Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Everyone neeeeeds to go and watch Baby Driver

So. Good.

Edgar Wright I'm so glad you're British we've done something right this year. Thank you.

Anyway! Have some more of this useless story ahahah

Here's some of my fav bois going on a domestic adventure!

And Tony kind of makes an appearance! Yay!

Brooklyn is much nicer than Gotham. It's an easily recognised fact that just about every major (and minor!) city in North America is nicer than Gotham - apart from maybe Blüdhaven, which might as well be its own angsty universe - but it's still weird for Dick to see proof of that with his own two eyes.

Their apartment building is in an old fashioned chunk of Brooklyn, and not the gothic granite and limestone kind of old fashioned either, but a red-brick, terraced windows, painted-on advertisements kind of old fashioned. It's pleasing to the eye, muted and warm and slightly industrial, and Dick trails the tips of his fingers against the apartment building as they walk out and feels a spark of familiarity shoot down his nerve endings. Maybe it's something to do with the little clay flower pots everywhere, or the washing lines hung up, or moms and dads walking hand in hand with their toddlers with the sticky cheeks, but Dick feels a kinship with this street block. He's reminded of oil stoves in a rickety caravan, of the smell of his aunt's simmering stew, of the whistling kettle making the hot water for his dad's coffee, of dipping light bulbs in coloured ink with his cousin and making their corner of the caravan into a magical Peter Pan-worthy den, of running across dirt roads barefoot with a stick in one hand like a sword and a broken compass in the other like a pirate.

And strangely, it doesn't hurt to think about. It tastes more like copper than iron in his mouth; sharper and warmer than blood. Dick's almost certain that he'd forgotten that he'd even remembered all of those little things...but hey, it's the little things that tend to stick with you, right?

(And the bodies. Dick will never forget the bodies.)

Brooklyn is artsy and eclectic and running on it's own time, and Dick wonders how he's ever supposed to go back to Gotham after getting a glimpse of this freedom. Maybe he'll like it a little less after bumping into a horde of hipsters, but for now it's just about the most perfect place he's stepped foot in for the last five years.

"Were you already local before you moved here?" Captain Rogers asks them - well, asks Roy, because Dick had an idea about a block back to drag the sharp end of their apartment keys gently against all the old buildings they walk past, and red and brown dust floats across his hand like rust. Barnes is almost as absorbed with the action as Dick is, but his focus is more on the key than it is the brick residue.

"I'm from Star City, actually." Says Roy plainly. Dick doesn't say he's a Gotham boy, even though his run-of-the-mill Gotham accent (which is not the same as a freaking Jersey accent, okay? However said that was an idiot) probably speaks for itself. He'd learnt most of his English in Gotham...there was no escaping the accent.

"Dick, you don't sound like a Star City kid," Rogers says over his shoulder. "Where are you from?" Dick stops dragging the keys against the walls as they take a corner, and chucks them back to Roy's open palm when he gets a dirty look from the redhead for scratching them. Wide eyed, he blinks, and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

"Where am I from? Uh...a lot of places." Rogers nods like he already guessed something like that. "For the last four-five years I've grown up in Gotham, though."

There's a noise behind him from Barnes, which Dick realises is a sort-of chuffing sound, and then a voice. "You couldn't tell, Stevie?" (The history books never talked about the nicknames oh my god I can't handle this-)

"Well," Rogers (Stevie!) drawls, with a little bit of spunk. "I'm so sorry I'm not able to tell the difference between Jersey and Jersey-Adjacent, Buck." (Buck! That's a nickname of a nickname!)

"Hey now," Dick interjects. They duck into what is apparently a shortcut next to an old but well-maintained British-style pub, and Dick trusts Roy enough to have his back that he turns around to walk backwards so he can face both of the broad-and-built Super Soldiers that they've made acquaintances of. God, what even is his life anymore? "Referring to Gotham as only 'Jersey-Adjacent' is an insult."

"To Jersey," Roy mumbles. Rogers chuckles as Dick sharply turns and launches himself on Roy's back with an indignant yelp. Roy, who doesn't even stumble, hooks his hands under the crook of Dick's knees and turns his very intimidating sneak attack into a cute little piggy back ride.

"How dare you," Dick pouts. He hooks his chin over Roy's shoulder, and throws his arms loosely under the archer's neck.

"Left here." Rogers directs.

A grocery store is directly across the road from them. There are small crates of fruit and veggies stacked outside which - according to the signs - are free for taking. Efficient, nice way to get rid of food that's going off. The road is quiet for 8:30 on a weekday morning, but maybe this side of Brooklyn isn't as busy over summer. Dick, who's used to the constant traffic and car-honking of Gotham streets, finds it...disturbingly tranquil.

