always with the Dick jokes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irrelevant) wrote2011-07-19 12:47 pm
irrelevant) wrote2011-07-19 12:47 pm
Entry tags:
[fic] and one in the hand (DCU)
it's Timmy's birthday, so in honor of that, I'm posting this piece of weird porn I've had sitting on my hard drive for three months. go figure.
and one in the hand
DC comics, post-Fugitive | Dick Grayson/Tim Drake | NC-17 | ~5800 words
summary: Being a caped vigilante means never having to apologize. That's the theory, anyway.
“Sorry,” Dick tells him. “No one's home and I didn’t think there’d be a problem.”
He half grins and Tim stares, but as explanations go it’s plausible and not at all surprising considering the source. Dick has a tendency to do and think afterward, and it’s possible and possibly probable that that’s exactly what happened here.
It’s equally possible that he really is sorry. Probable, even. Just like it’s probable that he didn’t mean to do this, possibly because he never does. Mean it.
He doesn’t mean to get in another one-way shouting match with Bruce, the kind where he’s the only one shouting while Bruce turns his back on him and walks away.
He doesn’t mean to skid out of the cave on his bike like he can’t leave himself behind fast enough. He never intends to lose himself in Gotham before he can head back to Blüdhaven, but Gotham happens, crime happens and Nightwing will always need to do something about both of those things that are actually one thing total.
He never means to react the way he does, but he always does, probably always will, and Tim can tell by looking at him how the last couple of hours went down. Some incidents don’t require physical media for playback, just intimate knowledge of the individuals involved. And if you know what you’re looking for, Dick prediction is as basic as memory.
Tim does know (he’s made something uncomfortably close to a fetish of knowing) and he thinks tonight there was… a mugging. Maybe some other type of assault. Someone screamed while Dick was waiting at a light. Nightwing responded.
Theoretically it works, or at least that’s what he (knows believes) thinks. Certainly the scenario fits in with tonight’s parameters. It’s also true that the actual eventuation chain could have been any one of several hundred possibilities. Tim knows them all, and he knows Dick. That’s all the detective work necessary.
In the same way, it’s completely unnecessary for him to use the cave’s lab and massive crays to find out that Dick didn’t mean to stop by his apartment. In his head he can see the path of Dick’s bike as clearly as if he’d gone along for the ride. Dick was already in the suit, still in Gotham, and he just happened to end up in this part of town. Happened to (remember) think of Tim, and then the rest… happened.
And it’s definitely, inherently possible that he didn’t intend to crouch an indefinite amount of time on Tim’s window ledge, making himself even crazier replaying every word he said to Bruce on the feedback loop behind his eyes. Trying to imagine all the words Bruce will never give him back.
Probably, he didn’t mean to end up in Tim’s room, but all available evidence indicates that he did. He got tired of crawling around inside his own head, and Bruce’s as well, so he crawled through Tim’s window and waited for Tim to get back from patrol.
Which is where Tim came in. It’s where Tim is, crouched in the window Nightwing left open with a batarang in his hand and Dick sprawled on his bed in full gear saying sorry for being there, or maybe for being himself, which amounts to the same thing.
It’s a good thing his dad and Dana are out tonight. And he guesses he could imagine his father’s reaction if he really wanted to… and that would be an emphatic no because he really, really doesn’t.
He doesn’t want activate his comm, either, but doing what he wants has never figured overmuch in any game plan he’s made to date. He pulls his cape tighter around him, turns the comm on and says, “You were right. He’s here.”
Oracle should never laugh. Ever. There should be a law, but then she’d just have to break it. Because wheelchair or not, she’s still a vigilante, and being a vigilante is the definition of never having to say you’re sorry.
Except for those rare occasions when you’re doing the honors for some other vigilante, which is its own precise skill set. Barbara is better at it than the rest of them, but that’s – well. It’s not saying much.
But neither does she. Much.
“Sorry about this,” is what she says now. “Since they dropped the charges, he’s been—they’ve both been… you know how they’ve been.”
“Yes,” Tim says. And he does. He even understands, maybe more than he wants to, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to forget anything. It doesn’t change the fact that it costs him both more and less than he’d like to say “I’ve got this,” and mean it.
And if a mechanized voice could be anything but ambiguous… “You sure?”
“Affirmative,” he says, and glances at the bed. Dick’s hands are laced together behind his head. It’s possible he’s staring at the ceiling. The lenses make it next to impossible to tell.
Tim’s bed has never looked less like something made for sleeping on.
“Keep him busy,” Oracle says. “Make him chase you, play with him, take him for a walk. Just keep him going until he remembers the where line between thinking and reacting is. If someone doesn’t, he’s going to keep doing things like this.”
“And I’m here.”
“Got it in one.”
“You know,” Dick says, “I can hear you guys. I’m still in the loop.”
“That can change,” Oracle says as dryly as a computer-generated voice can. “He’s all yours.”
“Thank you,” Tim says. “Really. I’ll think of a way to pay you back later.” And there’s another laugh that should never be before the line goes dead.
Gradual, inevitable progression is the only definition that fits the sound of the city filling the vacuum Oracle’s voice left. It crawls back up the side of the building, slithers through the gaps between Tim’s body and his arms and legs and into the room. Tim tucks his batarang away and slides all the way in along with it, shutting most of it out when he shuts the window behind him.
Paper crackles under his feet when he moves, but he doesn’t look down. He’s already seen what Dick’s presence has done to and for and with his room. He doesn’t need to look again.
And it’s technically not Dick’s fault that the window didn’t close all the way, that it caught the way it does sometimes and the wind came through and blew Tim’s papers all over the room. Isn’t his fault, as in he didn’t mean for it to happen. Being in the room is, in itself, a kind of fault, though the specifics of blame are somewhat hard to pin down, in much the same way Dick is.
Tim knows this. All of this. And on another night, in an earlier time, he would have already absolved Dick. This isn’t that night.
Tim isn’t nine anymore, and Dick—
“Get your boots off my duvet,” Tim says, and Dick rolls up onto his elbow and grins, all the way this time. Stretches his legs that one inch farther, so that his feet are hanging off the end of the bed as opposed to smearing grit and mud and motor oil on top of Tim’s dark blue bedspread, and props his cheek on his hand. Which only serves to pull his grin wider than it actually is, which means Tim… needs to start estimating the possible collateral damage to his room if he pulled his batarang back out and threw it.
“I was gonna take ‘em off and take a nap,” Dick interrupts his silent calculations. He plucks at Tim’s sheets with one black and blue hand, “But I didn’t want to spoil your hospital corners. Seriously, what’s a teenager doing with hospital corners? Jeeze, Timbo, you—”
“I hate that.” One thing among so many others. “You know I hate it.”
The knowledge is there; it’s in Dick’s smile as much as in his words. “Sure I do. Why else would I do it?” He flips onto his back again, legs curling up, over his head—
“Dick, boots—”
And he did know this was coming – Dick’s boots on his bed, Dick’s thigh muscles bunching, coiled and ready – but Dick is so much faster, he’s all movement and Tim is—
Flat on his back on the floor, and Dick is… “Putting on a few pounds lately?”
