always with the Dick jokes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irrelevant) wrote2010-04-15 07:12 am
irrelevant) wrote2010-04-15 07:12 am
Entry tags:
[fic] but you still come around (DCU)
but you still come around
Batman/Red Robin (Dick/Tim) | NC-17 | ~10400 words
Notes: Shout-out toglymr, whose observations and commentary helped make this a better story than it otherwise would have been. Spoilers for current storylines from various DC titles, Red Robin and Batgirl, mainly. Warnings... um. Emotional incest, maybe? These two are a gorgeous disaster however you look at it. Future fic, takes place some unspecified amount of time after Red Robin #11, but not too long after. Not a fix-it, in fact, this is mostly a lot of porn with a side of Tim being weird. But I’d like to think there’s an ambiguous current of hope in there somewhere.
Once a month on a Wednesday, Alfred makes—used to make crab cakes.
Crisp and buttery outside with just enough green onions and cilantro inside. You never asked him why, never asked Bruce or Dick, either. It was just crab cakes once a month on a Wednesday. Just one of those things.
It’s been five months since you’ve had one. They’re not something you think about wanting; good when they’re available, but not a personal favorite. You don’t consciously want crab on a Wednesday that could be Alfred’s, but sometimes you take a bite of something and swallow and the aftertaste is just… wrong. Those times, your chrono always says Wednesday. You’re starting to think the act of missing someone or something is less mental than physical.
Not conscious thought. More like something your subconscious thinks you should hear or see or smell when you don’t. Sense memory.
It’s not like losing Robin. That was conscious, and you never stopped thinking about it, not until the domino was back on your face. You took Robin back, just like you took Jason’s uniform from Alfred’s hands, Batman’s and Gotham’s needs weighed against your dad’s wants. You left your own needs and wants off the scales. Perfect imbalance.
Two-Face would have told you to flip for it. Whether he would have said it before or after tried to kill you is a question for the coin. You’ll take after for three hundred, Alex, and logical deduction based on cognitive memory.
Sense memory is something else. In Italy, a man laughed and you turned to look, but his eyes weren’t blue and his smile shaped his mouth wrong. The woman next to you in a Berlin lift let her blonde hair fall into her eyes instead of tucking it back into place with her right index finger.
The skylines of Paris and Geneva felt old in their outlines and complicated under your heels. You hit rooftop after rooftop, feeling like you didn’t know half the things you needed to.
Things like, if you put your foot here, the masonry will crumble here and here, in this pattern, but not if you lead with your heel. The upper ledges here can take your weight, but the ones on the other side of the building won’t. Don’t land there, twenty-four hour manned security. The fire escapes on the north end of this street are rusty, make too much noise. Understood risks on known rooftops.
These rooftops.
They’re unique in some ways, even with the prop tops gone. There are still more gargoyles per square foot than in most cities, although No Man’s Land put them on the endangered species list for a while. The chance of meeting a costumed crazy is about ninety percent better here than it is anywhere else.
The chance that you’re the costumed crazy up on the roof with the pigeons? Even better.
“You know,” says Batman, “I don’t think that suit was ever vetted.”
Two years ago, he would have told a trespassing cape, “You’re not wanted.” Or gassed them (or used their specific weakness against them) and dragged them back to the cave, then loomed for a while. Two years ago the Batman’s voice would’ve been harsh authority and no humor.
You make sure your lenses are down before you turn. He’s where the sound of his approach put him, and even though you’ve been here, done this before he’s still… too short. Not enough bulk. “Depends,” you tell him, and his mouth twitches, and that’s new as well. Too many things are.
“On what?” he says.
“Your definition of vetted.” And that is a dangerously correct smile on the wrong face under the right mask. “If you’re looking for small, hooded and vicious,” you say, “you’re four streets off. Gang activity suppression with BG.”
The smile shuts down like it was never there, which is also wrong, if for different reasons. “I know where he is,” he says. “I’m here for you.”
If you could use laughter the way he does, you’d do it now. You know better than to try. You turn back to the view from the edge and down below, Gotham’s night life is a glittering web of light unraveling into outlying darkness. No different from nighttime in Madrid or Milan or Paris, aside from the gargoyle headcount. And the guy behind you.
“O says you’ve been working with BG sometimes,” and he’s almost got the tone right this time. Almost blank, noncommittal enough. “No problems?”
The corners of your mouth are thinking about curling upward. You remember Pru’s bloody nose, and that’s all you need. “She took down my partner. Third time someone punched Pru in the nose in three months.”
You don’t think that’s actual laughter, and it’s one more right thing gone wrong. Because he’s the only one of you who let himself be obvious about anything. You know that for once most of this isn’t Bruce’s fault, but you briefly let yourself hate him anyway.
Slight ruffle of sound—the cape. He’s not touching but you think you can feel the heat of him there, behind you. “Ti—”
You cut him off, “No.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and your throat and temples start aching again after months of nothing. He says it again, “I’m sorry.” Says it against your ear, leaves it close where it can’t carry, “Tim.” Not a whisper, it’s more like a soundless hum—it’s the tone all of you use in the field, an inheritance. “You were right,” Batman says, and you hear the sharpness of your own sucked-in breath.
Your elbow impacts his sternum. His forearm and elbow are in your hands (breakable because of the familiar armoring, just enough pressure here or here) and he’s on his back because he wasn’t expecting this from you, and you put him down there because you could.
Your back is to the edge of the roof. You’re as much a target as one of the pigeons. You feel loose and too light and you’re not ready for any of this, and Batman is on his back. Because of you.
“I guess I deserved that,” he says. He’s just lying there.
“Get up,” you say. “Now.”
There’s a moment of silence like muffled laughter, and then he says, “Anything you say, little brother,” and you were… so right.
You’re not ready, and there won’t ever be a time he can’t make you feel like a green dumbass in two words or less.
He’s altered the suit to fit his own, more flexible needs. The Bat’s body armor looks as fluid on him as his own blue and black used to; the cape curls in on itself and him, almost as if it’s alive. He doesn’t stand so much as flow upward until he’s maybe a foot away from you, and his breath is warm on your face. “You were right,” he repeats, like maybe if he says it enough you’ll start to believe he means it.
“It doesn’t matter,” you tell him.
“Is lying to yourself part of being Red Robin?”
“The cowl is a lie?” It’s almost worth a smile. “I can’t speak for the last guy, but I think I’ll stick with cake,” and you know he saw that one coming. You see him coming and you don’t try to stop him.
He’s not Bruce, but he’s always been bigger than you. More muscle mass and training equal to and greater than your own. He has one of your arms twisted up behind your back and his free hand placed for a nerve strike that will put you out for at least ten minutes. You slam your heel into his inner calf and slam your head back into his face. He flinches and his grip slackens just enough.
“Damn it, Red—” he hasn’t pulled a punch in years. You’re not about to start, so you take a page from his old book and climb him, use his arm and shoulders to hurl yourself up and over him.
He’s already moving, flipping himself backward and away from you as you land. He somersaults twice and comes up in a crouch. “You’ve gotten a lot better at that.”
“I needed to,” you say, and your staff is solid and comfortable in your hands. Old habit made of newer, better materials. Back when you started training, he’d fight you bare-handed. Like Shiva, later, only with fewer broken body parts. You don’t remember winning, but you weren’t great at turning off distractions at first, and back then Dick was one hell of a distraction. It’s not really an issue anymore.
“That suit does something to people’s brains,” he says, almost an accusation. “You, Jay—”
You say, “His brain was already a mess,” and circle out to the right. He falls back, keeping himself just out of your range. You hear the slick shhhck of a batarang sliding into his hand, and you smile the only way Red Robin can, which is not much.
“Why are we doing this?” Dips his throwing shoulder, feinting, fishing for a reaction, but you’ve been that stupid before. You learn fast.
You say, “You're right. It’s the suit,” and this throw is real.
Deflecting the batarang is easy, but he’s not playing by your rules. The staff clatters against brick and you’re bent back over the roof edge with your arms trapped under you. His thigh is riding your crotch and the fit of your jock is starting to get painful, and he’s… not playing at all.
His mouth is as tight as Bruce’s ever got. He looks the way Batman should always look: pissed off at the world and scary as hell. He grabs you by the disc at your bandolier’s nexus and hauls you to your feet.
“Why, Tim?” he growls, still low enough not to be heard. Still thinking straight. You have enough time to wonder if you are before he’s kissing you.
You stop yourself from crushing his larynx, but it’s close. Your reactions don’t like being suppressed and everything your body knows says this is an attack. It takes you long seconds to get yourself back where you need to be, and by then he’s noticed that you’re not moving.
He pulls back a little. Changes the angle and, “Tim,” and he’s kissing you again and you let all interested muscle groups know that you’re going to kiss him back.
Later, the noise you make against his mouth will embarrass you. Later, when pressure isn’t all the suits are letting you feel, his hands gripping your shoulders, upper arms flexing under your gauntlets. His mouth is the only thing that’s really him, wet and hot and moving, brushing up against the corners of your mouth and sucking your lower lip in. He starts to pull away and you feel yourself start to (protest) make another embarrassing noise, feel your hands tightening on his arms.
He’s breathing faster than he should be. He swallows and a muscle jumps in his jaw and he says, “I want—I—” He’s leaning in again. His mouth is too much skin for this roof, but— “Not here,” and he’s letting you go. Skimming his hands down your arms, even though you can barely feel it through the suit. “Not—”
It’s too clear in your head, maybe because you’ve done this before, as well. Two capes in cowls making out on a Gotham rooftop, nobody watching but the pigeons and maybe the gargoyles.
“I didn’t…” want this. “I don’t.” Because he should be blue and you shouldn't have had to throw away your green, and cowls are different from masks in potentially permanent ways.
He touches a finger to his comm, and you back off, switch your frequency from Pru to the party line. “B to R,” he says, and there’s a pause, then Robin says flatly, “I’m busy.”
Probably true, given the background noise.
“Back to base when you’re done there,” Batman says, and Robin says, “What?”
Batgirl says, “You’re kidding.”
“Sometimes family trumps the mission.”
His white-outs are down, and the Batman’s profile is to you. The comm channel is silent, but not empty. You feel like you’ve all been waiting for one of you to say it and mean it, and if anyone was going to, it had to be him.
“Okay,” Batgirl says. “Talk about your harshed buzzes. You boys have fun with that, I’ve got a date—or I did,” she says wryly, and Batman laughs once and you fight down your wince.
“Don’t do that, boss man,” Batgirl tells him. “I’ve got a pretty good picture, and it’s not pretty. Red, you got your ears on?”
“Affirmative,” you say.
“Creepy, right?” she says.
“Affirmative.”
“Well. There you go. And okay, here I go—Batgirl says stay down, asshole.”
You thought you couldn’t love her more than you did at the exact moment you heard Pru’s nose go. You were wrong. You are, more often than you want to think about. Weeks in the air and on the road, scared shitless that every mile was the equivalent of another failed cloning experiment. Worse, one that didn’t fail. The cave in Iraq was feeling yourself jolted back into reality after months of waking dreams.
Over the comm someone—make that more than one someone—grunts.
Someone else gurgles, and Robin’s favorite “Tt” noise rattles out over the open channel before he says, “Why are you pulling me? Don’t tell me you want me there for your stupid reunion.”
Batman’s jaw looks like a long night and a fight that needs to happen. “I said, when you’re done, Robin,” he says. “I’ll see you back at base. Batman out.”
He raises his lenses and looks at you, and it—could be enough. If you let it.
“Come home with—no.” He starts to reach for you but drops his hand. His eyes are the right color. His mouth is the right shape. “Come home,” he says. “That’s it.”
You could tell him the manor is the only home you have left. You could tell him… a lot of things.
He doesn’t move for twenty-one seconds—you know that because you’ve been counting them off in your head. He keeps looking at you until he flips the lenses down and then he’s not looking, he’s blurring past you, taking the edge at a leap. You wait for the sound of the grapple; one, two more seconds and the line goes.
You change the comm frequency again. “You need a name.”
“I’ve already fucking well got one, haven’t I?” Pru says in your ear. “Don’t even go there. The bloody mask’s bad enough, and I feel a right arse in this fucking cat suit.”
Two ‘fucking’s in a row, which means she’s really annoyed. You feel your mouth start to twitch and shut it down. “You get used to it. I’ll be unavailable for a while. Contact BG or O if you need an assist.”
