always with the Dick jokes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irrelevant) wrote2011-08-10 04:46 pm
irrelevant) wrote2011-08-10 04:46 pm
Entry tags:
[fic] Date Night (DCU)
Date Night
DC comics (vaguely current continuity) | Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Alfred Pennyworth, Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, Damian Wayne | Dick/Tim | NC-17 | ~7500 words
notes: sequel to Prodigal. finally got off my butt and finished this. it's humor, action and smut, I guess? I figure since the reboot's going to revision present canon away, I might as well have fun while I can. so.
Of course his phone that’s not really a phone starts buzzing right after he palms the pad, because that’s how his life works. It vibrates against his thigh in time with the slide of the chute doors, and he steps halfway in and leans, keeping the doors open with his hip while he works it out of his pocket.
Tag, you’re it.
lrn 2 txt, he types and sends, and man does he not need this tonight.
Fifteen minutes after the board meeting from hell, five seconds before he’s about to head down to the bunker, and three words on a screen are all he needs to know Tim isn’t going to let him off the hook. Tim’s timing has always been the best or the worst, depending on everyone but Tim’s viewpoint, Dick’s current viewpoint being that it sucks, a lot.
Curses, he thinks, foiled again.
You started it, a voice that sounds a lot like Babs whispers in his head, but he pretends not to hear. He says, “Damn,” and shoves the phone back into his pocket, and from somewhere in or around the ornamental fern, Alfred says, “Problem, sir?”
He leans out far enough to see what Alfred’s doing: clipping the moss straggling down the sides of the pot; the bits he can see, anyway. Heba must’ve been in it again. Damian is going to be so dead when he gets back from New York.
Grinning, picturing the look on Damian’s face when he finds moss clippings neatly piled in the middle of his desk, he returns Alfred’s inquiring look with a shake of his head. “Just Tim. We’re, uh, working on something.”
Not quite a lie, but definitely not the whole truth. After all these years he still sucks at verbal evasion.
The clippers in Alfred’s right hand pause mid-snip; his left eyebrow is hovering somewhere near the ceiling. “I’ll inform Master Bruce he’s wanted immediately then, shall I?”
He shakes his head again, laughs again because he got out of that habit way before the time stream ate Bruce, and they both know it. “Hold that thought, Alfie,” he says, and moves his butt so the doors can close.
The second scanner is full body -- two now, jeeze, and he’s not even sure if that was Bruce’s idea or Tim’s. It kicks in as the doors close and he stares at the silver-white surface overhead while it makes sure he’s not public enemy number one.
“User, Richard Grayson, recognized,” a flat, genderless voice says. “Specify level.”
“Two,” he says, and has to grin as the hatch drops him down into the chute. Seriously, one of his and Damian’s best combined ideas ever, because the really awesome thing about building your own bat bunker? You can give yourself all the cool toys.
--
The chute spits him out right where he needs to be, lights coming on, computer booting up as his feet touch down. He slides his ear piece in, activating it, and Babs says, “Do I need to tell you this is a bad idea?”
Maybe if he doesn’t say anything she’ll think there’s a comm malfunction and go terrify someone else.
Maybe Tim’s text doesn’t mean what he thinks it does.
“And frozen pigs are flying in hell,” he mutters. Then, loud and cheerful and totally fake: “Hey, O.” He kicks his loafers off and picks them up, dangling them from two fingers while he yanks at his tie with his free hand. “This is kind of unexpected. I mean, stop me if you’ve heard this one, but didn’t you quit?”
“No one ever expects the Spanish inquisition. And nobody in this game ever really quits, not when they’re mentoring Stephanie Brown. I’m building Bruce’s new internet, remember?”
He tosses the tie on the chair and bends over the console. “Sucks to be you. Hang on a sec,” he says before she can skewer him as he so richly deserves. “I’ve got mail.”
A pile of vid messages, to be exact, one from Bruce, two from Damian, and a couple dozen from the other usual suspects, but the most recent one…
He hits enter and the screen is abruptly full of color. Bright primary red, yellow inside black, and green gauntlets, green tights, and he was righter than he knew, because—
“Oh boy.” His voice is thick enough to strangle on, low and heavy in his ears, almost a moan. He sounds fucked, or like he just got fucked, probably because he did. He feels his shoes slip from his fingers. Hears them hit the ground.
Robin smiles at him from the screen, small, smirky, got you over a barrel, and this time Dick groans for real.
“I wasn’t going to do this,” Robin says, “but I know you. You’d find a way out. I’m not going to give you one,” he finishes, and he’s turning away from the camera, and one (green green fuck green) gauntlet is wrapped around his extended staff – he must have been training.
“You’re it,” he says, and that’s all she wrote. Dick hears sucker loud and clear.
The screen goes as blank as Dick’s mind feels. Babs is making weird noises in his ear. The part of his brain that’s still working is glad she’s not using the voice scrambler. “I’m screwed,” he mumbles.
“What was your first clue?”
“This is emotional blackmail!” He can hear the whine in his voice. Babs has moved on from making weird noises to laughing herself sick.
“You started it,” she says, echoing his too-accurate-for-comfort imagination. “So, about that job you were going to do for me?”
So, so screwed.
--
“It’s a closed system,” she says as he opens his locker. “I need someone to get in and download onto a flash drive.” And then the locker door swings wide and that’s the last intelligible thing he hears for a while.
He knows she’s talking and that he should be listening, but she’s background to the ringing in his ears, sinuses stinging like he just took a punch. Because Tim’s never pulled his punches, ever, and he sure didn’t pull this one.
He reaches out. Lays his hand flat. Microfiber slipslides, shimmies away under his fingertips, black and blue where there’s usually grey and black. Tim must’ve put it there before he left.
Tim.
Robin.
Dick curls his fingers tight into slick-rough fabric and pulls it out.
The first time he had to be Batman, as opposed to just wearing the suit for a couple of nights; the first time he thought he might have to put on the cowl for good, Tim was there. Tim was his Robin, his partner, the biggest reason he didn’t go nuts during a time when his hatred and love for Bruce were barely balanced equality.
Tim kept him grounded. Tim’s need for everything to be okay kept him focused, and Batman’s need for Robin was never so obvious to him as it was then. Or at least—
It wasn’t. Until Bruce died and he put Damian’s and Gotham’s needs ahead of his own. And Tim’s.
Having Tim as his Robin now, even just for a few nights, seemed so necessary. The choice was so obvious he had the costume made before he asked.
He knew Tim wouldn’t say no, knew it in his gut. But he didn’t really understand what he was asking. He saw the struggle, watched it happen on Tim’s face, but he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand until now, black and blue in his hands, and he can’t—
He wears the symbol and the cowl. He has to, so he does. But Batman will always be Bruce’s.
Robin will always be Batman’s.
Nightwing.
Nightwing is his.
In his head he can see Tim putting the suit in his locker. Laying it carefully down on top of the cowl, then closing the door. And none of this, none of it has anything to do with need. It has everything to do with desire and want, and Dick’s going to associate that shade of blue with intense, visceral temptation for the rest of his life.
His life. His suit. Your choice, Robin-Tim-Robin whispers.
He’s out of his street clothes, tugging the uniform shirt down over the leggings when Babs stops being background noise.
“—hear me? Dick?”
“Yeah,” he hears himself say. “I read you, O.”
“Forget it,” she says, a blend of amusement and disgust that only Babs and Tim can manage. “I’ll tell Robin and he can tell you.”
“Absolutely,” he says, grinning like an idiot at the gauntlet he just pulled on. “You do that.”
“And you?” The disgust is gone, leaving only amusement behind. Dick flexes his hand. The right colors, right fit, perfect grip.
Perfect.
“Same thing I do every night, Pinky,” he says, and he can feel his grin stretching until it fills the locker bay, the bunker, the whole damn Tower. “Stop everyone else from taking over the world.”
She groans, as expected, and he laughs. “See you, babe,” he says. “Got a flight to catch.”
He thinks she says something, sounds like, “More like a bird.” But he could be wrong about that. And next family meeting Bruce will break out the design specs for his kinder, friendlier, pastel color scheme, complete with pink cowl and rainbow sparkle lenses.
Sure thing.
--
The really wrong thing is the way everything feels exactly right. Rightest wrong thing ever.
The guy pulling an attempted B&E over on Finger and Fifth seems to agree. Nightwing cuffs him and flips him over and he stares up at him with something a lot like horror in his eyes. “You’re supposed to be dead! Spazz told me he offed you when the riots went down.”
“Can’t kill me, I’m the gingerbread man,” Nightwing singsongs, and that look—
Yeah, that’s the one.
“Thanks, man,” he says. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed this.”
“He’s wondering if he’s supposed to laugh, scream, or soil his already unsanitary pants,” Robin’s voice comes down from overhead. “In case you were wondering.”
Nightwing tips his head back and grins. “Duh.” Grins wider because red and green and black gargoyles hanging off second floor fire escapes should not be that cute and little.
Well, not that little. Not as little as he used to be. Definitely bigger than he was the last time they did this in these suits.
Little brother all grown up.
“If you’re done playing,” Robin says, straightening out of his crouch and displaying all the various and very interesting ways he’s grown up, “we have an errand to run.”
Nightwing grins down at the guy. Who whimpers. “You done? Yeah? Me too.” He looks back up at Robin. “Yeah, we’re done.”
It could be a laugh. Or a snort. With Robin it’s always a tossup. “Top of the Aparo building. I’ll wait five minutes.”
Definitely a snort. Even his cape sounds annoyed, snapping out in his departing wake, a black and yellow banner of disapproval.
“So he can be a major pain in the ass,” Nightwing tells his prisoner, “but you gotta love him. Best partner a guy could ask for.”