He’s laughing, hot gusts of air across Tim’s jaw and cheek, his left knee is pushing Tim’s right thigh up and back, and if Tim turned his head slightly to the right—
Dick would cup his cheek just like that and say, “Hi. Nice mask. Why don’t you take it off?”
Nightwing’s gauntlets are scarred and rough, but Dick’s bare hands wouldn’t be much better. And Dick is humming low in his throat, his thumb is nudging the edge of Robin’s mask, peeling it back a millimeter at a time...
Tim has one shot at this. He has to make it count.
He doesn’t move until he’s sure of where he needs to put his knees and hands. Because it’s Dick, and Dick taught him how to do this, which is why it feels… wrong and awkwardly perfect at the same time to pull his knees up, push up and over with his hands and his legs… and hear Nightwing hit the wall of Tim Drake’s bedroom.
“Oh, that’s gonna hurt for a while,” Dick says in a muffled voice. “Nice one, Timmy.”
Tim’s somersault finishes in a crouch. He stays in it, hands splayed over his knees, and his cape falls down around him. He pulls it in, curls into it and raises his head.
Dick looks back at him – at least, he’s up out of his sprawl, facing Tim. Whether or not he’s actually looking at Tim isn’t obvious. His position is a funhouse reflection: Tim as he might eventually be, but never will. And his mask is off, on the floor, and Tim still can’t see his eyes.
“I can leave,” he says quietly, and it’s not the first time Tim’s felt the futility of wanting resolution for anything, even something as irrelevant as Dick’s hair falling into his eyes.
The edge of his own mask is already coming loose. He picks at it, tugs until he can pull it away without pulling his skin off. And he says, “No.”
The mask hurts coming off: it always does. He weighs it in his hand, ridiculously light compared to the weight of Robin’s gauntlet and also to the sudden weight of Dick’s hand in Nightwing’s gauntlet wrapped completely around his wrist.
His first, quickly suppressed reaction is as new as his suit’s design and as old as instinct: get out of the hold, disable and/or cripple his assailant. Do it right the first time so they’ll stay down, so that they can’t get up and come at him again.
He doesn’t think he moves, and of course he can’t see himself, but he can see Dick. And when Dick’s hand on his wrist starts being less about aggression than surety, when his wrist bones stop feeling like they’re going to give out any second, Dick stops looking like Tim just sucker punched him.
“Tim,” Dick says, “hey, it’s me, come on.”
Robin’s mask is falling onto the floor, landing a quarter of a room away from and way too close to Nightwing’s mask. Tim’s hands look small and green and pointless on top of and underneath black and blue. And Dick is much closer to Tim than Robin’s mask is to Nightwing’s; he’s blood and sweat and motorcycle grease; he’s Gotham and not, and Tim can’t—
“Tim.” Repetition feels warm against his skin, Dick’s breath blown out in the shape of his name. “C’mere?” Dick says, and he’s tugging at Tim’s cape with the hand not holding on to Tim’s wrist. Making Tim’s muscles ache with wanting to move.
Because this… he doesn’t think this is anything close to what Barbara meant, but he can’t quite tell himself she wouldn’t want him to go this route and then make himself believe it. He can wish for the excuse to be viable, but the easier it gets to lie to other people, the harder it is to lie to himself.
It’s always been impossible to lie to Dick, and right now Dick’s hands might even be some kind of truth, tight and ungiving, but his grip on Tim’s wrist isn’t as solid as it was. It relaxes and Tim’s blood circulation starts up again and his skin shivers and crawls along with Dick’s fingers, trailing s-lines up the side of his neck to his scalp—
Tim winces and Dick doesn’t take his hand out of his hair, but he does stop tugging on it. He tips Tim’s head back and holds him there with the moon too bright in his eyes. And he could be looking down at Tim, he could be looking over his head or at the R, but it’s impossible to say for sure with his hair hanging down in his face.
Dick’s hair is in his eyes. Tim’s hair is caught around Dick’s hand. Every twitch of Dick’s fingers is a tug on Tim’s scalp, another shiver down his spine.
“Still hate me?” Dick asks.
It shouldn’t be possible for so much intelligence and blind ignorance to exist side by side within the same cranial mass.
Tim says as much.
Dick just laughs. He says, “Bruce,” and he laughs again, and Tim… can’t disagree with him. He can’t argue with Dick’s laughter; he doesn’t even want to. Which makes it easier than he expected but so much more complicated to pull Dick down on top of him than it was to throw him.
It’s harder to convince his brain that his actions make sense than it is to make room for Dick between his legs.
And part of him is assessing the threat level while another part extrapolates Dick’s potential reactions to being flipped onto his back for the second time in fifteen minutes. And Dick is leaning in and then he’s just—
Getting the air pressed out of his lungs one breath at a time. And getting kissed.
And all of him is analyzing Dick’s technique while trying to decide what his response should be.
Kissing back is the obvious response, and it’s possibly even the right one. It’s also the expected response, the one Dick seems to expect, and Tim could write a book on Dick’s unspoken, preconceived expectations that have little or no resemblance to actual human reactions, but he can’t—
He can’t be Dick. Can’t throw himself into Dick the way Dick throws himself off rooftops. All Tim can be is careful, albeit not as much as he would have been before Steph. And then not careful at all. It’s impossible to keep being careful when Dick is cupping his cheek in his bare hand, tilting his head back and kissing him like his mouth is an end in itself and not just the means to one.
And he wants – he wishes Dick would just keep kissing him. Keep pushing his tongue into his mouth, keep making approving little noises so that he won’t notice Tim grinding up against his hip, but Dick is already pulling away. He’s pushing up on his hands, reluctantly separating his mouth from Tim’s; he’s looking down at Tim through his hair and saying, “Lose the cape.”
Kneeling, pushing Tim’s legs back and up with his own legs… and that was the first gauntlet, hitting the wall.
Tim pulls his own gauntlets off carefully. One at a time. Lays them on the floor as far away as the stretch of his arm. He’s watching Dick’s face, still looking for his eyes, because if he looks down he’ll see his thighs spread open around Dick. He’ll see his own need, not Dick’s, which is—
“Hey,” Dick says softly. “Breathe.” And Tim blinks and gasps and, most importantly, breathes, and Dick reaches down and unfastens the cape. Pushes it away from Tim’s throat, spreads it open.
Tim sees yellow in his peripheral vision. He sees blue slashed black in front of him. Feels the slide of Dick’s mouth over his throat, the slide of his hands down under him, nudging in between him and the cape. Cupping his ass.
Dick’s hands tighten on his hips and he has time to grip Dick’s arms and say, “Wait.” And then he’s not on his back anymore; he’s upright on Dick’s lap, straddling Dick’s lap. Dick’s arms are wrapped around him, supporting him, and Dick is laughing again. Laughing, the moon bright and clear on his face, and Tim looks down at him and Dick’s eyes are open.
“Isn’t this more fun than a walk?” Dick laughs up at him, and Tim hears a click just before he feels his belt loosen and fall away, slither down his thigh to pool next to his knee. “Takes ten seconds longer than it used to, to disarm that thing,” Dick says in his ear. “Was that you or Bruce?” he asks, and his words laugh for him, and his hands are already up under Tim’s tunic.