You can almost hear her raising her eyebrows. “Big bro finally show, then?”
“Don’t call him that to his face if you like your nose unbroken,” you say. “I’ll be at base tomorrow, nine-hundred. Probably with company.”
“Bloody brilliant,” she sighs. “Breakfast with the midget bastard.”
“You’re lucky it’s not dinner at the nearest cop shop.”
She snorts. “Right, then. Does your highness have any further commands?”
“No. But that could change.”
“It always does,” she says, then, “Fuck. B and E on Dixon. I’m out,” and the line goes dead.
This time, you let the smile come. Still living up to her name—or maybe that’s a hundred and eighty degrees south of it. You point your line in the direction you left your bike and shoot. You don’t worry about finding him; you already know where he is. Sitting in the car, blocking your bike’s exit route.
You switch your frequency to Nightwing’s. “On my way.” Kill the comm before he can answer, and jump before you can change your mind.
--
It feels weird following the batmobile to an in-city bunker instead of the cave. He laughs when you tell him that. “BG uses home territory more than we do. R and I are based here. It’s just easier.”
“Noted,” you say, and he snorts another short laugh. “Something funny, Batman?”
“In a lot of ways, you haven’t changed at all.”
You say, “Hmn,” and he says, “Yep. All the really annoying ones. Which reminds me. Don’t kill the kid, okay? I don’t want to have to tell Bruce that I let two of his kids murder each other while he was gone.”
Throat strike, pulled at the last microsecond. The pressure is enough to let you know it could have gone all the way through to the spine. You cough once and work on regulating your breathing.
“Red?” Batman says.
“I’m fine,” you say, and he leaves it there, and you take the reprieve while you can.
He takes a curve too fast, and that… works. For everyone behind his cowl. “How far?” you ask. The buildings around you are starting to look too nice for the kind of mind trap you’re expecting.
Then Batman says, “Here,” and turns again, and you’re riding straight into the back wall of what looks like an apartment complex until you aren’t, and the walls are smooth grey and lights are flashing past you too fast for you to make out much of anything.
The incline drops, lasts too long and not much time at all before it levels off and you’re on top of a second mouth spitting you out into a wide bay. You swerve around the car Batman just brought to a stop and pull in next to what looks like one of Robin’s bikes.
The batmobile’s roof hisses open. You rest one hand on your bike’s controls, the other on your thigh and take a good look at Dick’s new clubhouse.
It’s not the cave, but nothing ever is. As far as bases of operations go, this one is better than anything but a JLA design. Even the stripped down bay is better equipped than your own scattered command centers, but Dick does have more resources at his disposal than you ever did.
You start to ask why here, but he’s out of the car, moving toward the stairs. He’s not moving like Batman—he’s not moving like anyone else you know, either. “Command center’s up one level,” he calls without turning. “You want a shower?”
By the time he made your rooftop, you’d been in four confrontations, three of them with multiple opponents. You say, “Yes,” swing yourself off the bike, and follow him up the stairs.
You take them two at a time, counting as you go—two flights, twelve each—and glance at your chrono. Twenty-two thirty-three. Four sanitized crimes isn’t bad for just over two hours’ work. It could be better.
“You,” Batman says as you follow him out of the stairwell, “are worse than Bruce.”
That’s… he’s still wearing the cowl and he thinks—
He says, “Lights,” and life gets way too bright, much too fast. You flip your lenses, blinking rapidly and shielding your face with your hand.
“Not the cave, I know,” he says. “Down twenty percent.”
You lower your hand as the light dims. “So when exactly did Scotty beam us up?”
Dick laughs, and this time it really is Dick. The cowl’s pushed back. “Damian’s contribution,” he says. “I guess the lab he grew up in had the same setup.” He’s stripping off his gauntlets; dropping them on a computer console a close enough match for Bruce’s that this could almost be the cave. Though, Bruce never left pieces of his uniform lying around.
He says, “I’ve got some of your stuff here,” and the belt joins the gauntlets. He doesn’t look up. “In the lockers.”
There were nine cameras, some digital, some not. All expensive. Eight of them died in the line of duty. The last one disappeared with Blüdhaven, and the photos…
Still in the database. Somewhere. Bruce burned the hardcopy.
“Good to know I won’t get stuck wearing your shorts,” you say, and you hear the catch in Dick’s breathing, and his slow exhalation.
“It’s back this way,” he says, and you follow him through a maze of partitioned off areas—VR training grid even more advanced than the cave’s, kitchen, forensics lab—into a curved locker bay opening onto communal showers. Dick raps his knuckles against one locker, “All yours. Showers are the same as at home, but I’ve got two stalls for visitors if you—”
“It’s fine,” you interrupt. You push your cowl back and start in on your gauntlets, but Dick’s locker door swings open and there’s a heap of blue and black sitting on top of a pile of civvies, and you can’t make yourself stop staring.
His hand stills, spread fingers crosshatching dual colors. “Habit,” he says after a moment, and his fingers spasm, almost—almost like they’re petting. Something.
His head is down and his hair is in his face. You’re both looking at his hand stroking inanimate Nomex blend. His shoulders hunch as he pulls his hand away and reaches for the fastenings of his cape.
You look down at your own hands, tug at your gauntlets and damp suction tugs back. They come off in sucking pops and you open the locker Dick pointed out and toss them in, throwing a cursory glance at the rest of the contents as you do. Jeans and tees, underwear and a jacket; a pair of your old, beat-up sneakers with socks stuffed in.
Habit.
Every person has an infinite number of possible futures, each one a thread attached to a barbed stinger sunk in just under the skin’s surface, and sometimes you think you can feel the entire collective pulling, undermining the integrity of who you want to believe you are. You think everyone feels the same pull. Sometimes.
In Gotham, full moons are grounds for early nights. On a blue moon, sane people stay inside with the blinds down, every lock locked, and chairs under every doorknob.
In the Cave database—and the one here, probably—there are nineteen projected scenarios for circumstances under which Dick could go renegade. You wrote three of them yourself. You’ve written twenty for yourself, and others for… everyone who matters. In the ones written for Dick, Bruce’s scenarios and yours, when the punch line comes, he’s never anyone but himself.
None of you are.
Batman’s cowl and cape hit the bench that follows the locker bank’s curve, caving gradually in like a deformed parachute. The cape spills down onto the floor and Dick is waiting for you when you look up, the corners of his mouth pulled in deep and tight.
“I don’t hate it anymore,” he says. “I just don’t want it.”
You look back down to where your own cowl is crushed between your clenched fingers. You open your hand, watch it drop and turn your back on Dick while you disarm your suit.
The suit’s smells are mostly the same, sweat and body-warm Kevlar, dirt, blood and bike exhaust overlaying everything else. The catches come easy to your fingers. They shouldn’t, you should still be able to feel—
Cape, bandolier and cowl all go into the locker. You start to pull the tunic and undershirt over your head; Dick slides his hand across your bare shoulders, and you hear his feet padding away from you. You yank the tunic off and drop it but he’s already in the showers. He says something and the water goes on.
You wanted his trust, and he gave it to you. Gauntlets, cape over body armor, Nomex and Kevlar between your skin and his so you couldn’t feel the heat of his hand.
His back is to you, face tilted up into the spray. The shower tile is the kind of white designed to damage retinas, and he’s hard dark angles up against it.
You let yourself watch for five seconds (count them) before stripping off your boots and leggings and stepping onto wet tile, and then you don’t let yourself look at anything but the showerhead you’re standing under.
“You have to tell it what you want,” Dick says.
What you… want. You. There is. In your head.
There’s a list.
The cave’s chill, there even with climate control, and Bruce in the suit. Obvious, sure, but not even close to thin hands brushing your hair back from your face, the nighttime smell of her when she used to come in those times she was actually home and sit on your bed after she thought you were asleep. Dodge, all the way back, asleep in his parents’ house.
Z and Owens. Alive and doing their best to kill you. The alive part is key.
You want to know Barbara as she was. You want to watch her on her feet squaring off with Steph and Cass, all of them Batgirl, so sharp you could cut your lungs breathing the same air they do.
You want to know why you have Kon but not Dad.
Your nails are cutting into your palms. Relax, says the Dick who lives in your head, jeeze, little brother, you’re so tight you’re gonna burst something. It’s what Dick would say, and doing what Dick wants has always been easier for you than the opposite. You watch your fingers uncurl, one at a time, and say, “Medium spray, Fahrenheit one hundred.” The stream hits your legs and Dick is… there. Right behind you for the second time tonight.
His heat signature licks out, curls itself around you. You know he’s going to touch before he does it. You could stop him but you don’t, and his arms are wrapped around your waist, his cheek tight against your neck, scratchy with stubble. His dick is hard, hot and pressing in against your ass.
“Do you... is this something you want from me?”
I used to. “I don't know, Dick,” you say. “At the moment, I’m wondering why you’re offering, because for some reason, I never got the impression you wanted this from me. Little brother, right?”
His breath gusts out in a kind of sob. You think he means it as a laugh. He’s so—too here. You’re sucking steam in with every mouthful of air because he’s used up every unsaturated molecule. Your breath is in his lungs and his hands are kissing down your skin, teasing the edges of your nipples until you shudder, feeling them knot up tight. Tracing patterns on your abdomen and then your thighs, and this isn’t—
“God. Tim.” His mouth is open on your shoulder; he’s sucking water off your skin. “Better or worse?” he says, breathing warm and humid against the side of your neck.
“Neither. We’re not—” but you lose the thread because his teeth are clamped down on your throat and your balls are tightening with the stroke of his thumb over them.
He presses even closer, like he’s melting himself into you, and his dick parts the seam of your ass. His hips are restless, just like his hands and his mouth, rocking his dick up and down just inside your crease, slick friction opening you up and rubbing not deep enough to hit you where you really need it. He snarls, low and from the gut, thrusts against you like he can’t stop himself, and you taste his name in your mouth, feel yourself flex open and the head of his dick catches on your rim.
He moans, “Oh god,” and you hear the grinding, terrifying sound you make, feel yourself clench, then open up even more. He’s pushing against you, tiny nudges that make you push back onto him, make you want— “God, Tim, that’s—you’re so—”
His cockhead is slick with water and pre-come. Slick pressure against your hole, pressing into you, and he feels like too many things you won’t ever get back, and also like getting everyone back safe for good. He’s kneading your hips, the heels of his hands digging into your ass, spreading you wider, and you have to push back as he nudges again, again and the stretch burns over into penetration.
You let yourself fall forward into the spray. Brace yourself against the slippery wall and hang there, breathing and shaking because you want to move too much, shove yourself back onto his dick and let him open you up all the way. His hands are tight on your hips, keeping you still, “Tim don’t, don’t, I can’t—oh fuck,” because you can’t stay still and every shudder that goes through you pushes him a little deeper.
“I… oh Jesus.” He’s pulling out, careful and slow. Leaving you.
Something like panic clenches tight in your chest and everywhere else, and he gasps and his fingers claw up on your skin, but he—he’s still gone.
“Timmy, I have to—” He’s pulling you up. Away from the wall and the wall of water. He turns you around and kisses you, slow and sure of what he can have from you, and you don’t think, let yourself take this from him.
Take him, touching and trusting you at the same time, you can feel how necessary this is for him, how hard he’s holding on, how necessary you are—
Not. Pushing you away, and you’ve always known there’s no one less necessary than Tim Drake. You keep your arms at your sides, keep your hands relaxed when all they want is to ball up, and he’s just smiling. Like he knows what you’re thinking. He says, “You’re a mess, kid,” and goes down to his knees on the tile in front of you, smiling up at you while the spray from two showerheads mists on his skin and yours.
He cups your balls in his hand, squeezing gently. Still smiling, leaning forward and his mouth is opening up around your cockhead, swallowing you down, and you get your hands on his wet shoulders and dig your fingers in. Feel his muscle give under your grip and his throat give around your cock, but then he’s pulling off and you can feel the protest building in the back of your throat because… because…
“Good, that’s good, make some noise for me, little brother—”
His mouth closes around you again and you groan, wondering if this is supposed to keep you in line: good little brother, sit, stay; don’t go running off looking for Dad and maybe going crazy while you look; don’t do that and I’ll keep doing this. And god, you want him to keep doing this, keep going down until your cockhead is snug against the back of his throat and his cheeks are hollowing around you. His mouth feels like an obscenity, all wet and stretched and red, and his eyes are closed as he sucks you and he looks—Dick looks— “You—oh god you—wanted this,” you manage between stuttered breaths, answering your own question. He looks up at you through wet eyelashes, and he can’t smile with your dick in his mouth, but his eyes are enough.