He attaches a tracking strip to the dude’s collar, activates it and sends the code to GCPD dispatch. Then he pulls out his grapple and hauls ass after Robin.
--
He’ll admit his landing isn’t the best he’s ever made, but Robin’s smug closed-mouth smile is totally uncalled for.
“Give me a break, it’s been a while since I trained in these things.” He wiggles black and blue fingers and gives Robin’s suit a pointed look. “I know you trained for a couple of hours before you left the bunker. I have the security vids to pro—hey, they put up a railing. Cool.”
He flips himself up onto it and starts hand-walking his way over to Robin. Who lowers his binoculars, the better to stare expressionlessly at him. “You were saying something about reconditioning yourself?”
“Heh, funny.” There’s just something about walking on thin margins over big, empty spaces with no cape to get in the way. Almost as good as it was the first time after Bruce fi—
Yeah, not going there. He turns his back on the drop, curls his legs over and down until he’s standing upright next to Robin. “O said you’d fill me in?”
The binoculars go back up. “That building.” Mm, pointy green fingers, and why is his brain so stuck on that? He used to have a pair of gauntlets a lot like those. Maybe this is some kind of delayed, narcissistic ego trip with a side of id to go?
Okay, no, because… just no. Also, if that was going to happen it would have been Jay. So again, no.
Probably.
“The owner deals in designer drugs,” Robin continues, oblivious to Nightwing’s getting more disturbed by the second thoughts, “but for the last three weeks he’s been distributing a hybrid comprised of venom and one of Joker’s less lethal happy powders. He’s also a borderline megalomaniacal certified schizophrenic with extreme paranoid tendencies who keeps his files on a terminal not hooked up to any kind of network.”
“Not O’s kind of guy.”
“He’s not anyone’s kind of guy.”
“Not unless you’re Lex Luthor.” He leans forward, leaning his elbows on the railing. “What’s the plan?”
“Go in through the ventilation system, kill video, seal the room, get the data, get out.”
He eyes the building, a glassy, thirty-story exercise in bad taste. Then he looks at Robin. “That sounds like one of my plans. With you, there’s usually a lot more description in between the ventilation system and getting out.”
Robin tucks his binoculars into his belt and pulls out his grapple. He smiles at Nightwing. “Trust me.”
“This,” Nightwing says, “is going to suck a lot.” He’s starting to rethink the whole partner thing, and anyway, who died and made Robin Batman?
Aside from, you know, the obvious.
He looks back over at Robin. “It is going to suck, isn’t it?”
Robin is doing that thing where he tries not to chew on his lip. Which is a dead giveaway for him trying to decide whether or not lying is worth his time and effort.
“Give in and gnaw,” Nightwing encourages him. “You know you want to.” He gets a dirty look that could, under certain circumstances, lead to dirtier, better things. He’s going to go ahead and assume these are not those circumstances.
“Possibly,” Robin says, Robot Robin, blank, bland, noncommittal. His lower lip is quivering. “Probably.”
Nightwing nods. “Figured. Welp.” He vaults back up onto the railing. Robin stares at him, upside down. “Last one down’s a rotten egg.” He grins.
“I should have called Batgirl for backup,” Robin says.
Laughing while falling isn’t the smartest thing he’s ever done, but it’s definitely among the most enjoyable.
--
He blocks a punch and follows up with a leg sweep. Ducks a flock of shuriken with an inch to spare and they barely miss Robin, sitting at the computer behind him, embedding themselves in the wall less than six inches over his head.
“I thought you said you were going to seal this room off!”
“That was the plan,” says Robin. “Fifteen seconds.”
“Yeah, okay.” He punches another incredibly fake-looking ninja in the face. “Fifteen seconds. I can do that. Fifteen seconds is easy.”
It’s twenty seconds, but who’s counting? Really. The wannabe ninja are down for the count and he’s not even breathing hard. Robin is tucking a slim flash drive into his belt.
“Can we go now?” Nightwing asks.
Robin’s head is cocked to one side. He looks like he’s— “Now,” he says, “would be good.”
And then Nightwing hears it. Them. Coming fast. “The next time you tell me to trust you, for the record I’m probably going to say hell no.”
“That way,” Robin says, and they run.
The building is a warren of twisting hallways and sealed doors, surrounded by floor to ceiling glass. Robin’s cape disappears around a corner and Nightwing makes sure he knows which one before he half turns and throws a couple of smoke pellets and doesn’t wait to see if they go off. He dives for the corner, skids around it—
And puts the brakes on before he brains himself on the back of Robin’s head. He backs off a couple of steps, glances back at the smoke creeping down the corridor. He can’t hear anything, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there. “Not to spoil your concentration or anything, but I’m pretty sure this is a dead end.”
“Second only to the world’s greatest,” Robin murmurs. He’s staring intently at one of the walls, running his hand down it.
“Could you maybe hurry this up? Or we could run some more. Running is good. Or I could break a window. There’s a lot of glass in this place.”
“Or you could be quiet. I’ve got—”
This time, the fake ninja come down through the ceiling. “How do they do that?” Nightwing says, and wades in.
He takes two of them out with an escrima/flying kick combo, and then Robin says “Duck,” and he hits the floor.
Things whistle by overhead. There’s a staticky flash, muffled cries, and the sound of four bodies hitting the floor. “Is it safe to move?” he asks.
Robin says, “Hmn.” Nightwing takes that as a yes and flips forward onto his hands, back onto his feet, and stares.
“Wow. That’s… extra messy.”
“I’m surprised it worked,” Robin says from behind him. “The theory was sound, but I’ve never used these in the field.”
He turns away from the pile of unconscious, slime-covered ninja and says, “What? You didn’t know—” And stares at the gaping, door-sized hole in the corridor wall. “What just happened?”
“Paranoia at work,” Robin says. “I got a look at the floor plans that didn’t get filed. The building is full of these. It’s how they got into the room as well.”
Nightwing says, “Well, if you’re going to take all the mystery out of it… you’re determined to destroy all my illusions, aren’t you? By the way.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “What are those? I want some.”
“Batgirl calls them electrogooparangs,” Robin says. “Let’s go before anyone else shows up.”
“That’s a really great idea, Robin. I’ve only said so, oh, a few hundred times already.”
Robin doesn’t respond, probably because he doesn’t need to. His expression is enough.
--
The hidden walkway hooks up with an even narrower crawlspace, which eventually turns into cramped maintenance passages. An equally cramped tangle of air ducts spits them out onto the roof, and somebody somewhere must like them a lot because there are only three ninja posted.
“Three that I can see,” Robin says, his soundless in-the-field whisper. “Ideas?”
“Sure,” Nightwing says just as soundlessly. “Kick their butts.”
“Why do I even ask?” Robin says. “Palms, please.”
Nightwing flattens his hands against the bottoms of Robin’s boots. “Ready?”
“Now,” Robin says. He’s already throwing a batarang when Nightwing launches him out of the shaft.
Nightwing follows immediately, landing in a crouch and getting a handle on the situation. Robin’s staff is out. His opponents have swords: one of them is down, and he’s fighting the other two. Nightwing throws a wingding at the closest one. Just to get his attention.
Predictably the guy swears when it clips the side of his head. He turns and Nightwing crooks a finger. “You and me, buddy.”
The guy snarls and jumps. Nightwing blocks a kick, ducks a strike, and does three back flips, forcing the guy to follow him away from Robin. From somewhere in that vicinity, there’s a quick succession of thud, grunt, thump.
“Stop playing with your food,” Robin calls. “We’ve probably got incoming.”
“Just a sec.” He punches his guy in the face, following it up with a strike to the solar plexus that would put Bruce out. The fake ninja goes down without a whimper.
Nightwing straightens, sliding his escrima back into their loops. His grin feels a mile wide at least. “And the crowd goes wild. What’s our next move, boy-yeee!”
Not a real manly sound, but it’s hard to sound manly when you just got goosed but good. He spins, but Robin is already on the other side of the roof, standing on the edge.
“You are so going to pay for that,” Nightwing tells him.
Robin’s grapple is in his hand. The corners of his mouth curl up. “Tag,” he says, and steps backwards off the roof.
Which is, of course, the moment more ninja appear. Nightwing says, “Suckity suck suck,” and dives after Robin.
--
So maybe, just possibly, he has been out of the suit too long. Maybe he’s gotten too used to relying on the cowl, the scowl, and the growl, and needs a refresher course in lineless flight and wingdings.
Two years ago Robin would have been down and out and under him in under three minutes, but it’s been at least five since Robin took that first dive and the cape is still up there ahead of him, flapping like a red sheet in front of a bull.
“You realize,” he says, “I’m just going to noogie you a few thousand more times when I catch you.”
“Noogies require close physical proximity,” Robin’s voice says in his ear, ripe with amusement.
“Exactly,” Nightwing mutters. And there’s only one way that’s going to happen. It’s time to stop thinking like Batman and start thinking like, well, like himself.
Stop thinking and move. Wait until Robin’s a profile above the next roof, then shoot a decel line at his legs a fraction of a second before throwing the wingding that’s going to cut his line.
It’s a short fall, only a few feet. Yanks a couple of hard, sharp breaths out of him, but Robin’s already got a batarang out. He’s cutting himself loose when Nightwing lands on top of him, knocking the breath back out of both of them.
“Tag,” Nightwing gasps, and it’s old home week all over again because Robin is half panting, half smirking up at him. Daring him. Gripping his hips tight with his knees and not resisting at all.
Nightwing doesn’t even think about resisting. If Batman couldn’t do it, Nightwing doesn’t have a chance.
