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Your chest was tight, like there was a rhino sitting on it. You’d always had an uncanny grasp on the package of the time, especially when it came to your timer. Most days, you didn’t even have to look to know that it sat at something like 07:06:20:10:53:02--seven years, six months, twenty-one days, ten hours, fifty-three minutes, and two seconds. Which was exactly why your heart just about leapt out of your chest one day when you looked down and saw it at 00:00:00:00:10:05.
How could you possibly have mised the swap from seven years to just ten minutes?
Your heart was racing. You weren’t ready. Hell, you hadn’t showered in at least three days because you’d been so busy. Minutes slipped away while you ran to the nearest public restroom to at least try and spruce yourself up. Then, when you walked outside, you ran face-first into someone. “I’m so sorry!” you were already apologizing as you stepped back.
“Well, at least you weren’t holding a coffee or something,” his warm voice answered. “That would have been a pretty sucky way to meet you for the first time.”
You looked over at your wrist. Straight zeroes. Then your eyes roamed up, up, up, the lithe giant before you until your gaze finally met a pair of bright blue eyes that were ever-so-slightly shadowed by his jet black hair. “You’re Dick Grayson,” you said disbelievingly. It almost sounded like an accusation, even to your own ears.
“You know my name, but I don’t know yours. How’s that fair?”
“Everyone in this city knows your name,” you countereed on impulse.
“And yet, I still don’t know yours.”
You offered it quietly.
When he repeated it, your heart fluttered unpleasantly. “You wanna . . . get a coffee with me, maybe?”
“So I can spill it on you?”
His laughter was infectious; on that, the tabloids were annoyingly accurate. “Definitely.”
A smile spread its way across your face. “Absolutely.”