His fingers wiggle into the space just behind your balls. He presses up and everything narrows down to the jerk of your hips pushing your dick hard into his mouth, spilling pre-come all over his tongue. He teases your slit with his tongue, and it’s good to the point of pain, and you can't stop thrusting and he doesn't stop you. Slides the fingers behind your balls farther back— “Dick.”
Nudges you, swirling the pad of his finger over your hole and god, in—
You come. With his finger inside you and your dick shoved halfway down his throat, your choked-off shout too loud in your ears. Your knees want to buckle and you stiffen them, prop yourself up on his shoulders—he’s going to have finger marks—and he lets your dick slide out of his mouth with one last swirl of his tongue around the too-sensitive head.
His hands hold you steady; he looks up at you, smiling a little. “Okay?”
You nod, once. That’s all you have left, and he must know it because his smile widens and then he’s on his feet, pushing you backward. He moves you, hands on you guiding you where he wants, facing the wall in between showerheads. You slap your palms flat on the tile and he wraps his hands around your wrists and squeezes. “Like that,” he says, and you drop your head down between your arms and stay.
One hand on your hip, thumb stroking over and over the bone. His other thumb slides against you where you’re clenched tight on nothing and you don’t need anything else. Your legs spread wider and he’s hard against your hip, and you remember that he hasn’t come yet.
Both thumbs now, massaging and spreading, just grazing your hole. “How many?”
Three of your own, but Dick’s hands are—they’re— “I don’t, I—two. I think. Dick, just—”
You don’t sound like yourself, except you’ve never been in this situation before, so maybe this is how you always sound when your older brother is maybe two seconds away from fingering you. He’s keeps rubbing, circling your hole with his thumb, pushing in just enough to penetrate on the down slide. Just enough to make you feel yourself start to stretch before he takes the burn away and says, “Okay. You—” presses in with his fingertip and you clench and he breathes in sharply— “Okay.” His hands slide up to grip your hips as he slides the rest himself down your back.
Open-mouthed kisses all the way down your spine. You know they’re wet, he slicks his tongue from one kiss to the next, but the spray from both showerheads is hitting you and you’re wet everywhere, so much that you can’t tell your own pre-come from the water beading your dick. He’s whispering things into your skin that you can’t hear, and you have time to be grateful for that before he kisses you right over your tailbone and you hear his knees hit the tile. Thumbs, opening you up—he licks you once and your fingers curl, trying to dig into the tile because you know he can see everything.
You can feel him looking, and he’s touching, too, petting the stretched skin around your hole with the tips of his fingers. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this,” he says, his voice rough and used, like his mouth. Used. “I need you to—tell me this is okay, tell me I can… god, please, Tim,” he's begging, and your mouth opens in automatic response, words falling out, “Want, I—”
His tongue. Just the flat of it, pushing against you where you’re so possible. His fingers pull, stretch your skin taut, and he licks into you and you shouldn’t be getting hard again already, but you are. It’s the dirtiest kind of kiss, his mouth open against you, his tongue sliding inside you, and then he’s shoving it in, fucking into you hard until there’s nothing you can do but breathe and watch your cock jerk between your shaking legs with the thrust of his tongue inside you.
Heat rises, steam, and the smells of semen, diluted sweat, and underneath those, Dick. He pushes his tongue into you again and you’re breathing him in, taking him everywhere, but you want— “I want you to fuck me.”
You feel it go through him. Shakes him against you, and he’s sliding his tongue out of you, hands cupping your hips. His breath hits your skin in short bursts, “Timmy. I don’t—” So raw, used up, broken around your name.
You push yourself up and look down at him over your shoulder, holding yourself steady with one hand. He lifts his head, and his mouth is bruised, his eyes too dark. “I want you to fuck me,” you say again. “You asked.” He groans and thumps his forehead against your hip.
“I didn’t think I’d get an answer,” he says ruefully. Tips his head back and smiles, and this is…
You smirk, and it feels like Kon’s expression, not yours. “Are you flaking on me, big brother?”
His eyes widen slightly before narrowing. The smile grows about a million edges. “Gonna pay for that one, kid,” and okay, that’s—there’s no domino, but—god. Nightwing.
You bite your lip and turn back to the wall, because you're both Batman’s weapons, made to be used, and it’s still safer to stare at the bright, white tile than it is to watch him watching you.
You hear him move, and he squeezes your hips once, strokes, “Hold on, have to… be right back.” His heat is gone, footsteps splashing away from you. You close your eyes and rest your forehead between your splayed hands, and you stay that way, waiting to get the heat of him back, because if you move—if you move at all, you’ll… but you don’t, you don’t move, and then his hands are back on you and you’re flexing open around the slick fingers he’s pushing into you.
You open your eyes but you’re still sightless, black and blue blind. You open your mouth and something comes out, but you can’t hear anything over the sound of water hitting tile. He presses his fingers deep, stroking, twisting them inside you. Crooks them just--just there, god, making you pant and move the way he wants you to, making you pay... pulls them halfway out and spreads them, stretching you… gone.
His fingers slide all the way out out of you. You feel yourself clamp down, collapsing in on yourself where he should be and isn't, but his hand is on your hip, stroking, contact even if it's not what you need. You hear the click of the lube cap and he's slicking himself, lining his cockhead up— “I’m sorry.” He rests his forehead on your shoulder and pushes in, and you shut your eyes again and breathe through it.
“Tim don’t, fuck, don’t move,” over and over against your skin while he slides into you an inch at a time. You bite down on the inside of your cheek to keep the shout in, feel your back arching, and it’s… he’s…
You haven’t done this with anyone but yourself and a toy. There isn’t—but it’s not about trust. Except when it is.
There are layers. Some people you trust in some ways but not in others. People you trust generally but not specifically; and people you count on for one thing only, because that’s all you can be sure of.
At this layer, it’s always been about him.
Not even… oh man, Rob, harder, just squeeze it, fuck—
Not even Bart (-feel good? because I think it’s supposed to. even the medical journals say that although they’re kind of sketchy about it, but you can do it to me for, you know, practice. you can, um, leave your gloves on? if you want?)
Steph offered. Even this, if you needed it, and you almost…
Everything else. Bodies, mouths sliding together, hands and fingers touching, gripping, but not—
The tile is slick and cool under your cheek. Dick’s warm all down your back and thick inside you, stretching you to breaking, and you can feel him holding you open with his thumbs so he can see…
What? What does—no, what would Batman see? The same thing Bruce would? Two of his Robins, brothers, his… sons?
It’s enough to make you clench, short muscular spasms in your ass and in your throat, swallowing. Dick makes a small choked noise against your skin and bites down on the join of your shoulder and neck, making you jerk and shake, and that’s another clench and another noise. He’s moving slowly inside you, shallow thrusts that don’t rub you quite right. And he’s talking because he always talks, but especially when he’s moving without thinking. His brain shuts down and his mouth opens and everything he is goes everywhere.
“Little brother, Timmy, god I’m sorry, I missed you, missed—”
One hand braced against the tile next to yours and the other is flexing on your hip, clenching and relaxing with the thick drag of his dick inside you. And he told you not to move, but he opens his stance, shifting inside you and you jerk back into him because it feels so— He hurts that good, and you’re shoving back against him, you’re both shoving together, close as you can get and it’s not enough, not—
He grunts and your hands are opening and closing on nothing but there’s something, some necessary sound caught in your throat. He slides his hand across the tile, threads his fingers through yours. Pushes all the way into you and pushes the sound out of you until it’s echoing off the tile.
His hips are jerking, he's thrusting into you without rhythm and your name is every other breath out of his mouth. You’re just starting to get that he’s going to come inside you when he hauls you hard into him, pulling you up onto the balls of your feet, “God, Tim,” and everything gets slicker, easier, except you’re all the way hard again, hard enough to hurt, and easy isn’t something you can have.
Everything hurts, tight pressure in your dick and your balls, the strain of your muscles clenching around him, trying to get more, and then he’s wrapping an arm around your waist and his voice is low, desperate in your ear: “Timmy, stop, it’s—”
Wraps his free hand around your dick and you’re clawing at him and you hate the sounds coming out of your mouth, “Can't, oh god, I don't…”
You roll your head against his shoulder, turn your face into his neck and he smells like himself, tastes like heat and salt and Bruce’s soap. He jacks you hard because you’re not going to let him make this easy, and he’s mouthing kisses over your hair, down to your temple and he stops there, his lips still moving, “Okay, it’s okay, little brother, come on, come—”
And you do, you come into his hand, come for him, and it’s like losing the last piece of yourself that was just yours.
Sweat and water and semen spread slickly between you, making the hypersensitive brush of skin against skin bearable. He’s softer, but still inside you. Still holding you up. You’re still shaking, the last shudders of your orgasm dying off.
“Tim.” He finishes rinsing his hand, smooths your soaked hair out of your eyes. “Gotta move, okay?”
You nod and he holds you steady, pulling out as slowly as he pushed in. You grit your teeth against the sensation, the hot slide of his semen out of your stretched hole, and then he’s turning you around, cupping your face in his hands and kissing you.
Trying to kiss you, because you're turning your head, leaning back and pulling away from his hands, his support— “Don’t. I… space. Please.” You’re not looking at him, but you can feel his gaze on your face. His hands fall away from you and you hear him back up, see the outline of him moving out of the corner of your eye.
“Whatever you need,” he says, and you nod, because you believe that he believes he means that.
You turn your back and start cleaning yourself up. The soap dispenser is, thankfully, standard issue, because you don’t really want to know what you have to say to get a handful of cleanser on the Enterprise-B. You close your eyes and scrub and there are seconds, smashed together out of sync in your brain, before you feel him move, hear splashing behind you that isn’t the shower.
The water temperature has dropped; it feels about right for a heated pool. You stand under the stream and let it pound the soap from your skin and out of your hair.
Dick says, just loud enough to be heard, “You know, I almost hated you.”
You know. You knew then, and it still—
“At Haly’s,” he says, as though you need to be reminded. Maybe he thinks you do. “You were so…” He stops. Laughs. “You were so sure about everything, and you were this kid, and you didn’t know anything. That’s what I thought, then.”
“No.” You turn your head, and he’s staring at you, and his expression… you look away. “You were right. I was a stupid kid. I just—”
“Tell me?” he says when you stop, and you don’t want to go there, but he’s asking and you’re still learning how to tell him no.
You swallow down the slick nauseating aftertaste of soap and say, “Kon and… Bruce. I—” You put your hand up and watch the star-spatter splash of water through your spread fingers. “I wanted to feel that sure again. I needed to make something work.”
Fingers, clenching in on themselves; you drop your hand. “Kon’s alive and I had nothing do with it. No control over whether I got him back or not.” You can’t keep yourself from jerking around, throwing it at him: “Harkness is alive. Even if Bruce comes back, what—what’s the point of any of this if something we can’t control is making arbitrary decisions about who gets to come back and who doesn’t? How is that any different from closing your eyes and praying to some god?”
Nothing on him but water. No mask, no cowl, nothing but his skin, and his eyes are closed. You don’t think he’s praying. “I put… what we thought was Bruce… into a Lazarus pit. What came out. It… wasn’t him.”
Like swallowing someone else’s tears. “You—”
“I failed,” and his hands are knots at his sides. His mouth twists. “You and Alfred and Bruce. Damian. I failed all of you.”
Yes.
“I’m sor—”
“Shut up.”
“Tim—”
“I said shut up.” He blocks a strike to his throat and one to his sternum before your kick sends both of you skidding across the water-slick floor into the wall.
Dick is panting in your ear; your shoulders and tailbone sting where you impacted and your throat aches under the band of his arm. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
You could say too late, but that would be as stupid and immature as you were— “Fuck you, Dick.” You shove him off and he lets you. The tile is cold. You’re getting there fast. Not even a Wayne shower can stay warm forever.
“Shower off,” you say, and the dual stream dies. You can feel Dick watching you, and you try to count him away. Seconds and minutes and spacetime shredding around you, slip-sliding across the tile with his feet, draining away down the pipes. His hand is inevitable on the back of your neck.