--
He’s still not sure how it happened. It wasn’t something he thought about doing, not consciously. He was just standing there, getting ready to push the cowl off. He was thinking how good the hot water was going to feel and also that there was something he needed to tell Tim, so he turned around to tell him and—
And Tim was Robin. The Robin he’d always meant to choose. The Robin he’ll choose every time he’s given a choice, whether he’s Nightwing or Batman, Nightwing most of all, because Nightwing can choose.
So maybe Nightwing does have a better chance at resistance. For Batman there’s not really a choice because there’s never really been anyone but Robin. There’s no real thought between seeing Robin and touching him. It just happens.
So it happened. Batman and Robin happened and now Nightwing is rolling around on a rooftop with Robin.
And this time he’s got a choice and everything in him and on him, from what’s left of his brain to his domino, from his hands in their gauntlets on down to what’s under his groin guard is saying oh yeah.
Everything about tonight – the vid message that started it all, the suits, those stupid ninja – it’s just open ended foreplay, and Robin—
“You did this on purpose,” Nightwing accuses, and Robin laughs at him. He laughs and then he grabs Nightwing tighter with his thighs and flips them, rolls them over and sits up, straddling his hips.
“Yes,” Robin says. “Consider this payback for trains and blindfolds.” He pushes himself up, a long ripple of cape and muscle and he’s still straddling Nightwing, standing over him, and the view is unbelievable.
He looks down at Nightwing, head cocked to the side like… like a robin. “Are we doing this or not?”
Nightwing says, “God yes,” and lunges up, but Robin is already dancing away, quiet laughter trailing after him. And the chase is always fun, but Nightwing’s had enough foreplay, thanks.
He takes him down from behind this time. Tackles him and they’re rolling again, smacking up against something, a gargoyle. And Robin is wriggling under him, wrenching himself halfway around and kissing him like an attack, like his mouth is something that has to be taken, beaten, had.
He tastes blood, his, Robin’s, theirs, and Robin’s wrists are twisting against his grip and his own hips are rolling, rubbing his cock against his cup and Robin’s hip and it hurts almost enough and it’s going to be more than enough if he doesn’t—
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he wants and Robin gives, his hands bruise him through his uniform and then Robin is pulling his mouth away, scraped teeth sting. Falling back down, mouth bruised, black hair messy on concrete and the smell of him, hot and chemical and his.
“What do you want?” Nose and mouth pressed up against, nuzzling Robin’s throat. Tasting him there, soft skin and smooth scars giving under his teeth. “You can have anything.” And he can, he’ll give him whatever he wants, anything he can because he’s—Robin is—
He’s Robin and he’s laughing even though he’s not a Robin who laughs. Hot skin, slick nomex and Nightwing kisses him again, his throat and the corner of his mouth and the flush riding his right cheekbone. And he’s touching, tugging at Nightwing’s hair, his gauntlet rough against his cheek, thumb scraping the edge of his domino.
“What do you think?” he says, but Nightwing stopped thinking five minutes ago.
Robin pulls him down, hand tight in his hair. Kisses his ear with breath. “Fuck me.” Low and on-purpose dirty, and gravel and kevlar scrape together when he pushes himself up and that’s a mistake, Robin is slithering out from under him up onto his knees.
He grabs, gauntlets catching on the cape, and Robin says, “Here,” and throws something at him.
Catches it automatically and lifts it, clear tube squishing in under the pressure of his fingers. They all carry it and this won’t be the first time he’s used it for this, maybe not the first time Robin has, but it’s the first time they’ve used it for this at the same time.
It shouldn’t matter. Watching Robin lose the belt, push the cape out of the way and fall forward onto his hands shouldn’t be so fucking wrong and still right; it shouldn’t feel right to know exactly where the fastenings will give fastest on Robin’s suit.
And Robin’s panting, making this sweet little back of his throat sound and saying, “Gauntlets, use—” Which just makes his cock get harder, get wetter, and then he’s pulling green tights out of his way, splaying his fingers out over Robin’s skin and using his thumbs. Opening Robin up, black and blue twisting, sliding into him, spreading him enough to see and know he’s going to come just watching his fingers fucking into Robin.
“I’ll kill you,” Robin hisses, christ knows how he knows but he always does and that’s a little too close to someone else who always knows. Just close enough to push Nightwing back from the edge, take the edge off… enough that he doesn’t come when he shoves his cup down and wraps his slick gauntlet around his dick.
And he’s swearing and Robin’s back is arching; the head of his dick brushes against the curve of Robin’s ass and it’s too much, he needs more skin for this, needs—
“Taking them off,” yanking, pulling his gauntlets off with his teeth and his hands and his dick are all the skin he has and they’re enough, just enough to cup Robin’s ass and spread him open. Line the head of his dick up with Robin’s slick hole and push into him, push some kind of long, low sound out of him when he pushes all the way inside.
And stays there, not moving, just breathing, inside. Hands, skin touching Robin’s skin, forehead pressed into the dip of his back. Breathing, breathing and not coming, not yet, but Robin—
He lifts his head and Robin’s head is up, tilted back far enough that he can see the line of his throat and the curve of his mask and his mouth, open—he’s saying something, maybe— “N, move—” And tightening around him and he can’t hear whatever comes out of his mouth through the roaring in his ears, but he hopes it’s not—
“Robin, Tim—” he wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t going to, but—
He’s everyone right now, inside Tim. He’s Robin and Batman and Nightwing and Dick and Tim is Tim, Robin, little brother, and he’s saying, “Shut up and fuck me,” low and growly and that’s—
“God you didn’t,” but he really did, used the fucking voice. And it’s so unfair and so—no, it’s not anything else, but Nightwing’s dick is still jerking inside Robin. His hips jerk forward, obedient and preconditioned and, “I’m going to get you for this.”
“Not until—” gasping, pushing back because Nightwing’s pulling out, “until I come, Di—”
“We fail hard, boy wonder,” by Batman’s standards, anyway, but he’s laughing, laughing, and Robin’s hips are bony bowls for his fingers and he’s pulling him back as he pushes in with his cock, watches himself go in and in and in. Breathes in Robin and Tim and Gotham, pulling back out, and the city flows out with him, discordant noise edging Robin’s uneven breathing.
Slides his hand across Robin’s hip and slides back into him and the scar on Robin’s, on Tim’s lower abdomen is too new, too long, too obvious for his fingers to ignore. And then it’s just, “Tim,” and, “Timmy,” and Dick’s hands on Tim’s skin, the slap of his thighs connecting with Tim’s ass. It’s just them, kevlar and skin and sweat and their city, breathing around them.
Dick wraps his arms around Tim’s waist and sinks back and down, pulling Tim with him. Pulling him down onto his lap, onto his dick, then pulling Tim’s head around, swallowing his gasp.
Swallowing Tim, breath and saliva and want. Spreading Tim’s thighs wide with his knees, cupping, angling his hips and holding him there, supporting straining thighs with his hands and fucking up into him. Tim pulls away, takes his mouth away, “N—” and Dick’s pressing his face into the curve of Tim’s neck, nosing along his jaw line for the skin the cape won’t give him. He’s sucking, biting, kissing words onto Tim’s skin, “Fuck your hand, wanna hear it.”
And feel it, Tim clenching around his dick when Tim wraps his hand around his own dick and squeezes.
“God, you’re—” slick and hot and squeezing him with his thighs and his ass. And there’s a sound, Dick’s sound, caught in Dick’s throat, and he’s pushing in again, mindless of everything that isn’t Tim. Wants to reach down and stroke him but he needs his hands to keep them from falling over. Wants to close his hand over the arch of Tim’s throat and feel Tim gasping for breath or for him or maybe just to come and he can’t with his hands so he uses his mouth instead.
Tastes it when Tim swallows, when Tim says his name and makes an arch of himself and comes, semen spattering his gauntlets and the roof. And he tastes like salt and desperation and he smells like all of his selves and all of Dick’s selves together, and Dick tips him forward again, pushes him up against the gargoyle and thrusts in hard.
So close, and he hears Robin’s gauntlets scrabbling across stone, bracing them; smells Tim, hot and sharp; hears Robin’s voice, just as sharp but so much colder, “Nightwing, come.”
And god he hates his fucked up subconscious, loves it too, and he’s laughing or choking, can’t tell anymore; he’s digging his fingers into Tim’s hips and coming inside him. Coming inside him and falling into him and Tim—
Tim catches him.
--
Gargoyles are surprisingly comfortable as long as your little brother is making a convenient cushion between you and them. “Pulling out, ‘kay?” he mumbles into the crook of Robin’s neck and Robin makes a humming noise of agreement.
Hisses a little when Nightwing’s dick slides free, but he doesn’t even twitch.
“Okay?” Nightwing asks. Robin’s skin is ridiculously soft where it isn’t scarred. He nuzzles soft cheek, scarred line of chin and jaw and it’s all Robin. All of him.
“Clean up,” Robin says, which sounds like a non sequitur but isn’t and Nightwing stops nuzzling and obediently leans back enough for Robin to get the sterile wipes out of his belt.
He finishes first, probably because he doesn’t do more than get clean and pull his jock up. Then he has to wait until Robin is tucked back into his costume and the wipes are tucked back into the belt and the belt is back around Robin’s waist.
He doesn’t give Robin time to do anything else, because giving Robin time to do anything means giving him time to think, which is always a bad idea. Instead he flops forward against him, knocking him back down onto the gargoyle and sprawling all over him.
“I think that was my liver,” Robin says in a muffled voice. “Was.”
“Wimp.” He hooks his arms around Robin’s waist and his chin over his shoulder. Closes his eyes breathes in kevlar and sweat and warm, annoyed Robin. Best thing ever.
