Chapter Text
In early July, Dick went to New York City for a week to handle a bunch of advertisement shoots for the various sponsor contracts he’d signed recently. He found it efficient to get them done mostly all at once on a single trip, rather than having to keep coming back to do it. His PR Agent, Rachel, had been very helpful for arranging everything. He traveled in on Monday and had his first day of work on Tuesday.
Dick was staying in his New York Apartment for this trip, but Rachel was staying in a nearby hotel. He ended up tagging along to her hotel to use the gym there, since he didn’t have much gym equipment in his apartment where he rarely stayed. He may be busy with sponsorships, but he had competitions soon, so he needed to stay in shape. He did have a pull up bar that fit in his doorframe at the apartment, so he would utilize that as well.
Dick had already had a contract with the sports drink Zatorade since shortly after the London Olympics, but they renewed it for a new contract paying $5 million over 4 years, plus bonuses if the specific products he advertised did well. He’d talked to them about interest in if they had a branded electrolyte powder to add to water, since he wanted to reduce his plastic usage.
The Zatorade commercial was filmed first, and they were launching a new line of electrolyte powders with him as the face of it. First, they filmed him in athletic clothes doing gymnastics on a horizontal bar, including close-ups of his face with artificial sweat. Then they did some of him drinking from a zatorade-branded metal water bottle, many slow shots of that. Then of him jogging up stairs. Then they filmed him with the Zatorade electrolyte powder packets and mixing them into a drink. He’d verified that this new product was just the normal electrolytes and didn’t have any performance enhancing anything added to it. It was a long day of filming and he was aware he may end up being featured in multiple advertisements by them for it. They also did a photoshoot with him of still shots. Zatorade invited him to attend a Yankee’s game in their luxury suite/box seats while he was there, and he said he’d check his schedule and would consider it.
That night, since he was in New York, he met up with Kory and Donna. Kory took them out to a nice restaurant, with Donna wearing sunglasses to obscure her identity some. They walked in with Kory in the middle with each of them holding one of her hands. Dick was sure to visibly wear his Rolex watch, from one of his other sponsorships, knowing he was likely to be photographed while they were out. Dick knew TMZ would probably post something about him dating two girls at once or something, but he was just glad to catch up with his friends in the private room at the restaurant, even if they had to stick to civilian topics while they were out.
Dick complained some about the modeling stuff, seeking tips from Kory. Modeling was so much more fun when Kory was also on set. She laughed, teasing him for needing an entourage, though she then offered to join him for some of the shoots if he got permission, though she was busy with her own shoot tomorrow. He messaged his PR Agent Rachel about it and they coordinated things for her to join on the Dior and Rolex shoots, which would be long days. Rachel phrased it as having Kory approved as a “personal modeling coach.” Which, fair, Kory had a lot of experience with that.
Dick didn’t completely dominate the conversation, he also asked about them and they confirmed that they are properly dating now, though they weren’t formally announcing it to the public. They joked about Dick serving as a beard for their date today. Kory convinced Dick to come to various events in New York with her, including staying late to attend the broadway debut of a musical she was excited about. All in all, it was nice catching up with his friends.
On Wednesday, Dick had two different smaller photo shoots. In the morning, he had a photoshoot with Crest Toothpaste, who had been eager to reach out to him considering how often he’d won “Best Smile” awards. He was doing a one-time advertisement shoot with them and earning $500,000 for it. There were a few video shots of him wearing a white T-shirt and smiling at the camera, but he didn’t have to do anything, it would just be one part of a commercial. Then they took a bunch of still photos of him, especially his face as he smiled. Dick was honestly kind of astonished that he could make so much money in just a few hours of work; that was one of his smaller endorsements and he was making more than he’d earned in years as a police officer. Anyways, the crest advertisement would mostly feature in magazines and stuff like that.
That afternoon, he had a small photoshoot for Colourpop, specifically various looks with their eye shadow and lipstick, since he enjoyed the vibrant looks with that makeup. They were a smaller company but they were growing, so he was making $100k plus some stock options. They also discussed that next year they wanted to do pride-themed makeup palettes with him as the face of the Bisexual one. He expressed interest and to work out the details with his agent, though also mentioned he would be fairly busy heading into the summer of 2016 considering the Olympics, so it may be better to schedule a photoshoot a bit earlier.
The ad campaign involved a lot of time spent in the makeup chair. Rachel coordinated with the Colourpop people and ended up taking a photo of him in the white robe he wore featuring his face fully made up in the colorful makeup and a colourpop logo visible on something, him in a casual pose as if not looking at the camera, and they posted it to tease the ad campaign. This product involved more social media advertising, so it made sense to tease it some.
He’d decided to go to the Yankee’s game that night at 7pm, inviting his PR Agent Rachel to accompany him. He didn’t have anything better to do that night, his extensive plans to attend things with Kory started the following day. He’d went over his various plans with Rachel and they coordinated what things he should wear to each in order to make his sponsors happy.
