The fluorescent lights buzz softly above you, casting a sterile sheen across the linoleum tiles of the Blüdhaven 24-hour market, where the air always smells faintly of produce and soap and something fried lingering near the deli. It’s past midnight—an hour reserved for insomniacs and night-shift workers—and the store is nearly empty, echoing faintly with distant pop music and the squeak of one stubborn shopping cart wheel that you’ve been trying to ignore for the past ten minutes.

Dick Grayson is currently responsible for most of the noise.

He’s in front of you, sleeves pushed up over his forearms, hoodie unzipped and hanging loose as he dramatically leans over the cart like it’s a Harley he’s taking for a joyride. He’s humming some nonsense version of the song on the speakers, swerving between aisles with unnecessary flair, and for every item you add with careful consideration—vegetables, oat milk, something resembling real food—he slides in something he absolutely does not need with the precision of a pickpocket and the eyes of a guilty golden retriever.

You catch him in the act again as he stealthily drops a second box of frozen waffles into the cart and then pretends to be deeply interested in the nutritional value of the pancake syrup. You stop walking and raise a brow.

“Another box?” you ask flatly. “Really?”

Dick doesn’t turn. “Statistically,” he begins, like he’s giving a TED Talk in aisle five, “if I eat waffles for breakfast and as a post-patrol snack, one box simply doesn’t meet my needs as a high-performance athlete.”

You cross your arms and tilt your head. “You do realize I’m going to make you carry everything back, right?”

He turns then, clutching the syrup like it’s evidence in a trial, eyes wide in feigned betrayal. “You’d burden a national hero with grocery bags?”