“After this evening you owe me a cuddle or twenty,” he says into the side of Robin’s neck, into soft skin and uneven scars and the right kind of security. “So shut up and get cuddled.”
Robin’s shoulders shake but he shuts up. Nightwing gets his cuddles.
--
“Hmn?” he says later, lifting his forehead out of the crook of Robin’s neck.
“My belt,” Robin says. “Second compartment from the left.”
“You suck at pillow talk,” Nightwing mumbles. “Or is that rooftop talk?” But he’s already sliding his hand down Robin’s side, he’s carefully finger-counting booby-trapped indents—
“What is that?” he asks when Robin takes the thing he just pulled out of the belt away from him.
“Hand laser. One of Lonnie’s designs.”
“Oooh, pretty.” He tries to take it back and gets his hand smacked.
“You can play with the pretty laser later. I’m using it.”
Nightwing hooks his chin over Robin’s shoulder and watches for future reference while he activates the laser. “What’re you planning on doing with that?” he asks. Because it’s just now occurring to him that he’s ass to the breeze on top of a Gotham high rise and Robin’s got what amounts to a laser scalpel in his hand.
These are the sorts of things that can make a vigilante nervous if he stops and thinks about them, and Nightwing has unfortunately started thinking again. He’s thinking that Robin laughing doesn’t help.
Robin often laughs at things other people don’t find at all funny. At least he’s not pointing the scalpel at Nightwing. He turns his head slightly, smirking at Nightwing over his shoulder, and Nightwing gets the feeling he knows exactly what he’s thinking.
“This is Gotham,” Robin explains. “We have gargoyles instead of trees.” Then, using precise, clean lines, he burns Cindy + Marcia onto the back of the gargoyle’s wing. He encloses the names inside a heart.
Nightwing wraps his arms around Robin, presses his forehead against Robin’s shoulder blade, and tries really hard to die laughing.
--
He’s still laughing when she lands about six feet away from their gargoyle. She straightens out of her crouch, coiling her line, and then she sees them and says, “Oh my god.”
Nightwing tries to slither off Robin while pulling his tights the rest of the way up at the same time. He fails spectacularly. His gauntlet ends up tangled in Robin’s belt, and beneath him, Robin is shaking, laughing without any sound at all.
“Oh my god,” Batgirl says again. Her grapple dangles forgotten from her hand. Her mouth is pretty much on the ground.
“That’s an interesting look for you,” Robin says. “The open mouth goes surprisingly well with the eggplant accents.”
The mouth in question snaps shut. It opens again after a moment, more cautiously. “What the heck are you guys doing?” Batgirl says, staring first at Robin, then Nightwing, then Robin again. “The kid’ll kill you if he sees you in that.”
Nightwing is ninety-nine percent sure ‘you’ means Robin. He decides letting Robin answer is the smart thing and gets back to the important thing, which is putting himself back together.
“It’s not permanent,” Robin is saying when he curls to his feet and turns around. Robin is standing across from Batgirl, tights and everything else in place. His hair is back in its viciously perfect waves and he looks pristine and untouched and sexless, all wrapped up in concealing black.
It makes Nightwing want to go over there and mess him up again. Do it right this time.
He’s so fixed on the idea he almost misses Batgirl saying, “Better not be.” She pokes Robin in the chest with a batarang. “He’s just getting to the point where he feels secure. Like B isn’t going to hand him back over to you know who, or kick him out, or whatever. Don’t go messing with his head like that.” Another poke, right where the R is under the cape.
It takes Nightwing a second to realize she’s talking about Damian. Wow.
“She’s right,” Oracle says in his ear. “You two have had your fun. Toss the snake and run before it turns around and bites you on the ass.”
“Please don’t say ass.”
Batgirl grins at him. “The scrambler?” Nightwing shudders and she laughs. “Yeah, swearing in that voice? Not exactly copacetic.” Her gaze glances off Robin and veers back toward him. “You guys have something for me.”
Nightwing looks at Robin. “We do?”
“Yes,” Robin says. “We do.” One green gauntlet emerges from behind the cape. Batgirl plucks the flash drive from his palm and tucks it into her belt.
“That would be it.” Her grapple is half raised; she looks like she’s already gone in her head, but she hesitates, caught between somewhere she’s been and somewhere else she’d much rather be. She says, “Screw it.” And turns, stalks, stops in front of Nightwing, clenched gauntlet eggplant ferocity.
Pokes him in the chest. Her finger is somehow more threatening than the batarang. Which is not that surprising, because Batgirl.
“Hurt him and I’ll hang you upside down from the southbound gargoyle on the Sprang Bridge wearing nothing but your underwear and a kick-me sign.” She smiles at him, wide and gorgeous and guileless, and then she looks at Robin. “Spar tomorrow, and yes, you have to. Cave or bunker?”
“Cave.”
“Okay.” She looks at Nightwing like she wants to say something else, but she shakes her head instead. Blows out a breath and says it again: “Okay.” Walks to the edge of the roof and shoots her grapple.
Nightwing wanders in her wake, checking himself over, making sure nothing’s going to fall off mid-flight. By the time he’s leaning against the ledge, she’s already jumped.
He waits until he’s almost sure she’s far enough away (never a sure thing with them) to say, “Your ex is scary.”
Robin is crouched on the edge of the roof, watching her go. “I could say something about your exes, plural, but I won’t. It would take too long.” He half turns to look at Nightwing. “Actually, that could have gone a lot worse. Ready?”
“Absolutely,” Nightwing says. “On all counts.” He pulls his grapple out and grins at Robin. “Let’s go find ourselves a train.”
--
The best thing about a bunker as opposed to a cave is reliable climate control.
“Remember when we used to have to stop every ten minutes in the middle of winter?” Dick says and bends in three directions at once in the interests of avoiding the downswing of Tim’s staff. “We were either too hot or too cold, all the time.”
Tim looks at him for a moment before bracing his staff on the mat and himself on the staff. “Yes, Dick,” he says patiently, leaning like he’s got all night, which he kind of does. “It’s true. Your bunker is infinitely superior to the cave. If your ego is happy now, can we do this before Alfred or Steph or Bruce, or possibly, the way my luck’s been going lately, Damian comes down?”
Dick looks down at his arm, still blue on black. Still right. He looks back up at Tim, out of his cape and mask and belt, still in his tunic and tights, and that’s somehow just as right.
“I just,” he starts, but he can’t finish it.
Tim does it for him. “I know,” he says quietly. “This doesn’t—” He stops, chewing on his lower lip.
It’s a tried and true Tim habit, one he’s never quite managed to kick. Dick’s always had the urge to lean in and chew on it for him when he does that. And it’s occurring to him that he’s kind of allowed now, when Tim picks up where he left off.
“Bruce is taking Leslie’s suggestion that Damian needs his attention seriously.”
Dick stares at Tim’s lower lip. “Oh yeah?”
The lip Dick is staring at twitches. “Yes.”
“Which means…”
Twitch, twitch, twitch. “It means they’re going to be traveling together a lot while Bruce is still recruiting. Probably after as well.”
Dick raises his eyebrows. “Is that so?” he says slowly.
Tim’s shrug is a masterpiece of indifference. Not much more than a twitch, it raises his eyebrow, shoulder, and the corner of his mouth in a virtuoso display of synchronized nonchalance.
Actually, it’s kind of…
Cute. It’s really cute, and if Dick told him that Tim would kill him. He guesses he’ll have to settle for a surprise tackle.
The staff goes flying. They hit the mats with a breath-stealing whump and Dick hears the staff clatter down somewhere off to the left, and then they’re rolling.
And it’s so good to hear Tim’s breathless laughter. To feel him long and lean and wrapped around him in a fight to get the upper hand. He cheats, of course he does, they both do, but Tim is fighting extra dirty. He’s using his mouth.
He’s sucking kisses onto the most sensitive places on Dick’s neck and Dick hears himself swearing. And sometime while the sparkly little explosions are still going off behind his eyes, Tim rolls him onto his back and pins his shoulders to the mat.
It takes a few seconds, but eventually Dick’s brain stops fizzing. His nervous system quiets down. He opens his eyes and Tim is on top of him, straddling him, all deadpan expression and crossed arms.
“So when did you say they were going out of town again?” Dick says.
“I didn’t,” Tim replies, but he leans down and kisses Dick, which pretty much kills the whole omniscient stoic thing he’s got going on.
“Quit trying to do Bruce,” Dick tells him as soon as Tim stops kissing him long enough for him to speak. “You still fail at it.”
Tim’s hands are tight around Dick’s wrists, but his mouth is twitching again. “Still better than you.”
“Maybe,” Dick concedes. He applies pressure with his thumbs and twists, freeing his wrists and grabbing Tim’s, then rolling them over, grinning down at Tim’s half annoyed, half amused expression from his new, superior position. “But I’m still the best Robin.”
“Marcia, Marcia, Marrrciaaaaa,” Tim sings, and bucks up, and Dick bears down, laughing and holding on to Tim, because everyone in him, Nightwing and Batman and Dick Grayson, all of them want to hold on to Tim.
The reason’s not even that hard to parse: they’re all Dick. He says, “Them’s fighting words, boy wonder,” and digs his fingers into Tim’s ribs.
Dick is first and best, which is why he’s going to win. He always wins. Which means Tim has to be two seconds away from begging for mercy when Damian’s suspicious voice says, “What are you wearing, Drake?”
Dick opens his eyes. Tim is staring over his shoulder, his face a total blank. “Busted,” Steph says brightly somewhere behind him. “Twice, even.”
Tim’s gaze drifts back over to meet Dick’s. “Game over,” he says, and smiles, looking more peaceful than he has in a very long time.
