Tada. I'm back bitches. Better beware, my nerdiness™ has only increased and I am very very ready to supply all the fluff and plot and the jokes.

And the Stucky. Oh boy do I love me the Stucky.

And Tony Stark. He's...he's just so precious? I love him.

And don't even get me started on Dick Grayson i love that boy to pieces oh my god,, and im a very strong advocate for more support in the Romani!Robin corner.

Bless his lil gypsy heart he's about to get absolutely tugged around by these fandoms. Pray for dickie bird y'all he's gonna need it.

Without too much further ado, I present to you::

Chapter One!

"-we deserve better than this." Roy glares heavily at the three of them, and something very very rotten twists in Dick's chest. And suddenly he's standing up faster than he can control himself, and there's a very heavy, molasses-thick kind of silence in which everyone in the room stares at him. Batman's glare is steady and expectant, and Dick knows that this is the moment where he's expected to raise his hackles and defend the Justice League til his last breath.

But the look Roy gives him is just so...familiar, not in the way that Roy sports that sort of frantic desperation for validation - no, he's too edgy for that - but more along the lines of Dick recognising himself in Roy.

"You're right." Dick says quietly. For all the softness it was said with, from the look everyone's giving him he might as well have just declared intergalactic war. "We do. We do deserve better than this." Roy's mouth twitches in something akin to relief, something a little smug to the twist of his lips, and Dick recalls the many arguments they'd had about Batman and Bruce Wayne and why they were both assholes to Dick Grayson and Robin. Roy'd been passionate that Dick needed to rebel, set part of the house on fire - or better yet, the Batcave - but Dick had never put much faith in Roy's opinion of Bruce. He'd hated having his relationship ('What relationship?! He treats you like you're a Batarang, Dick, if you broke he'd throw you away and find a better one-') picked apart by anyone, but especially by Roy who'd thought that holding back or sugar coating would hurt him more. He was reflecting at least half of Ollie's behaviour onto Bruce, anyway, so it used to be okay to listen through.

But now? Dick thought they'd been making progress. That they'd built up an equal level of trust. That he was finally being seen as less and less of a soldier, and more like a partner and...a son.

"Rob?" Wally whispers, very confused with the goings on, and relying on Dick to fill him in. But Dick just stares at Batman, dares him with his eyes to speak up and put a stop to both of them. If he doesn't say a thing, Dick is turning around and he will not be coming back. He should have listened to Roy sooner. They should have done this sooner.

But Batman's expression doesn't falter. Maybe this is some kind of test to him, and Dick is supposed to use his knowledge in psychology to reel Roy in and have them both sitting at the feet of their respective 'mentors' again like good little sidekicks.

So Dick says nothing. He walks up to Roy, grabs his hand tightly, like he used to do when he was just a freaky dumb orphan kid and Roy was his coolest, nicest, bestest friend in the whole world, and nothing could ever hurt him when he was with Roy.

Roy's hand squeezes back so tightly in relief it's like he's splitting all the weight he'd piled on his shoulders onto Dick through their fingertips.

"Congratulations Arrow, Batman." Roy spits, hair practically static with anger under his yellow hat (which boy, really is dorky). He looks so angry, so untouchable, but here Dick is, and they're holding hands like two little lost boys. Roy's hand - just the one, mind - shakes in his, wether it's with frustration or anxiety is harder to tell. "You've finally succeeded in getting rid of the partners you never wanted in the first place."

Ooh. Burn.

Dick's hand is tugged towards Roy, a united front, and there's a small little opening - subtle but obvious at the same time, if that makes any sense - where Roy is offering him a chance to speak up. To rip into Bruce the same way Roy had Ollie.

He stares at the stone, emotionless face of Batman's cowl, the angrily squinted eyes, and it's quite obvious what Dick needs to say.

Nothing.

So they walk out together, alone but free but very aware that they are alone together, no one else to stand up for them except for themselves, and.

For the first time since Haly's, since family, since performing, since happiness, Dick feels like he's flying.

Roy doesn't give him long to get his things. The League's top priority is Zoltan, so really they should be tied up with that for a while, but Roy wants them to have a head start in finding their own way.

