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“Uh, listen Zee…” Dick starts, “I kinda need to ask you something…”
The apartment is quiet for a moment. A clusterfuck of pillows and clothes and deep breathing, yes, but his words hang in the air for a second before Zatanna sighs dramatically.
She pulls the arm from behind his head and glances at the only thing Dick is currently wearing (his wristwatch) before commenting, “Wow, it only took you four hours this time.”
Dick at least has grace enough to look sheepish as Zatanna lets him have his arm back and props herself up on his chest. He’d probably be more mortified if she wasn’t smiling cheekily down at him.
“I’m really losing my touch huh?” he asks, grimacing.
“Nah, you’ve got the touch all right.” Her eyes twinkle in amusement as she traces a few lazy circles on his bare chest. “But you should know better than to booty call without a better excuse than ‘I miss you’,” she ribs, before settling back down against him as he wraps an arm around her.
Dick rubs her hip soothingly as he kisses the top of her head, because he does wish some things (like the sporadic hook-ups and the insanely different schedules) could be different between them.
“I do miss you,” he says earnestly.
“I thought we made a deal not to lie to each other, Mr. Grayson.”
He smirks into her hair. “Exactly.”
She smacks him, rolling her eyes. “What do you need, Manly Wonder?”
“I never said I needed anything,” he points out, backpedaling, trying to salvage what he can of their afterglow. He rolls over her, the sheets tangling taught over his ankles, and begins trailing light kisses the expanse of skin down her neck, murmuring, “What if my tortured soul just missed you and came by for your exquisite company?”
Zatanna laughs, grabbing his face to bring his lips to hers. She kisses him deeply and it’s a little too hot and a little too wanting for nonchalance.
“What if…” she whispers breathy against his mouth, “you stop being so full of shit?”
Dick pulls his face back to look down on her, playfully annoyed, as she smirks up at him. “You tarnish all my aster, Zee.”
“You’ve got aster enough for the world over, you troll,” she teases, crossing her arms behind her head confidently. “I thought the great bird detective would know better than to play a player. Especially one who plays the game as well as he does.”
Dick sits back on his heels, glancing down at her exposed chest, amused. “So you’re saying I should be asking you what it is you want in return for my body?”
Zatanna raises her eyebrows expectantly. Years of friendship (usually with benefits) have taught Zatanna how to spin their especially intricate relationship.
“How about,” he goes on in a velvety voice, reaching down to idly knead her breasts, “dinner for two, the most expensive Italian restaurant in Gotham City, eight o’clock, this Thursday? I buy you the dress, you order the six most expensive things on the menu, and then…”
He leans over her to whisper slowly in her ear, “Food fight.”
“Hmm…” she sighs, pretending to seriously consider his offer. “I was going to ask for access to the Bat Cave’s files on Black Skull, but I like how your mind works better.”
Dick cackles low in her ear, mischievous, wicked, and the sound electrifies her spine. He reads the reaction loud and clear and his hands slip from her breasts to her ribs, holding her in place as he bites her earlobe.
They are exhausted already, spent. But somehow, they always manage to find the extra energy somewhere for an encore (or three). They never really know the next chance they’ll have together to expend it.
“So what did you obviously come to ask me for?” she asks before their charade becomes at risk of devolving back into limbs and lips and her magnificent hips and his outstanding ass. Dick groans his defeat and rolls off her and onto his back.
“I…need a glamour charm,” he admits finally. “The most powerful one you can make without, y’know, leaving magical residue that can be seen from space. I need it by week’s end.”
“That’s not a terribly scandalous excuse for jumping my bones,” Zatanna chuckles, sitting up. She tosses her hair and part of the sheets over one shoulder like a tunic, calling, “Emoc Ereh!”
Her father’s spell book flies from her bookshelf on the other side of the apartment and lands expertly in her hands. She crosses her legs and cracks it open on her lap, flipping through it expertly. “I’m guessing I’m not allowed to ask for anything specific? Gender? Height? Weight? Hair color?”
