Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at

http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/10604073.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Relationship: Dick Grayson/Raven (DCU)
Character: Dick Grayson, Raven (DCU)
Additional Tags: robrae - Freeform, Robrae week 2017, Day 1, Alternate Universe -
Mob, Angst
Series: Part 1 of RobRae Week 2017
Stats: Published: 2017-04-12 Words: 2515

Broke My Bones Playing Games With You

by Aer

Summary

Things have never been easy for them- but this is a difficult situation even by their
standards.

Notes

So, I participated in RobRae Week this year in a challenge to myself to write more. I'm
posting the fics here now for archiving purposes.

Dick Grayson strolled into the Blüdhaven Police Department with a smile on his face and a spring
in his step. It had been a good night. "Morning, Boss!" He called cheerfully to the Chief as he
passed by his office on his way to his desk. He received an angry sounding grunt in return, and
paused.

"Everything ok? Did someone call about the Wilson case?" Dick asked, concerned. Redhorn
grunted again. The Slade Wilson case had been a huge coup for their department- it wasn't every
day that the police got something on the right hand of the mob boss Trigon.

"Worse. The Ice Queen was in here first thing this morning." Chief Redhorn snarled. "Wilson's
out on bail and it's sounding like they're gonna settle out of court, if any charges stick at all."
Dick bit down on several creative swear words. "Shit. Seriously, Boss? They actually made his
bail?"

"It was damn low, too." Redhorn grumbled, and Dick bit back another curse.

"Roth was sweet talking the judge?" He demanded. Rachel Roth was Trigon's daughter and best
lawyer, known as the Ice Queen when they were being polite, and the Frozen Bitch when they
weren't. He shoved away from the door, feet itching to pace.

"Now you know I can't say anything without some real good proof." Redhorn said warningly.
"But unless you've got a real good reason that a guy hauled in on a list of charges longer than your
arm had a bail of a hundred thousand even, that's about all I've got." Dick didn't bother with biting
his tongue this time as he swore aloud. Redhorn didn't reprimand him, the look in his eyes saying
quite clearly he was thinking the exact same thing.

"She seriously got him out on that?" Dick groaned. "I knew Roth was good, but shit." He said
with feeling.

"You're telling me." Redhorn growled. "Still, I want you to write up that arrest report, and write it
up well. We're gonna need this to be air tight and squeaky clean if we don't want Wilson to slide
right through our fingers, the greasy son of a bitch."

Dick sighed. "I gotcha, Boss. At this point, we are still clear to try for a trial, right?"

"Damn straight. I hear Gordon's the assigned prosecutor, too." Dick grinned, wide and vicious.

"Get Wilson on the stand and she'll rip him apart." Barbara was an old friend of Dick's, and he
knew exactly how good she was at her job.

"Looking forward to seeing the Ice Queen and the Oracle go head to head, is that it?" Redhorn
snorted at him.

"Hells yes, Boss. Two gorgeous, genius women going at it? It's every man's dream." Dick's grin
widened.

"Watch it, Grayson. Say that too loud and you'll lose more than just a dream." Redhorn waved a
hand, shooting him away. "I want that report on my desk by tomorrow!" Dick sauntered away,
shooting a salute over one shoulder.

"Sure thing, Boss."

"And stop calling me Boss, it's Chief, damnit!"

"You got it, Boss." The snarl he received in reply made Dick chuckle, before sobering as he
reached his desk, the news he'd been ignoring reasserting itself full force.

Slade Wilson, one of the deadliest men in the city, was on the loose, and unless he violated the
terms of his bail where a police officer could see, there was no way they were going to be able to
lock him up again. And he wasn't dumb enough to let them see. Hell, it had been a miracle they'd
ever managed to grab him in the first place, and to hear that Roth had waltzed her pretty little self
in and walked right back out with Wilson in tow was enough to drive a guy crazy.

With a scowl, he turned to his report. The arrest had been clean- no need to give Roth that easy of
a time- but there was still plenty that had to be included.

It was going to be a long day.

