Who: Rachel Roth and Dick Grayson What: Cleaning up after the Halloween Party When: Monday Morning. November 1. Where: Their apartment Rating: low
Dick’s reaction to the party has been a hard no for a few days until Rachel asked enough times to wear him down to a maybe and then finally the concession of ‘yes’. Dick didn’t think it was a good idea, but he didn’t specify it was because he was worried Rachel might lose control and hurt herself or someone else. Despite his concerns, he acquiesced. Had he spent most of the night keeping an eye on the party with the camera’s he installed? Yes. He realized it was pushing the boundaries, but he couldn’t help it - it was something left over from being Bruce Wayne’s ward.
He hadn’t come home last night - something he realized he probably should have, but the redhead from the night before had been very… distracting. Even though he hadn’t been there when the party ended, he wasn’t surprised by the state of the apartment. This was one of those disadvantages not to having Alfred around.
“Rachel?” He called her name first to give her a heads up he was there before he headed for the kitchen to grab a garbage bag.
--
Rachel was stretched out on her bed, half-asleep. She hadn’t expected Dick to give in to allowing her to having a party, and she certainly hadn’t expected him to be out all night. She groaned softly when she heard him calling her name, rubbing her eyes a bit. “I’m sleeping, Dick,” she said, as she pulled herself up and out of bed. She knew Dick well enough to know that answer wasn’t going to fly.
After making sure she was fully dressed and presentable enough, she stepped out of her bedroom. She found Dick in the kitchen with the garbage bags. She blinked a bit at the man, her head tilting slightly. “Thanks, Dick,” she said, ignoring the fact it would likely be her doing the cleaning up.
“Can I take a shower first?” she asked, belatedly realizing she probably smelled vaguely of pot.
---
“You should probably wait until you pick everything up otherwise you’ll need to take a second shower.” He held out one of the bags for her to take without really cracking a smile, though a smile from Dick was generally hard to get unless you knew where to look when he did smile. “Besides, you probably want to do most of the clean up so we can both pretend you weren’t doing anything illegal while I was gone.”
He moved over to the sink to start loading the dishwasher after casually saying what he did, though he was still trying to process what he wanted to say about it. At the moment he seemed eerily calm.
--
“I didn’t do anything illegal,” she said, as she grabbed a trash bag from the box. “Well. If we were still in San Francisco it wouldn’t have been illegal,” she said, after considering it for a moment. She started to collect the empty plastic cups she had gotten for the party, shoving them into the trash bag.
She wrinkled her nose slightly at the contents of one of the cups, then decided her stomach couldn’t handle actually looking into some of these. Perhaps she wasn’t being completely honest with Dick. She had perhaps overindulged in alcohol the night before as well. It was mainly the pot, though.
Rachel picked up a half-empty bottle of beer, and dumped the contents down the sink before tossing the bottle into the trash. “I feel gross,” she told the man.
---
“Of course you do.” The truth was that Dick knew the feeling. This was probably the time someone who was better at being a guardian would give some personal tale of how they drank once and over-partook and felt like shit the next day and talk about the life lessons in it, but this was Dick. Dick’s experience of a guardian was Bruce Wayne and Bruce Wayne didn’t do heart warming stories.
He sighed and paused with the dishwasher, turning around to look at her. “Do you know how dangerous you were being last night? Have you ever actually tried a lot of alcohol or pot to know how you react to it? You’re lucky you didn’t -” Somewhere in his lecture he realized he was talking to a kid and he paused and changed the what and the way he was going to say what he had meant. Dick’s voice softened a little and so did his body language. “Something bad could have happened and I wasn’t around to help if it did.”
--
As Dick started to tell her how dangerous she had been last night, she felt irrationally angry for a brief moment. Long enough for her eyes to give away the fact that she was, in fact, angry. It wasn’t the usual way a normal person would look angry, either. Her eyes glowed for a moment or two before she managed to shake away the feeling. She knew Dick was just looking out for her, trying to protect her. Trying to protect the other kids who had been at the party from her as well.
“How am I supposed to know how much alcohol or pot I can handle if I don’t try it, Dick?” she asked, softly, as she continued to throw trash in the now nearly full trash bag.
At least he wasn’t saying anything about Alyssa. That was a good thing. Maybe he didn’t know about Alyssa….
Hopefully.
---
Dick didn’t look phased, thankfully because by now that particular look was familiar to him. He had to wonder if there were any other people in this place that had similar powers. Part of him hoped so - Rachel could have someone to guide her through her own powers. The more realist in him didn’t think they’d be that lucky.
“You could at least give me a heads up or let me be somewhere close if you need me.” Despite saying that, the teenage Dick somewhere deep inside of him rolled his eyes extremely hard. He couldn’t help it, though. It wouldn’t matter what happened, if Rachel got hurt, he’d blame himself, just like he still blamed himself for Donna and even what he did to Gar despite not being in the right state of mind at the time.
