1. The first attempt to keep it casual.

Dick was just entering Kory with another skimpy, transparent excuse to see her (he was self-aware enough to realize having her check his math on the Titans finances was exactly that) when he realized Kory had done one of two things. Either she had known that he was coming through her door… not impossible, given that he had been following her… or she just wore a skimpy, transparent excuse for lingerie for everyone. The latter was disturbingly possible.

"Oh, Dick," she smiled at him like he had made her the happiest woman in the world by seeing her in a clinging garment that… damnit, he could see her nipples and everything. "I didn't hear you come in. I can change into something else, if you're repressed."

Kory had a sometimes faulty command of English, despite the kiss she'd given him… deep, long… maybe if they tried again… oh, she was good!

"No, I'm cool with the human form… or Tamaranian." And, just to show her he couldn't be rattled, he took off his shirt. She raised an eyebrow.

"Very cool," she said. "Were you also thinking we should have sex?"

He really didn't know what to do with the shirt he was just holding in one hand. "Wha?"

"I was thinking we should have sex, then you walked in on me in my traditional Tamaranian self-fulfillment robe…"

Dick took a closer look at the place. Yup, seemed all set for self-fulfillment. Great timing.

"Then you took your shirt off, and now you have an erection."

Little Dick, for shame!

"I was thinking we could discuss our finances," he admitted sheepishly.

She responded by throwing him onto the bed. "You Earth people… such strange pillow talk."

Attempt one was a complete, utter, orgasmic failure.

2. The second attempt to keep it casual.

Karras was a good man, Dick knew. He treated Kory well. He almost certainly didn't deserve to have his face broken. And yet, there really wasn't anyone whose face Dick wanted to break more. Life was full of little ironies like that.

Wait, wait, Dick had forgotten about Kory's father, Myand'r. And Dick thought Bruce had been a lousy father. Or Ollie, even. But Myand'r had stole out his daughter twice. Oh yeah, if Dick had a choice on whose face to break, it would be Myand'r's… but he'd try to punch him so that he flew into Karras. Because Karras was the one who would be touching Kory, making her birth his heirs…

Dick punched the wall. If it had been Karras's face, his hand probably wouldn't have broken. Stupid, Grayson. Stupid. He went to the medical bay to get some bandages. Kory was there, inventorying supplies. She looked conspicuously unearthly with a clipboard, checking off numbers of syringes and bandages.

Dick didn't go through the rigmarole of calling in a nurse. He knew how to set the bone, wrap it, tell Kory to get lost… except he wasn't telling her, she was giving him a splint. His teeth gritted for pain that never came… he wished it would. Not hurting gave him more time to look at her.

"You remember when I broke my arm?" Kory asked. Tamaranian conversation starters.

He did, in fact. She had flown into a building and Gar had laughed before Dick threatened to throttle him. Not that Wally wasn't laughing, but he knew enough to do it on the inside. It hadn't seemed so funny when she'd taken off her bracelet and they'd seen a compound fracture. Of their own will, his fingers moved over the skin where the bone had been tucked back inside.

"You signed your name on the cast. Dick G. Like one of Vic's gangstas." She smiled at him and his good hand was still on her arm. "You could've written Robin, but instead you put down your name. It meant a lot to me, because I know how protective you are of your name. Your identity. Yourself. What happened to you, anyway?"

"Thought of you."

"I'm glad I can still arouse such passions in you."

Jesus, did she even know when she did that?

He tried to get away, but she grabbed him by the splint. "I'm not done fixing you yet." Dirty fighter.

He let her examine the splint, tapping it in places. "I do not consider Karras my husband."

"I do."

"A marriage of convenience does not hold a candle to a marriage of love." He looked away. "I would not bring children into the first. I would into the second."

Dick opened his mouth, tried to explain he couldn't sleep with someone else's wife… but she just practically said she hadn't slept with him, and really, she was more like his business partner. It wasn't like he was cuckolding Karras… the guy had his own girl tucked away somewhere.

Say something mean so she'll go away.

Say something nice so she'll know you still like her.

Think of something mean to say!

Think of something nice to say!

Think of something!

Without thinking, he kissed her.

That seemed to work out pretty well.

3. The third attempt to keep it casual.

She had left.

How long had it been until he had even thought to ask? He hadn't been sleeping and he had just assumed she was under Raven's control, still, and the fight…

He blinked sleep from his eyes. He had also thought she hadn't notice how strained the relationship had been getting lately. How angry she made him, just by existing, and how blunt he was to her. Maybe he was the one who was possessed. It would make sense of the shambles he'd made of his team.

Dick wasn't thinking clearly.

He had to stop Raven. Kory could wait. She would be waiting for him. They would fix it, just as soon as the crisis was over. And when he found her.

Not that he wanted to, but he was succeeding in keeping things casual.

4. The fourth attempt to keep it casual.

One of their relationships had failed. He'd lost track of which one. He'd dated other women, she'd dated other men… other women too, for all he knew. He found her in the dreary dishabille he had come to associate with alcoholism, but knew she was actually engaging in that uniquely Tamaranian ability to get drunk off her own melancholy.

"Hey," he said, tentative so she wouldn't hear "I love you."

"Hey," she said back. When she looked at him, she wasn't the happiest woman in the world. She probably wasn't even the happiest woman in the room, though she was alone. Did dust mites have gender? They seemed pretty happy.

