lifestyles of the rich and the famous

[bossymarmalade]

Dick bustled around the penthouse putting on all the final touches to his outfit. Dickie Grayson had to be prettier than all the other boys to really get news, and the wilder he looked, the better. Black high-waisted pants tailored to fit his body like a second skin paired up with a bright blue bolero jacket and white ruffled shirt seemed like the perfect outfit for attracting attention. A small Bat earring finished off the ensemble. Dick looked at himself in the mirror and laughed. A few subtle touches of makeup brought out that hint of “exotic" the tabloids had always loved throwing around with any mention of him.

He stretched and did a flip across the floor, testing the suit’s flexibility again. Perfect as ever. Satisfied with his preparation, he flopped down on a chaise longue and waited for the sound of Ollie arriving on the Zeta pad.

It had been a long, long time since Ollie’d last visited the Wayne penthouse. It was one of those places that was designed to be utterly gorgeous, decadently sumptuous, and yet somehow completely forgettable. Kinda like if on your way out from the party, you were misted with some kind of drug that erased your memory of the last four wild hours.

But that had been the few times that Bruce Wayne had actually thrown parties here, before he’d moved them out and away from places with the Wayne stamp on them. As Ollie stepped from the zeta pad and gave himself the usual brush-down to make sure no parts were dislocated; his clothes seemed fine, a tailored dark brown leather jacket over a fitted grey t-shirt with vibrant orange patterning on part of it, dark jeans, his favourite purple buckled low-heeled shoes. He couldn’t wait to see what Dick was decked out in for this little jaunt. Considering how the kid dressed on a *normal* basis, his idea of attention-grabbing would likely be at an 11.

"Dick?" Ollie hollered when he was barely inside the big tinted glass doors. “Where you at, bluebird? Ready to jet?"



Dick checked himself once more—to add a ring or not? Hmm, that might be a bit much with everything else—and sent a text down to the chauffeur before bounding up to meet Ollie, a huge grin on his face. "Looking good there, Ollie! Penguin will have a fit when he sees us coming in."

He hooked his arm with Ollie’s and led him to the elevator. "I thought we should use the glass elevator tonight. Seemed like a good way to start the evening. Any particular public sins you’d like to commit tonight?"

"We could always start with some profanity," Ollie suggested, and gleefully flipped a double-fisted bird at the paparazzi who were aiming their cameras at the glass elevator from the building opposite. He dropped his hands and cupped his groin for good measure, laughing. “Most of that they won’t even be able to use, heh!"

The chauffeur was, naturally, a consummate professional when it came to the tricky task of conveying famous people into the limo with the minimum of gossip column spillover. “Best to save the wild behaviour for when we actually get to the club?" Ollie mused as they took their seats, raising an eyebrow at Dick. But then he really got an eyeful of Dick’s getup and amended, “On the other hand, they do need to know that Dickie Grayson’s on the town, don’t they?" He nodded up at the sunroof, grinning.

Dick met Ollie’s eyes and grinned wickedly. "I’d hate to keep the public waiting." He opened the sunroof and popped out, laughing as the chauffeur slowed immediately to let his charge do his thing without falling out. Dick balanced a foot on each side of the seats lining the limo, bouncing on his toes as he waved to the cars and pedestrians around them. Phones were raised and cameras pulled out, so Dick hopped up and out of the sunroof, dangling his feet inside as he sat on the roof.

When a cop finally eyed him, Dick laughed and plopped right back down into the limo, landing in a crouch, then flopped back onto the seat next to Ollie. "The wind feels nice up there," he said as the driver picked up speed now that both passengers were securely back inside the vehicle. "You do that often when you were a Star-lebrity?"

"*Were*??" Ollie repeated, with a highly offended expression. “I’ll have you know, tidbit, that I am STILL raking in the celebrity gossip, the news crawl, the infotainment, the EDUtainment, the talking heads AND the blind items even in my advanced years and veritable dotage." Ollie tugged the edges of his jacket to emphasize this with a harrumph. “So the short answer is yes."