You feel yourself shudder, try to stop the reaction, but you’ve been holding yourself still all your life and there are hairline cracks through the domino you wouldn’t see if you looked in a mirror. If you put your hand up, you think you’d feel it.
“He’s coming back,” Dick says, and he sounds so damn sure.
“Yes.”
Up against you again, touching like he doesn’t know how to do this any other way. Your hands are never going to stop being fists. Long, restless strokes of his hands up and down your chest, pausing on the new scar on your lower abdomen— “We just have to figure out how to get him here,” he says, his mouth moving against the back of your neck. You have to force your answer out through full body muscular constriction.
“Yes.”
“The time thing…” Dick’s voice trails off into jagged laughter. “God. Only Bruce would give the time stream a black eye shaped like his bat.”
He’s vibrating against you like Bart. You say, “Yes,” and force your neck muscles to relax. Still touching you, real and warm and you can’t feel his scars, new or old, water-smooth lies against your skin, but you don’t need to feel to know. You thump your head back against his shoulder and say it again because you’re both here, and eventually Bruce will be too. “Yes.”
He says, “Jesus. Jesus, Tim,” and turns you around and opens your mouth with his own. And you want to bite through his lip, kick his ass then kick it again. Punch his face until he’s bleeding everywhere. You want to hate him and you can’t.
“My parents’ combined fortunes won’t be enough to cover my therapy,” Damian’s voice comes in over the bunker’s PA.
Dick stops kissing you. He doesn’t let you go, though, holds on, even when you roll your shoulders to shake him off.
Damian continues, “Or I could just sell this footage. Todd’s idea was good, even if his follow through wasn’t. This is better. Don’t you agree, Grayson?”
The PA switches off audibly.
Dick is… growling. “You said I couldn’t kill him,” you remind him. “That means you can’t either.”
The PA comes back on line. “Signal’s up,” Damian says, and switches it off for what probably isn’t the final time.
Dick pulls you back in and just… looks at you. “You’re coming with.”
“Yes.”
“You’re coming back here with us, after.” He sounds a lot less sure about that. You think about letting him live with it. He says, “Tim,” dragging out the m, and you decide a few hours’ satisfaction isn’t worth him whining in your ear for most of that time.
“Maybe,” you say, because you’ve said yes too many times, in too many ways. But he’s smiling at you, and that’s—
You’re four years old, held by a boy who’s smiling at you like you’re it. You say, “Dick?”
“Mmn?”
“I could always kill you instead of Damian.” Easier for Bruce.
“Yeah,” he laughs, and sometimes he’s too good at reading your mind, because, “Bruce would probably understand.”
More static. Damian says, “In two minutes I’m torching the spare suits and taking the car.”
“Gonna kill him,” Dick says, finally letting go of you.
“You’re not,” you answer as both of you grab towels and slide more than walk over to the lockers. “I’ve got dibs.”
“Hey, I’ve been living with him for months.”
You pull up your jock, ignoring the twinge in your ass, and tug Red Robin’s leggings on over it. “He tried to kill me. Twice.”
“Point.”
You finish dressing before Dick does. He calls, “I’m right behind you,” as you take the stairs instead of the lift, and Robin is already down in the bay when you get there.
He’s standing in front of the V.23, arms crossed. It’s like showing up late to meet Zoanne; all that’s missing is the tapping foot. And the right gender.
“Robin,” you say, a huge concession, but this is Damian, son of Talia. He walks past you like you’re not there and mounts his bike.
The stairs shift under Batman’s weight. “Fair warning,” he says as he stalks by Robin on his way to the car. “Next time you zone and I’m around for it, you’re dead meat.”
“I never zone,” Robin says. “Can we go now, or would you and Red Robin prefer to scar me for life some more?”
“Bite me,” says Nightwing from behind Batman’s cowl. You say, “Guys, bat signal, remember?” and wait for them to shut up (not happening), wait for Robin’s bike to clear the tunnel before you follow them out.
All the way to Central, your lower body keeps telling that you just had penetrative sex up against a wall. It protested when you first straddled your bike, and it keeps complaining while you tail Batman and Robin through the city to a meeting that has awkward written all over it. It whines a little while Robin goads Batman over the comm about Red Hood’s latest round of stupidities, and winces when you shoot your grapple at Central’s roof.
You block the physiological feedback loop out with a mental exercise borrowed from Shiva (“I am a woman, little bird, subject to all that means”) and hang back in the shadows while Batman talks to Gordon. He keeps glancing from Batman to Robin to you and back again.
“New team member?” he says to Batman. The CD file he just handed him contains the latest intel on a recent Joker-like killing spree. Like, because although the manner of death fits, the MO doesn’t.
Batman says, “Yes,” hands the file off to you, “and no.” You tuck it into your bandolier. Gordon grunts and shoves his hands into his coat pockets.
“Don’t know why I bother asking. It’s not like you’re going to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me.”
Robin snorts. You nudge him in the ribs. “He’s forgotten more about detective work than you’ll ever know.”
He half turns, mouth opening, but Batman says, “Robin,” and he shuts it again without speaking. Not even white-out lenses completely block the focused glare behind them.
“We’ll get back to you on this,” Batman tells the commissioner.
Gordon’s mouth quirks to one side. “I can’t say it’s ever a pleasure, but life would be a lot less interesting without you boys around.” He glances up at the signal. “Guess it’s time for me to turn my back—”
By the time he looks down, you’re the only thing left on the roof but the signal generator. “It’s good to see you, sir,” you tell him, and then you let yourself fall and his answer, if there is one, is dragged up and away from you by the air whipping past you.
Batman and Robin are waiting with the vehicles. “—certain,” Robin says as you land. “They add a few drops to the final cut. Most of the time it kills, but sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Are we doing this now?” you say, holding the CD out to Batman, who looks over at you.
“Maybe. Robin thinks he knows which outfit is playing with Joker’s toys.”
“West Burnley,” Robin says. “Los Manos territory.”
“I know it.” There’s been one gang or another running drugs out by the north island docks since before No Man’s Land. “We could let Joker deal with the problem,” you say as you swing your leg over your bike. You’re only half joking.
“If you ignore the fact that he’s dead,” Robin sneers.
Batman slides the file into a slot on the car’s control panel. “Don’t assume death until you’ve seen the body. Even then, it doesn’t always stick.” Which is hitting way too close to home.
Before you or Robin can call him on it, Batman says, “We need to deal with this now before more high school kids die. R, lock your bike down, you’re riding with me.”
“But—”
“Do it.”
Robin’s mouth snaps shut. He vaults into the car and the armoring on his bike activates.
You glance at his hunched profile. Batman’s mouth is twitching. “Up for this?” he asks, and you know Batgirl and Pru must have given him a blow by blow of what Steph is calling the Ra’s fracas.
“What do you think?” you say.
His smile would fit better beneath a domino. The contact he wants is six feet of empty space. Under your suit your skin prickles, nipples hardening into tight, too-sensitive points fast rubbing raw against your undershirt.
You step back, moving yourself out of the danger zone. “It’s your op.” He steps forward into your space.
“Little brother.” And it’s… all there. How bad last year was. How much better this one still has to get, because—
He flips himself backward and handsprings into the batmobile’s cockpit, Nightwing enough to hurt. The canopy seals shut and the car shoots out of the alley like that cliché you aren’t going to use. You rev your bike to life and follow.
When you leave Central, your chrono reads twenty-three fifty-two. The streets you’re riding aren’t as busy as they were even an hour ago. In many of the buildings you pass, people are just now winding down the day. Finishing up late at the office. Closing down an all-night grocery. Getting ready for bed, eating delayed dinner, or maybe just watching a late TV show with their wives, husbands, partners, children, siblings, friends.
You? Are on your way to join two of your brothers in an act of Wayne familial bonding known as hurting people. Probably a lot of people.
Just to make things interesting, before, during and after the hurting of people your little brother will talk at you about your mutual father, and how he’s not really. Then he’ll comment on your sexual preferences, positions included. Your big brother will tell him to shut up several times in between hurting as many people as he can so as to lessen the possibility of them hurting you or your little brother.
And when everyone but you and your brothers are on the ground groaning, you’ll ask questions. You’ll share your displeasure when those questions don’t receive immediate answers. But eventually they will get answered, and then two of you will zip-strip the leftovers, while the third calls the cops. After that, because by then it’ll be pushing dawn, you’ll go back with your brothers to Wayne Tower.
You’ll wash the blood off in the bunker showers before you go up to the penthouse, but there won’t be any sex this time. Instead, you and Dick will do something—you’re not sure what, yet—to make Damian wish he’d never crawled out of his nice warm bio-tube. Because he was grown, not born, which is still less strange than your other brother, who died, got reanimated, then clawed his way out of his own grave.
Somewhere, in some dimension, there are normal families. You’ve read about them. You like to think they exist, but you’re not sure you believe in them. Besides, according to Cass, water torture is fun. You’re pretty sure she’s in a position to know.
But maybe Damian will get lucky tonight. Maybe you’ll let him off the hook, because by the time the blood is gone and the adrenalin starts to wear off, you’ll be starting to feel how much damage you’ve taken over the last few months. So maybe Damian will have to wait for tomorrow and Pru, who'll enjoy watching the two of you trying to kill each other. Tomorrow, after sleep and caffeine. A lot of caffeine.
Tonight you’ll let Dick take a look at your old damage and bandage the new damage you’ll start taking about twenty minutes from now. Then you’ll get dressed and go upstairs to say goodnight to the man who really runs this show. Who will pat your shoulder and say, “I return the sentiment, Master Timothy. Allow me to offer you a salve for that bruise where your left cheekbone once was.” And you’ll take it because the salve really does work. But even if it didn’t, it’s Alfred.
You don’t say no to Alfred. Not if your brain’s working right.
And yours will be working, if running on empty. You’ll say, “Yes,” and, “Thank you,” and then Dick will drop down on you from some improbable angle. He’ll yawn and drape himself all over you and complain about how bony you are. You’ll tell him to move if he’s so uncomfortable. He won’t.
Alfred will come back in with the salve and insist on applying it himself. Damian will point out his own superior healing abilities. His bone-deep bruises are always gone by morning.
You’ll ignore him until he gets bored, ignore your numb cheekbone, then you’ll elbow him goodnight as soon as he’s close enough. Get out of his way before he can pull his knife, while Dick whines about you moving around too much. You’ll shove Dick off you onto the nearest couch, find a corner where you can watch everyone else, and wait for them to go to bed.
When Damian and Alfred are gone, the penthouse will be quiet for maybe ten seconds before Dick opens his mouth.
Riddle me this, Tim Drake-Draper-Wayne: how do you shut a Dickie-bird up before he can start in singing another round of apologies and self loathing?
Answer: use your mouth on him until he comes hard enough to pass out. Shove him into bed, make coffee, and take it back down with you to the bunker. Repeat outlined subroutines until you figure out how to get Bruce back from wherever in the past he’s trapped.
Ahead of you, the batmobile makes an abrupt turn and you turn with it. Inside your head, you’re everywhere but here. You think, Gotham, and then you know. For the first time since the plane landed you know, visceral understanding even you can’t question. You’re not in Baghdad or Berlin. Not even Prague.
Gargoyles. Costumed crazies and stylized bats like rude tattoos stamped into the fabric of the cosmos.
Minimal LoA activity—always a plus.
The batmobile is slowing down. You adjust your speed, threading slowly between crammed-in warehouses after the car, until Batman turns into a narrow alley and parks.
You keep going. You’ll need the maneuvering room later. “R-point in five,” you say into the comm.
“Got it.”
You pull up on a dimly lit side street full of refuse that looks undisturbed. You lock the bike down and walk over to stand just inside mouth between buildings, and the smell hits you.
Wet salt rot from the docks. The metallic, back of the throat aftertaste that’s just Gotham, and also something more chemical than metal. Meth lab. Large scale operation.
Looks like the kid was right. “Red,” Batman says in your ear. “Guards on all ground exits. We’re going in through the roof.”
“Understood,” you say, and then you’re running, shooting your grapple at the building on your left as you go, gaining height fast. You pull yourself up onto the roof, catch and retrieve, and you’re already moving again, shooting your line out into the darkness between buildings. You jump. The line goes taut. It catches your momentum on the upswing and your cape snaps out behind you and the skyline rushes up to meet you.
And you fly.