Anyways, they decided it made sense for him to wear some of his nicer athleisure wear clothes to the baseball game so he wore some of the clothes he got from his Under Armour sponsorship, specifically a plain navy blue T-shirt with their logo on it and black fancy athleisure pants with a zipper pocket. He fancied it up by wearing some of his Balenciaga boots and his Rolex watch. Rachel had went out and bought them both nice Yankee’s hats to wear to the game.
They managed to be subtle while entering the stadium, things had been arranged for them like that, but he ended up talking to a sports journalist or something when they were getting food from the area serving the luxury suites. Dick just casually mentioned he was in the city, shooting ads for Zatorade and others, and that Zatorade had invited him to see the game in their box. Rachel nodded at him approvingly for the quote he gave which namedropped the sponsor.
The Sports Journalist asked if he was really a Yankee’s fan or a Gotham Knights fan. Dick answered that he liked both, but admitted he was especially fond of the Gotham Knights since he attended their games while growing up in Gotham. But he’d also lived in New York for a bit, so he was genuinely fond of the Yankee’s as well. He also joked that cheering for the Yankee’s was more fun since they won far more often, which there was a well-established joke about how much the Gotham Knight’s team sucked, because no good player wanted to move to Gotham. When asked who he cheered for when they played against eachother, Dick charmingly deflected a bit, saying he cheered for the home team. While it wasn’t a formal interview, he was sure his casual comments would get published somewhere, so he was careful with his words.
Fortunately, Gotham and New York, while both being in the Eastern division of the American League, weren’t the worst of rivals. It wasn’t like the Yankees and the Red Sox, or the Knights and the Metropolis Meteors. Dick returned to the Zatorade luxury box, where he was handed Zatorade to be visibly drinking. He ate the food inside the box, not wanting unflattering pictures of him taken while eating. Dick checked in with Rachel about his comments to the reporter and she confirmed what he said was fine, though that it was perhaps overly generous of him to give such a detailed spontaneous interview.
Dick ended up going out to the separated section of outside seats attached to the luxury box to watch the game. He enjoyed watching the game, enjoying the atmosphere. At multiple points, he was aware as a camera was pointed at him, acting casual for the ones that were just for the TV broadcast, where he wasn’t necessarily supposed to be aware of a camera being pointed at him (and had only noticed due to his bat hypervigilance). For the ones where he was broadcast on the jumbo screen in the stadium, he stood and waved, smiling at the crowd.
He cheered for the home team, which was playing against the Oakland Athletics. He celebrated with the crowd as the Yankees won. Periodically, Rachel, who was monitoring things on social media, informed him that his presence was being well received on social media. Bruce checked in with them that it was okay before posting a #Throwback picture of his own, of the two of them going to a Gotham Knights game when Dick was a preteen.
Rachel took various pictures of him watching the game today. Then updated him on how people online were arguing over whether Dick was a Yankees fan or a Knights fan. Dick settled (or arguably worsened) the argument by posting with two pictures, one of him as an adult at a Gotham Knights game with Bruce and then another of him today alone at the Yankee’s game, with a caption of “Everyone’s saying I should choose one; Can’t a guy bat for both teams ;)”, which was a veiled but fairly obvious reference to him being bisexual. Dick was vaguely aware that Tim was with Percy in Paris now for the environmental thing they were doing, which explained why Percy had actually bothered to check social media for it, Tim had likely prompted him. Anyways, Percy posted a picture from the one Knights-Yankees game they’d attended in Gotham, with Dick in Knights gear and Percy in Yankees gear, with Percy commenting, “I’m originally from NYC, I’m a Yankees fan; they tried to get me into Knights gear, but I refused to be converted.”
The Zatorade executives commented that they were pleased with the attention he was getting for attending the game with them and he was his usual charming self. Dick was invited to the baseball team’s executive suite or owner’s box or whatever for a meet and greet at the end of the game, and Rachel agreed for them to go.
Some team executive was there and greeted him and said that if they’d known he was going to be here to attend the game, they’d have invited him to throw the opening pitch. Dick deflected that he didn’t know he would be attending in advance, he was invited yesterday and decided to come today, kind of on a whim, but left things open for such a thing in the future. Rachel, as his agent, introduced herself and collected a business card from him with non-committal statements about being in touch if things aligned.
Then after the game, some of the star players came up to the executive box. He could tell they were kind of just going through the motions greeting some of the executives, but they seemed genuinely pleased to see Dick there. Dick hid the fact he didn’t really know who any of them were, complimenting the one whom he’d noticed had gotten a home run that day. The one Yankee’s player he did specifically know, Derek Jeter, had evidently retired last year. Anyways, the players quietly invited him out to a bar or club they were going at to celebrate after the game, and he politely begged off, saying he had a photoshoot early the next morning and it was already getting late.
Which, part of him did find the idea of going and partying and getting drunk to be very appealing, but he was in full famous-celebrity “looking good for sponsors” and acting professional mode this week, so he’d decided it was best to mostly avoid such scenes. He went home to his apartment after their driver dropped Rachel off at her hotel and he worked out in his apartment for an hour or so until he was tired enough to go to sleep.