Dick’s flexibility is his superpower. His hands are his weapons, used ruthlessly in the name of good and right and making other people do what he wants them to. What he seems to want right now is for Tim’s tunic to disappear.
Tugging, pulling at the fastenings. Loosening them enough to slide up under and rest just there, his fingertips grazing the small of Tim’s back.
Tim can feel the shape of them on his skin. The size of each individual finger is burned into his sense memory, and he hears himself (moan) make some kind of low noise, feels the arch his body is becoming under the light pressure of those fingers.
Hears Dick say, “Oh wow,” and he’s ridiculously glad he can’t see himself right now, hearing is bad enough. Even worse that he’s hard inside his tights and not even the cramped fit of his jock can stop his penis from getting harder, wetter every time Dick’s fingers slide down a little more and press in right there—
Under his tights, riding the top of his ass. And it’s like his tailbone is some kind of trigger and Dick’s thumb is right on it, pressing gently against it. Slip-sliding through the trickle of sweat running down Tim’s back into the cleft of his ass.
“Don’t.” It’s out before he can stop it, before he can decide if it’s what he wants to say or what he wants to happen.
He doesn’t think he wants Dick to stop moving, but Dick has to. Or Tim has to say something else, and he doesn’t have anything else to say, so Dick can’t move. And his hands are wrong in their stillness, and his shoulders are giving under Tim’s hands.
Tim’s lip is stinging and he can hear his teeth grinding together. He can’t see anything because… because…
“Tim,” Dick whispers, so close he can feel the vibration disturbing the molecular structure of the air in and around his ears. Dick’s thighs flex, bunch up and release, and Tim involuntarily tightens his own thighs around them. Shivers when something brushes his chin. And, “Timmy,” and his eyes snap back open, and Dick—
“Don’t what?” Dick asks. He kisses Tim’s jaw, insubstantial sensation brushed over his chin, the corner of his mouth, and pushes with his fingertips. Pushes Tim forward until Tim can feel the heat of him through layers of Kevlar and Nomex and microfiber; until he can feel the wash of Dick’s sigh across his neck.
There’s blood in his mouth. He tastes it when he swallows. When he relaxes his jaw, the air hits and his lower lip throbs and stings where his teeth have cut into it, and that’s the least of his pain. His hands hurt from being clenched so tightly, and he doesn’t want to think about how much Dick’s shoulders have to be aching. Even knowing that, he has to make himself let go, and the sound Dick makes is almost a groan, and the heat, the calloused skin of his hands on Tim’s back, on Tim’s scars isn’t nearly enough.
It’s not enough to be anything but fantasy, lifelong; hardly enough to make him believe… anything at all.
The only things that feel real are his own hands and the rough-slick slide of Nightwing’s suit under his palms as he drags them down over the ridges and angles of Dick beneath it. And stops, barely touching, hovering at the join of leggings and shirt.
There’s a sound, something choked on and unwilling, caught in his throat. He can’t push it out, can’t push his hands down any farther, they won’t move. And he feels the preparatory tightening in his muscles – fight or flight. Something has to give.
He needs to move, needs to groan or shout or— “Please.” Out of him, tearing itself out of him, and then Dick is groaning, heaving up beneath Tim like he needs this, like he can’t stay still even one more second.
And now Tim has to move with him, ride the punch of his hips—
Push his hand down the front of Dick’s tights. Push Dick’s jock out of the way and push back into the fingers that just slipped down past his tailbone into his cleft. Moan and shake and clench at the pressure of Dick’s thumb grazing the outer rim of his anus.
Dick’s other hand is just as busy. It’s in Tim’s tights, working its way under his jock. Pulling it clear and his hands are – they’re just hands and it doesn’t make sense that Tim’s hand wouldn’t feel just as good, that it wouldn’t make Tim jerk and shudder and ache.
“I want to make you do that again a lot.” Dick licks his ear and strokes, and Tim jerks forward and then back, and the tip of Dick’s finger penetrates him.
Presses into him and… stops. Tim opens his eyes.
There is no circumstance or situation in which Dick Grayson is not beautiful. Even when he’s blank-eyed and open-mouthed… and if Tim squinted he could probably see the cartoon squiggles and birds circling his head…
Dick says, “God, you look like you... is that what...?”
What he wants?
It’s not about that, but that’s—
Not what Dick wants to hear.
And he’s not always as good as he should be at gauging his own reactions, but he’s pretty sure laughter isn’t the correct response.
He says, “Don’t,” again, but this time he also says, “stop.” He kisses Dick and doesn’t let himself think about what he’s doing, and then Dick’s finger is pressing in again and he has to think about that.
Sweat-slick and it’s not enough; all the books say that, and they’re right. He already knows the heavy pressure of his own fingers. The heat and the burn, the impossible stretch around three of his fingers, even with lube leaking down from his anus to pool in his cleft.
Three fingers were enough to stretch him almost past bearing, so full he was sure he wouldn’t ever be able to take anything else, but pulling out was so much worse. Like he was pulling something of himself out with his fingers. And he’d (almost) never felt so (Jason) hollowed out and empty before as he did the first time, knowing what it was like to have that pressure and fullness, and then to have to take it away.
Pain is… something else. Manageable. He expected it to hurt, before he’d come and after, and it did. Still stings even now, in more ways than one, but he’s always been careful not to try for more than he could possibly take or want. He doesn’t – Robin doesn’t take potentially damaging chances outside the mission; he wouldn’t want to, and there’s lube in third compartment of his belt if he… if… but it’s…
It hurts in the right way. Burns and stings and Dick’s finger nudges in again and he knows it’s not the right kind of wet, not enough. Except that it feels like more than enough, and Dick just feels like more.
Dick’s mouth and restless hands and his cock, thick and blood-hot when Tim’s hand closes over it -- it’s all more than Tim thinks he really wants, but it’s no more than he can handle.
Like three of his own fingers. Like one of Dick’s, inside him more with every circling nudge, and it feels—he thinks—
Dick groans against Tim’s cheek and the slide of Tim’s hand around his penis gets slicker, easier. His breath hits Tim’s throat in staccato bursts, “Need your hands, god, Robin.”
And Tim’s yanking at Dick’s tights while Dick yanks at his, bare skin searching for more skin, and the damp friction of Dick’s penis rubbing against his penis is more relief than pleasure.
“Yeah, yeah fuck—”
He doesn’t mean to stop, but that… is that… what this is? What they’re—?
“Tim.”
Turning, chasing Dick’s mouth. Biting into his lip because he already bit his own and it’s… there’s already blood in his mouth—
Dick’s kiss tastes like shared blood and it’s hard enough to knock Tim back against the arm around him, back onto the finger inside him. Dick’s fingers, Dick’s hand… big enough to hold their penises together even without Tim’s hand, and his fingers are meshing with Tim’s fingers and tightening—
Tim jerks his mouth free and bites down on his hand so he can’t scream.
And comes.