He was, in fact, about to launch into a story about that heiress who sold stock options in *herself*, when the chauffeur pulled the limo to a halt and informed them as much. “Already?" Ollie asked, incredulous, but Dick was climbing halfway out of the sunroof with a lift of graceful ease, so really, what else could he do but follow.

—- —- —-

"…I didn’t even notice when *that* happened," Ollie rambled, pointing his kazoo at the lacy cream-coloured camisole that Dick was now wearing under his bolero jacket, replacing the ruffled white shirt he’d left the penthouse in. He sprawled against the back seat of the limo, reaching down to brush some neon pink feathers from one purple shoe, before rapping on the glass between them and the chauffeur. “Hey, hey! Find a Big Belly Burger and drive thru, huh?"

The man nodded with perfect aplomb, putting the window back up, and Ollie grinned at Dick, reaching over to scratch lightly at the dusting of iridescent white glitter that was sticking to the younger man’s skin, cresting along one collarbone and dipping down underneath the camisole. “I’m starved," he said, “and I think some fast food grease is the perfect way to compliment all that fucking champagne. Jesus, she really slapped this stuff on you good and hard. You’re gonna have to either scrub it off, or just leave it for days. Did she make a pattern?"

"I don’t think it’s so much a pattern as wherever her hands could go." Dick looked down the inside of his new camisole and laughed, pulling away the waist of his pants. "Whoa! I didn’t realize she got all the way down there. I better scrub this stuff off. No telling where I’ll keep finding it."

He shook loose the camisole again, letting it flutter with a burst of glitter. “I think you were a little distracted with the, uh, Fabulous Feather Foursome when the shirt-swap happened." He suddenly laughed, kicking up some of the bright feathers beside Ollie’s foot. "I just remembered she wrote her number on my cuff before we swapped. Whoops!"

Dick turned up the charm once more as they got their food, ordering things more greasy and probably more plentiful than they needed, but, hey, a big selection was good for tipsy indecision. With a “Home, James!" and a silent nod from the chauffeur, they headed back to the penthouse, Dick already digging into one of the bags of fries. "You know, I don’t think any of B’s cars have ever seen this much glitter, grease, and glitz at one time. Even his adventures tend to be on the subtle side."

Digging out a burger from the number of brown paper sacks that had been deposited into the car, Ollie contentedly leaned back with it, taking two big bites and chewing and swallowing before he ventured, “So what’s all this about, anyhow, huh? Last time Dickie Grayson hit the town it seemed like … well, I know you said you didn’t regret it, exactly, afterwards, but it didn’t seem like you really had your heart in it. It didn’t fulfill anything inside you, really. Kinda like Bruce, that way."

Mentioning Bruce and watching one of the feathers float around in the draft by their feet made Ollie grin, and he found himself some chicken nuggets before adding, "—and hey, your father and me got up to some adventures back in the day that involved copious amounts of all three. Let’s just say that the resurgence of glam in the fashion world of the nineties meant that glitter, grease, and glitz were the basic elements of any sort of party involving fleets of coked-up supermodels and uber-rich douchebags."

Dick grinned. "Is this one of those ‘well, back in MY day!’ memories?" He laughed at the chicken nugget Ollie tossed at him, falling back to catch it in his mouth and chew it triumphantly. "I don’t know, tonight is just… It’s kind of the same thing as last time. I needed something to blow up and blow off steam, but this time it might take. You never know."

He pulled out a burger and laid some fries inside it before taking a bite, using the time chewing to gather his thoughts. "There’s something about going out on the town like that, a kind of…unconditional acceptance while you’re doing it. Everybody loves you, you know? I don’t know, I feel like I’ve been lacking that lately. Not so much the unconditional love, but the acceptance? After a handful of rejections in a row, I didn’t really want another one."

He smiled crookedly over at Ollie. "So, I thought, why not try my night out again. At least this time I’d have a chaperone."

"Can’t hurt, I guess." Ollie finished his nuggets and rummaged around in the bags until he found a slightly melted frosted malt, sitting up in his excitement to dig into the chocolatey treat. He sucked on the spoon and considered what Dick had said before the chaperone bit, crossing his legs and jiggling his foot.

