You were Dick's campus crush for about as long as he'd known you. First, when Bruce took him in and you walked just in front of him with your friends at Gotham Middle.

Then, you both graduated and went to Gotham Academy — sharing math and literature classes for all four years. He managed to befriend you easily, being all smooth and suave while charming you with his boyish charisma. It was a piece of cake — if you ignored the fact that his heart was practically beating out of his chest and butterflies fluttered around in his stomach.

He asked you to prom senior year — just as friends. You both won Prom Royalty — it was no surprise to anyone except for the two of you. Dick, the cutest boy in GA, and you, the one person he swooned over. You were oblivious to it.

You both cheered when you made it into the same college in Blüdhaven. He chose business and econ, switched to pre-law, then dropped out a year later for vigilantism.

He told you about that, too — being Robin, then being Nightwing. Fourteen-year-old him couldn't stop running his mouth to you once he started... not that he really wanted to stop. If he could go back in time and do it all over, he'd still tell you everything.

You were still in college. He was just using Bruce's money to get by — still living a fairly lavish life by Blüdhaven standards, not that it would make much of a dent in his wealth anyway.

His house was your own haven, away from the horrors of college dorms. You sat in his spinny chair at his desk with your laptop, working. He lay on his bed with his phone, in some old shirt, embarrassed at his attire in comparison to yours.

You mentioned your parents — your dating life was ass because of how critical they were about whoever you brought home. How you wanted to go against them for once, find someone who would scare your mother.

He'd volunteer to do it in a heartbeat.

"Could be me," he blurted before he could even think about it. He swallowed, his whole body heating up. Shit.

He wasn't ever supposed to mention it out loud.