Roy lets go of his legs once they hit the curb on the other side of the street, and Dick heaves a sigh that Roy could probably physically feel. He doesn't unhook his legs, and stubbornly burrows further into Roy's neck.

"Dick, get off." His arms are tugged away from Roy's neck, and Dick goes with them, drooping upside down against the back of Roy's body until his hands are limply dangling against Roy's calves. From his upside-down vantage point, he sees Barnes and Rogers share mildly bewildered (and vey amused) looks. He grins at them cheekily.

"I'll step on your fingers." Roy grits out. Dick knows he's not really that bothered by his koala-like tendency to latch onto people taller and wider than him, but when there's a teenager plastered over your back for an extended period of time, anyone would be a little fed up. And Roy has less patience than most people. Especially with affection. He loves it secretly, Dick knows, Roy loves and craves hugs and hair ruffles and hand-holding and shoulder-pats, but he doesn't like how showing affection. He says it makes him feel itchy, which ironically, is the way Dick feels when he's not being affectionate.

When he was younger, and still a little too scared of the man to hug Bruce, he'd take at least three warm showers every day with the water pressure all the way up to imitate fingers drumming against his skin. Sometimes it left little bruises and lots of red skin, but it was the only thing that seemed to help.

Dangling upside down, Dick's thoughts stray for just a second to how safe and warm he always felt when Bruce wrapped an arm around his shoulder, rubbed his knuckles across Dick's head, chucked him lightly on the chin with a gentle fist, let him sink into his side on nights where he had nightmares so specific he could phantom-taste blood in his mouth and the felt the ghostly feeling of blunt objects knocking his ribs into his lungs.

Roy mercilessly slaps his feet off from his waist, and Dick drops hurriedly into a handstand with a mischievous laugh as Roy struts off further into the grocery store. He takes a few steps on his hands before bending his legs over until they're touching the ground, looking a little bit like he was going to crab walk around the place, and then rises up fluidly to an upright, vertical, position.

"Are all kids this bendy nowadays?" Sergeant Barnes speaks up for what Dick thinks is for about the 2nd time that day, good for him, white a very flat expression. Somehow, though, Dick knows that Barnes is joking. "Because I've been consistently informed that your generation is-"

"A bunch of lazy, self-righteous, rebellious and tech-obsessed brats?" Dick finishes for him. "Oh yeah, definitely." Dick grabs a small bag of pre-chopped carrots and a few whole onions to put in their basket as Roy browses for a bag of mixed vegetables that required the least amount of prep. Behind him, Barnes emits a rather patronising hum.

"So you're just a special case, then?"

Dick grins. "Not special. Just a circus brat."

Barnes' answering smile is rigid but amused. "'Course you are."

Somehow, within the short minute or so that Dick had been loitering by the vegetables with the Sergeant, Roy had wondered further into the grocery store with the other off-duty Avenger. Dick caught a flash of russet hair turning the corner with another basket in hand filled solely with multiple brightly coloured boxes.

Good, so Roy remembered Dick's culinary range extended from pb+j to cereal.

But he also caught something else in his peripheral vision.

"Hey, so do CCTV cameras usually follow wherever you or your boy go? Or should I worry about being stalked every time we run out of milk?"

Barnes' eyes don't move from where he's tracking the prices of several different types of potatoes. His hands slide casually into his jacket pockets; he's the perfect picture of an unaware civilian.

Except Dick can see the outline of a browning handgun behind the leather on Barnes' right hand side, knows the way the man's body turns toward the parsnips is to shield Dick's body and face from the camera in the corner of the grocer's.

"The government said they'd stopped 'observing' me two months ago." Barnes shifted his weight to be able to talk to Dick face to face but keep the cameras at the corner of his vision.

"When did they really stop?" Dick asks, stuffing his hands in his jeans, fingering the the hilt of a sheathed throwing knife strapped to his upper thigh through a thin tear in the lining of his pocket.

"Two weeks ago. Which means whoever's watching us now isn't them, and not it's not HYDRA."

"How can you tell?" Dick asks, though he can already predict the answer.

"They wouldn't be this arrogant." They'd have sniped us both already if they had a clear visual, goes unheard between them on a wavelength Dick is supposed to be too naïve to pick up.

"Who do you know that's this arrogant, then?"

As if waiting for this particular cue, Barnes' phone goes off in his jeans pocket. A personalised ringtone of what Dick is pretty sure is Black Sabbath blares almost unreasonably loudly until Barnes, with a sharp annoyance and dull relief, places a touch-screen phone to his ear.