"I’m glad you’re set on the unconditional love front," Ollie remarked, “because that’s the most important thing. As for the rejection … well, you know what they say about bad news coming in threes, I guess. At least one of these rejections was handed out by Gardner, was it? Or is that too big of a leap I’m making?

Dick sipped a soda thoughtfully, making a face at the flavor and handing it to Ollie in exchange for the one on his side. "Yeah, it was, but I kind of expected that one, to be honest. I mean, I’d already rejected him when I chose Bette, so I couldn’t really expect him to be waiting for me or something.

"The first one was Bette," he mused, stirring the straw of his right drink. "I kinda talked to her when I got back, but it was right after we got Damian back and he was in medical so I kinda just sprung it on her. She told me how she felt, how hurt she was, and I can’t blame her. I was pretty awful to her."

Dick leaned back and ran a hand through his hair, a shower of glitter raining down on the seat behind him. "Then it was Guy. But the one that hurt the most was…. Bruce was upset when I moved back out; he’d wanted me to stay. So, on Father’s Day, I told him I was moving back in on my off days, so I could be around and still keep my job. You know, like a compromise. Instead, he just handed me the things for the penthouse and said that it wouldn’t be fair to Damian if I moved back to the Manor because Damian ‘needed the stability’ and me moving back in would undermine that. I mean, I raised him for—!"

Dick threw a nugget across the limo, glaring at it as it bounced off the window and skidded to a halt on the floor. "Bruce goes away without a word for months on end, but I go to a city barely two hours away in bad traffic and I’m uprooting Damian’s stability." Dick stuffed some fries in his mouth angrily. "Where does he get off like that?"

Ollie slurped mindlessly on the soda that Dick had handed him, surprised when the straw rattled against the empty bottom of the cup. He’d been thirstier than he thought — but then again, up-ending a Gotham club run by a Gotham rogue would do that to you.

"So, to recap," he said, running a hand through his hair and frowning when he discovered that he had two little cocktail stirrers tucked over one ear, “Bette rejected you — with reason — then Guy rejected you — also with reason — then Bruce rejected you, and that’s the one that sticks in your craw. That about it?"

He didn’t wait for a response, hooking his fingers into one of the untouched food bags and pulling it over. There were some kind of french toast fingers inside and Ollie started grazing through them. “You know what he’s like," he said, gesturing with one of the bread pieces. “Work work work, and then something happens and he blames himself for not seeing every possible bad outcome, then even MORE work work work. So when shit happens to one of you, and especially the way it happened with Damian—" Ollie shuddered, the memory of that plunge down the cliffside with the broken child in his arms, the memory of Rayner filling Damian with green light, "—he gets protective. Overprotective. To make up for what he sees as his own failure."

Ollie cast the french toast piece aside, dusting powdered sugar from his fingers. “I’m not saying he approaches things in the most sensible or considerate of ways. ‘For Damian’s stability’ is putting it real stark. But Dick, come on now…" he balled up a napkin and tossed it at Dick’s knee. “You’ve been back and forth between the Manor and Bludhaven like a yo-yo, and lots of it has had to do with who was or wasn’t your lover at the time. Living in Wayne Manor is a fucking fraught thing, don’t act like it isn’t. I don’t blame you for being mad, but shit, you haven’t exactly *been* a bastion of stability for yourself, much less for a neurotic kid like Damian!"

"At least I’ve been around! That’s more than he can say." Dick glowered at his empty fry box and tossed it in one of the bags, licking ketchup off his finger like a wound. "Bruce is always the one to stick in my craw the most. He does that well. But you’re right. I haven’t been too stable, but I’m trying to fix that. I thought moving back in part-time might help. Of course, now he’ll really think I’m unstable, so… Whatever."

When they arrived at the penthouse, Dick took them up the private, solid elevator at the side. No need to show any paparazzi who might still be lingering what the after-the-party look was. Back inside, Dick flopped on the couch, a cloud of glitter rising around him. "I’m never going to get this stuff off of me. This is terrible."