Dick drops his forehead back down onto Tim’s shoulder and laughs like someone who doesn’t know how to lose.
DC comics (vaguely current continuity) | Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Alfred Pennyworth, Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, Damian Wayne | Dick/Tim | NC-17 | ~7500 words
notes: sequel to Prodigal. finally got off my butt and finished this. it's humor, action and smut, I guess? I figure since the reboot's going to revision present canon away, I might as well have fun while I can. so.
Of course his phone that’s not really a phone starts buzzing right after he palms the pad, because that’s how his life works. It vibrates against his thigh in time with the slide of the chute doors, and he steps halfway in and leans, keeping the doors open with his hip while he works it out of his pocket.
Tag, you’re it.
lrn 2 txt, he types and sends, and man does he not need this tonight.
Fifteen minutes after the board meeting from hell, five seconds before he’s about to head down to the bunker, and three words on a screen are all he needs to know Tim isn’t going to let him off the hook. Tim’s timing has always been the best or the worst, depending on everyone but Tim’s viewpoint, Dick’s current viewpoint being that it sucks, a lot.
Curses, he thinks, foiled again.
You started it, a voice that sounds a lot like Babs whispers in his head, but he pretends not to hear. He says, “Damn,” and shoves the phone back into his pocket, and from somewhere in or around the ornamental fern, Alfred says, “Problem, sir?”
He leans out far enough to see what Alfred’s doing: clipping the moss straggling down the sides of the pot; the bits he can see, anyway. Heba must’ve been in it again. Damian is going to be so dead when he gets back from New York.
Grinning, picturing the look on Damian’s face when he finds moss clippings neatly piled in the middle of his desk, he returns Alfred’s inquiring look with a shake of his head. “Just Tim. We’re, uh, working on something.”
Not quite a lie, but definitely not the whole truth. After all these years he still sucks at verbal evasion.
The clippers in Alfred’s right hand pause mid-snip; his left eyebrow is hovering somewhere near the ceiling. “I’ll inform Master Bruce he’s wanted immediately then, shall I?”
He shakes his head again, laughs again because he got out of that habit way before the time stream ate Bruce, and they both know it. “Hold that thought, Alfie,” he says, and moves his butt so the doors can close.
The second scanner is full body -- two now, jeeze, and he’s not even sure if that was Bruce’s idea or Tim’s. It kicks in as the doors close and he stares at the silver-white surface overhead while it makes sure he’s not public enemy number one.
“User, Richard Grayson, recognized,” a flat, genderless voice says. “Specify level.”
“Two,” he says, and has to grin as the hatch drops him down into the chute. Seriously, one of his and Damian’s best combined ideas ever, because the really awesome thing about building your own bat bunker? You can give yourself all the cool toys.
--
The chute spits him out right where he needs to be, lights coming on, computer booting up as his feet touch down. He slides his ear piece in, activating it, and Babs says, “Do I need to tell you this is a bad idea?”
Maybe if he doesn’t say anything she’ll think there’s a comm malfunction and go terrify someone else.
Maybe Tim’s text doesn’t mean what he thinks it does.
“And frozen pigs are flying in hell,” he mutters. Then, loud and cheerful and totally fake: “Hey, O.” He kicks his loafers off and picks them up, dangling them from two fingers while he yanks at his tie with his free hand. “This is kind of unexpected. I mean, stop me if you’ve heard this one, but didn’t you quit?”
“No one ever expects the Spanish inquisition. And nobody in this game ever really quits, not when they’re mentoring Stephanie Brown. I’m building Bruce’s new internet, remember?”
He tosses the tie on the chair and bends over the console. “Sucks to be you. Hang on a sec,” he says before she can skewer him as he so richly deserves. “I’ve got mail.”
A pile of vid messages, to be exact, one from Bruce, two from Damian, and a couple dozen from the other usual suspects, but the most recent one…
He hits enter and the screen is abruptly full of color. Bright primary red, yellow inside black, and green gauntlets, green tights, and he was righter than he knew, because—
“Oh boy.” His voice is thick enough to strangle on, low and heavy in his ears, almost a moan. He sounds fucked, or like he just got fucked, probably because he did. He feels his shoes slip from his fingers. Hears them hit the ground.
Robin smiles at him from the screen, small, smirky, got you over a barrel, and this time Dick groans for real.
“I wasn’t going to do this,” Robin says, “but I know you. You’d find a way out. I’m not going to give you one,” he finishes, and he’s turning away from the camera, and one (green green fuck green) gauntlet is wrapped around his extended staff – he must have been training.
“You’re it,” he says, and that’s all she wrote. Dick hears sucker loud and clear.
The screen goes as blank as Dick’s mind feels. Babs is making weird noises in his ear. The part of his brain that’s still working is glad she’s not using the voice scrambler. “I’m screwed,” he mumbles.
“What was your first clue?”
“This is emotional blackmail!” He can hear the whine in his voice. Babs has moved on from making weird noises to laughing herself sick.
“You started it,” she says, echoing his too-accurate-for-comfort imagination. “So, about that job you were going to do for me?”
So, so screwed.
--
“It’s a closed system,” she says as he opens his locker. “I need someone to get in and download onto a flash drive.” And then the locker door swings wide and that’s the last intelligible thing he hears for a while.
He knows she’s talking and that he should be listening, but she’s background to the ringing in his ears, sinuses stinging like he just took a punch. Because Tim’s never pulled his punches, ever, and he sure didn’t pull this one.
He reaches out. Lays his hand flat. Microfiber slipslides, shimmies away under his fingertips, black and blue where there’s usually grey and black. Tim must’ve put it there before he left.
Tim.
Robin.
Dick curls his fingers tight into slick-rough fabric and pulls it out.
The first time he had to be Batman, as opposed to just wearing the suit for a couple of nights; the first time he thought he might have to put on the cowl for good, Tim was there. Tim was his Robin, his partner, the biggest reason he didn’t go nuts during a time when his hatred and love for Bruce were barely balanced equality.
Tim kept him grounded. Tim’s need for everything to be okay kept him focused, and Batman’s need for Robin was never so obvious to him as it was then. Or at least—
It wasn’t. Until Bruce died and he put Damian’s and Gotham’s needs ahead of his own. And Tim’s.
Having Tim as his Robin now, even just for a few nights, seemed so necessary. The choice was so obvious he had the costume made before he asked.
He knew Tim wouldn’t say no, knew it in his gut. But he didn’t really understand what he was asking. He saw the struggle, watched it happen on Tim’s face, but he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand until now, black and blue in his hands, and he can’t—
He wears the symbol and the cowl. He has to, so he does. But Batman will always be Bruce’s.
Robin will always be Batman’s.
Nightwing.
Nightwing is his.
In his head he can see Tim putting the suit in his locker. Laying it carefully down on top of the cowl, then closing the door. And none of this, none of it has anything to do with need. It has everything to do with desire and want, and Dick’s going to associate that shade of blue with intense, visceral temptation for the rest of his life.
His life. His suit. Your choice, Robin-Tim-Robin whispers.
He’s out of his street clothes, tugging the uniform shirt down over the leggings when Babs stops being background noise.
“—hear me? Dick?”
“Yeah,” he hears himself say. “I read you, O.”
“Forget it,” she says, a blend of amusement and disgust that only Babs and Tim can manage. “I’ll tell Robin and he can tell you.”
“Absolutely,” he says, grinning like an idiot at the gauntlet he just pulled on. “You do that.”
“And you?” The disgust is gone, leaving only amusement behind. Dick flexes his hand. The right colors, right fit, perfect grip.
Perfect.
“Same thing I do every night, Pinky,” he says, and he can feel his grin stretching until it fills the locker bay, the bunker, the whole damn Tower. “Stop everyone else from taking over the world.”
She groans, as expected, and he laughs. “See you, babe,” he says. “Got a flight to catch.”
He thinks she says something, sounds like, “More like a bird.” But he could be wrong about that. And next family meeting Bruce will break out the design specs for his kinder, friendlier, pastel color scheme, complete with pink cowl and rainbow sparkle lenses.
Sure thing.
--
The really wrong thing is the way everything feels exactly right. Rightest wrong thing ever.
The guy pulling an attempted B&E over on Finger and Fifth seems to agree. Nightwing cuffs him and flips him over and he stares up at him with something a lot like horror in his eyes. “You’re supposed to be dead! Spazz told me he offed you when the riots went down.”
“Can’t kill me, I’m the gingerbread man,” Nightwing singsongs, and that look—
Yeah, that’s the one.
“Thanks, man,” he says. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed this.”
“He’s wondering if he’s supposed to laugh, scream, or soil his already unsanitary pants,” Robin’s voice comes down from overhead. “In case you were wondering.”
Nightwing tips his head back and grins. “Duh.” Grins wider because red and green and black gargoyles hanging off second floor fire escapes should not be that cute and little.
Well, not that little. Not as little as he used to be. Definitely bigger than he was the last time they did this in these suits.
Little brother all grown up.
“If you’re done playing,” Robin says, straightening out of his crouch and displaying all the various and very interesting ways he’s grown up, “we have an errand to run.”
Nightwing grins down at the guy. Who whimpers. “You done? Yeah? Me too.” He looks back up at Robin. “Yeah, we’re done.”
It could be a laugh. Or a snort. With Robin it’s always a tossup. “Top of the Aparo building. I’ll wait five minutes.”
Definitely a snort. Even his cape sounds annoyed, snapping out in his departing wake, a black and yellow banner of disapproval.
“So he can be a major pain in the ass,” Nightwing tells his prisoner, “but you gotta love him. Best partner a guy could ask for.”