Rachel Roth kept her face blank as she escorted Slade back to her father. The car, a black
Mercedes, hummed around her in a manner that would be soothing if it weren't for the fact that
Slade, as usual, would not stop talking. How her father had managed all these years without
tearing his tongue out, she would never know. Slade purred another innuendo from the backseat,
leaning up against the driver's seat to deliver it right into her ear, and she felt her teeth grind
together for a moment before forcing herself to loosen the clenched jaw muscles. She was already
halfway to a headache, she didn't need to add tension pains on top of it.

She slammed on the breaks as they pulled up in front of Trigon's mansion, perhaps a tad too
harshly, but it was worth it to see Slade catch himself on the seat lest he go flying out the
windshield.

"Father is waiting for you inside. He is... most displeased." Rachel said, speech short and clipped.
"I have other engagements today, so if you would get out of my car." The words were a hair short
of an order, and she saw the masked man's shoulders tense. Very few would dare order him like
that, for fear of loosing their tongues or even their heads.

Rachel, however, was something of a special case. Being Trigon's daughter and lawyer, despite
not being an official member of his organization, granted her immunity from all but Trigon
himself. And Slade, no matter how much he might wish he was, was not more powerful than
Trigon. As such, it was with a glare, but no more, that he exited her car. The door had barely shut
behind him when she peeled away from the mansion, racing out the driveway. She had not been
lying about being horridly busy, and she had no time for Trigon or Slade's games.

Flexing her fingers against the steering wheel, Rachel sighed heavily.

It was going to be a long day.

Dick let the door to his apartment slam behind him loudly, sighing. The day had been even longer
than he had expected, with half the precinct being called out to a huge drug bust Vice had spent
the last two weeks setting up. Redhorn had declared it all hands on deck, including Homicide, to
make sure the bust went smoothly.

It hadn't. Even with BPD's best and brightest there, the bust had still turned into a shitshow. It was
inevitable, Dick figured. Mix junkies, cops, and a whole hell of a lot of delicate chemical
reactions, and explosions became more than imminent, they became the norm.

He tossed his keys onto the table as he toed off his shoes, and he was working on the buttons of
his uniform when she made her presence known.

"Richard." She greeted, her voice low and smooth as she floated out of his bedroom and into the
hall.

"Rachel." His voice was clipped, and his movements as he shrugged out of his jacket were harsh.
He didn't look at her as he strode by, heading for his closet to hang up everything that didn't need
washing. "Thought you weren't coming by tonight. You said you were busy." His fingers
struggled with his tie, and she made a soft noise of exasperation from behind him, before suddenly
she was there, fingers slipping beneath his as she smoothly unknotted the recalcitrant piece of
fabric. She pulled it from his collar and padded away. He heard a drawer slide open and shut as
she put the tie away, and he knew without looking that it would be folded exactly where he kept
that particular tie, not a millimeter out of place.
"I was supposed to." She agreed calmly. "But I've had an enormously trying day, and I thought it
would be nice to see you." Her voice dipped lower on the last words, and he shook his head with
a bitter snort.

"Yeah, real trying." He snarled. "It would have been nice of you to mention that your busy day
today was getting Slade Wilson out on bail." He stripped off his dress shirt in short, jerky
movements, throwing it carelessly at the hamper. It fell short, crumpling to the floor, and he let it
fall.

"It would have been real nice, to know you were planning on setting a murderer I put in jail loose
on the streets again." He continued. "But I guess niceness is in short supply these days, and what
there is is spent on liars, thieves, and killers." He wasn't usually so angry, so bitter- in fact,
normally, he was downright sunny, especially for a place like Blüdhaven.

Today hadn't exactly been a normal day though, and so he kept on, Rachel unusually silent behind
him. "So forgive me, if I don't feel like being nice to you." He finally turned around, and was
struck breathless- though whether in rage or lust, even he couldn't tell. Seated primly on the bed,
Rachel let the dress shirt she'd taken from his closet fall around her, leaving her in nothing more
than a lacy black bra and panties. Despite her lack of clothing, she was as collected as if she was
in court, raising a sardonic eyebrow at him.

"Nice, Richard? You want me to be nice, now?" Rachel drawled. "Have you forgotten the rules
of our little arrangement?" She snorted, flicking deep purple hair over her shoulder. "Nice." She
scoffed. "Do you think I'm your girlfriend, or some such inanity? This relationship is one of
convenience, and nothing more. I don't ask your business, and you don't ask mine."

