Nightwing: Heartless

Part 8: Studying

It was too early to be doing homework. 8:15am to be exact, and it turns out the peacefulness of the study area in the student union provided no help to her organic chemistry problems. Willa stared out the window, watching students walking to class or the dining hall.

"Hey."

She jumped a little in surprise to see Dick Grayson standing in front of her, bag slung over his shoulder. She hadn't heard him approach.

She smiled, "hey."

"What are you doing here so early?" He asked.

Willa gestured to her organic chemistry, "I went to bed last night thinking I could figure it out before class but for some reason the answers haven't come to me in the past half an hour."

"Organic chemistry? I thought you took political science classes." He moved closer to stand beside her chair to see her notebook.

"What if I decide to go to med school?" Willa shot back with a smile. It was true, she had no idea what she wanted to do and the pressure of graduating next year was not helping. So she figured she'd try to cover the basics of as many disciplines as possible. So far she was thinking she would not be attending med school if she had to take any more chemistry.

Dick studied her notebook then read some of her open textbook before scanning her paper again. "Here's your problem. May I?" He held his hand out for her pencil, which she handed to him. He bent down and made an adjustment to her chemical equations, suddenly making them look doable.

Willa just looked at him in disbelief. "You can do organic chemistry?"

"I know a little bit."

"I thought you took political science courses," she smirked as she turned his words back to him. "Thank you, this really helped."

"No problem."

"So why are you here so early?" Willa scribbled some numbers in her notebook and redid some calculations to figure out her first problem.

"I'm always here around this time. I get most of my work done in the mornings before class."

Willa nodded, still filling in her notes, "sounds...early."

Dick laughed and pointed to a mistake Willa had made. She sighed and erased the numbers to do them again. Along with great reflexes and having invisibility, she guessed perfect eyesight wasn't a stretch.

"My friend says you don't live on campus," she said after finishing the problem.

"I don't," he said simply. She was starting to notice he didn't say more than what was necessary.

"Why?"

"My mansion is just so much nicer."

Willa's head snapped up, taken aback by the comment but saw Dick trying to hold in his laughter. Willa joined in and rolled her eyes, closing her notebook. "You're funny, Grayson."

"Why do you sound so surprised?"

Willa stood up. "I just thought sons of billionaires didn't need humor. You have all those bags of money." Dick threw his head back and laughed. It was the first time she had really heard him laugh. It was nice. "Where are you headed?"

"Advanced Macro."

"I'm going that way too."

"Then I'll walk you."

Willa stopped walking, "but I already started walking."

Dick grinned and breezed by her, "your point?"

"If anything, I'm walking you."

"You're not doing a great job!" He called from a few feet ahead of her.

She shook her head and jogged to keep up with him. He walked so fast. She blamed the long legs. He was almost a foot taller than her and his stride was considerably longer. She realized he had noticed and slowed his pace to match hers so she didn't have to jog every few steps. How perceptive, she thought and turned to look at him.

How had she never noticed him before? He was the type of person noticed, even without the famous dad. He caught her looking and smirked. She snapped her head forward, determined not to let him see how embarrassed she was.

"What happened?" She asked instead, pointing to a fading bruise on his jaw. It's what she had been looking at the whole time anyway.

"Hm?" He pressed a hand to the yellowish bruise right on his jaw. Facing him straight on, almost anyone would have missed it but she had a different angle, walking beside him. "Oh, I must have hit myself in the face with something."

"Not as coordinated as I thought," she joked. She might have imagined it but it seemed like his pace slowed, like a weight was added to his shoulders. "I get random bruises too. I have this one on my elbow that I have no idea how it got there." She twisted her arm to show him, which brought a smile back to his face.

They stopped in front of the economics room, which reminded Willa of the question she had meant to ask him at the beginning of their walk. "Hey, I meant to ask how you found that mistake I made. I thought for sure it was balanced, but..." she checked the clock on the wall and saw it was a minute till class started and Dick still needed to get down the hall. "Um, nevermind."

He seemed to read her mind. He pulled out a pen and started writing on her notebook. "Text me your question and I'll answer it during class. We're doing easy stuff right now, anyway." Then left, turning around the nearest corner.