He attaches a tracking strip to the dude’s collar, activates it and sends the code to GCPD dispatch. Then he pulls out his grapple and hauls ass after Robin.
--
He’ll admit his landing isn’t the best he’s ever made, but Robin’s smug closed-mouth smile is totally uncalled for.
“Give me a break, it’s been a while since I trained in these things.” He wiggles black and blue fingers and gives Robin’s suit a pointed look. “I know you trained for a couple of hours before you left the bunker. I have the security vids to pro—hey, they put up a railing. Cool.”
He flips himself up onto it and starts hand-walking his way over to Robin. Who lowers his binoculars, the better to stare expressionlessly at him. “You were saying something about reconditioning yourself?”
“Heh, funny.” There’s just something about walking on thin margins over big, empty spaces with no cape to get in the way. Almost as good as it was the first time after Bruce fi—
Yeah, not going there. He turns his back on the drop, curls his legs over and down until he’s standing upright next to Robin. “O said you’d fill me in?”
The binoculars go back up. “That building.” Mm, pointy green fingers, and why is his brain so stuck on that? He used to have a pair of gauntlets a lot like those. Maybe this is some kind of delayed, narcissistic ego trip with a side of id to go?
Okay, no, because… just no. Also, if that was going to happen it would have been Jay. So again, no.
Probably.
“The owner deals in designer drugs,” Robin continues, oblivious to Nightwing’s getting more disturbed by the second thoughts, “but for the last three weeks he’s been distributing a hybrid comprised of venom and one of Joker’s less lethal happy powders. He’s also a borderline megalomaniacal certified schizophrenic with extreme paranoid tendencies who keeps his files on a terminal not hooked up to any kind of network.”
“Not O’s kind of guy.”
“He’s not anyone’s kind of guy.”
“Not unless you’re Lex Luthor.” He leans forward, leaning his elbows on the railing. “What’s the plan?”
“Go in through the ventilation system, kill video, seal the room, get the data, get out.”
He eyes the building, a glassy, thirty-story exercise in bad taste. Then he looks at Robin. “That sounds like one of my plans. With you, there’s usually a lot more description in between the ventilation system and getting out.”
Robin tucks his binoculars into his belt and pulls out his grapple. He smiles at Nightwing. “Trust me.”
“This,” Nightwing says, “is going to suck a lot.” He’s starting to rethink the whole partner thing, and anyway, who died and made Robin Batman?
Aside from, you know, the obvious.
He looks back over at Robin. “It is going to suck, isn’t it?”
Robin is doing that thing where he tries not to chew on his lip. Which is a dead giveaway for him trying to decide whether or not lying is worth his time and effort.
“Give in and gnaw,” Nightwing encourages him. “You know you want to.” He gets a dirty look that could, under certain circumstances, lead to dirtier, better things. He’s going to go ahead and assume these are not those circumstances.
“Possibly,” Robin says, Robot Robin, blank, bland, noncommittal. His lower lip is quivering. “Probably.”
Nightwing nods. “Figured. Welp.” He vaults back up onto the railing. Robin stares at him, upside down. “Last one down’s a rotten egg.” He grins.
“I should have called Batgirl for backup,” Robin says.
Laughing while falling isn’t the smartest thing he’s ever done, but it’s definitely among the most enjoyable.
--
He blocks a punch and follows up with a leg sweep. Ducks a flock of shuriken with an inch to spare and they barely miss Robin, sitting at the computer behind him, embedding themselves in the wall less than six inches over his head.
“I thought you said you were going to seal this room off!”
“That was the plan,” says Robin. “Fifteen seconds.”
“Yeah, okay.” He punches another incredibly fake-looking ninja in the face. “Fifteen seconds. I can do that. Fifteen seconds is easy.”
It’s twenty seconds, but who’s counting? Really. The wannabe ninja are down for the count and he’s not even breathing hard. Robin is tucking a slim flash drive into his belt.
“Can we go now?” Nightwing asks.
Robin’s head is cocked to one side. He looks like he’s— “Now,” he says, “would be good.”
And then Nightwing hears it. Them. Coming fast. “The next time you tell me to trust you, for the record I’m probably going to say hell no.”
“That way,” Robin says, and they run.
The building is a warren of twisting hallways and sealed doors, surrounded by floor to ceiling glass. Robin’s cape disappears around a corner and Nightwing makes sure he knows which one before he half turns and throws a couple of smoke pellets and doesn’t wait to see if they go off. He dives for the corner, skids around it—
And puts the brakes on before he brains himself on the back of Robin’s head. He backs off a couple of steps, glances back at the smoke creeping down the corridor. He can’t hear anything, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there. “Not to spoil your concentration or anything, but I’m pretty sure this is a dead end.”
“Second only to the world’s greatest,” Robin murmurs. He’s staring intently at one of the walls, running his hand down it.
“Could you maybe hurry this up? Or we could run some more. Running is good. Or I could break a window. There’s a lot of glass in this place.”
“Or you could be quiet. I’ve got—”
This time, the fake ninja come down through the ceiling. “How do they do that?” Nightwing says, and wades in.
He takes two of them out with an escrima/flying kick combo, and then Robin says “Duck,” and he hits the floor.
Things whistle by overhead. There’s a staticky flash, muffled cries, and the sound of four bodies hitting the floor. “Is it safe to move?” he asks.
Robin says, “Hmn.” Nightwing takes that as a yes and flips forward onto his hands, back onto his feet, and stares.
“Wow. That’s… extra messy.”
“I’m surprised it worked,” Robin says from behind him. “The theory was sound, but I’ve never used these in the field.”
He turns away from the pile of unconscious, slime-covered ninja and says, “What? You didn’t know—” And stares at the gaping, door-sized hole in the corridor wall. “What just happened?”
“Paranoia at work,” Robin says. “I got a look at the floor plans that didn’t get filed. The building is full of these. It’s how they got into the room as well.”
Nightwing says, “Well, if you’re going to take all the mystery out of it… you’re determined to destroy all my illusions, aren’t you? By the way.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “What are those? I want some.”
“Batgirl calls them electrogooparangs,” Robin says. “Let’s go before anyone else shows up.”
“That’s a really great idea, Robin. I’ve only said so, oh, a few hundred times already.”
Robin doesn’t respond, probably because he doesn’t need to. His expression is enough.
--
The hidden walkway hooks up with an even narrower crawlspace, which eventually turns into cramped maintenance passages. An equally cramped tangle of air ducts spits them out onto the roof, and somebody somewhere must like them a lot because there are only three ninja posted.
“Three that I can see,” Robin says, his soundless in-the-field whisper. “Ideas?”
“Sure,” Nightwing says just as soundlessly. “Kick their butts.”
“Why do I even ask?” Robin says. “Palms, please.”
Nightwing flattens his hands against the bottoms of Robin’s boots. “Ready?”
“Now,” Robin says. He’s already throwing a batarang when Nightwing launches him out of the shaft.
Nightwing follows immediately, landing in a crouch and getting a handle on the situation. Robin’s staff is out. His opponents have swords: one of them is down, and he’s fighting the other two. Nightwing throws a wingding at the closest one. Just to get his attention.
Predictably the guy swears when it clips the side of his head. He turns and Nightwing crooks a finger. “You and me, buddy.”
The guy snarls and jumps. Nightwing blocks a kick, ducks a strike, and does three back flips, forcing the guy to follow him away from Robin. From somewhere in that vicinity, there’s a quick succession of thud, grunt, thump.
“Stop playing with your food,” Robin calls. “We’ve probably got incoming.”
“Just a sec.” He punches his guy in the face, following it up with a strike to the solar plexus that would put Bruce out. The fake ninja goes down without a whimper.
Nightwing straightens, sliding his escrima back into their loops. His grin feels a mile wide at least. “And the crowd goes wild. What’s our next move, boy-yeee!”
Not a real manly sound, but it’s hard to sound manly when you just got goosed but good. He spins, but Robin is already on the other side of the roof, standing on the edge.
“You are so going to pay for that,” Nightwing tells him.
Robin’s grapple is in his hand. The corners of his mouth curl up. “Tag,” he says, and steps backwards off the roof.
Which is, of course, the moment more ninja appear. Nightwing says, “Suckity suck suck,” and dives after Robin.
--
So maybe, just possibly, he has been out of the suit too long. Maybe he’s gotten too used to relying on the cowl, the scowl, and the growl, and needs a refresher course in lineless flight and wingdings.
Two years ago Robin would have been down and out and under him in under three minutes, but it’s been at least five since Robin took that first dive and the cape is still up there ahead of him, flapping like a red sheet in front of a bull.
“You realize,” he says, “I’m just going to noogie you a few thousand more times when I catch you.”
“Noogies require close physical proximity,” Robin’s voice says in his ear, ripe with amusement.
“Exactly,” Nightwing mutters. And there’s only one way that’s going to happen. It’s time to stop thinking like Batman and start thinking like, well, like himself.
Stop thinking and move. Wait until Robin’s a profile above the next roof, then shoot a decel line at his legs a fraction of a second before throwing the wingding that’s going to cut his line.
It’s a short fall, only a few feet. Yanks a couple of hard, sharp breaths out of him, but Robin’s already got a batarang out. He’s cutting himself loose when Nightwing lands on top of him, knocking the breath back out of both of them.
“Tag,” Nightwing gasps, and it’s old home week all over again because Robin is half panting, half smirking up at him. Daring him. Gripping his hips tight with his knees and not resisting at all.
Nightwing doesn’t even think about resisting. If Batman couldn’t do it, Nightwing doesn’t have a chance.