His breath hisses, high and jerked out of him and he can’t get any air back in. He’s wheezing and dizzy; he’s raw inside and out -- Dick’s hands feel like sandpaper and he – he came before Dick and that’s—
Almost as bad as coming at all, here, like this.
Dick doesn’t sound like he cares. He almost sounds like he’s crying, breathless syllables tangled up, incoherent. Tim can’t tell what he’s saying – it could be “Sorry” or “Timmy” or some other word Tim doesn’t need to know, Tim doesn’t—
He doesn’t care, he just wants to—
“Come… come here, Tim please.”
Dick is already too close for any kind of distance. Closing in on him, closing him in, and Tim has to force himself not to fight free. He has to remind himself who this is, but when he does—
“Please,” Dick says again, and Tim lets himself fall.
He lets Dick move their hands the way he needs. Lets Dick show him what he wants while he closes his eyes and rests his forehead on Dick’s shoulder. Which is as hard as the suit is rough, but not hard or rough enough to distract him from the slick slap of their hands. His penis is still hard and Dick’s finger is still inside him. It keeps nudging his prostate, and if Dick doesn’t come soon he… he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t think he could again, doesn’t want to, but—
Dick’s cheek is pressed against the side of his head and Dick keeps saying his name. His arm tightens and his finger pushes in all the way and Tim hears himself gasping, feels himself start clenching again—
He smells it when Dick comes. Fresh sweat dripping down both their faces and Dick’s semen all over their hands.
And Tim thinks it’s going to stop now, he hears someone saying, “Can’t, don’t, I’m not—”
And it’s him, he knows it’s him when Dick says, “Sshh, sshh, it’s okay, you can—Timmy, it’s okay.”
Inside him Dick’s finger twists and crooks, pulls out and pushes back in; Dick’s thumb rubs back and forth across the slit in the head of his penis, almost as though it’s pushing in—
Tim has nothing to bite but Dick’s shoulder. He can’t hear his screams through the buzzing in his ears.
He leaves his eyes closed for eons and seconds and ten exhalations, and he can’t see anything when he opens them. His face is turned into Dick’s shoulder.
He has no immediate need to move so he stays where he is, breathing in the odors of his own sweat and Dick’s shampoo. The chemical taste of Nightwing’s suit coats his tongue and he swallows it down, keeps swallowing until the bitter afterburn is gone and his throat isn't quite as sore.
Dick’s voice is low and very close to his ear. “Pulling out, okay?” Tim nods against Dick’s shoulder. The suit scratches his skin. And Dick is saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” against his the top of his head, and it hurts, but not that much.
And when Dick kind of… rubs up against (nuzzles?) him and tips him over onto his cape; when he crawls on top of him without doing anything about their tights or the slimy mess of semen between them that’s already beginning to dry, Tim doesn’t struggle. He doesn’t say anything.
He lets Dick sprawl all over him. It feels like the intelligent thing. Dick is still on the reacting side of the line and at this point, shoving would be--
The potential consequences are legion and for the most part, negative. Also, one of Dick's hands is currently cupping his bare right asscheek.
He wonders if the combined actions of the past hour constitute losing his virginity. He thinks that just maybe, they don’t. A fantasy isn’t capable of actual deflowering and the last – he cranes his neck to check the clock on the wall – the last fifty-three minutes could, when viewed from a certain angle, qualify as such. They could have been the collective reenactment of any number of scenarios he imagined both before and after his first ejaculation. And nothing about this – Dick’s head on his chest, Robin’s cape under his bared ass, Nightwing’s stripe growing warm under his hand – is unknown to various areas of his brain.
Not even the gauntlet digging into his kidney feels out of place.
There’s only one discordant note in the dream construct. Fantasies are obedient and safe and harmless to everyone involved – with the possible exception of the person doing the fantasizing – and while he will sometimes follow orders, and causes harm only to those who deserve it, there is nothing at all safe about Dick Grayson.
Even half asleep, he’s dangerous on so many levels it’s impossible to estimate which ones apply to this situation if any—
“I’m sorry, little brother,” Dick mumbles and pushes his face into Tim’s neck. “Really, I—” Slurred out, exhausted and wriggling on top of Tim, presumably looking for a comfortable position.
Which isn’t comfortable for either of them, but Tim isn’t paying much attention. He’s thinking about the alley. Squashed-rot stink not quite covering the underlying tang of blood, and the fight he didn’t want but Dick seemed to need.
He remembers qualifiers: they both put them out there. Threw them at each other and they both missed, wingding and batarang meeting midair and bouncing off in different directions.
He remembers asking Dick why he couldn’t just apologize in so many words. Although in a way, he supposes that’s what tonight was about.
And somehow it’s very… very Dick of him to offer a whole body apology. Tim can see how that would make it easier for some people to believe in the sincerity of what’s being offered.
Not that he doesn’t believe in Dick’s sincerity. That would be impossible on the grounds that Dick is always sincere. About everything, even when one thing he’s sincere about contradicts the premise of another thing he believes in equally. Dick is flexible in all parts of his life, but Tim doesn’t have his elasticity of body or belief.
It’s enough for him to know that Dick means what he says when he says it. He’s positive Dick believes he’s sorry right now. He always does. And he’ll keep believing, keep meaning it until the next time the wingding hits the batarang.
As though he hears and is disturbed by Tim’s thoughts, Dick wriggles again, mutters something Tim doesn’t catch. The positioning of his left hipbone is fast becoming crucial to Tim’s continued health. One more wriggle and Tim is going to have to retrieve the shock-prod from his belt.
Instead he says, “Hold still.” And he doesn’t wait for something that isn’t likely to happen. He shifts enough to one side that he can pull the gauntlet out from under him, then he lays it next to its mate and settles, letting Dick settle on top of him. And then he waits.
And eventually Dick’s body is deadweight, pushing the knobs of Tim’s spine down into his not very plush carpet. Eventually, the in-out of Dick’s chest evens out, slows until its movement matches the rhythm of Tim’s breathing.
Tim tries not to breathe too deeply and tries not to feel as though his ribcage is caving in. His position makes it impossible not to notice the Superman poster directly above him on his ceiling. He put it there because it was growing faded from being in direct sunlight on one of his walls. The concept of preservation seems to be working, as far as it goes, but one ragged corner has pulled free of the tacky stuff he used to attach it, and now the poster sags sadly to one side.
Superman’s face is creased, making him look like he’s frowning at Tim.
Tim turns his head and looks at his gauntlets. He avoids thinking about the poster falling and Superman flying. About what Superman would think if he looked all the way from Metropolis into this room. But it’s impossible not to think, and Dick is… he’s heavy. Hot and heavy and not going anywhere.
The poster isn’t going anywhere, either, but it, at least, is an easy fix. He’ll do that after Dick leaves. Until then he’ll have to hope it doesn’t fall.
Tim shifts Dick’s arm off of him, reducing the heat and weight by a very small factor. Then he looks back up at the poster and he says, without looking anywhere else, “Apology accepted.”
He starts calculating exactly how long he can let Dick sleep, estimating and then subtracting the time it’ll take him to make a clean getaway before his parents come home. It doesn’t keep him occupied long, but it’s better than nothing.
