Chapter Text
One in the morning is a very strange time to leave the house without telling anyone. It’s even weirder to leave the house in secret without telling anyone. A ridiculous thing to do considering he’s an adult who doesn’t have to listen when people tell him no.
despite this, at one in the morning, the only thing Dick can hear is the light scratching sound of ice underneath him.
He starts out slow, circling the edges. It’s quieter than normal, a welcome change. He lets the speed pick up, lets his body loose, cuts into the center and pushes off into a spin. It’s fun. Freeing. When he slides back to the edges, everything feels okay for a moment. He doesn’t feel like a wire about to snap right now.
Dick puts both arms up slightly, bracing, shifting so he moves backwards, and leaps up into the air so high he feels like he’s flying off a building. Time feels like it slows down to track every movement. He tucks his arms in tight over his chest, relishing in the way he spins in the air—really living up to the “wing” part of his name—before landing back on the ice on one foot. The weight of the fall folds his waist like a drinking bird until Dick fights himself upright again, gliding backwards.
He does another lap around, bracing again and holding his breath while he rushes forward to jump once, twice, three times all after the other. Adrenaline flows like water as he goes in for another spin in the center, holding one leg over his head and freezing in place while he does so.
The rest of the world melts away. The rink is all that matters. The soft noise his skates make against the ice and the feeling of spinning midair without being in a life-or-death situation lets him forget he’s a crimefighter for a moment. He’s not nightwing here. He’s just Dick Grayson.
He speeds down the length of the ice again, so quickly that the ice hisses, and leaps up into the air. He lets the momentum throw him into another spin and folds low to the ground once he lands with one leg outwards. Dick whirled, his wide eyes just inches away from the ground. When he rises back up, he’s still rotating. Dick looks upwards at the white linoleum light above him, the only one illuminating this whole room, and outstretches an arm towards it. He goes even faster until everything but the light is impossible to see. The moment doesn’t even feel real, like he’s been taken away from all the chaos for just one isolated moment.
All at once, forces his other skate back onto the ice. He stops instantly, which always feels like the most difficult part of the routine, and raises his arms to the side. For a while, he just stays in that final position, chest heaving. Dick hasn’t felt this good in a long time. Still, his transitions could be smoother, and he needed to add some elements if he wants to make a good program. Plus, he should totally figure out how to backflip on ice. Can’t be much harder than circus tricks, right?
He’s the only person on the rink, which is why Dick nearly jolts out of his skin when he hears the heavy entrance door slam shut.
”What the hell?”
Dick tries to regain his balance, but it doesn’t work. His skate skids against the ice when he missteps, hissing loudly and jamming into the scuff it makes, throwing the rest of Dick’s body forward into the ice. The fall is dizzyingly hard when he lands right on the side of his head, and it takes a moment for the voice to register in Dick’s brain.
Jason.
Of course it’s Jason. Out of every possible person. It had to be that one. For a second, he considers just not getting up from the floor and making Jason think he’s unconscious to avoid talking.
Dick scrambles back onto his hands and knees, shakily standing up and turning to face Jason from where he is, descending the stands to meet Dick at the gate. “What are you doing here?”
”What am I doing here?” Jason asks incredulously, gripping the edge of the gate with both hands. “What are you doing here?”
Suddenly, Dick feels a flush of embarrassment rising up the back of his neck. He’s caught. “Uh…” he stammers, glancing around the room for some sort of excuse. Upon finding none, he just gives Jason a slightly sheepish smile. “I…couldn’t sleep.”
Jason doesn’t look impressed. They just stare at each other for a while. After a few moments, Dick clears his throat.
“How much of that were you watching? How the hell did you get here?”
”I just got here.” Jason gestures around the rink. “I saw you sneaking out and thought you were going off to meet someone. Imagine my surprise when I open the door, fully expecting you to be making out with some mystery girl, and you’re busy…Ice skating.”
”Figure skating.” Dick can’t help but correct. He doesn’t let it show, but a wave of anxiety washes over him once Jason mentions what he was expecting to see. Mystery girl. There wouldn’t be a mystery girl in any scenario—
Dick takes a steady breath in. This was the shit that made him escape to the rink in the first place. As much as he loves his little wing, it takes real effort for Dick not to scream at him until he leaves.