He rolled over and looked at Ollie. "I just want to have a home and a lover and feel like I belong somewhere. Or any one of the three, I’m not that picky."

Ollie eased down on the couch next to Dick, getting glitter all over his arm and t-shirt (the leather jacket was a distant memory, having been sacrificed to cover up a club-goer who had come out of the worse end of an ostrich race) and rubbed the side of his face. He looked around at where they were — the huge glass doors with automatic lighting change, the sumptuous furniture, the state-of-the-art electronics, the decor tailor-made to suit Dick’s … well, flamboyant excesses. And of course, sunken comm panels in each wall that would no doubt summon food or liquor or anything else Dick should require.

"It’s a good thing," Ollie said drolly, “that you’re talking to a fellow member of the Poor Little Rich Boys club. Anybody else would be hard-pressed to see where the unease and yearning comes in."

Grinning, Ollie sprawled back in the sofa, which naturally was of such a configuration and design that any way you sat in it, you felt at perfect ease. “The thing is, Dick," Ollie said, “is you’ve had those things, in spades, for most of your life. I know there was probably a long adjustment period with Bruce, but you know what I mean. So this period of feeling unsettled, it’s due to the sudden vacuum. Now—" Ollie rolled his head to look over at Dick, “I’m not saying you’ve had so much in your life, so you shouldn’t be sad, some people have nothing, yadda yadda. I think it’s great that you’ve had love and a home and belonging, I think everybody should have those things, as much as they need."

Ollie looked up at the massive drop chandelier that hung over them and frowned. “Where was a going with this? I’m sure I had a point, but I feel like I’m chasing it around the kiddie pool…"

Dick chuckled and scooted over until he could rest his head in Ollie’s lap. "I think I get your point. Like, I’ve had so much love and I know what it feels like to have all of that, so when it’s suddenly pulled away, even temporarily, there’s like this giant nothingness and because I know what should be there, I’m finding it harder to adjust to it being gone because I want it back."

Dick rolled over to look up at Ollie, poking at a stain of dried face paint on his shoulder from when they caught a dancer mid-fall. "I feel like somewhere in there I lost the point, too. But it’s just so…" He sighed and stared up at the ceiling. "I was telling Matt the other day how long it’s been since I had sex and he just gave me this look of, ‘wow, your problems are rough, bro,’ which I get because it totally sounds petty, but… I mean, you get it, right? Like, it’s not sex, it’s being that close to someone, it’s having someone hold you and touch you and get you and."

He frowned. "That’s not going to fix everything, but dammit, if it wouldn’t make things easier. And now I feel petty again."

"Ahhhh, there’s nothing wrong with wanting somebody. Especially if you’re the kinda type’a person who *likes* having somebody and is used to it, used to that kind of companionship." He swirled the fingertips of one hand through Dick’s hair as the young man’s head tossed restlessly. “I guess what might help is if you look at the other two things, and how you’ve still got them. I mean, this penthouse alone…" Ollie twirled the fingers of his other hand in the air, looking around. “It’s got the Wayne name on it, and Bruce gave it to you to live in. That covers home and belonging right there, Dick. You made a home for yourself in the ‘Haven when the Manor didn’t feel like one anymore, and you know that’s only temporary, the situation at the Manor."

Ollie plucked a few tiny soft white down feathers from Dick’s blue-black hair. “I mean, you were saying it yourself, weren’t you? And I think you were right. That maybe it’s good for you to learn how to cope on your own for a bit. You still belong, to your family and to the League and to your fraternal order of cops — there’s plenty of places you belong. And maybe this nest is a good home while you’re trying to figure out if you want to be at the Manor, or at Bludhaven, or at both."

He waited a few moments, tugging on the curl of Dick’s ear, before venturing, "…as for the sex part of it … isn’t there an existing option, where that’s concerned? When it comes to sex for strictly sex’s sake, but with somebody you know and feel comfortable with?"

Dick hummed as Ollie played with his hair, eyes half-closing, but still alert. "Maybe this is one of those things were I know what I have to do, I get what I need, but I still don’t quite know how to implement it. Guess I’ll figure it out eventually."