Five minutes later he’s mentally rearranging the contents of his belt. His left leg is going numb.
On top of Central the bat signal goes on.
He’s still staring at the faded yellow light pooling around their legs when the poster falls.
and one in the hand
DC comics, post-Fugitive | Dick Grayson/Tim Drake | NC-17 | ~5800 words
summary: Being a caped vigilante means never having to apologize. That's the theory, anyway.
“Sorry,” Dick tells him. “No one's home and I didn’t think there’d be a problem.”
He half grins and Tim stares, but as explanations go it’s plausible and not at all surprising considering the source. Dick has a tendency to do and think afterward, and it’s possible and possibly probable that that’s exactly what happened here.
It’s equally possible that he really is sorry. Probable, even. Just like it’s probable that he didn’t mean to do this, possibly because he never does. Mean it.
He doesn’t mean to get in another one-way shouting match with Bruce, the kind where he’s the only one shouting while Bruce turns his back on him and walks away.
He doesn’t mean to skid out of the cave on his bike like he can’t leave himself behind fast enough. He never intends to lose himself in Gotham before he can head back to Blüdhaven, but Gotham happens, crime happens and Nightwing will always need to do something about both of those things that are actually one thing total.
He never means to react the way he does, but he always does, probably always will, and Tim can tell by looking at him how the last couple of hours went down. Some incidents don’t require physical media for playback, just intimate knowledge of the individuals involved. And if you know what you’re looking for, Dick prediction is as basic as memory.
Tim does know (he’s made something uncomfortably close to a fetish of knowing) and he thinks tonight there was… a mugging. Maybe some other type of assault. Someone screamed while Dick was waiting at a light. Nightwing responded.
Theoretically it works, or at least that’s what he (knows believes) thinks. Certainly the scenario fits in with tonight’s parameters. It’s also true that the actual eventuation chain could have been any one of several hundred possibilities. Tim knows them all, and he knows Dick. That’s all the detective work necessary.
In the same way, it’s completely unnecessary for him to use the cave’s lab and massive crays to find out that Dick didn’t mean to stop by his apartment. In his head he can see the path of Dick’s bike as clearly as if he’d gone along for the ride. Dick was already in the suit, still in Gotham, and he just happened to end up in this part of town. Happened to (remember) think of Tim, and then the rest… happened.
And it’s definitely, inherently possible that he didn’t intend to crouch an indefinite amount of time on Tim’s window ledge, making himself even crazier replaying every word he said to Bruce on the feedback loop behind his eyes. Trying to imagine all the words Bruce will never give him back.
Probably, he didn’t mean to end up in Tim’s room, but all available evidence indicates that he did. He got tired of crawling around inside his own head, and Bruce’s as well, so he crawled through Tim’s window and waited for Tim to get back from patrol.
Which is where Tim came in. It’s where Tim is, crouched in the window Nightwing left open with a batarang in his hand and Dick sprawled on his bed in full gear saying sorry for being there, or maybe for being himself, which amounts to the same thing.
It’s a good thing his dad and Dana are out tonight. And he guesses he could imagine his father’s reaction if he really wanted to… and that would be an emphatic no because he really, really doesn’t.
He doesn’t want activate his comm, either, but doing what he wants has never figured overmuch in any game plan he’s made to date. He pulls his cape tighter around him, turns the comm on and says, “You were right. He’s here.”
Oracle should never laugh. Ever. There should be a law, but then she’d just have to break it. Because wheelchair or not, she’s still a vigilante, and being a vigilante is the definition of never having to say you’re sorry.
Except for those rare occasions when you’re doing the honors for some other vigilante, which is its own precise skill set. Barbara is better at it than the rest of them, but that’s – well. It’s not saying much.
But neither does she. Much.
“Sorry about this,” is what she says now. “Since they dropped the charges, he’s been—they’ve both been… you know how they’ve been.”
“Yes,” Tim says. And he does. He even understands, maybe more than he wants to, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to forget anything. It doesn’t change the fact that it costs him both more and less than he’d like to say “I’ve got this,” and mean it.
And if a mechanized voice could be anything but ambiguous… “You sure?”
“Affirmative,” he says, and glances at the bed. Dick’s hands are laced together behind his head. It’s possible he’s staring at the ceiling. The lenses make it next to impossible to tell.
Tim’s bed has never looked less like something made for sleeping on.
“Keep him busy,” Oracle says. “Make him chase you, play with him, take him for a walk. Just keep him going until he remembers the where line between thinking and reacting is. If someone doesn’t, he’s going to keep doing things like this.”
“And I’m here.”
“Got it in one.”
“You know,” Dick says, “I can hear you guys. I’m still in the loop.”
“That can change,” Oracle says as dryly as a computer-generated voice can. “He’s all yours.”
“Thank you,” Tim says. “Really. I’ll think of a way to pay you back later.” And there’s another laugh that should never be before the line goes dead.
Gradual, inevitable progression is the only definition that fits the sound of the city filling the vacuum Oracle’s voice left. It crawls back up the side of the building, slithers through the gaps between Tim’s body and his arms and legs and into the room. Tim tucks his batarang away and slides all the way in along with it, shutting most of it out when he shuts the window behind him.
Paper crackles under his feet when he moves, but he doesn’t look down. He’s already seen what Dick’s presence has done to and for and with his room. He doesn’t need to look again.
And it’s technically not Dick’s fault that the window didn’t close all the way, that it caught the way it does sometimes and the wind came through and blew Tim’s papers all over the room. Isn’t his fault, as in he didn’t mean for it to happen. Being in the room is, in itself, a kind of fault, though the specifics of blame are somewhat hard to pin down, in much the same way Dick is.
Tim knows this. All of this. And on another night, in an earlier time, he would have already absolved Dick. This isn’t that night.
Tim isn’t nine anymore, and Dick—
“Get your boots off my duvet,” Tim says, and Dick rolls up onto his elbow and grins, all the way this time. Stretches his legs that one inch farther, so that his feet are hanging off the end of the bed as opposed to smearing grit and mud and motor oil on top of Tim’s dark blue bedspread, and props his cheek on his hand. Which only serves to pull his grin wider than it actually is, which means Tim… needs to start estimating the possible collateral damage to his room if he pulled his batarang back out and threw it.
“I was gonna take ‘em off and take a nap,” Dick interrupts his silent calculations. He plucks at Tim’s sheets with one black and blue hand, “But I didn’t want to spoil your hospital corners. Seriously, what’s a teenager doing with hospital corners? Jeeze, Timbo, you—”
“I hate that.” One thing among so many others. “You know I hate it.”
The knowledge is there; it’s in Dick’s smile as much as in his words. “Sure I do. Why else would I do it?” He flips onto his back again, legs curling up, over his head—
“Dick, boots—”
And he did know this was coming – Dick’s boots on his bed, Dick’s thigh muscles bunching, coiled and ready – but Dick is so much faster, he’s all movement and Tim is—
Flat on his back on the floor, and Dick is… “Putting on a few pounds lately?”
He’s laughing, hot gusts of air across Tim’s jaw and cheek, his left knee is pushing Tim’s right thigh up and back, and if Tim turned his head slightly to the right—
Dick would cup his cheek just like that and say, “Hi. Nice mask. Why don’t you take it off?”