”Same thing, whatever. Point is, what the hell did I just watch? Since when did you do that?” Jason is, admittedly, asking reasonable questions. But Dick just doesn’t want to deal with it. Not here, not now.
Dick glides a few inches from the gate, fidgeting with the cuff of his sleeve. ”I’ll explain at patrol.” He says quickly. “I’ll tell you everything when it’s not one in the morning.”
”It’s three, actually.”
”…Oh.” Had he really been out that long? It didn’t feel like two hours. He’d need to go back home soon. “Well, I’ll tell you tomorrow. Go home, Jason.”
”You’re not gonna avoid—“
”Go home.” Dick says it more firmly this time, louder.
Jason raises his voice in turn. “I’m not going back, Dick! Tell me what’s going on! You were doing shit that obviously takes a long time to learn. So, what, you’ve just been sneaking out for years?”
Dick feels like he’s being interrogated. Alarms go off in his head, and he suddenly feels a lot more nervous than he really should. Just don’t lash out. “Fuck off!” He barks out. It comes out much louder than he’d intended, and Jason seems genuinely startled by his brother’s reaction.
Real smooth.
For a moment, it looks like Jason wants to yell back. But he throws his hands up in mock surrender instead.
He watches, completely still, as Jason scowls and begrudgingly stands up to grab his bag. It’s weird that he’s actually listening to Dick, no matter how grateful he is about it. Maybe it’s from how hard he’s breathing. Or the wild look in his eyes. Or the slowly opening cut across the side of Dick’s head from falling over which is beginning to slowly trickle a small trail of blood down to his chin.
Jason rises through the stands with his bag thrown over his shoulder. A little awkwardly, he looks back at Dick and says something he can’t identify before opening the door.
Jason leaves, and Dick briefly wonders if he’s just moving somewhere else where Dick can’t spot him. He starts to move again after a moment.
If Bruce were here, he’d probably have dragged Dick off the ice already. He’d say some bullshit about how he needed to set a better example as the oldest sibling. The sounds of the ice quiet his mind down, but it still rambles on.
If Bruce did ever find out, he’d take the whole sport away. Did Dick deserve that? Bruce was right when he was a kid, fighting did help him.
But he was still angry, despite all that help vigilantism brought him.
Dick slides into another jump. Shaky landing. Were the others this angry? This desperate for something, anything to quiet the gnawing urge to scream and cry and give up on everything the moment they weren’t good enough? Was Dick the only one who was so constantly angry?
The ice hisses under him. He’s going too fast. The next jump is unsteady, he lands too hard. Jason was angry, but he had a good reason. He died and came back and the world still treats him like he’s dead. Jason is angry because he needs to be. Dick is angry like an injured animal, lashing out needlessly in a panic whenever someone got to close to his sanctuaries.
His head hurts from the cut. It makes focusing more difficult. He misses a jump, popping out of it before the first rotation is even done. His breathing picks up. Dick tried for so long to be his own person, to step out of Bruce’s grasp. In the end, he was pulled back to fill in as Batman and keep up appearances. Was that right to be angry over? Was that setting a good enough example?
The ice skids, sending flurries of snow outwards. There’s drops of blood falling onto his shirt now. Was he a good enough sibling? A good enough son? If Bruce took away his skating, would that make him better? Was he not good enough already?
He hesitates to think further, losing focus for just a split second. He barely has time to look at the wall before his shoulder collides into it and sends him sinking to the floor.
Dick closes his eyes for a moment, wincing. He wasn’t good enough. And this stupid goddamn obsession of his was one of the reasons why.
As he half-lays on the ice, blood spilling onto the floor, Dick briefly tries to remember what Jason said to him before he’d left.
”hey, I have no clue what the hell you were doing, but whatever it was, you seem pretty good at it.”
Huh.
Dick sits up. A compliment. From his brother. From Jason. That’s new.
Slowly, he gets back up. This obsession of his, no matter how idiotic, was at least somewhat impressive.
…Maybe he could stay a little longer.