"Well, at this point I’m hoping it might still be open." He followed a trail of glitter down the side of Ollie’s shirt where it had clung to him off of the couch. When he’d reached Ollie’s navel, he looked back up at his face. "But that all depends how you feel about it."

Ollie drew in a quick breath, fingers stilling on Dick’s ear, before he closed his eyes, smiled, and gently pinched Dick’s earlobe. “Not at this point, I’m afraid," he said, opening his eyes again and looking down at Dick. “Not with all things considered and the fights and so forth that’ve happened since the last time, kiddo. But it’s nice to know you’d still feel that comfortable with me."

He squeezed Dick’s shoulder and continued, “Anyhow, I was referring to somebody else in specific, somebody far better suited to such a delightful task! Gardner mentioned that even though you said you don’t love him anymore, he was still willing to have booty calls with you. Wait, do people still say booty call? Well, anyhow, that’s what he said. He’d have sex with you once in a while, and that you know this." Ollie raised an eyebrow. “You *do* know this, right?"

Dick chuckled and rapped his knuckles against Ollie’s shoulder. "I can’t stay uncomfortable with you for very long. Known you too long." He curled his fingers in the sleeve of Ollie’s t-shirt, pulling together his thoughts. "He’d mentioned it, yeah, as a maybe we could kind of thing. I don’t know if I could do it yet, though. I fall back in love pretty easily, and that might just set me off again."

He sighed and sat up, resting his head on Ollie’s shoulder, one hand playing with the hem of Ollie’s t-shirt for distraction. "I think I figured it out. I don’t really fall out of love, I just sorta damp it down until something stronger takes over. If I can convince myself they don’t love me as much anymore, it makes it a little easier to say I don’t love them the same. Bette loved me too much. I didn’t know what to do with that, so I focused on someone else. That’d already passed, though."

Ollie grunted, trying to sort through what Dick was saying before he responded. Finally he laughed, shrugging, and bopped Dick’s nose lightly with his fingers. “I dunno if I’ve got enough brainpower left right now to parse what you just said, kiddo," he confessed, “but it sounds as though you’ve sorted some things through for yourself. Which is excellent! If we still had any liquor around I’d toast the realization. Let’s just backdate the toasting to that round of tequila shots that came served in the ice glasses."

Mentioning the sheer amount of booze that they’d imbibed over the course of the night made Ollie suddenly start, looking at his watch. “Shit, it’s later than I thought. I shoulda remembered that’s a side effect of doing the town billionaire style, jesus." Clasping Dick’s head in his hands, he kissed the nest of curls and wavered up to his feet. “That was a damn good time, Dickie Grayson, and I hope you got as much of a kick out of it as you did a catharsis out of it. Wait, did you get a catharsis? Or a revelation? I think a revelation. What you just said sounded pretty damn resolutiony. And hey, it’s too bad about you and Gardner. I honestly thought you two still had a spark for each other, y’know? But if you realized otherwise, that’s cool."

Dick tucked his feet under him and smiled up at Ollie. "Some sparks shouldn’t reignite." He reached out and squeezed Ollie’s hands. "Thanks for indulging me. I knew you’d help, if anyone could. Thanks for just…listening to me. I needed it."

He squeezed Ollie’s hands for a moment longer, a small flicker of worry about being alone adding to his alcoholic clinginess, but it passed and he let go, flopping back against the couch. "Have a safe zeta trip. Make sure you get the code right. Don’t want to wind up in the middle of Central or someplace."

Leaning down, Ollie gave Dick a tight hug, rubbing his back briskly. “I’m here to listen to you anytime, bluebird," he said, putting as much feeling into the statement as he could manage. It had felt good, talking with Dick again, doing madcap nonsense things, slipping easily in and out of conversation that ranged from serious to ridiculous and somewheres in-between.

Still, Ollie could have done without Dick’s final mischievous comment vis-a-vis the zeta coordinates. He spent a full five minutes entering, re-entering, and double-triple-quadruple checking the coordinates before he finally committed, heading back to what he hoped was Star City and his own bed.