Batman/Red Robin (Dick/Tim) | NC-17 | ~10400 words
Notes: Shout-out to
glymr, whose observations and commentary helped make this a better story than it otherwise would have been. Spoilers for current storylines from various DC titles, Red Robin and Batgirl, mainly. Warnings... um. Emotional incest, maybe? These two are a gorgeous disaster however you look at it. Future fic, takes place some unspecified amount of time after Red Robin #11, but not too long after. Not a fix-it, in fact, this is mostly a lot of porn with a side of Tim being weird. But I’d like to think there’s an ambiguous current of hope in there somewhere.Once a month on a Wednesday, Alfred makes—used to make crab cakes.
Crisp and buttery outside with just enough green onions and cilantro inside. You never asked him why, never asked Bruce or Dick, either. It was just crab cakes once a month on a Wednesday. Just one of those things.
It’s been five months since you’ve had one. They’re not something you think about wanting; good when they’re available, but not a personal favorite. You don’t consciously want crab on a Wednesday that could be Alfred’s, but sometimes you take a bite of something and swallow and the aftertaste is just… wrong. Those times, your chrono always says Wednesday. You’re starting to think the act of missing someone or something is less mental than physical.
Not conscious thought. More like something your subconscious thinks you should hear or see or smell when you don’t. Sense memory.
It’s not like losing Robin. That was conscious, and you never stopped thinking about it, not until the domino was back on your face. You took Robin back, just like you took Jason’s uniform from Alfred’s hands, Batman’s and Gotham’s needs weighed against your dad’s wants. You left your own needs and wants off the scales. Perfect imbalance.
Two-Face would have told you to flip for it. Whether he would have said it before or after tried to kill you is a question for the coin. You’ll take after for three hundred, Alex, and logical deduction based on cognitive memory.
Sense memory is something else. In Italy, a man laughed and you turned to look, but his eyes weren’t blue and his smile shaped his mouth wrong. The woman next to you in a Berlin lift let her blonde hair fall into her eyes instead of tucking it back into place with her right index finger.
The skylines of Paris and Geneva felt old in their outlines and complicated under your heels. You hit rooftop after rooftop, feeling like you didn’t know half the things you needed to.
Things like, if you put your foot here, the masonry will crumble here and here, in this pattern, but not if you lead with your heel. The upper ledges here can take your weight, but the ones on the other side of the building won’t. Don’t land there, twenty-four hour manned security. The fire escapes on the north end of this street are rusty, make too much noise. Understood risks on known rooftops.
These rooftops.
They’re unique in some ways, even with the prop tops gone. There are still more gargoyles per square foot than in most cities, although No Man’s Land put them on the endangered species list for a while. The chance of meeting a costumed crazy is about ninety percent better here than it is anywhere else.
The chance that you’re the costumed crazy up on the roof with the pigeons? Even better.
“You know,” says Batman, “I don’t think that suit was ever vetted.”
Two years ago, he would have told a trespassing cape, “You’re not wanted.” Or gassed them (or used their specific weakness against them) and dragged them back to the cave, then loomed for a while. Two years ago the Batman’s voice would’ve been harsh authority and no humor.
You make sure your lenses are down before you turn. He’s where the sound of his approach put him, and even though you’ve been here, done this before he’s still… too short. Not enough bulk. “Depends,” you tell him, and his mouth twitches, and that’s new as well. Too many things are.
“On what?” he says.
“Your definition of vetted.” And that is a dangerously correct smile on the wrong face under the right mask. “If you’re looking for small, hooded and vicious,” you say, “you’re four streets off. Gang activity suppression with BG.”
The smile shuts down like it was never there, which is also wrong, if for different reasons. “I know where he is,” he says. “I’m here for you.”
If you could use laughter the way he does, you’d do it now. You know better than to try. You turn back to the view from the edge and down below, Gotham’s night life is a glittering web of light unraveling into outlying darkness. No different from nighttime in Madrid or Milan or Paris, aside from the gargoyle headcount. And the guy behind you.
“O says you’ve been working with BG sometimes,” and he’s almost got the tone right this time. Almost blank, noncommittal enough. “No problems?”
The corners of your mouth are thinking about curling upward. You remember Pru’s bloody nose, and that’s all you need. “She took down my partner. Third time someone punched Pru in the nose in three months.”
You don’t think that’s actual laughter, and it’s one more right thing gone wrong. Because he’s the only one of you who let himself be obvious about anything. You know that for once most of this isn’t Bruce’s fault, but you briefly let yourself hate him anyway.
Slight ruffle of sound—the cape. He’s not touching but you think you can feel the heat of him there, behind you. “Ti—”
You cut him off, “No.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and your throat and temples start aching again after months of nothing. He says it again, “I’m sorry.” Says it against your ear, leaves it close where it can’t carry, “Tim.” Not a whisper, it’s more like a soundless hum—it’s the tone all of you use in the field, an inheritance. “You were right,” Batman says, and you hear the sharpness of your own sucked-in breath.
Your elbow impacts his sternum. His forearm and elbow are in your hands (breakable because of the familiar armoring, just enough pressure here or here) and he’s on his back because he wasn’t expecting this from you, and you put him down there because you could.
Your back is to the edge of the roof. You’re as much a target as one of the pigeons. You feel loose and too light and you’re not ready for any of this, and Batman is on his back. Because of you.
“I guess I deserved that,” he says. He’s just lying there.
“Get up,” you say. “Now.”
There’s a moment of silence like muffled laughter, and then he says, “Anything you say, little brother,” and you were… so right.
You’re not ready, and there won’t ever be a time he can’t make you feel like a green dumbass in two words or less.
He’s altered the suit to fit his own, more flexible needs. The Bat’s body armor looks as fluid on him as his own blue and black used to; the cape curls in on itself and him, almost as if it’s alive. He doesn’t stand so much as flow upward until he’s maybe a foot away from you, and his breath is warm on your face. “You were right,” he repeats, like maybe if he says it enough you’ll start to believe he means it.
“It doesn’t matter,” you tell him.
“Is lying to yourself part of being Red Robin?”
“The cowl is a lie?” It’s almost worth a smile. “I can’t speak for the last guy, but I think I’ll stick with cake,” and you know he saw that one coming. You see him coming and you don’t try to stop him.
He’s not Bruce, but he’s always been bigger than you. More muscle mass and training equal to and greater than your own. He has one of your arms twisted up behind your back and his free hand placed for a nerve strike that will put you out for at least ten minutes. You slam your heel into his inner calf and slam your head back into his face. He flinches and his grip slackens just enough.
“Damn it, Red—” he hasn’t pulled a punch in years. You’re not about to start, so you take a page from his old book and climb him, use his arm and shoulders to hurl yourself up and over him.
He’s already moving, flipping himself backward and away from you as you land. He somersaults twice and comes up in a crouch. “You’ve gotten a lot better at that.”
“I needed to,” you say, and your staff is solid and comfortable in your hands. Old habit made of newer, better materials. Back when you started training, he’d fight you bare-handed. Like Shiva, later, only with fewer broken body parts. You don’t remember winning, but you weren’t great at turning off distractions at first, and back then Dick was one hell of a distraction. It’s not really an issue anymore.
“That suit does something to people’s brains,” he says, almost an accusation. “You, Jay—”
You say, “His brain was already a mess,” and circle out to the right. He falls back, keeping himself just out of your range. You hear the slick shhhck of a batarang sliding into his hand, and you smile the only way Red Robin can, which is not much.
“Why are we doing this?” Dips his throwing shoulder, feinting, fishing for a reaction, but you’ve been that stupid before. You learn fast.
You say, “You're right. It’s the suit,” and this throw is real.
Deflecting the batarang is easy, but he’s not playing by your rules. The staff clatters against brick and you’re bent back over the roof edge with your arms trapped under you. His thigh is riding your crotch and the fit of your jock is starting to get painful, and he’s… not playing at all.
His mouth is as tight as Bruce’s ever got. He looks the way Batman should always look: pissed off at the world and scary as hell. He grabs you by the disc at your bandolier’s nexus and hauls you to your feet.
“Why, Tim?” he growls, still low enough not to be heard. Still thinking straight. You have enough time to wonder if you are before he’s kissing you.
You stop yourself from crushing his larynx, but it’s close. Your reactions don’t like being suppressed and everything your body knows says this is an attack. It takes you long seconds to get yourself back where you need to be, and by then he’s noticed that you’re not moving.
He pulls back a little. Changes the angle and, “Tim,” and he’s kissing you again and you let all interested muscle groups know that you’re going to kiss him back.
Later, the noise you make against his mouth will embarrass you. Later, when pressure isn’t all the suits are letting you feel, his hands gripping your shoulders, upper arms flexing under your gauntlets. His mouth is the only thing that’s really him, wet and hot and moving, brushing up against the corners of your mouth and sucking your lower lip in. He starts to pull away and you feel yourself start to (protest) make another embarrassing noise, feel your hands tightening on his arms.
He’s breathing faster than he should be. He swallows and a muscle jumps in his jaw and he says, “I want—I—” He’s leaning in again. His mouth is too much skin for this roof, but— “Not here,” and he’s letting you go. Skimming his hands down your arms, even though you can barely feel it through the suit. “Not—”
It’s too clear in your head, maybe because you’ve done this before, as well. Two capes in cowls making out on a Gotham rooftop, nobody watching but the pigeons and maybe the gargoyles.
“I didn’t…” want this. “I don’t.” Because he should be blue and you shouldn't have had to throw away your green, and cowls are different from masks in potentially permanent ways.
He touches a finger to his comm, and you back off, switch your frequency from Pru to the party line. “B to R,” he says, and there’s a pause, then Robin says flatly, “I’m busy.”
Probably true, given the background noise.
“Back to base when you’re done there,” Batman says, and Robin says, “What?”
Batgirl says, “You’re kidding.”
“Sometimes family trumps the mission.”
His white-outs are down, and the Batman’s profile is to you. The comm channel is silent, but not empty. You feel like you’ve all been waiting for one of you to say it and mean it, and if anyone was going to, it had to be him.
“Okay,” Batgirl says. “Talk about your harshed buzzes. You boys have fun with that, I’ve got a date—or I did,” she says wryly, and Batman laughs once and you fight down your wince.
“Don’t do that, boss man,” Batgirl tells him. “I’ve got a pretty good picture, and it’s not pretty. Red, you got your ears on?”
“Affirmative,” you say.
“Creepy, right?” she says.
“Affirmative.”
“Well. There you go. And okay, here I go—Batgirl says stay down, asshole.”
You thought you couldn’t love her more than you did at the exact moment you heard Pru’s nose go. You were wrong. You are, more often than you want to think about. Weeks in the air and on the road, scared shitless that every mile was the equivalent of another failed cloning experiment. Worse, one that didn’t fail. The cave in Iraq was feeling yourself jolted back into reality after months of waking dreams.
Over the comm someone—make that more than one someone—grunts.
Someone else gurgles, and Robin’s favorite “Tt” noise rattles out over the open channel before he says, “Why are you pulling me? Don’t tell me you want me there for your stupid reunion.”
Batman’s jaw looks like a long night and a fight that needs to happen. “I said, when you’re done, Robin,” he says. “I’ll see you back at base. Batman out.”
He raises his lenses and looks at you, and it—could be enough. If you let it.
“Come home with—no.” He starts to reach for you but drops his hand. His eyes are the right color. His mouth is the right shape. “Come home,” he says. “That’s it.”
You could tell him the manor is the only home you have left. You could tell him… a lot of things.
He doesn’t move for twenty-one seconds—you know that because you’ve been counting them off in your head. He keeps looking at you until he flips the lenses down and then he’s not looking, he’s blurring past you, taking the edge at a leap. You wait for the sound of the grapple; one, two more seconds and the line goes.
You change the comm frequency again. “You need a name.”
“I’ve already fucking well got one, haven’t I?” Pru says in your ear. “Don’t even go there. The bloody mask’s bad enough, and I feel a right arse in this fucking cat suit.”
Two ‘fucking’s in a row, which means she’s really annoyed. You feel your mouth start to twitch and shut it down. “You get used to it. I’ll be unavailable for a while. Contact BG or O if you need an assist.”
You can almost hear her raising her eyebrows. “Big bro finally show, then?”
“Don’t call him that to his face if you like your nose unbroken,” you say. “I’ll be at base tomorrow, nine-hundred. Probably with company.”
