ɢʜᴏꜱᴛꜱ | ᴅ. ɢʀᴀʏꜱᴏɴ

chapter 29

29. near death

•—✽—✽—✽—•

thirty minutes later

DICK GRAYSON WAS PROVING TO THE world every day that he could be a leader and work on a team without having to sacrifice another member for his benefit. He came up with a plan to finally catch Deathstroke that didn't involve trading over Rose.

"Paige, can I talk to you for a sec?" Dick asked once he was done explaining the plan. Lightly furrowing her eyebrows, she nodded as she followed him. Once everyone was gone and out of earshot, he sighed before letting his eyes meet hers.

The woman immediately became concerned. "Is everything alright?"

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lied to you when you asked about Deathstroke. I just...I knew that you would be worried and I didn't want to add more things for you to be stressing out about," he explained.

"Well, Jason was able to do that for you so..." she said, chuckling lightly to herself before allowing her eyes to meet his again.

Dick knew Paige too well. Sometimes he knew her better than she knew herself which she found incredibly annoying. But, he was able to see the little things. The way her smile didn't quite reach her eyes when she chuckled and the way her eyes glossed over when she mentioned Jason.

At the sound of her clearing her throat, he was brought back to reality. "I think we should uh...go get ready," Paige suggested. He nodded as they walked towards their rooms together.

"You know what I miss," Dick began, allowing an old thought to pop up into his head, "Our old office banter."

"Well, we still argue. Just not about whether or not it was you who took all of the staples out of my stapler or someone else."

"Never gets old. I still think it's funny," he laughed lightly to himself as he opened her bedroom door, holding it open for Paige to go in.

"Well, that's because you have the humor of a child."

He watched as a small grin crept onto her lips as she walked past. "Don't act like you didn't find it funny."

"Oh, I found it hilarious having to open a new pack of staples every week."

A couple of minutes of comfortable silence fell upon the two before Dick managed to break it like he always did. "Hey, Paige?"

"Yeah?" she called out from the bathroom where she was busy putting her hair up and out of her face.

"I love you."

✄ ✄ ✄

A part of being a team leader was making the sacrifice plays for the benefit of the rest of the group. Paige knew what was running through Dick's mind the second he uttered those three words to her back at the tower.

She knew that he wasn't going to trade over Rose for Jason because he was going to trade over himself for Jason. And although it was quite noble of him it was still selfish of him to not think about how hurt everyone else would be if he died.

"Anybody got eyes on Dick?" Dawn asked through the earpieces once they were all in position and he had yet to mention his whereabouts.