--
Rachel sighed softly as she listened to Dick speak. Deep down, she knew he was right. She had never over-indulged with alcohol or pot before, how was she supposed to know how she was going to handle it? Dick would have been able to keep her safe, had she told him of her plans for the night before. Or, at least, he would have been able to at least try to keep her (and the others) safe.
“I want to be a normal teenager sometimes, Dick,” she explained. “Normal teenagers do shit like this.”
She knew that she wasn’t a normal teenager, though, and she never would be able to be one. That didn’t mean that she had to accept it, or had to like it.
“You have cameras in the apartment, don’t you? How much did you see? ...do you have cameras in my room?”
---
He opened his mouth to tell her that she wasn’t a normal teenager when she asked him about the cameras which made him pause. Then his brow furrowed as he looked a little incredulous. “No. Well, I mean, yes, but not in your room. Or the bathroom, for the record. Just the common areas. To keep us safe.” Even if it might be seen as an encroachment on freedom, Dick really meant for it to be for their safety.
He closed the dishwasher with a little exhale, turning to lean on the counter. His arms crossed over his chest in a very Dick Grayson stance. “I know we’re not home and here there’s not exactly any need for the Titans, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be in danger if we let our guard down.”
--
She narrowed her eyes a bit as Dick admitted to there being cameras in the apartment. She really hadn’t expected anything different from the man. She knew it wasn’t because he didn’t trust her, it was just part of how he was. She hadn’t exactly given him a reason to trust her, either, not last night.
“At least they’re not in my room or bathroom,” she said, with a small sigh. She shook her head slightly, “I know we can’t let our guard down here, but… I just want to be a normal teenager every once in a while, you know?”
Rachel understood that she possibly couldn’t be a normal teenager (ever) but that didn’t stop her from wanting to be one.
---
He nodded a few times as he processed. He did understand the need and a part of him wanted to just let go of it all and let her be a kid all the time. The problem was, Rachel would never be ‘just’ anything and if she hurt someone, he had no idea how to fix that in a place like this.
Dick stood up straight and uncrossed his arms and instead buried his hands in his pant pockets. He did it mostly because he couldn’t cross his arms again. “I get it. If you agree to let me know when you plan on doing some normal teenager stuff - without having to go into detail - then I’ll agree to give you some space to do it.” He would try really hard to, anyway.
--
“Then I want to invite Alyssa over again,” she said, eyeing Dick as she spoke. She still wasn’t sure how much of what went on with Alyssa Dick had seen, or whether her request would give anything away, but she had to at least try. She wasn’t trying to lie to Dick, by omission or otherwise, but.... There was only so much she wanted to talk about with her guardian.
“I won’t drink or smoke pot while she’s here, if that makes you feel better about it.” He couldn’t really deny her having friends over, could he?
Unless he had an inkling as to why she wanted Alyssa over.
---
Dick nodded. He was pretty sure that Rachel didn’t think he would and somewhere he was sure Gar was saying something along the lines of ‘why does she get to…’ but being in Madison changed the rules for them. “You should be out and making friends.” Was Dick going to follow his own advice? Probably not, since Dick was annoying that way, but it wasn’t like he even knew how to be a social butterfly unless he was pretending - he’d learned to fake it while attending various galas with Bruce Wayne.
“You deserve to be happy Rachel” He moved to grab a second garbage bag to help her clean up more of the debris. “... but I also think we need to keep training.” He added that casually, like it was totally normal and reasonable thing.
--
“I need to be making friends, Dick? What about you?” Yes, Dick. She knew that you likely weren’t out making new friends in Madison Valley. “You know, you deserve to be happy, too.” She wasn’t just saying that, either. She truly believed Dick deserved to be happy. She knew that Madison Valley was an opportunity for him to do just that.
After she filled the first trash bag, and tied it up to be taken out to the trash later, Rachel considered something for a brief moment. She stepped toward Dick, and wrapped her arms around him, giving him a brief hug.
“We can still train, if that will make you happy.”
--
Dick would probably try at some point, but he was bad at making friends. Or, really, it was just that Dick didn’t know how to relax which often rubbed people the wrong way - not that he blamed them.
He managed a nod before Rachel hugged him and Dick managed to return the hug with only a bit of a delay. Hugs he was getting better at, especially when it came to Rachel. Then he nodded again when she said she’d be happy to train here. “How about you tackle the living room and I’ll make breakfast.”
--
“Breakfast sounds amazing. I’m starving.” Which was probably a residual side effect of the pot she’d smoked the night before. That, and she loved breakfast food. She patted his shoulder, and grabbed a few trash bags so she could clean the living room.
Having Dick as a guardian wouldn’t be so bad. She decided she’d just needed to test him a bit. That’s how teenagers were supposed to be, right? Rebellious. But she didn’t particularly want to stay rebellious.
She wanted to get along with Dick. She had gotten along with him back home, she could do it here, too.