--
He’s still not sure how it happened. It wasn’t something he thought about doing, not consciously. He was just standing there, getting ready to push the cowl off. He was thinking how good the hot water was going to feel and also that there was something he needed to tell Tim, so he turned around to tell him and—
And Tim was Robin. The Robin he’d always meant to choose. The Robin he’ll choose every time he’s given a choice, whether he’s Nightwing or Batman, Nightwing most of all, because Nightwing can choose.
So maybe Nightwing does have a better chance at resistance. For Batman there’s not really a choice because there’s never really been anyone but Robin. There’s no real thought between seeing Robin and touching him. It just happens.
So it happened. Batman and Robin happened and now Nightwing is rolling around on a rooftop with Robin.
And this time he’s got a choice and everything in him and on him, from what’s left of his brain to his domino, from his hands in their gauntlets on down to what’s under his groin guard is saying oh yeah.
Everything about tonight – the vid message that started it all, the suits, those stupid ninja – it’s just open ended foreplay, and Robin—
“You did this on purpose,” Nightwing accuses, and Robin laughs at him. He laughs and then he grabs Nightwing tighter with his thighs and flips them, rolls them over and sits up, straddling his hips.
“Yes,” Robin says. “Consider this payback for trains and blindfolds.” He pushes himself up, a long ripple of cape and muscle and he’s still straddling Nightwing, standing over him, and the view is unbelievable.
He looks down at Nightwing, head cocked to the side like… like a robin. “Are we doing this or not?”
Nightwing says, “God yes,” and lunges up, but Robin is already dancing away, quiet laughter trailing after him. And the chase is always fun, but Nightwing’s had enough foreplay, thanks.
He takes him down from behind this time. Tackles him and they’re rolling again, smacking up against something, a gargoyle. And Robin is wriggling under him, wrenching himself halfway around and kissing him like an attack, like his mouth is something that has to be taken, beaten, had.
He tastes blood, his, Robin’s, theirs, and Robin’s wrists are twisting against his grip and his own hips are rolling, rubbing his cock against his cup and Robin’s hip and it hurts almost enough and it’s going to be more than enough if he doesn’t—
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he wants and Robin gives, his hands bruise him through his uniform and then Robin is pulling his mouth away, scraped teeth sting. Falling back down, mouth bruised, black hair messy on concrete and the smell of him, hot and chemical and his.
“What do you want?” Nose and mouth pressed up against, nuzzling Robin’s throat. Tasting him there, soft skin and smooth scars giving under his teeth. “You can have anything.” And he can, he’ll give him whatever he wants, anything he can because he’s—Robin is—
He’s Robin and he’s laughing even though he’s not a Robin who laughs. Hot skin, slick nomex and Nightwing kisses him again, his throat and the corner of his mouth and the flush riding his right cheekbone. And he’s touching, tugging at Nightwing’s hair, his gauntlet rough against his cheek, thumb scraping the edge of his domino.
“What do you think?” he says, but Nightwing stopped thinking five minutes ago.
Robin pulls him down, hand tight in his hair. Kisses his ear with breath. “Fuck me.” Low and on-purpose dirty, and gravel and kevlar scrape together when he pushes himself up and that’s a mistake, Robin is slithering out from under him up onto his knees.
He grabs, gauntlets catching on the cape, and Robin says, “Here,” and throws something at him.
Catches it automatically and lifts it, clear tube squishing in under the pressure of his fingers. They all carry it and this won’t be the first time he’s used it for this, maybe not the first time Robin has, but it’s the first time they’ve used it for this at the same time.
It shouldn’t matter. Watching Robin lose the belt, push the cape out of the way and fall forward onto his hands shouldn’t be so fucking wrong and still right; it shouldn’t feel right to know exactly where the fastenings will give fastest on Robin’s suit.
And Robin’s panting, making this sweet little back of his throat sound and saying, “Gauntlets, use—” Which just makes his cock get harder, get wetter, and then he’s pulling green tights out of his way, splaying his fingers out over Robin’s skin and using his thumbs. Opening Robin up, black and blue twisting, sliding into him, spreading him enough to see and know he’s going to come just watching his fingers fucking into Robin.
“I’ll kill you,” Robin hisses, christ knows how he knows but he always does and that’s a little too close to someone else who always knows. Just close enough to push Nightwing back from the edge, take the edge off… enough that he doesn’t come when he shoves his cup down and wraps his slick gauntlet around his dick.
And he’s swearing and Robin’s back is arching; the head of his dick brushes against the curve of Robin’s ass and it’s too much, he needs more skin for this, needs—
“Taking them off,” yanking, pulling his gauntlets off with his teeth and his hands and his dick are all the skin he has and they’re enough, just enough to cup Robin’s ass and spread him open. Line the head of his dick up with Robin’s slick hole and push into him, push some kind of long, low sound out of him when he pushes all the way inside.
And stays there, not moving, just breathing, inside. Hands, skin touching Robin’s skin, forehead pressed into the dip of his back. Breathing, breathing and not coming, not yet, but Robin—
He lifts his head and Robin’s head is up, tilted back far enough that he can see the line of his throat and the curve of his mask and his mouth, open—he’s saying something, maybe— “N, move—” And tightening around him and he can’t hear whatever comes out of his mouth through the roaring in his ears, but he hopes it’s not—
“Robin, Tim—” he wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t going to, but—
He’s everyone right now, inside Tim. He’s Robin and Batman and Nightwing and Dick and Tim is Tim, Robin, little brother, and he’s saying, “Shut up and fuck me,” low and growly and that’s—
“God you didn’t,” but he really did, used the fucking voice. And it’s so unfair and so—no, it’s not anything else, but Nightwing’s dick is still jerking inside Robin. His hips jerk forward, obedient and preconditioned and, “I’m going to get you for this.”
“Not until—” gasping, pushing back because Nightwing’s pulling out, “until I come, Di—”
“We fail hard, boy wonder,” by Batman’s standards, anyway, but he’s laughing, laughing, and Robin’s hips are bony bowls for his fingers and he’s pulling him back as he pushes in with his cock, watches himself go in and in and in. Breathes in Robin and Tim and Gotham, pulling back out, and the city flows out with him, discordant noise edging Robin’s uneven breathing.
Slides his hand across Robin’s hip and slides back into him and the scar on Robin’s, on Tim’s lower abdomen is too new, too long, too obvious for his fingers to ignore. And then it’s just, “Tim,” and, “Timmy,” and Dick’s hands on Tim’s skin, the slap of his thighs connecting with Tim’s ass. It’s just them, kevlar and skin and sweat and their city, breathing around them.
Dick wraps his arms around Tim’s waist and sinks back and down, pulling Tim with him. Pulling him down onto his lap, onto his dick, then pulling Tim’s head around, swallowing his gasp.
Swallowing Tim, breath and saliva and want. Spreading Tim’s thighs wide with his knees, cupping, angling his hips and holding him there, supporting straining thighs with his hands and fucking up into him. Tim pulls away, takes his mouth away, “N—” and Dick’s pressing his face into the curve of Tim’s neck, nosing along his jaw line for the skin the cape won’t give him. He’s sucking, biting, kissing words onto Tim’s skin, “Fuck your hand, wanna hear it.”
And feel it, Tim clenching around his dick when Tim wraps his hand around his own dick and squeezes.
“God, you’re—” slick and hot and squeezing him with his thighs and his ass. And there’s a sound, Dick’s sound, caught in Dick’s throat, and he’s pushing in again, mindless of everything that isn’t Tim. Wants to reach down and stroke him but he needs his hands to keep them from falling over. Wants to close his hand over the arch of Tim’s throat and feel Tim gasping for breath or for him or maybe just to come and he can’t with his hands so he uses his mouth instead.
Tastes it when Tim swallows, when Tim says his name and makes an arch of himself and comes, semen spattering his gauntlets and the roof. And he tastes like salt and desperation and he smells like all of his selves and all of Dick’s selves together, and Dick tips him forward again, pushes him up against the gargoyle and thrusts in hard.
So close, and he hears Robin’s gauntlets scrabbling across stone, bracing them; smells Tim, hot and sharp; hears Robin’s voice, just as sharp but so much colder, “Nightwing, come.”
And god he hates his fucked up subconscious, loves it too, and he’s laughing or choking, can’t tell anymore; he’s digging his fingers into Tim’s hips and coming inside him. Coming inside him and falling into him and Tim—
Tim catches him.
--
Gargoyles are surprisingly comfortable as long as your little brother is making a convenient cushion between you and them. “Pulling out, ‘kay?” he mumbles into the crook of Robin’s neck and Robin makes a humming noise of agreement.
Hisses a little when Nightwing’s dick slides free, but he doesn’t even twitch.
“Okay?” Nightwing asks. Robin’s skin is ridiculously soft where it isn’t scarred. He nuzzles soft cheek, scarred line of chin and jaw and it’s all Robin. All of him.
“Clean up,” Robin says, which sounds like a non sequitur but isn’t and Nightwing stops nuzzling and obediently leans back enough for Robin to get the sterile wipes out of his belt.
He finishes first, probably because he doesn’t do more than get clean and pull his jock up. Then he has to wait until Robin is tucked back into his costume and the wipes are tucked back into the belt and the belt is back around Robin’s waist.
He doesn’t give Robin time to do anything else, because giving Robin time to do anything means giving him time to think, which is always a bad idea. Instead he flops forward against him, knocking him back down onto the gargoyle and sprawling all over him.
“I think that was my liver,” Robin says in a muffled voice. “Was.”
“Wimp.” He hooks his arms around Robin’s waist and his chin over his shoulder. Closes his eyes breathes in kevlar and sweat and warm, annoyed Robin. Best thing ever.
“After this evening you owe me a cuddle or twenty,” he says into the side of Robin’s neck, into soft skin and uneven scars and the right kind of security. “So shut up and get cuddled.”