Dick doesn’t answer her question right away. “It’s for a woman,” he says after a minute. “If you could keep her looking like a woman, that’d be great.”
Zatanna pauses in her paging. There’s a beat, and then she can’t help herself. She bursts out laughing.
Dick looks startled for a moment (his mind had been miles away) but when he glances over at her cackling he catches his misalignment of words. Then it’s his turn to roll his eyes.
“It’s not what it sounds like, Zee.”
“Oh sure. Obviously,” she chuckles. She interrupts him before he can protest. “This is for sexy times, isn’t it? What, Dick Grayson, billionaire and certified Lady’s Man, couldn’t wile his way into a girl’s bedroom so he needs magic to appease his ego?”
“Now you’re just exaggerating,” he mutters, scowling at the title.
“Pfft, I think I’m aggerating just fine,” Zatanna fires back, and watches his body flush in response to the word. (Between the pair of them, they had a nice list of the world’s most unconventional fetishes.) “Let’s see…there’s the alien. The Amazon. And of course…”
Zatanna throws her head back theatrically, holding the back of her hand to her forehead, and calling out in a very bad impersonation of Dick, “Oh, Miss Gordon! How I relish the opportunity to oogle your spandex mid-battle and wrestle you out of it post-haste—!”
He tackles her, not gently at all, and the two of them and the book careen off the side of her bed in a tangled net of sheets. The only reason he doesn’t crush her on the hardwood floor is because she’d been expecting the retribution and calls out “Ria Noihsuc!” just before they hit the ground.
“You forgot my favorite,” he informs her smartly, sandwiching her with his weight, “the ‘cleverest witch of her age’.”
She snorts, kissing around his Adam’s apple. “I will never understand how someone can be such a ridiculously attractive dork.”
He smirks. “So you are conceding that I’m ridiculously attractive?”
“I have a pulse, Dick.”
“I’m whelmed to hear that.”
“Psh. I am queen of whelmed.”
Dick kisses her throat, where her pulse is, but it’s tender. Easier. Tired.
“I miss you,” he says again, softer. “I wish I didn’t, but I do, Zee. I miss seeing you every day, working with you, being with you in anything that resembles a relationship.”
Zatanna sighs, rubbing circles over his shoulders, and allows herself the un-jaded honesty if only for a moment. “I miss you too. But we picked this when we picked our respective teams. And this is nice, right?” she asks gently as she touches her cheek to his temple. “No strings, no worries, no mess. Right?”
“Sure,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice as he relaxes under her ministration.
“Well, I can have the Cihpromoisyhp charm for you by Thursday,” she informs him, pulling his drooping head back to look at him. She’s back to smiling too. “Got any plans for the rest of the evening that don’t involve drooling on my collarbone?”
“I’ll bring the Black Mask flash drive, you bring the charm—”
“I always bring the charm,” she corrects.
“—and as a matter of fact,” he continues, standing, “if the Team and the League can manage without us for the next couple hours, I have the third and fourth seasons of Cold Case in my duffel bag…”
“What a coincidence,” she says slyly, as he offers her his hand up, “I happen to have the number of a highly recommended Romanian restaurant on my fridge. They even do delivery.”
His blue eyes dance deviously as they stand for a moment toe to toe. “Tequila shots every time someone successfully pulls off bullshit Hollywood detective-ing?”
“Have I ever told you you’re my favorite superhero?”
“And here I was, convinced that we weren’t lying to each other anymore,” Dick jokes, wrapping his arms around her.
She smirks, kissing his nose. “Exactly.”
The food takes its sweet time getting there and they get very drunk very quickly without it, and Zatanna almost tells the League emergency alert in South Africa to go screw itself because so few things are more hilarious than Dick impersonating Detective Lilly Rush while shirtless and under the influence of tequila.