"You know about Bludhaven?"

She breathed in. "I've heard about it on your news programs. Large fires, corruption scandals, people dying. You'll fit right in."

"Gee, thanks." He sat down next to her. Worked his fingers along the mountain range of his knuckles. They'd been broken many times, but all he could think of was the time when he'd thought he'd lost her. Why couldn't he get that angry over her anymore?

"I heard about Ph'yzzon," Dick said. "I'm sorry. He sounded like a good man."

"He was."

"Otherwise, you wouldn't have married him." Dick scratched in his pocket. "Unless, of course, he was the prince of a rebellious southern state…"

"Stop." Not a trace of humor.

"We said we'd still be friends. So why aren't we being friendly?"

She reached out and ran the back of her hand over his stubble. "When you find out, let me know."

It was pretty hard to be casual with someone when you never talked.

5. The fifth attempt to keep it casual.

Dick really hated Gordanians. It was one of those couple things he and Kory did that persisted after they split up. When someone sells your girlfriend into slavery, when you hold her while she dreams about manacles still around her hands, you tend to hold a grudge.

There were times when being leader of the Outsiders rocked. Blowing up a Gordanian infestation… sorry, shipyard… on Earth was one of them. Grace seemed to really enjoy playing whack-a-mole with slavers as well, so good deal all around.

A starbolt shot down from the clouds, hitting one of the fuel cells they were targeting. It was well-defended. Now it was gone.

"Kory!" Dick called. For once he wasn't being sarcastic when he thought his day kept getting better and better. "Thought you were off with Dr. Smith and Don West."

"No, just Animal Man and Adam Strange."

"Lost in space!" Roy explained as he fired a plastic bullet into a Gordanian's head. A little late, but Kory made an "oh" face.

Dick swore inwardly. Every time she showed up.

"Danger, Koriand'r," he said robotically, disarming a few slavers with the proper application of Batarangs. "Danger."

"It would be funnier if Vic were here," Kory said as she slung a starbolt over his shoulder.

"I'm gonna tell him you said that," Dick said as he dodged a rather close laser bolt.

"No you're not, because I'm gifting that joke to Gar." She dodged an ax blow, ripped the weapon out of her enemy's hands and dazed him with it. "How's Barbara?"

Dick kicked the nearest Gordanian extra hard. "We broke up."

"We should start a club," Dick said later, over drinks in a bar that had only been a third crushed by a fleeing, then crashing slaver-ship.

Roy was giggling into his club soda as he split a bowl of peanuts with Grace and Thunder, who wore identical scowls at the TV set in the corner. Never bet against Roy when it came to hockey. This was Teen Titans law.

"No, I'm serious, we should start a club."

"We'll call it the Teen Titans," Kory joked.

Dick smiled. "No. A matrimony club. I never get married and you never stop getting married."

"My husbands keep dying on me. You should be glad Raven blasted our minister. Unless you have a death wish."

"Only semi-annually."

Kory paused in the middle of her drink. "Is this a semi-annual… annul… anal?"

Dick laughed, then shook his head. "Haven't felt like jumping into a hail of gunfire in a while. Doesn't stop me, though, I just don't feel like it."

"And I haven't felt like marrying anyone in a while. We really should start a club."

"What, no sparks flying between you and that sexy Adam Strange?"

"He's taken."

Dick groaned sympathetically.

"And Animal Man has kids."

Dick groaned louder.

"So, what've you been up to? Other than ruining Gordanians' days, which I do like."

Dick told her about his move to New York, his brief flirtation with male modeling, his run-in with Jason Todd, his even briefer flirtation with Cheyenne.

"How drunk are you?" Kory asked, boggled.

"Oh, your story is so much more believable?"

Of course, Dick didn't know Kory's story, so she told him. He tried not to point out plot holes, or titter at the part with the giant and the planet full of traps (seriously, who just leaves a planet full of traps lying around?), but by the time she had finished the bar was closing. Dick looked for the rest of the Outsiders, but they were long gone. He recalled Roy saying something about going for a threesome. Best of luck to him.

"You have a place to sleep? Stay?" Dick instantly corrected himself.

"I don't pay my rent that far in advance. And if I did, imagine all the voice-mail I would have to check."

Dick laughed, again, and tried to remember the last time he had laughed so much in one night. The Lost in Space story wasn't particularly funny, but it was the way Kory told it… especially her rather Harlequinesque retelling of the parts where she'd been naked, breathlessly describing to him how firm her breasts were in such a serious narration that he couldn't help but giggle.

And, you know, actually picture what she was describing. Kory did a good job on that account.

"So, I'm staying with you?" she asked, latching onto his arm as he headed for the hotel room.

He wasn't that drunk… two beers and lots of beer nuts don't have that much of an effect on you after you've been to a Wally West bachelor party… but damn if it didn't sound like a good idea.

"Of course. What are friends for?"

As it turned out, friends were apparently for jamming their tongue down your throat the moment you get through the door, ripping your clothes off when you just can't figure out how to undress fast enough, and various other things that you've forgotten are much more fun when not done alone to late-night Cinemax.

And as Kory collapsed on top of him on the bed, far too sober to let him play it off as a one-night stand come morning, Dick wondered how exactly he had ever thought they could be casual with each other.