Robin’s shoulders shake but he shuts up. Nightwing gets his cuddles.
--
“Hmn?” he says later, lifting his forehead out of the crook of Robin’s neck.
“My belt,” Robin says. “Second compartment from the left.”
“You suck at pillow talk,” Nightwing mumbles. “Or is that rooftop talk?” But he’s already sliding his hand down Robin’s side, he’s carefully finger-counting booby-trapped indents—
“What is that?” he asks when Robin takes the thing he just pulled out of the belt away from him.
“Hand laser. One of Lonnie’s designs.”
“Oooh, pretty.” He tries to take it back and gets his hand smacked.
“You can play with the pretty laser later. I’m using it.”
Nightwing hooks his chin over Robin’s shoulder and watches for future reference while he activates the laser. “What’re you planning on doing with that?” he asks. Because it’s just now occurring to him that he’s ass to the breeze on top of a Gotham high rise and Robin’s got what amounts to a laser scalpel in his hand.
These are the sorts of things that can make a vigilante nervous if he stops and thinks about them, and Nightwing has unfortunately started thinking again. He’s thinking that Robin laughing doesn’t help.
Robin often laughs at things other people don’t find at all funny. At least he’s not pointing the scalpel at Nightwing. He turns his head slightly, smirking at Nightwing over his shoulder, and Nightwing gets the feeling he knows exactly what he’s thinking.
“This is Gotham,” Robin explains. “We have gargoyles instead of trees.” Then, using precise, clean lines, he burns Cindy + Marcia onto the back of the gargoyle’s wing. He encloses the names inside a heart.
Nightwing wraps his arms around Robin, presses his forehead against Robin’s shoulder blade, and tries really hard to die laughing.
--
He’s still laughing when she lands about six feet away from their gargoyle. She straightens out of her crouch, coiling her line, and then she sees them and says, “Oh my god.”
Nightwing tries to slither off Robin while pulling his tights the rest of the way up at the same time. He fails spectacularly. His gauntlet ends up tangled in Robin’s belt, and beneath him, Robin is shaking, laughing without any sound at all.
“Oh my god,” Batgirl says again. Her grapple dangles forgotten from her hand. Her mouth is pretty much on the ground.
“That’s an interesting look for you,” Robin says. “The open mouth goes surprisingly well with the eggplant accents.”
The mouth in question snaps shut. It opens again after a moment, more cautiously. “What the heck are you guys doing?” Batgirl says, staring first at Robin, then Nightwing, then Robin again. “The kid’ll kill you if he sees you in that.”
Nightwing is ninety-nine percent sure ‘you’ means Robin. He decides letting Robin answer is the smart thing and gets back to the important thing, which is putting himself back together.
“It’s not permanent,” Robin is saying when he curls to his feet and turns around. Robin is standing across from Batgirl, tights and everything else in place. His hair is back in its viciously perfect waves and he looks pristine and untouched and sexless, all wrapped up in concealing black.
It makes Nightwing want to go over there and mess him up again. Do it right this time.
He’s so fixed on the idea he almost misses Batgirl saying, “Better not be.” She pokes Robin in the chest with a batarang. “He’s just getting to the point where he feels secure. Like B isn’t going to hand him back over to you know who, or kick him out, or whatever. Don’t go messing with his head like that.” Another poke, right where the R is under the cape.
It takes Nightwing a second to realize she’s talking about Damian. Wow.
“She’s right,” Oracle says in his ear. “You two have had your fun. Toss the snake and run before it turns around and bites you on the ass.”
“Please don’t say ass.”
Batgirl grins at him. “The scrambler?” Nightwing shudders and she laughs. “Yeah, swearing in that voice? Not exactly copacetic.” Her gaze glances off Robin and veers back toward him. “You guys have something for me.”
Nightwing looks at Robin. “We do?”
“Yes,” Robin says. “We do.” One green gauntlet emerges from behind the cape. Batgirl plucks the flash drive from his palm and tucks it into her belt.
“That would be it.” Her grapple is half raised; she looks like she’s already gone in her head, but she hesitates, caught between somewhere she’s been and somewhere else she’d much rather be. She says, “Screw it.” And turns, stalks, stops in front of Nightwing, clenched gauntlet eggplant ferocity.
Pokes him in the chest. Her finger is somehow more threatening than the batarang. Which is not that surprising, because Batgirl.
“Hurt him and I’ll hang you upside down from the southbound gargoyle on the Sprang Bridge wearing nothing but your underwear and a kick-me sign.” She smiles at him, wide and gorgeous and guileless, and then she looks at Robin. “Spar tomorrow, and yes, you have to. Cave or bunker?”
“Cave.”
“Okay.” She looks at Nightwing like she wants to say something else, but she shakes her head instead. Blows out a breath and says it again: “Okay.” Walks to the edge of the roof and shoots her grapple.
Nightwing wanders in her wake, checking himself over, making sure nothing’s going to fall off mid-flight. By the time he’s leaning against the ledge, she’s already jumped.
He waits until he’s almost sure she’s far enough away (never a sure thing with them) to say, “Your ex is scary.”
Robin is crouched on the edge of the roof, watching her go. “I could say something about your exes, plural, but I won’t. It would take too long.” He half turns to look at Nightwing. “Actually, that could have gone a lot worse. Ready?”
“Absolutely,” Nightwing says. “On all counts.” He pulls his grapple out and grins at Robin. “Let’s go find ourselves a train.”
--
The best thing about a bunker as opposed to a cave is reliable climate control.
“Remember when we used to have to stop every ten minutes in the middle of winter?” Dick says and bends in three directions at once in the interests of avoiding the downswing of Tim’s staff. “We were either too hot or too cold, all the time.”
Tim looks at him for a moment before bracing his staff on the mat and himself on the staff. “Yes, Dick,” he says patiently, leaning like he’s got all night, which he kind of does. “It’s true. Your bunker is infinitely superior to the cave. If your ego is happy now, can we do this before Alfred or Steph or Bruce, or possibly, the way my luck’s been going lately, Damian comes down?”
Dick looks down at his arm, still blue on black. Still right. He looks back up at Tim, out of his cape and mask and belt, still in his tunic and tights, and that’s somehow just as right.
“I just,” he starts, but he can’t finish it.
Tim does it for him. “I know,” he says quietly. “This doesn’t—” He stops, chewing on his lower lip.
It’s a tried and true Tim habit, one he’s never quite managed to kick. Dick’s always had the urge to lean in and chew on it for him when he does that. And it’s occurring to him that he’s kind of allowed now, when Tim picks up where he left off.
“Bruce is taking Leslie’s suggestion that Damian needs his attention seriously.”
Dick stares at Tim’s lower lip. “Oh yeah?”
The lip Dick is staring at twitches. “Yes.”
“Which means…”
Twitch, twitch, twitch. “It means they’re going to be traveling together a lot while Bruce is still recruiting. Probably after as well.”
Dick raises his eyebrows. “Is that so?” he says slowly.
Tim’s shrug is a masterpiece of indifference. Not much more than a twitch, it raises his eyebrow, shoulder, and the corner of his mouth in a virtuoso display of synchronized nonchalance.
Actually, it’s kind of…
Cute. It’s really cute, and if Dick told him that Tim would kill him. He guesses he’ll have to settle for a surprise tackle.
The staff goes flying. They hit the mats with a breath-stealing whump and Dick hears the staff clatter down somewhere off to the left, and then they’re rolling.
And it’s so good to hear Tim’s breathless laughter. To feel him long and lean and wrapped around him in a fight to get the upper hand. He cheats, of course he does, they both do, but Tim is fighting extra dirty. He’s using his mouth.
He’s sucking kisses onto the most sensitive places on Dick’s neck and Dick hears himself swearing. And sometime while the sparkly little explosions are still going off behind his eyes, Tim rolls him onto his back and pins his shoulders to the mat.
It takes a few seconds, but eventually Dick’s brain stops fizzing. His nervous system quiets down. He opens his eyes and Tim is on top of him, straddling him, all deadpan expression and crossed arms.
“So when did you say they were going out of town again?” Dick says.
“I didn’t,” Tim replies, but he leans down and kisses Dick, which pretty much kills the whole omniscient stoic thing he’s got going on.
“Quit trying to do Bruce,” Dick tells him as soon as Tim stops kissing him long enough for him to speak. “You still fail at it.”
Tim’s hands are tight around Dick’s wrists, but his mouth is twitching again. “Still better than you.”
“Maybe,” Dick concedes. He applies pressure with his thumbs and twists, freeing his wrists and grabbing Tim’s, then rolling them over, grinning down at Tim’s half annoyed, half amused expression from his new, superior position. “But I’m still the best Robin.”
“Marcia, Marcia, Marrrciaaaaa,” Tim sings, and bucks up, and Dick bears down, laughing and holding on to Tim, because everyone in him, Nightwing and Batman and Dick Grayson, all of them want to hold on to Tim.
The reason’s not even that hard to parse: they’re all Dick. He says, “Them’s fighting words, boy wonder,” and digs his fingers into Tim’s ribs.
Dick is first and best, which is why he’s going to win. He always wins. Which means Tim has to be two seconds away from begging for mercy when Damian’s suspicious voice says, “What are you wearing, Drake?”
Dick opens his eyes. Tim is staring over his shoulder, his face a total blank. “Busted,” Steph says brightly somewhere behind him. “Twice, even.”
Tim’s gaze drifts back over to meet Dick’s. “Game over,” he says, and smiles, looking more peaceful than he has in a very long time.
Dick drops his forehead back down onto Tim’s shoulder and laughs like someone who doesn’t know how to lose.
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