Nightwing’s gauntlets are scarred and rough, but Dick’s bare hands wouldn’t be much better. And Dick is humming low in his throat, his thumb is nudging the edge of Robin’s mask, peeling it back a millimeter at a time...
Tim has one shot at this. He has to make it count.
He doesn’t move until he’s sure of where he needs to put his knees and hands. Because it’s Dick, and Dick taught him how to do this, which is why it feels… wrong and awkwardly perfect at the same time to pull his knees up, push up and over with his hands and his legs… and hear Nightwing hit the wall of Tim Drake’s bedroom.
“Oh, that’s gonna hurt for a while,” Dick says in a muffled voice. “Nice one, Timmy.”
Tim’s somersault finishes in a crouch. He stays in it, hands splayed over his knees, and his cape falls down around him. He pulls it in, curls into it and raises his head.
Dick looks back at him – at least, he’s up out of his sprawl, facing Tim. Whether or not he’s actually looking at Tim isn’t obvious. His position is a funhouse reflection: Tim as he might eventually be, but never will. And his mask is off, on the floor, and Tim still can’t see his eyes.
“I can leave,” he says quietly, and it’s not the first time Tim’s felt the futility of wanting resolution for anything, even something as irrelevant as Dick’s hair falling into his eyes.
The edge of his own mask is already coming loose. He picks at it, tugs until he can pull it away without pulling his skin off. And he says, “No.”
The mask hurts coming off: it always does. He weighs it in his hand, ridiculously light compared to the weight of Robin’s gauntlet and also to the sudden weight of Dick’s hand in Nightwing’s gauntlet wrapped completely around his wrist.
His first, quickly suppressed reaction is as new as his suit’s design and as old as instinct: get out of the hold, disable and/or cripple his assailant. Do it right the first time so they’ll stay down, so that they can’t get up and come at him again.
He doesn’t think he moves, and of course he can’t see himself, but he can see Dick. And when Dick’s hand on his wrist starts being less about aggression than surety, when his wrist bones stop feeling like they’re going to give out any second, Dick stops looking like Tim just sucker punched him.
“Tim,” Dick says, “hey, it’s me, come on.”
Robin’s mask is falling onto the floor, landing a quarter of a room away from and way too close to Nightwing’s mask. Tim’s hands look small and green and pointless on top of and underneath black and blue. And Dick is much closer to Tim than Robin’s mask is to Nightwing’s; he’s blood and sweat and motorcycle grease; he’s Gotham and not, and Tim can’t—
“Tim.” Repetition feels warm against his skin, Dick’s breath blown out in the shape of his name. “C’mere?” Dick says, and he’s tugging at Tim’s cape with the hand not holding on to Tim’s wrist. Making Tim’s muscles ache with wanting to move.
Because this… he doesn’t think this is anything close to what Barbara meant, but he can’t quite tell himself she wouldn’t want him to go this route and then make himself believe it. He can wish for the excuse to be viable, but the easier it gets to lie to other people, the harder it is to lie to himself.
It’s always been impossible to lie to Dick, and right now Dick’s hands might even be some kind of truth, tight and ungiving, but his grip on Tim’s wrist isn’t as solid as it was. It relaxes and Tim’s blood circulation starts up again and his skin shivers and crawls along with Dick’s fingers, trailing s-lines up the side of his neck to his scalp—
Tim winces and Dick doesn’t take his hand out of his hair, but he does stop tugging on it. He tips Tim’s head back and holds him there with the moon too bright in his eyes. And he could be looking down at Tim, he could be looking over his head or at the R, but it’s impossible to say for sure with his hair hanging down in his face.
Dick’s hair is in his eyes. Tim’s hair is caught around Dick’s hand. Every twitch of Dick’s fingers is a tug on Tim’s scalp, another shiver down his spine.
“Still hate me?” Dick asks.
It shouldn’t be possible for so much intelligence and blind ignorance to exist side by side within the same cranial mass.
Tim says as much.
Dick just laughs. He says, “Bruce,” and he laughs again, and Tim… can’t disagree with him. He can’t argue with Dick’s laughter; he doesn’t even want to. Which makes it easier than he expected but so much more complicated to pull Dick down on top of him than it was to throw him.
It’s harder to convince his brain that his actions make sense than it is to make room for Dick between his legs.
And part of him is assessing the threat level while another part extrapolates Dick’s potential reactions to being flipped onto his back for the second time in fifteen minutes. And Dick is leaning in and then he’s just—
Getting the air pressed out of his lungs one breath at a time. And getting kissed.
And all of him is analyzing Dick’s technique while trying to decide what his response should be.
Kissing back is the obvious response, and it’s possibly even the right one. It’s also the expected response, the one Dick seems to expect, and Tim could write a book on Dick’s unspoken, preconceived expectations that have little or no resemblance to actual human reactions, but he can’t—
He can’t be Dick. Can’t throw himself into Dick the way Dick throws himself off rooftops. All Tim can be is careful, albeit not as much as he would have been before Steph. And then not careful at all. It’s impossible to keep being careful when Dick is cupping his cheek in his bare hand, tilting his head back and kissing him like his mouth is an end in itself and not just the means to one.
And he wants – he wishes Dick would just keep kissing him. Keep pushing his tongue into his mouth, keep making approving little noises so that he won’t notice Tim grinding up against his hip, but Dick is already pulling away. He’s pushing up on his hands, reluctantly separating his mouth from Tim’s; he’s looking down at Tim through his hair and saying, “Lose the cape.”
Kneeling, pushing Tim’s legs back and up with his own legs… and that was the first gauntlet, hitting the wall.
Tim pulls his own gauntlets off carefully. One at a time. Lays them on the floor as far away as the stretch of his arm. He’s watching Dick’s face, still looking for his eyes, because if he looks down he’ll see his thighs spread open around Dick. He’ll see his own need, not Dick’s, which is—
“Hey,” Dick says softly. “Breathe.” And Tim blinks and gasps and, most importantly, breathes, and Dick reaches down and unfastens the cape. Pushes it away from Tim’s throat, spreads it open.
Tim sees yellow in his peripheral vision. He sees blue slashed black in front of him. Feels the slide of Dick’s mouth over his throat, the slide of his hands down under him, nudging in between him and the cape. Cupping his ass.
Dick’s hands tighten on his hips and he has time to grip Dick’s arms and say, “Wait.” And then he’s not on his back anymore; he’s upright on Dick’s lap, straddling Dick’s lap. Dick’s arms are wrapped around him, supporting him, and Dick is laughing again. Laughing, the moon bright and clear on his face, and Tim looks down at him and Dick’s eyes are open.
“Isn’t this more fun than a walk?” Dick laughs up at him, and Tim hears a click just before he feels his belt loosen and fall away, slither down his thigh to pool next to his knee. “Takes ten seconds longer than it used to, to disarm that thing,” Dick says in his ear. “Was that you or Bruce?” he asks, and his words laugh for him, and his hands are already up under Tim’s tunic.