"Why are you stalking me?" Is ground out before the person on the other line can get a word in edgewise.

"When did you and Cap acquire a clone of yourselves, Barnes? Was it HYDRA? Did they fuse your DNA? The little one looks more like you than Rogers though - is there a tiny patriot clone locked in a capsule somewhere waiting to bust out and fight for the free world? Oh! Is the ginger Nat's and yours? Bet he's a fucking nightmare to get along with. Looks kinda grumpy. Have you adopted them legally or are they just following you around like little puppies? And why am I only finding out about it now?"

The voice on the phone was so loud that Dick could hear it clearly from where he was standing. Barnes' anger seemed to increase with every invasive question and wildly misappropriate conspiracy. His jaw jutted out in barely restrained fury. "Stark, shut up."

"What, did I hit a nerve? Just tell me what the fuck you're doing with a bunch of teenagers before I call our mutual pain in the ass, General Ross, and inform him that you're corrupting children or; maybe, I'll ring up CPS to tell them that the worlds most dangerous assassin has kidnapped two kids."

Dick feels irritation bubble in his gut. Without thinking, he snatches the phone from Barnes with deft hands. I'm just enough time, too, because it looked like the thing was about to crack in two. "First of all, Tiny Stork or whatever the hell your name is," (Dick knows exactly what his name is because Bruce has about 20 gigabytes worth of files on this dumb, self sacrificing, Avenger asshole, but the indignant noise that comes from the other side of the line is gloriously rewarding.) "If these low-resolution cameras you've illegally hacked into to stalk a minor has enough colour available for you to pick up auburn hair, you've definitely got enough pigment to see that I'm no Brooklyn-scion, American-flag-waving white boy, so if you insinuate that I'm the genetic bastard of the two whitest men in America, you must not know how basic biology works. And here I've been told you're a scientist."

"Keep going, oh my god," Whispers Barnes hoarsely, hands clenched but his grin toothy and eyes wide in raw amusement and Dick wonders if this is first time the man's found anything genuinely comical without underlying bitterness since he'd recovered. But then he realises how arrogant that sounds, and concludes that maybe Tony Stark is a man that doesn't often get talked down to by children, and that Barnes is probably going to be quoting this for the rest of his life. Dick shares the man's grin mischievously as he listens to one of the smartest men alive fumble for a witty response. He seems a little thrown off his game after having the small, peppy child that had bounced into the grocers rip into him so ferociously.

"And second of all, I have not been kidnapped. If I was, I'm pretty sure these two stealth-trained government operatives would be a little more discreet about it." Barnes raised his clenched (flesh) fist to his mouth to bite down a chuckle. He looked more like a human being than Dick had seen of him so far.

"Who even are you?" Stark asked, finally. He sounded disgusted that Dick even existed. It was awesome.

"I'm their neighbour."

"So that's one question answered, but I'm looking for a name, kid. Who are you?"

"You don't already know? Wow. I'm kind of insulted, actually."

"I'm sorry, am I supposed to know the name of every brat born in Brooklyn?"

"Of course not."

"Exactly."

"I was born in France, not Brooklyn."

"...look, kid. I'll admit you got me. Tiny Stork, I'm not living that down for a while, I can see Barnes' smug face through these cameras. Touché or whatever, go ahead and tweet all about it. Just keep in mind that your neighbours are involved with dangerous, world-ending kind of things and don't - don't - get yourself involved because of some weird hero-worship or whatever. Being a 'superhero' sounds cool until it gets kids like you killed."

"Don't worry about my brother and I, Mr Stark." Dick smiled innocently up at the camera still trained on them.

"We'd never get ourselves involved in superheroes."

Lolllllllllll here u go. After like a month. Ahah ahh I've been a busy bee, bc unlike u American scum ghosting through this fic (that's right I know what u r doing), us brits only have six weeks of summer hols and we spend it doing useless shit everyday. I've been busy with family+friends outings like every day until today ((which is just a barbecue with my faves, Mémé and Gaga (my adorable French grandmother - who is thE BEST - and my grandpa, who's also the best) in our rare warm+sunny weather (you'd think the change of seasons would make it a little sunnier but noPE))) but I've managed to throw this together to tide you guys over. I'm off to Spain next week for 2 weeks (feck yeah bodyboarding + ugly tan lines here I come)) so I might manage to write something there on in the afternoons (bc it's too hot to go outside at 1-4 where we're going) so until then!

Here you go. Plz comment and other stuffs!

((Also if anyone cared the ringtone was 'Iron Man' by Black Sabbath, obviously, and Bucky did not get a choice in it))