Absolute Chaos (Dick Grayson)

CHAPTER TWO

yay! plot! also, a very late update. I started school, and I was just never getting enough time in to write more than a few good sentences. anywho, this is a short one and there's a lot more descriptions than dialogue and interaction, but it picks up in the next chapter.

When Jessica first met Roy, he was tall and lanky and built like a track and field athlete. He sometimes looked like he was hiding, but with Oliver there, he had the confidence of ten people. But when he opened his mouth around Jess, he didn't bother being nice. He sounded like the most insulting thirty year old trucker out there.

Now, a couple years later, Roy is less lanky and more lean, with the build of a football player and even more ego. The two have managed to get past a few of their bones to pick, but Roy and Jessica were not brother and sister, despite what people thought. In public, they ignored each other. In private, it was a battle of wits. But strangely enough, he was her brother at the most unexpected times; when she went on a date with Joshua Petrakis, Roy was not at all impressed with his motorcycling, leather jacket, and constant smoking, not to mention the tattoo winding from his bicep to his wrist.

She was fifteen and mostly just doing this date to annoy him. Jessica remembers coming downstairs to see Roy staring at Joshua, who was leaning against the doorframe with a self assured smirk. Dick and Wally were shamelessly watching with obvious interest from the couch in the sitting room.

Jessica walked over in a pair of tall black boots and a denim dress. Roy turned to look at her slowly, clearly not happy.

"You're not going with him." Roy crossed his arms.

Jessica squinted at him. "Excuse me?"

"That's a death trap, and he looks like someone's baby daddy, Jessica."

"Roy, you don't tell me what to do," she said slowly. Jess remembers being surprised he was reacting like this; she thought he'd be more insulting than...protective.

Roy turned and leaned forward until he was nearly nose to nose with Joshua. "You don't touch, you don't look, you don't even breathe on her. And you better have some fucking helmets." He then plucked the cigarette right out of Joshua's mouth and crushed it beneath his fingers.

That night, when Jess came back from a half-ass date ready to stay up watching The Vampire Diaries, Roy was sitting on the sofa.

"Good. You're alive. He didn't do anything?" He looked suspicious.

Jessica gaped at him. "Why are you guys down here? There's not even a TV in this room."

Wally shot an annoyed glance at Roy. "He made us wait all night for you." Roy glared at him.

Dick smirked. At the time, she didn't know him much beyond the fact that he was like a little brother to Roy and Bruce Wayne's oldest adopted kid. She rarely saw him outside of galas, preferring not to stick around when Roy had his friends over. Megan, the redhead with the fair freckled skin, was always trying to get Jess involved in their activities even though Roy despised the idea.

"Just wanted to make sure he didn't leave your dead ass in a ditch or crash into any cars with his death trap," Roy muttered. He turned his back on her almost immediately after that and directed his friends to the den for video games.

Since then, Jessica has noticed a strange protectiveness in Roy every so often. Like the morning after the party.

Of course, protective isn't what flashes through her mind when she hears him slamming his fists against the door of her bedroom.

Her face is itchy from the dried tears and her muscles feel like total jelly. She slept weird last night, arm crossed underneath her chest and one leg lying off the side of her bed. Jess pushes herself up and pats around for her robe.