Dick’s flexibility is his superpower. His hands are his weapons, used ruthlessly in the name of good and right and making other people do what he wants them to. What he seems to want right now is for Tim’s tunic to disappear.
Tugging, pulling at the fastenings. Loosening them enough to slide up under and rest just there, his fingertips grazing the small of Tim’s back.
Tim can feel the shape of them on his skin. The size of each individual finger is burned into his sense memory, and he hears himself (moan) make some kind of low noise, feels the arch his body is becoming under the light pressure of those fingers.
Hears Dick say, “Oh wow,” and he’s ridiculously glad he can’t see himself right now, hearing is bad enough. Even worse that he’s hard inside his tights and not even the cramped fit of his jock can stop his penis from getting harder, wetter every time Dick’s fingers slide down a little more and press in right there—
Under his tights, riding the top of his ass. And it’s like his tailbone is some kind of trigger and Dick’s thumb is right on it, pressing gently against it. Slip-sliding through the trickle of sweat running down Tim’s back into the cleft of his ass.
“Don’t.” It’s out before he can stop it, before he can decide if it’s what he wants to say or what he wants to happen.
He doesn’t think he wants Dick to stop moving, but Dick has to. Or Tim has to say something else, and he doesn’t have anything else to say, so Dick can’t move. And his hands are wrong in their stillness, and his shoulders are giving under Tim’s hands.
Tim’s lip is stinging and he can hear his teeth grinding together. He can’t see anything because… because…
“Tim,” Dick whispers, so close he can feel the vibration disturbing the molecular structure of the air in and around his ears. Dick’s thighs flex, bunch up and release, and Tim involuntarily tightens his own thighs around them. Shivers when something brushes his chin. And, “Timmy,” and his eyes snap back open, and Dick—
“Don’t what?” Dick asks. He kisses Tim’s jaw, insubstantial sensation brushed over his chin, the corner of his mouth, and pushes with his fingertips. Pushes Tim forward until Tim can feel the heat of him through layers of Kevlar and Nomex and microfiber; until he can feel the wash of Dick’s sigh across his neck.
There’s blood in his mouth. He tastes it when he swallows. When he relaxes his jaw, the air hits and his lower lip throbs and stings where his teeth have cut into it, and that’s the least of his pain. His hands hurt from being clenched so tightly, and he doesn’t want to think about how much Dick’s shoulders have to be aching. Even knowing that, he has to make himself let go, and the sound Dick makes is almost a groan, and the heat, the calloused skin of his hands on Tim’s back, on Tim’s scars isn’t nearly enough.
It’s not enough to be anything but fantasy, lifelong; hardly enough to make him believe… anything at all.
The only things that feel real are his own hands and the rough-slick slide of Nightwing’s suit under his palms as he drags them down over the ridges and angles of Dick beneath it. And stops, barely touching, hovering at the join of leggings and shirt.
There’s a sound, something choked on and unwilling, caught in his throat. He can’t push it out, can’t push his hands down any farther, they won’t move. And he feels the preparatory tightening in his muscles – fight or flight. Something has to give.
He needs to move, needs to groan or shout or— “Please.” Out of him, tearing itself out of him, and then Dick is groaning, heaving up beneath Tim like he needs this, like he can’t stay still even one more second.
And now Tim has to move with him, ride the punch of his hips—
Push his hand down the front of Dick’s tights. Push Dick’s jock out of the way and push back into the fingers that just slipped down past his tailbone into his cleft. Moan and shake and clench at the pressure of Dick’s thumb grazing the outer rim of his anus.
Dick’s other hand is just as busy. It’s in Tim’s tights, working its way under his jock. Pulling it clear and his hands are – they’re just hands and it doesn’t make sense that Tim’s hand wouldn’t feel just as good, that it wouldn’t make Tim jerk and shudder and ache.
“I want to make you do that again a lot.” Dick licks his ear and strokes, and Tim jerks forward and then back, and the tip of Dick’s finger penetrates him.
Presses into him and… stops. Tim opens his eyes.
There is no circumstance or situation in which Dick Grayson is not beautiful. Even when he’s blank-eyed and open-mouthed… and if Tim squinted he could probably see the cartoon squiggles and birds circling his head…
Dick says, “God, you look like you... is that what...?”
What he wants?
It’s not about that, but that’s—
Not what Dick wants to hear.
And he’s not always as good as he should be at gauging his own reactions, but he’s pretty sure laughter isn’t the correct response.
He says, “Don’t,” again, but this time he also says, “stop.” He kisses Dick and doesn’t let himself think about what he’s doing, and then Dick’s finger is pressing in again and he has to think about that.
Sweat-slick and it’s not enough; all the books say that, and they’re right. He already knows the heavy pressure of his own fingers. The heat and the burn, the impossible stretch around three of his fingers, even with lube leaking down from his anus to pool in his cleft.
Three fingers were enough to stretch him almost past bearing, so full he was sure he wouldn’t ever be able to take anything else, but pulling out was so much worse. Like he was pulling something of himself out with his fingers. And he’d (almost) never felt so (Jason) hollowed out and empty before as he did the first time, knowing what it was like to have that pressure and fullness, and then to have to take it away.
Pain is… something else. Manageable. He expected it to hurt, before he’d come and after, and it did. Still stings even now, in more ways than one, but he’s always been careful not to try for more than he could possibly take or want. He doesn’t – Robin doesn’t take potentially damaging chances outside the mission; he wouldn’t want to, and there’s lube in third compartment of his belt if he… if… but it’s…
It hurts in the right way. Burns and stings and Dick’s finger nudges in again and he knows it’s not the right kind of wet, not enough. Except that it feels like more than enough, and Dick just feels like more.
Dick’s mouth and restless hands and his cock, thick and blood-hot when Tim’s hand closes over it -- it’s all more than Tim thinks he really wants, but it’s no more than he can handle.
Like three of his own fingers. Like one of Dick’s, inside him more with every circling nudge, and it feels—he thinks—
Dick groans against Tim’s cheek and the slide of Tim’s hand around his penis gets slicker, easier. His breath hits Tim’s throat in staccato bursts, “Need your hands, god, Robin.”
And Tim’s yanking at Dick’s tights while Dick yanks at his, bare skin searching for more skin, and the damp friction of Dick’s penis rubbing against his penis is more relief than pleasure.
“Yeah, yeah fuck—”
He doesn’t mean to stop, but that… is that… what this is? What they’re—?
“Tim.”
Turning, chasing Dick’s mouth. Biting into his lip because he already bit his own and it’s… there’s already blood in his mouth—
Dick’s kiss tastes like shared blood and it’s hard enough to knock Tim back against the arm around him, back onto the finger inside him. Dick’s fingers, Dick’s hand… big enough to hold their penises together even without Tim’s hand, and his fingers are meshing with Tim’s fingers and tightening—
Tim jerks his mouth free and bites down on his hand so he can’t scream.
And comes.
His breath hisses, high and jerked out of him and he can’t get any air back in. He’s wheezing and dizzy; he’s raw inside and out -- Dick’s hands feel like sandpaper and he – he came before Dick and that’s—
Almost as bad as coming at all, here, like this.