He ground his teeth together so hard he was surprised it wasn't audible. "Damn it, Raven." The
nickname slipped unbidden from his lips, Dick too furious to keep the filter between his brain and
mouth solid. "There's a man suspected for the deaths of hundreds of people out on the streets
tonight, where you put him. Doesn't that bother you?"

Her purple eyes regarded him coolly. "What do you think, Richard?" She crossed her legs at the
knee, so composed she could be taking tea, not sitting nearly naked in a man's bed. He glared at
her, before turning away.

"On my better days, I like to think you do, even if I don't know why you do what you do." He
admitted quietly. "On days like today..." He snorted a helpless, bitter laugh. "On days like today, I
think maybe you really are the frozen bitch the precinct calls you behind your back." When he
glanced at her, she didn't look offended, or surprised. Her face was as smooth as the ice from
which she took her title.

"But you knew all of that already." He faced back towards the wall with a heavy sigh. Behind
him, the blankets rustled. The arms that slid around his waist came as a surprise, and he jumped
slightly as a warm body pressed against his back.

"I knew. But I try not to bring my work to bed." She said softly, laying a kiss against his shoulder.

Almost against his will, he felt the tension in his shoulders loosen. She saw it, he knew she did,
and a second kiss was pressed to the side of his neck. A shiver traveled down his spine, and he
sighed, before turning in her arms to look down at her. One hand slid up her creamy back, fingers
sightlessly tracing out the raven that stretched its wings across her shoulders.

"Which one is it, Raven? My good days, or my bad?" He asked quietly. Large violet eyes looked
up at him solemnly.
"Come to bed, Robin." She said softly without answering, stepping back. He followed, caught in
her pull.

"Please, Raven. I need to know." She turned away to slide into the bed, the blackness of the tattoo
she'd taken in honor of the nickname a little boy had once given her swallowing any light
unfortunate enough to touch the inky surface.

"Be patient with me, Robin." Was all she said, in something too calm to be a plea, but too forceful
to be as casual as she might wish. Her eyes met his.

"I'm sorry." He finally said. "I just... You could be so much more than this, Raven. You're
brilliant, the top of your class at Harvard, and this is what you're doing?" He sighed sadly. "Where
did my dreaming Raven go?"

"The same place her bright Robin did." She answered sharply. "She grew up." She pulled up the
sheet, hiding herself beneath it.

He smiled bitterly. "Weird thing, that growing up. How much it changes people." He hadn't
known Raven for very long as a boy, just a year or two, but she'd left a mark on him all the same.

He hoped the fact that she had sought him out three years ago when he came to Blüdhaven meant
he had done the same to her.

"Come to bed." She requested again, and this time, worn to the bone, he did so. Slipping beneath
the cool sheet, he pulled her close, marveling as ever how someone who looked so could could be
so warm. Her arms wound around his neck, pulling him down into a deep kiss. Her small, soft
fingers traced down his side to the tiny robin tattooed on his ribcage, and his hands ran up her
back to span her raven. He fell onto his back, pulling her on top of him as their lips met in a
fevered kiss.

Robin fell asleep quickly, afterward, but Raven laid awake, staring up at the ceiling until she
managed to get up the willpower to move.

Every time she had to leave, it grew harder, and this time was no exception, as she slipped out of
his arms, dressing in the business suit she had come here in. Every piece of clothing felt like a
piece of armor, clicking into place as she hid Robin's Raven beneath the icy exterior of Rachel
Roth. Slipping into her heels, she retrieved her briefcase, cracking it open. Stacks of documents
she had spent years collecting stared back at her, and she bit her lip. There would be no going
back, after this.

She didn't want to go back. Pulling the files out, she stacked them neatly on the bed, for Richard
to find when he woke. She attached a sticky note to the top folder, running a slim finger over
words penned only minutes previously, before latching the empty case and slipping silently out of
the apartment. The ball was in Robin's court now.

The note read:

Robin,

I choose the first. I always have.

You know where to find me.

Yours,
Raven

His throat tightened, and he choked out a sound- laugh or sob, it was all the same in the end.

"Damn it, Raven. This isn't what I meant at all." Dick whispered, before picking up the files and
returning to the real world.

He had work to do.

Please drop by the archive and comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!