They go to Gotham first, and Dick feels like a stranger as he sneaks through his bedroom window with an empty new duffle bag in hand. He doesn't take many clothes - on a slim chance they might be recognisable - but he takes as much underwear and socks and toiletry products and his own personal med kits as he can fit into the bottom pocket of his bag. Basically, everything that is confirmed to be untouched by Bat-tracers and chemical trackers is brought with him. He has an emergency stash of cash - 'weekly allowance' Bruce had set up to withdraw $20 from the bank to post through their mail box every week when Dick first moved in (to distract from his horrible traumatic experience and lack of family), that had really never been touched and then forgotten about by Bruce completely - stashed behind his desk in several different wallets, and a few fake ID's that Dick had made by himself...just in case.

After a moment of contemplation, Dick creeps to his closet and opens it. He ignores all the nice clothes hung up, ironed and pressed, on hangers and shelves, and instead pries open a board at the back. Sitting there is a squat, beaten, dusty leather trunk only about the size of Dick's chest and a round little suitcase made of old wood and green canvas. He grabs the small green suitcase first, putting it snug up in one corner of his wide duffle bag, which leaves just enough room for his trunk to fit in before he zips it up.

He thinks about leaving a note on his bed - not for Bruce, but for Alfred, and not to say goodbye (Dick would never dream of saying goodbye to Alfred), but to thank him. Alfred could've done more for Dick and Bruce's relationship, but he did far from less and Dick is pretty sure the man is a little bit omniscient. He's going to miss that.

There's a buzz at his hip, Roy texting him to hurry up, and the final look Dick takes around his dark, spacious, empty looking bedroom should probably be more sentimental. But it's not. He feels...not much of anything, really. It almost hurts how much he's not going to miss it. Almost.

Roy helps strap his duffle bag onto the back of his bike, and Dick's really glad it's midday and sunny because it just looks like they're going on a trip rather than steeling something, which is what the case would usually be if two kids were strapping a heavy duffle bag to a motorcycle in the dead of night in Gotham.

"Ready to go?" Roy asks, sliding the dark visor of his helmet down over his face, pulling the zip up on his dark leather jacket. Across the street they chose to meet up on - in front of an averagely busy shopping mall - a group of teenagers stare at him and blush and giggle. Roy doesn't spare them a glance, but Dick knows that if they weren't in this kind of urgent rush then he'd show off for them a little bit, maybe even flirt with that girl with the purple hair. But they have places to be. Roy can find someone to flirt with later.

Now, Dick isn't exactly sure where they're going, but he thinks he can assume that it's going to be far away from here. He came to the conclusion about an hour ago that Roy had already planned everything out in case the JL decided to try and pat them on the head and pretend they were doing them a favour for it. He assumes that means that Roy's got some place to live.

Some place to call home.

"Yeah." Dick says, swinging his legs around the bike, arms around Roy's waist.

"Step on it, bitch."

The bike revved.

"I'll step on you, you little shit."

Yeah, home.

They're on the road for a good few hours, driving through Gotham and Blüdhaven and Jersey and part of Manhattan until they end up in a red-brick area of Brooklyn. There are various diners, delis, Mom 'n Pop stores and bistros around, and a couple of apartment buildings with terraces and flower pots. You would never find this kind of domestic charm in Gotham, and Star City was about as flashy as its namesake, bar from the Glades and the factories.

Roy pulls up the bike into the side of a charming old red brick building, perfectly friendly minus the slabs of paste and mortar over what Dick is sure used to be bullet wholes, and they park next to two even more charming old Harley's that they both take a few seconds to drool at. Then Dick decides he'd very much like to stretch his legs, does an areal dismount off the seat, and does some slow backwards walkovers to stretch out the kinks in his back. Roy doesn't bat an eye, and just leans on the bike for a couple of seconds to make sure the kickstand's sturdy. Sometimes it's not very reliable, but it works better in warm weather, so the bike sits pretty and solid as Roy gets off and starts unstrapping their bags. They have one on each side of the rear of the bike for clothes and miscellaneous civilian things, and the black shiny motorcycle case sitting innocently on the tail holds a plethora of weapons, cash, tech, and Kevlar. And knowing Roy, maybe some travel-sized bottles of alcohol and a packet or two of roll up cigarettes.

"Come grab your shit, Dickie."

Halfway through folding himself into a complex pretzel, Dick groans, and languidly flops to the floor and then to his feet. "Got it." He swings the strap diagonally across his chest, and the bag rests easily across his lower back. In each hand, he holds a helmet, and the plastic tag of the bike's key rests in between his teeth. It's around 4:30 in the afternoon, so the weather has cooled marginally, but it's still a little too sunny and warm to have to drag everything inside the foyer of the apartment building by themselves.