“Bloody brilliant,” she sighs. “Breakfast with the midget bastard.”
“You’re lucky it’s not dinner at the nearest cop shop.”
She snorts. “Right, then. Does your highness have any further commands?”
“No. But that could change.”
“It always does,” she says, then, “Fuck. B and E on Dixon. I’m out,” and the line goes dead.
This time, you let the smile come. Still living up to her name—or maybe that’s a hundred and eighty degrees south of it. You point your line in the direction you left your bike and shoot. You don’t worry about finding him; you already know where he is. Sitting in the car, blocking your bike’s exit route.
You switch your frequency to Nightwing’s. “On my way.” Kill the comm before he can answer, and jump before you can change your mind.
--
It feels weird following the batmobile to an in-city bunker instead of the cave. He laughs when you tell him that. “BG uses home territory more than we do. R and I are based here. It’s just easier.”
“Noted,” you say, and he snorts another short laugh. “Something funny, Batman?”
“In a lot of ways, you haven’t changed at all.”
You say, “Hmn,” and he says, “Yep. All the really annoying ones. Which reminds me. Don’t kill the kid, okay? I don’t want to have to tell Bruce that I let two of his kids murder each other while he was gone.”
Throat strike, pulled at the last microsecond. The pressure is enough to let you know it could have gone all the way through to the spine. You cough once and work on regulating your breathing.
“Red?” Batman says.
“I’m fine,” you say, and he leaves it there, and you take the reprieve while you can.
He takes a curve too fast, and that… works. For everyone behind his cowl. “How far?” you ask. The buildings around you are starting to look too nice for the kind of mind trap you’re expecting.
Then Batman says, “Here,” and turns again, and you’re riding straight into the back wall of what looks like an apartment complex until you aren’t, and the walls are smooth grey and lights are flashing past you too fast for you to make out much of anything.
The incline drops, lasts too long and not much time at all before it levels off and you’re on top of a second mouth spitting you out into a wide bay. You swerve around the car Batman just brought to a stop and pull in next to what looks like one of Robin’s bikes.
The batmobile’s roof hisses open. You rest one hand on your bike’s controls, the other on your thigh and take a good look at Dick’s new clubhouse.
It’s not the cave, but nothing ever is. As far as bases of operations go, this one is better than anything but a JLA design. Even the stripped down bay is better equipped than your own scattered command centers, but Dick does have more resources at his disposal than you ever did.
You start to ask why here, but he’s out of the car, moving toward the stairs. He’s not moving like Batman—he’s not moving like anyone else you know, either. “Command center’s up one level,” he calls without turning. “You want a shower?”
By the time he made your rooftop, you’d been in four confrontations, three of them with multiple opponents. You say, “Yes,” swing yourself off the bike, and follow him up the stairs.
You take them two at a time, counting as you go—two flights, twelve each—and glance at your chrono. Twenty-two thirty-three. Four sanitized crimes isn’t bad for just over two hours’ work. It could be better.
“You,” Batman says as you follow him out of the stairwell, “are worse than Bruce.”
That’s… he’s still wearing the cowl and he thinks—
He says, “Lights,” and life gets way too bright, much too fast. You flip your lenses, blinking rapidly and shielding your face with your hand.
“Not the cave, I know,” he says. “Down twenty percent.”
You lower your hand as the light dims. “So when exactly did Scotty beam us up?”
Dick laughs, and this time it really is Dick. The cowl’s pushed back. “Damian’s contribution,” he says. “I guess the lab he grew up in had the same setup.” He’s stripping off his gauntlets; dropping them on a computer console a close enough match for Bruce’s that this could almost be the cave. Though, Bruce never left pieces of his uniform lying around.
He says, “I’ve got some of your stuff here,” and the belt joins the gauntlets. He doesn’t look up. “In the lockers.”
There were nine cameras, some digital, some not. All expensive. Eight of them died in the line of duty. The last one disappeared with Blüdhaven, and the photos…
Still in the database. Somewhere. Bruce burned the hardcopy.
“Good to know I won’t get stuck wearing your shorts,” you say, and you hear the catch in Dick’s breathing, and his slow exhalation.
“It’s back this way,” he says, and you follow him through a maze of partitioned off areas—VR training grid even more advanced than the cave’s, kitchen, forensics lab—into a curved locker bay opening onto communal showers. Dick raps his knuckles against one locker, “All yours. Showers are the same as at home, but I’ve got two stalls for visitors if you—”
“It’s fine,” you interrupt. You push your cowl back and start in on your gauntlets, but Dick’s locker door swings open and there’s a heap of blue and black sitting on top of a pile of civvies, and you can’t make yourself stop staring.
His hand stills, spread fingers crosshatching dual colors. “Habit,” he says after a moment, and his fingers spasm, almost—almost like they’re petting. Something.
His head is down and his hair is in his face. You’re both looking at his hand stroking inanimate Nomex blend. His shoulders hunch as he pulls his hand away and reaches for the fastenings of his cape.
You look down at your own hands, tug at your gauntlets and damp suction tugs back. They come off in sucking pops and you open the locker Dick pointed out and toss them in, throwing a cursory glance at the rest of the contents as you do. Jeans and tees, underwear and a jacket; a pair of your old, beat-up sneakers with socks stuffed in.
Habit.
Every person has an infinite number of possible futures, each one a thread attached to a barbed stinger sunk in just under the skin’s surface, and sometimes you think you can feel the entire collective pulling, undermining the integrity of who you want to believe you are. You think everyone feels the same pull. Sometimes.
In Gotham, full moons are grounds for early nights. On a blue moon, sane people stay inside with the blinds down, every lock locked, and chairs under every doorknob.
In the Cave database—and the one here, probably—there are nineteen projected scenarios for circumstances under which Dick could go renegade. You wrote three of them yourself. You’ve written twenty for yourself, and others for… everyone who matters. In the ones written for Dick, Bruce’s scenarios and yours, when the punch line comes, he’s never anyone but himself.
None of you are.
Batman’s cowl and cape hit the bench that follows the locker bank’s curve, caving gradually in like a deformed parachute. The cape spills down onto the floor and Dick is waiting for you when you look up, the corners of his mouth pulled in deep and tight.
“I don’t hate it anymore,” he says. “I just don’t want it.”
You look back down to where your own cowl is crushed between your clenched fingers. You open your hand, watch it drop and turn your back on Dick while you disarm your suit.
The suit’s smells are mostly the same, sweat and body-warm Kevlar, dirt, blood and bike exhaust overlaying everything else. The catches come easy to your fingers. They shouldn’t, you should still be able to feel—
Cape, bandolier and cowl all go into the locker. You start to pull the tunic and undershirt over your head; Dick slides his hand across your bare shoulders, and you hear his feet padding away from you. You yank the tunic off and drop it but he’s already in the showers. He says something and the water goes on.
You wanted his trust, and he gave it to you. Gauntlets, cape over body armor, Nomex and Kevlar between your skin and his so you couldn’t feel the heat of his hand.
His back is to you, face tilted up into the spray. The shower tile is the kind of white designed to damage retinas, and he’s hard dark angles up against it.
You let yourself watch for five seconds (count them) before stripping off your boots and leggings and stepping onto wet tile, and then you don’t let yourself look at anything but the showerhead you’re standing under.
“You have to tell it what you want,” Dick says.
What you… want. You. There is. In your head.
There’s a list.
The cave’s chill, there even with climate control, and Bruce in the suit. Obvious, sure, but not even close to thin hands brushing your hair back from your face, the nighttime smell of her when she used to come in those times she was actually home and sit on your bed after she thought you were asleep. Dodge, all the way back, asleep in his parents’ house.
Z and Owens. Alive and doing their best to kill you. The alive part is key.
You want to know Barbara as she was. You want to watch her on her feet squaring off with Steph and Cass, all of them Batgirl, so sharp you could cut your lungs breathing the same air they do.
You want to know why you have Kon but not Dad.
Your nails are cutting into your palms. Relax, says the Dick who lives in your head, jeeze, little brother, you’re so tight you’re gonna burst something. It’s what Dick would say, and doing what Dick wants has always been easier for you than the opposite. You watch your fingers uncurl, one at a time, and say, “Medium spray, Fahrenheit one hundred.” The stream hits your legs and Dick is… there. Right behind you for the second time tonight.
His heat signature licks out, curls itself around you. You know he’s going to touch before he does it. You could stop him but you don’t, and his arms are wrapped around your waist, his cheek tight against your neck, scratchy with stubble. His dick is hard, hot and pressing in against your ass.
“Do you... is this something you want from me?”
I used to. “I don't know, Dick,” you say. “At the moment, I’m wondering why you’re offering, because for some reason, I never got the impression you wanted this from me. Little brother, right?”
His breath gusts out in a kind of sob. You think he means it as a laugh. He’s so—too here. You’re sucking steam in with every mouthful of air because he’s used up every unsaturated molecule. Your breath is in his lungs and his hands are kissing down your skin, teasing the edges of your nipples until you shudder, feeling them knot up tight. Tracing patterns on your abdomen and then your thighs, and this isn’t—
“God. Tim.” His mouth is open on your shoulder; he’s sucking water off your skin. “Better or worse?” he says, breathing warm and humid against the side of your neck.
“Neither. We’re not—” but you lose the thread because his teeth are clamped down on your throat and your balls are tightening with the stroke of his thumb over them.
He presses even closer, like he’s melting himself into you, and his dick parts the seam of your ass. His hips are restless, just like his hands and his mouth, rocking his dick up and down just inside your crease, slick friction opening you up and rubbing not deep enough to hit you where you really need it. He snarls, low and from the gut, thrusts against you like he can’t stop himself, and you taste his name in your mouth, feel yourself flex open and the head of his dick catches on your rim.
He moans, “Oh god,” and you hear the grinding, terrifying sound you make, feel yourself clench, then open up even more. He’s pushing against you, tiny nudges that make you push back onto him, make you want— “God, Tim, that’s—you’re so—”
His cockhead is slick with water and pre-come. Slick pressure against your hole, pressing into you, and he feels like too many things you won’t ever get back, and also like getting everyone back safe for good. He’s kneading your hips, the heels of his hands digging into your ass, spreading you wider, and you have to push back as he nudges again, again and the stretch burns over into penetration.
You let yourself fall forward into the spray. Brace yourself against the slippery wall and hang there, breathing and shaking because you want to move too much, shove yourself back onto his dick and let him open you up all the way. His hands are tight on your hips, keeping you still, “Tim don’t, don’t, I can’t—oh fuck,” because you can’t stay still and every shudder that goes through you pushes him a little deeper.
“I… oh Jesus.” He’s pulling out, careful and slow. Leaving you.
Something like panic clenches tight in your chest and everywhere else, and he gasps and his fingers claw up on your skin, but he—he’s still gone.
“Timmy, I have to—” He’s pulling you up. Away from the wall and the wall of water. He turns you around and kisses you, slow and sure of what he can have from you, and you don’t think, let yourself take this from him.
Take him, touching and trusting you at the same time, you can feel how necessary this is for him, how hard he’s holding on, how necessary you are—
Not. Pushing you away, and you’ve always known there’s no one less necessary than Tim Drake. You keep your arms at your sides, keep your hands relaxed when all they want is to ball up, and he’s just smiling. Like he knows what you’re thinking. He says, “You’re a mess, kid,” and goes down to his knees on the tile in front of you, smiling up at you while the spray from two showerheads mists on his skin and yours.
He cups your balls in his hand, squeezing gently. Still smiling, leaning forward and his mouth is opening up around your cockhead, swallowing you down, and you get your hands on his wet shoulders and dig your fingers in. Feel his muscle give under your grip and his throat give around your cock, but then he’s pulling off and you can feel the protest building in the back of your throat because… because…
“Good, that’s good, make some noise for me, little brother—”
His mouth closes around you again and you groan, wondering if this is supposed to keep you in line: good little brother, sit, stay; don’t go running off looking for Dad and maybe going crazy while you look; don’t do that and I’ll keep doing this. And god, you want him to keep doing this, keep going down until your cockhead is snug against the back of his throat and his cheeks are hollowing around you. His mouth feels like an obscenity, all wet and stretched and red, and his eyes are closed as he sucks you and he looks—Dick looks— “You—oh god you—wanted this,” you manage between stuttered breaths, answering your own question. He looks up at you through wet eyelashes, and he can’t smile with your dick in his mouth, but his eyes are enough.