Dick doesn’t sound like he cares. He almost sounds like he’s crying, breathless syllables tangled up, incoherent. Tim can’t tell what he’s saying – it could be “Sorry” or “Timmy” or some other word Tim doesn’t need to know, Tim doesn’t—
He doesn’t care, he just wants to—
“Come… come here, Tim please.”
Dick is already too close for any kind of distance. Closing in on him, closing him in, and Tim has to force himself not to fight free. He has to remind himself who this is, but when he does—
“Please,” Dick says again, and Tim lets himself fall.
He lets Dick move their hands the way he needs. Lets Dick show him what he wants while he closes his eyes and rests his forehead on Dick’s shoulder. Which is as hard as the suit is rough, but not hard or rough enough to distract him from the slick slap of their hands. His penis is still hard and Dick’s finger is still inside him. It keeps nudging his prostate, and if Dick doesn’t come soon he… he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t think he could again, doesn’t want to, but—
Dick’s cheek is pressed against the side of his head and Dick keeps saying his name. His arm tightens and his finger pushes in all the way and Tim hears himself gasping, feels himself start clenching again—
He smells it when Dick comes. Fresh sweat dripping down both their faces and Dick’s semen all over their hands.
And Tim thinks it’s going to stop now, he hears someone saying, “Can’t, don’t, I’m not—”
And it’s him, he knows it’s him when Dick says, “Sshh, sshh, it’s okay, you can—Timmy, it’s okay.”
Inside him Dick’s finger twists and crooks, pulls out and pushes back in; Dick’s thumb rubs back and forth across the slit in the head of his penis, almost as though it’s pushing in—
Tim has nothing to bite but Dick’s shoulder. He can’t hear his screams through the buzzing in his ears.
He leaves his eyes closed for eons and seconds and ten exhalations, and he can’t see anything when he opens them. His face is turned into Dick’s shoulder.
He has no immediate need to move so he stays where he is, breathing in the odors of his own sweat and Dick’s shampoo. The chemical taste of Nightwing’s suit coats his tongue and he swallows it down, keeps swallowing until the bitter afterburn is gone and his throat isn't quite as sore.
Dick’s voice is low and very close to his ear. “Pulling out, okay?” Tim nods against Dick’s shoulder. The suit scratches his skin. And Dick is saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” against his the top of his head, and it hurts, but not that much.
And when Dick kind of… rubs up against (nuzzles?) him and tips him over onto his cape; when he crawls on top of him without doing anything about their tights or the slimy mess of semen between them that’s already beginning to dry, Tim doesn’t struggle. He doesn’t say anything.
He lets Dick sprawl all over him. It feels like the intelligent thing. Dick is still on the reacting side of the line and at this point, shoving would be--
The potential consequences are legion and for the most part, negative. Also, one of Dick's hands is currently cupping his bare right asscheek.
He wonders if the combined actions of the past hour constitute losing his virginity. He thinks that just maybe, they don’t. A fantasy isn’t capable of actual deflowering and the last – he cranes his neck to check the clock on the wall – the last fifty-three minutes could, when viewed from a certain angle, qualify as such. They could have been the collective reenactment of any number of scenarios he imagined both before and after his first ejaculation. And nothing about this – Dick’s head on his chest, Robin’s cape under his bared ass, Nightwing’s stripe growing warm under his hand – is unknown to various areas of his brain.
Not even the gauntlet digging into his kidney feels out of place.
There’s only one discordant note in the dream construct. Fantasies are obedient and safe and harmless to everyone involved – with the possible exception of the person doing the fantasizing – and while he will sometimes follow orders, and causes harm only to those who deserve it, there is nothing at all safe about Dick Grayson.
Even half asleep, he’s dangerous on so many levels it’s impossible to estimate which ones apply to this situation if any—
“I’m sorry, little brother,” Dick mumbles and pushes his face into Tim’s neck. “Really, I—” Slurred out, exhausted and wriggling on top of Tim, presumably looking for a comfortable position.
Which isn’t comfortable for either of them, but Tim isn’t paying much attention. He’s thinking about the alley. Squashed-rot stink not quite covering the underlying tang of blood, and the fight he didn’t want but Dick seemed to need.
He remembers qualifiers: they both put them out there. Threw them at each other and they both missed, wingding and batarang meeting midair and bouncing off in different directions.
He remembers asking Dick why he couldn’t just apologize in so many words. Although in a way, he supposes that’s what tonight was about.
And somehow it’s very… very Dick of him to offer a whole body apology. Tim can see how that would make it easier for some people to believe in the sincerity of what’s being offered.
Not that he doesn’t believe in Dick’s sincerity. That would be impossible on the grounds that Dick is always sincere. About everything, even when one thing he’s sincere about contradicts the premise of another thing he believes in equally. Dick is flexible in all parts of his life, but Tim doesn’t have his elasticity of body or belief.
It’s enough for him to know that Dick means what he says when he says it. He’s positive Dick believes he’s sorry right now. He always does. And he’ll keep believing, keep meaning it until the next time the wingding hits the batarang.
As though he hears and is disturbed by Tim’s thoughts, Dick wriggles again, mutters something Tim doesn’t catch. The positioning of his left hipbone is fast becoming crucial to Tim’s continued health. One more wriggle and Tim is going to have to retrieve the shock-prod from his belt.
Instead he says, “Hold still.” And he doesn’t wait for something that isn’t likely to happen. He shifts enough to one side that he can pull the gauntlet out from under him, then he lays it next to its mate and settles, letting Dick settle on top of him. And then he waits.
And eventually Dick’s body is deadweight, pushing the knobs of Tim’s spine down into his not very plush carpet. Eventually, the in-out of Dick’s chest evens out, slows until its movement matches the rhythm of Tim’s breathing.
Tim tries not to breathe too deeply and tries not to feel as though his ribcage is caving in. His position makes it impossible not to notice the Superman poster directly above him on his ceiling. He put it there because it was growing faded from being in direct sunlight on one of his walls. The concept of preservation seems to be working, as far as it goes, but one ragged corner has pulled free of the tacky stuff he used to attach it, and now the poster sags sadly to one side.
Superman’s face is creased, making him look like he’s frowning at Tim.
Tim turns his head and looks at his gauntlets. He avoids thinking about the poster falling and Superman flying. About what Superman would think if he looked all the way from Metropolis into this room. But it’s impossible not to think, and Dick is… he’s heavy. Hot and heavy and not going anywhere.
The poster isn’t going anywhere, either, but it, at least, is an easy fix. He’ll do that after Dick leaves. Until then he’ll have to hope it doesn’t fall.
Tim shifts Dick’s arm off of him, reducing the heat and weight by a very small factor. Then he looks back up at the poster and he says, without looking anywhere else, “Apology accepted.”
He starts calculating exactly how long he can let Dick sleep, estimating and then subtracting the time it’ll take him to make a clean getaway before his parents come home. It doesn’t keep him occupied long, but it’s better than nothing.
Five minutes later he’s mentally rearranging the contents of his belt. His left leg is going numb.
On top of Central the bat signal goes on.
He’s still staring at the faded yellow light pooling around their legs when the poster falls.