The door is, thankfully, a push, so Roy insists that Dick walk in ahead of him and kick the door open gently. There's a blonde lady waiting for them by the mailboxes, a set of keys in her hands and a light jacket on over a pair of nurses scrubs. Despite that, Dick thinks she's definitely no nurse, considering the gun he can tell is strapped to the inside to the back of her jacket. He's not one to jump to paranoid conclusions, though, so he's pretty sure she's just some undercover agent trying to tie up all loose ends to her mission by selling her stakeout apartment to the most innocent new tenants possible: two orphan teenagers with rich, absent foster fathers moving out to live on their own, two trust fund kids with no affiliations to any government or gang.

At some point, Dick is sure that their new living arrangement will one way or another hit the media, and Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen will probably be dragged onto talk shows about why their kids moved out. Gossip columns are going to crazy. Or maybe Bruce will come up with some bullshit story about holidays and trust and independence, and then everyone will just ignore the fact that he and Ollie aren't doing their job properly.

Roy doesn't bat an eye at the fact that he's buying such a suspicious place, or the fact that this lady looks way too relieved that they're taking the apartment off her hands, so Dick just goes with it and assumed Roy did his research. He plasters on his cutest neutral face, smiles at the woman around the keychain in his mouth, and he knows that as soon as she glances at him he has her doubtless and wrapped around his finger. Roy's not one to butter up to people, though, so he just nods in greeting and puts down his duffle to shake her hand.

"Roy Harper, we spoke on the phone?" Roy says, and the woman smiles at him. She has a firm handshake.

"Sharon Carter. You're right on time, I just finished moving my things out to my car." Dick calls bullshit internally, because there is no car outside the building and she would never be loading boxes in medical crocs and and scrubs. People just don't tend to go out in public in their uniform, if they have a choice, and they especially wouldn't go outside in crocs.

"The apartment is on the top floor, end of the hall on the right, it's fully furnished - though feel free to replace anything you want - the only thing you can't do is repaint any of the walls, the wallpaper is free reign. There two bedrooms, like you've already been shown-" When did Roy find the time to visit this place? How long had he been looking into moving out? "-and one bathroom. It's not the best view, but you get the best smell; there's a bakery right next to this side of the building and the windows in the apartment are pretty much adjacent to their vent."

Roy nods smoothly, thanks Sharon with a half-smile, and takes the keys as she drops them into his hand. "You said you were paying rent in cash, so every 5th Monday - starting on the first Monday of August - post the envelope to the landlord's mailbox, which is this one here-" She slaps her palm against the bottom right mail slot, a number 1 proudly engraved on it. "-and I've left his email address on the kitchen counter if you needed to contact him directly about any problems." She smiles winningly again when Roy continues to nod, and looks half-subtly down at her watch.

"Any last questions about the place?"

Roy makes a move like he's about to nod again, but then he stops and furrows his eyebrows. Dick knows it's for show. "Yeah, actually - you mentioned that the neighbours were...high profile?"

Dick's eyebrows jump to his hairline. Roy definitely has something planned with this suspicious apartment building. And it has something to do with the not-nurse in front of them, and the high profile neighbours.

"Well," Sharon runs a hand through her hair, buying some time, and twists her lips thoughtfully. "Yes, they're high profile. And one of them, I'm required by law to tell you is an ex-convict. We've had some weird people show up to buy this apartment because of them, so you're the first tenant to pass all the security tests. If this puts you off the place, just hand back the keys and I'm sorry for wasting both of our time."

Roy looks pointedly at Dick over his shoulder, so he shrugs loosely. Ex-cons don't scare him, and him and Roy are technically high profile themselves. In two different ways, even. "It's not a problem, I just wanted to make sure we're not going to wake up at 4 am to a bunch of reporters making noise in our hallway."

Sharon grins easily, and with only mild suspicion in her eyes as she gestures at the elevator. "Alright then, if that's all, you can go ahead and start moving in and I'll just leave you be."

Roy, eloquent as ever, smiles and nods, and swings his duffle back over his shoulder and leads Dick into the elevator.

As soon as the doors slide shut, Dick opens his mouth and lets the keys drop to the floor. "What kind of game are you playing with these neighbours?"

Roy glares at him mildly. It's more for show than anything. "Relax, Dickie, nothing dangerous. It's just something to make the League...back off a little."

Dick glares at him with feeling, but they're nearly at their floor, so he kicks the bike keys up with his foot and catches it between his teeth again just as the door opens.

'Nothing dangerous, he says.' Dick thinks to himself as they walk down the hallway. 'That's so going to come back and bite us in the ass.'

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