His fingers wiggle into the space just behind your balls. He presses up and everything narrows down to the jerk of your hips pushing your dick hard into his mouth, spilling pre-come all over his tongue. He teases your slit with his tongue, and it’s good to the point of pain, and you can't stop thrusting and he doesn't stop you. Slides the fingers behind your balls farther back— “Dick.”
Nudges you, swirling the pad of his finger over your hole and god, in—
You come. With his finger inside you and your dick shoved halfway down his throat, your choked-off shout too loud in your ears. Your knees want to buckle and you stiffen them, prop yourself up on his shoulders—he’s going to have finger marks—and he lets your dick slide out of his mouth with one last swirl of his tongue around the too-sensitive head.
His hands hold you steady; he looks up at you, smiling a little. “Okay?”
You nod, once. That’s all you have left, and he must know it because his smile widens and then he’s on his feet, pushing you backward. He moves you, hands on you guiding you where he wants, facing the wall in between showerheads. You slap your palms flat on the tile and he wraps his hands around your wrists and squeezes. “Like that,” he says, and you drop your head down between your arms and stay.
One hand on your hip, thumb stroking over and over the bone. His other thumb slides against you where you’re clenched tight on nothing and you don’t need anything else. Your legs spread wider and he’s hard against your hip, and you remember that he hasn’t come yet.
Both thumbs now, massaging and spreading, just grazing your hole. “How many?”
Three of your own, but Dick’s hands are—they’re— “I don’t, I—two. I think. Dick, just—”
You don’t sound like yourself, except you’ve never been in this situation before, so maybe this is how you always sound when your older brother is maybe two seconds away from fingering you. He’s keeps rubbing, circling your hole with his thumb, pushing in just enough to penetrate on the down slide. Just enough to make you feel yourself start to stretch before he takes the burn away and says, “Okay. You—” presses in with his fingertip and you clench and he breathes in sharply— “Okay.” His hands slide up to grip your hips as he slides the rest himself down your back.
Open-mouthed kisses all the way down your spine. You know they’re wet, he slicks his tongue from one kiss to the next, but the spray from both showerheads is hitting you and you’re wet everywhere, so much that you can’t tell your own pre-come from the water beading your dick. He’s whispering things into your skin that you can’t hear, and you have time to be grateful for that before he kisses you right over your tailbone and you hear his knees hit the tile. Thumbs, opening you up—he licks you once and your fingers curl, trying to dig into the tile because you know he can see everything.
You can feel him looking, and he’s touching, too, petting the stretched skin around your hole with the tips of his fingers. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this,” he says, his voice rough and used, like his mouth. Used. “I need you to—tell me this is okay, tell me I can… god, please, Tim,” he's begging, and your mouth opens in automatic response, words falling out, “Want, I—”
His tongue. Just the flat of it, pushing against you where you’re so possible. His fingers pull, stretch your skin taut, and he licks into you and you shouldn’t be getting hard again already, but you are. It’s the dirtiest kind of kiss, his mouth open against you, his tongue sliding inside you, and then he’s shoving it in, fucking into you hard until there’s nothing you can do but breathe and watch your cock jerk between your shaking legs with the thrust of his tongue inside you.
Heat rises, steam, and the smells of semen, diluted sweat, and underneath those, Dick. He pushes his tongue into you again and you’re breathing him in, taking him everywhere, but you want— “I want you to fuck me.”
You feel it go through him. Shakes him against you, and he’s sliding his tongue out of you, hands cupping your hips. His breath hits your skin in short bursts, “Timmy. I don’t—” So raw, used up, broken around your name.
You push yourself up and look down at him over your shoulder, holding yourself steady with one hand. He lifts his head, and his mouth is bruised, his eyes too dark. “I want you to fuck me,” you say again. “You asked.” He groans and thumps his forehead against your hip.
“I didn’t think I’d get an answer,” he says ruefully. Tips his head back and smiles, and this is…
You smirk, and it feels like Kon’s expression, not yours. “Are you flaking on me, big brother?”
His eyes widen slightly before narrowing. The smile grows about a million edges. “Gonna pay for that one, kid,” and okay, that’s—there’s no domino, but—god. Nightwing.
You bite your lip and turn back to the wall, because you're both Batman’s weapons, made to be used, and it’s still safer to stare at the bright, white tile than it is to watch him watching you.
You hear him move, and he squeezes your hips once, strokes, “Hold on, have to… be right back.” His heat is gone, footsteps splashing away from you. You close your eyes and rest your forehead between your splayed hands, and you stay that way, waiting to get the heat of him back, because if you move—if you move at all, you’ll… but you don’t, you don’t move, and then his hands are back on you and you’re flexing open around the slick fingers he’s pushing into you.
You open your eyes but you’re still sightless, black and blue blind. You open your mouth and something comes out, but you can’t hear anything over the sound of water hitting tile. He presses his fingers deep, stroking, twisting them inside you. Crooks them just--just there, god, making you pant and move the way he wants you to, making you pay... pulls them halfway out and spreads them, stretching you… gone.
His fingers slide all the way out out of you. You feel yourself clamp down, collapsing in on yourself where he should be and isn't, but his hand is on your hip, stroking, contact even if it's not what you need. You hear the click of the lube cap and he's slicking himself, lining his cockhead up— “I’m sorry.” He rests his forehead on your shoulder and pushes in, and you shut your eyes again and breathe through it.
“Tim don’t, fuck, don’t move,” over and over against your skin while he slides into you an inch at a time. You bite down on the inside of your cheek to keep the shout in, feel your back arching, and it’s… he’s…
You haven’t done this with anyone but yourself and a toy. There isn’t—but it’s not about trust. Except when it is.
There are layers. Some people you trust in some ways but not in others. People you trust generally but not specifically; and people you count on for one thing only, because that’s all you can be sure of.
At this layer, it’s always been about him.
Not even… oh man, Rob, harder, just squeeze it, fuck—
Not even Bart (-feel good? because I think it’s supposed to. even the medical journals say that although they’re kind of sketchy about it, but you can do it to me for, you know, practice. you can, um, leave your gloves on? if you want?)
Steph offered. Even this, if you needed it, and you almost…
Everything else. Bodies, mouths sliding together, hands and fingers touching, gripping, but not—
The tile is slick and cool under your cheek. Dick’s warm all down your back and thick inside you, stretching you to breaking, and you can feel him holding you open with his thumbs so he can see…
What? What does—no, what would Batman see? The same thing Bruce would? Two of his Robins, brothers, his… sons?
It’s enough to make you clench, short muscular spasms in your ass and in your throat, swallowing. Dick makes a small choked noise against your skin and bites down on the join of your shoulder and neck, making you jerk and shake, and that’s another clench and another noise. He’s moving slowly inside you, shallow thrusts that don’t rub you quite right. And he’s talking because he always talks, but especially when he’s moving without thinking. His brain shuts down and his mouth opens and everything he is goes everywhere.
“Little brother, Timmy, god I’m sorry, I missed you, missed—”
One hand braced against the tile next to yours and the other is flexing on your hip, clenching and relaxing with the thick drag of his dick inside you. And he told you not to move, but he opens his stance, shifting inside you and you jerk back into him because it feels so— He hurts that good, and you’re shoving back against him, you’re both shoving together, close as you can get and it’s not enough, not—
He grunts and your hands are opening and closing on nothing but there’s something, some necessary sound caught in your throat. He slides his hand across the tile, threads his fingers through yours. Pushes all the way into you and pushes the sound out of you until it’s echoing off the tile.
His hips are jerking, he's thrusting into you without rhythm and your name is every other breath out of his mouth. You’re just starting to get that he’s going to come inside you when he hauls you hard into him, pulling you up onto the balls of your feet, “God, Tim,” and everything gets slicker, easier, except you’re all the way hard again, hard enough to hurt, and easy isn’t something you can have.
Everything hurts, tight pressure in your dick and your balls, the strain of your muscles clenching around him, trying to get more, and then he’s wrapping an arm around your waist and his voice is low, desperate in your ear: “Timmy, stop, it’s—”
Wraps his free hand around your dick and you’re clawing at him and you hate the sounds coming out of your mouth, “Can't, oh god, I don't…”
You roll your head against his shoulder, turn your face into his neck and he smells like himself, tastes like heat and salt and Bruce’s soap. He jacks you hard because you’re not going to let him make this easy, and he’s mouthing kisses over your hair, down to your temple and he stops there, his lips still moving, “Okay, it’s okay, little brother, come on, come—”
And you do, you come into his hand, come for him, and it’s like losing the last piece of yourself that was just yours.
Sweat and water and semen spread slickly between you, making the hypersensitive brush of skin against skin bearable. He’s softer, but still inside you. Still holding you up. You’re still shaking, the last shudders of your orgasm dying off.
“Tim.” He finishes rinsing his hand, smooths your soaked hair out of your eyes. “Gotta move, okay?”
You nod and he holds you steady, pulling out as slowly as he pushed in. You grit your teeth against the sensation, the hot slide of his semen out of your stretched hole, and then he’s turning you around, cupping your face in his hands and kissing you.
Trying to kiss you, because you're turning your head, leaning back and pulling away from his hands, his support— “Don’t. I… space. Please.” You’re not looking at him, but you can feel his gaze on your face. His hands fall away from you and you hear him back up, see the outline of him moving out of the corner of your eye.
“Whatever you need,” he says, and you nod, because you believe that he believes he means that.
You turn your back and start cleaning yourself up. The soap dispenser is, thankfully, standard issue, because you don’t really want to know what you have to say to get a handful of cleanser on the Enterprise-B. You close your eyes and scrub and there are seconds, smashed together out of sync in your brain, before you feel him move, hear splashing behind you that isn’t the shower.
The water temperature has dropped; it feels about right for a heated pool. You stand under the stream and let it pound the soap from your skin and out of your hair.
Dick says, just loud enough to be heard, “You know, I almost hated you.”
You know. You knew then, and it still—
“At Haly’s,” he says, as though you need to be reminded. Maybe he thinks you do. “You were so…” He stops. Laughs. “You were so sure about everything, and you were this kid, and you didn’t know anything. That’s what I thought, then.”
“No.” You turn your head, and he’s staring at you, and his expression… you look away. “You were right. I was a stupid kid. I just—”
“Tell me?” he says when you stop, and you don’t want to go there, but he’s asking and you’re still learning how to tell him no.
You swallow down the slick nauseating aftertaste of soap and say, “Kon and… Bruce. I—” You put your hand up and watch the star-spatter splash of water through your spread fingers. “I wanted to feel that sure again. I needed to make something work.”
Fingers, clenching in on themselves; you drop your hand. “Kon’s alive and I had nothing do with it. No control over whether I got him back or not.” You can’t keep yourself from jerking around, throwing it at him: “Harkness is alive. Even if Bruce comes back, what—what’s the point of any of this if something we can’t control is making arbitrary decisions about who gets to come back and who doesn’t? How is that any different from closing your eyes and praying to some god?”
Nothing on him but water. No mask, no cowl, nothing but his skin, and his eyes are closed. You don’t think he’s praying. “I put… what we thought was Bruce… into a Lazarus pit. What came out. It… wasn’t him.”
Like swallowing someone else’s tears. “You—”
“I failed,” and his hands are knots at his sides. His mouth twists. “You and Alfred and Bruce. Damian. I failed all of you.”
Yes.
“I’m sor—”
“Shut up.”
“Tim—”
“I said shut up.” He blocks a strike to his throat and one to his sternum before your kick sends both of you skidding across the water-slick floor into the wall.
Dick is panting in your ear; your shoulders and tailbone sting where you impacted and your throat aches under the band of his arm. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
You could say too late, but that would be as stupid and immature as you were— “Fuck you, Dick.” You shove him off and he lets you. The tile is cold. You’re getting there fast. Not even a Wayne shower can stay warm forever.
“Shower off,” you say, and the dual stream dies. You can feel Dick watching you, and you try to count him away. Seconds and minutes and spacetime shredding around you, slip-sliding across the tile with his feet, draining away down the pipes. His hand is inevitable on the back of your neck.
You feel yourself shudder, try to stop the reaction, but you’ve been holding yourself still all your life and there are hairline cracks through the domino you wouldn’t see if you looked in a mirror. If you put your hand up, you think you’d feel it.
