in a way that wasn’t fooled by itself. “You don’t have to protect me from yourself.”
Dick laughed too fast, the sound brittle. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
Roy finally looked over.
There was no teasing there. No edge. Just quiet, devastating certainty.
“Yeah.” Roy said. “It is.”
Dick had nothing to give back to that. No joke. No deflection that didn’t feel insulting.
Roy exhaled, leaned back, and let the moment pass.
Like he always did.
Like he trusted Dick to choose him someday, even if it meant breaking his own heart first.
Dick watched him go, the familiar ache settling heavy in his chest.
Mutual.
Unspoken.
Untouched.
And somehow, that hurt more than if Roy had never felt it at all.
That same night, Dick dreamed of it again.
Of a time when he let himself have good things. When wanting didn’t feel like a risk assessment. When he wasn’t measuring every joy by how badly it might hurt later.
Roy was there. Close. Easy. His.
Not stolen. Not delayed. Not imagined.
Just his.
Dick woke with his heart racing and his hands empty, the echo of something almost-real clinging to him like a bruise.
Back when Roy could have been his.
Back when he hadn’t convinced himself he didn’t deserve it.
“It was only a dream.” He muttered to the dark.
The words sounded thin. Practiced.
He said it again, softer. Like repetition might make it true.
“It was just a dream…”
His chest still ached.
His hands still remembered.
And somewhere in the quiet, his heart refused to believe him.