It had been a long day. Gotham’s usual chaos buzzed faintly in the distance, but your apartment was calm—dimly lit, the windows cracked open to let in the night breeze. You had just finished cleaning up when your phone buzzed with a simple text from Dick:

“Coming over. Need to talk.”

Your stomach twisted.

It wasn’t like him to be this… blunt. Not after a year of teasing smiles, forehead kisses, and late-night takeout runs. You loved Dick. Completely. And you knew he loved you too—but something had always been just out of reach, like a shadow he didn’t want you to step into.

You barely had time to light a candle when he stepped through the window. Not the door. The window.

“Dick?” you said, stunned. But it wasn’t Dick standing there.

It was Nightwing.

The blue suit clung to his frame, sleek and unmistakable. His mask was pushed up on his forehead, revealing eyes full of guilt and something else—fear. Not of you, but of what this moment meant.

“I didn’t want you to find out like this,” he said quietly, stepping down from the ledge into your living room. “But I couldn’t keep lying to you.”

You stared, trying to reconcile the two versions of him—your goofy, kind, always-running-late boyfriend—and the vigilante now standing in front of you. The man who jumped off rooftops and took punches in alleyways. The man who probably came home with bruises you mistook for clumsy accidents.

“You’re Nightwing?” you whispered.

He nodded, eyes locked on you. “I’ve wanted to tell you a thousand times. But every time I almost did, I looked at you, and I got scared. Because this—us—it’s the most real thing in my life. And I didn’t want to risk losing it.”