“He’s coming back,” Dick says, and he sounds so damn sure.
“Yes.”
Up against you again, touching like he doesn’t know how to do this any other way. Your hands are never going to stop being fists. Long, restless strokes of his hands up and down your chest, pausing on the new scar on your lower abdomen— “We just have to figure out how to get him here,” he says, his mouth moving against the back of your neck. You have to force your answer out through full body muscular constriction.
“Yes.”
“The time thing…” Dick’s voice trails off into jagged laughter. “God. Only Bruce would give the time stream a black eye shaped like his bat.”
He’s vibrating against you like Bart. You say, “Yes,” and force your neck muscles to relax. Still touching you, real and warm and you can’t feel his scars, new or old, water-smooth lies against your skin, but you don’t need to feel to know. You thump your head back against his shoulder and say it again because you’re both here, and eventually Bruce will be too. “Yes.”
He says, “Jesus. Jesus, Tim,” and turns you around and opens your mouth with his own. And you want to bite through his lip, kick his ass then kick it again. Punch his face until he’s bleeding everywhere. You want to hate him and you can’t.
“My parents’ combined fortunes won’t be enough to cover my therapy,” Damian’s voice comes in over the bunker’s PA.
Dick stops kissing you. He doesn’t let you go, though, holds on, even when you roll your shoulders to shake him off.
Damian continues, “Or I could just sell this footage. Todd’s idea was good, even if his follow through wasn’t. This is better. Don’t you agree, Grayson?”
The PA switches off audibly.
Dick is… growling. “You said I couldn’t kill him,” you remind him. “That means you can’t either.”
The PA comes back on line. “Signal’s up,” Damian says, and switches it off for what probably isn’t the final time.
Dick pulls you back in and just… looks at you. “You’re coming with.”
“Yes.”
“You’re coming back here with us, after.” He sounds a lot less sure about that. You think about letting him live with it. He says, “Tim,” dragging out the m, and you decide a few hours’ satisfaction isn’t worth him whining in your ear for most of that time.
“Maybe,” you say, because you’ve said yes too many times, in too many ways. But he’s smiling at you, and that’s—
You’re four years old, held by a boy who’s smiling at you like you’re it. You say, “Dick?”
“Mmn?”
“I could always kill you instead of Damian.” Easier for Bruce.
“Yeah,” he laughs, and sometimes he’s too good at reading your mind, because, “Bruce would probably understand.”
More static. Damian says, “In two minutes I’m torching the spare suits and taking the car.”
“Gonna kill him,” Dick says, finally letting go of you.
“You’re not,” you answer as both of you grab towels and slide more than walk over to the lockers. “I’ve got dibs.”
“Hey, I’ve been living with him for months.”
You pull up your jock, ignoring the twinge in your ass, and tug Red Robin’s leggings on over it. “He tried to kill me. Twice.”
“Point.”
You finish dressing before Dick does. He calls, “I’m right behind you,” as you take the stairs instead of the lift, and Robin is already down in the bay when you get there.
He’s standing in front of the V.23, arms crossed. It’s like showing up late to meet Zoanne; all that’s missing is the tapping foot. And the right gender.
“Robin,” you say, a huge concession, but this is Damian, son of Talia. He walks past you like you’re not there and mounts his bike.
The stairs shift under Batman’s weight. “Fair warning,” he says as he stalks by Robin on his way to the car. “Next time you zone and I’m around for it, you’re dead meat.”
“I never zone,” Robin says. “Can we go now, or would you and Red Robin prefer to scar me for life some more?”
“Bite me,” says Nightwing from behind Batman’s cowl. You say, “Guys, bat signal, remember?” and wait for them to shut up (not happening), wait for Robin’s bike to clear the tunnel before you follow them out.
All the way to Central, your lower body keeps telling that you just had penetrative sex up against a wall. It protested when you first straddled your bike, and it keeps complaining while you tail Batman and Robin through the city to a meeting that has awkward written all over it. It whines a little while Robin goads Batman over the comm about Red Hood’s latest round of stupidities, and winces when you shoot your grapple at Central’s roof.
You block the physiological feedback loop out with a mental exercise borrowed from Shiva (“I am a woman, little bird, subject to all that means”) and hang back in the shadows while Batman talks to Gordon. He keeps glancing from Batman to Robin to you and back again.
“New team member?” he says to Batman. The CD file he just handed him contains the latest intel on a recent Joker-like killing spree. Like, because although the manner of death fits, the MO doesn’t.
Batman says, “Yes,” hands the file off to you, “and no.” You tuck it into your bandolier. Gordon grunts and shoves his hands into his coat pockets.
“Don’t know why I bother asking. It’s not like you’re going to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me.”
Robin snorts. You nudge him in the ribs. “He’s forgotten more about detective work than you’ll ever know.”
He half turns, mouth opening, but Batman says, “Robin,” and he shuts it again without speaking. Not even white-out lenses completely block the focused glare behind them.
“We’ll get back to you on this,” Batman tells the commissioner.
Gordon’s mouth quirks to one side. “I can’t say it’s ever a pleasure, but life would be a lot less interesting without you boys around.” He glances up at the signal. “Guess it’s time for me to turn my back—”
By the time he looks down, you’re the only thing left on the roof but the signal generator. “It’s good to see you, sir,” you tell him, and then you let yourself fall and his answer, if there is one, is dragged up and away from you by the air whipping past you.
Batman and Robin are waiting with the vehicles. “—certain,” Robin says as you land. “They add a few drops to the final cut. Most of the time it kills, but sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Are we doing this now?” you say, holding the CD out to Batman, who looks over at you.
“Maybe. Robin thinks he knows which outfit is playing with Joker’s toys.”
“West Burnley,” Robin says. “Los Manos territory.”
“I know it.” There’s been one gang or another running drugs out by the north island docks since before No Man’s Land. “We could let Joker deal with the problem,” you say as you swing your leg over your bike. You’re only half joking.
“If you ignore the fact that he’s dead,” Robin sneers.
Batman slides the file into a slot on the car’s control panel. “Don’t assume death until you’ve seen the body. Even then, it doesn’t always stick.” Which is hitting way too close to home.
Before you or Robin can call him on it, Batman says, “We need to deal with this now before more high school kids die. R, lock your bike down, you’re riding with me.”
“But—”
“Do it.”
Robin’s mouth snaps shut. He vaults into the car and the armoring on his bike activates.
You glance at his hunched profile. Batman’s mouth is twitching. “Up for this?” he asks, and you know Batgirl and Pru must have given him a blow by blow of what Steph is calling the Ra’s fracas.
“What do you think?” you say.
His smile would fit better beneath a domino. The contact he wants is six feet of empty space. Under your suit your skin prickles, nipples hardening into tight, too-sensitive points fast rubbing raw against your undershirt.
You step back, moving yourself out of the danger zone. “It’s your op.” He steps forward into your space.
“Little brother.” And it’s… all there. How bad last year was. How much better this one still has to get, because—
He flips himself backward and handsprings into the batmobile’s cockpit, Nightwing enough to hurt. The canopy seals shut and the car shoots out of the alley like that cliché you aren’t going to use. You rev your bike to life and follow.
When you leave Central, your chrono reads twenty-three fifty-two. The streets you’re riding aren’t as busy as they were even an hour ago. In many of the buildings you pass, people are just now winding down the day. Finishing up late at the office. Closing down an all-night grocery. Getting ready for bed, eating delayed dinner, or maybe just watching a late TV show with their wives, husbands, partners, children, siblings, friends.
You? Are on your way to join two of your brothers in an act of Wayne familial bonding known as hurting people. Probably a lot of people.
Just to make things interesting, before, during and after the hurting of people your little brother will talk at you about your mutual father, and how he’s not really. Then he’ll comment on your sexual preferences, positions included. Your big brother will tell him to shut up several times in between hurting as many people as he can so as to lessen the possibility of them hurting you or your little brother.
And when everyone but you and your brothers are on the ground groaning, you’ll ask questions. You’ll share your displeasure when those questions don’t receive immediate answers. But eventually they will get answered, and then two of you will zip-strip the leftovers, while the third calls the cops. After that, because by then it’ll be pushing dawn, you’ll go back with your brothers to Wayne Tower.
You’ll wash the blood off in the bunker showers before you go up to the penthouse, but there won’t be any sex this time. Instead, you and Dick will do something—you’re not sure what, yet—to make Damian wish he’d never crawled out of his nice warm bio-tube. Because he was grown, not born, which is still less strange than your other brother, who died, got reanimated, then clawed his way out of his own grave.
Somewhere, in some dimension, there are normal families. You’ve read about them. You like to think they exist, but you’re not sure you believe in them. Besides, according to Cass, water torture is fun. You’re pretty sure she’s in a position to know.
But maybe Damian will get lucky tonight. Maybe you’ll let him off the hook, because by the time the blood is gone and the adrenalin starts to wear off, you’ll be starting to feel how much damage you’ve taken over the last few months. So maybe Damian will have to wait for tomorrow and Pru, who'll enjoy watching the two of you trying to kill each other. Tomorrow, after sleep and caffeine. A lot of caffeine.
Tonight you’ll let Dick take a look at your old damage and bandage the new damage you’ll start taking about twenty minutes from now. Then you’ll get dressed and go upstairs to say goodnight to the man who really runs this show. Who will pat your shoulder and say, “I return the sentiment, Master Timothy. Allow me to offer you a salve for that bruise where your left cheekbone once was.” And you’ll take it because the salve really does work. But even if it didn’t, it’s Alfred.
You don’t say no to Alfred. Not if your brain’s working right.
And yours will be working, if running on empty. You’ll say, “Yes,” and, “Thank you,” and then Dick will drop down on you from some improbable angle. He’ll yawn and drape himself all over you and complain about how bony you are. You’ll tell him to move if he’s so uncomfortable. He won’t.
Alfred will come back in with the salve and insist on applying it himself. Damian will point out his own superior healing abilities. His bone-deep bruises are always gone by morning.
You’ll ignore him until he gets bored, ignore your numb cheekbone, then you’ll elbow him goodnight as soon as he’s close enough. Get out of his way before he can pull his knife, while Dick whines about you moving around too much. You’ll shove Dick off you onto the nearest couch, find a corner where you can watch everyone else, and wait for them to go to bed.
When Damian and Alfred are gone, the penthouse will be quiet for maybe ten seconds before Dick opens his mouth.
Riddle me this, Tim Drake-Draper-Wayne: how do you shut a Dickie-bird up before he can start in singing another round of apologies and self loathing?
Answer: use your mouth on him until he comes hard enough to pass out. Shove him into bed, make coffee, and take it back down with you to the bunker. Repeat outlined subroutines until you figure out how to get Bruce back from wherever in the past he’s trapped.
Ahead of you, the batmobile makes an abrupt turn and you turn with it. Inside your head, you’re everywhere but here. You think, Gotham, and then you know. For the first time since the plane landed you know, visceral understanding even you can’t question. You’re not in Baghdad or Berlin. Not even Prague.
Gargoyles. Costumed crazies and stylized bats like rude tattoos stamped into the fabric of the cosmos.
Minimal LoA activity—always a plus.
The batmobile is slowing down. You adjust your speed, threading slowly between crammed-in warehouses after the car, until Batman turns into a narrow alley and parks.
You keep going. You’ll need the maneuvering room later. “R-point in five,” you say into the comm.
“Got it.”
You pull up on a dimly lit side street full of refuse that looks undisturbed. You lock the bike down and walk over to stand just inside mouth between buildings, and the smell hits you.
Wet salt rot from the docks. The metallic, back of the throat aftertaste that’s just Gotham, and also something more chemical than metal. Meth lab. Large scale operation.
Looks like the kid was right. “Red,” Batman says in your ear. “Guards on all ground exits. We’re going in through the roof.”
“Understood,” you say, and then you’re running, shooting your grapple at the building on your left as you go, gaining height fast. You pull yourself up onto the roof, catch and retrieve, and you’re already moving again, shooting your line out into the darkness between buildings. You jump. The line goes taut. It catches your momentum on the upswing and your cape snaps out behind you and the skyline rushes up to meet you.
And you fly.
no subject
That's the point where it hit me that the story was in second person. I hadn't noticed before. Because it's perfect and seamless and inside Tim's head. (Oh, and hot hot hot.) Makes it worth trying to keep up with the current tangled timeline.