always with the Dick jokes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irrelevant) wrote2011-01-30 01:07 am
irrelevant) wrote2011-01-30 01:07 am
Entry tags:
ficlets: various DCU pairings
Coarse
Pre-Crisis | Bruce/Jason | PG-13 | 1515 words
notes: The decision to dye Pre-Crisis Jason’s hair was his own. Like Tim and Carrie after him, he initially stole the suit and Robin’s persona without Bruce’s permission. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Morrison.
He’s soaped up and wet by the time you follow the yellow green red trail pointing the way into the showers.
“I assigned you a locker for a reason,” you say as you strip off the cowl, tossing it into your own locker. “Cleanliness isn’t applicable to hygiene alone.”
He laughs, turning unerringly toward your voice without opening his eyes. He’s scrubbing stripping agent into his hair and the soapy, muddy-looking residue is dripping down his face and shoulders. “I know,” he says. “I’ll do it as soon as I get out, promise! I just wanted to—”
His voice trails off but his expression is as clear as words would be. He wanted to wash the past month off of him as quickly as possible, a feeling you can’t help but share. You peel off your leggings and toss them and your uniform shirt on top of his tunic – it all needs to be cleaned and there’s no reason to make Alfred go hunting through the lockers – and step into the shower.
The tile is slipperier than usual. You avoid the obvious patches of slick and reach past Jason for the controls, your hand brushing against his shoulder. “Is that why you’re doing this?” You tug at a lock of his hair and he yelps, opening his eyes.
“Ow, Bruce!” He sticks his head under the water, rinsing his face then pulling back to glare at you out of soap-stung eyes. “Why’d you hafta go and do that? Now I’ve got to start all over again.”
You laugh quietly, somewhat surprised you still have the ability. You lost it for a while after Dick left for New York, but Jason’s given it back to you. He’s showed you how to laugh with him and now you learn how to laugh at him while he frowns at you, his eyes cautious slits of blue. You wipe a stray streak of dye off his cheek with your thumb and say, “Turn around. I’ll finish it for you.”
It gets you another narrow, suspicious glare, but he’s already giving you his back. You wonder, not for the first time, what you’ve done to earn such complete trust. Not even Dick was so willing to surrender his person into your hands.
Jay arches into your hands like a cat with an itch that needs scratching. He butts his head against your chest, marking you with diluted dye, pushing into the push of your fingers through his hair. “Mmm,” he says. “‘S good.”
It takes everything in you not to pull him in hard and touch him everywhere you never let yourself. “Good to know,” you say, keeping your tone light and your hands where they belong. “But that’s not the point. Close your eyes and duck your head.”
He obeys, bending forward into the stream of water, and you keep running your hands through his hair, sluicing the last of the suds and two kinds of dye out of his hair and off of his skin. You lean back, let the light hit him, and it’s finally, after two years, the right color. The same color it was the first time you saw him.
“I should have just left it in,” he gasps, flinging his head back out of the water. “Already put more black on. But—”
“I know,” you say. And you do. One night posing as Malone’s pretty blond rent boy would have been too much. Nearly a month and you’re going to have a hefty water bill to show for it. “We caught them,” you tell him. “They’ll never hurt anyone again.”
His head tilts back, resting against your shoulder. His lashes lift and he looks up at you, and you see the children on that stage reflected in his eyes. “They won’t,” he says, and he sighs, and he looks, he is too tired for his age. “But somebody else will.”
There was very little left of his innocence after he saw his parents’ bodies. Even less after this month. You wish, fiercely, to preserve the small amount remaining, but you know better than anyone how pointless it would be to try. “Jay,” you start to say, but his head moves against you, a tiny negation.
“I’m okay,” he says, and pushes away from you. The mischievous spark is dulled but there when he looks back up. “Better catch some of the hot before it runs out.”
You shake your head and reach for the soap – there’s not much chance of running out of hot water even down here – and you see him glance at his locker. He runs a hand through his hair and frowns at the floor.
“I really need to get this done tonight. Would you—?”
“No.” Too harsh. You know as soon as it’s out of your mouth, but you can’t take it back. Can’t stop the wide startled flight of his eyes back up to your face. You can only try to gentle your tone and hope he won't misinterpret your meaning. “Leave it as is,” you say, and his eyes widen even further.
“But Robin,” he says. “Don’t you—”
You’re already shaking your head. “I would never have asked that of you,” you tell him as you finish soaping yourself and lean into the water. “Perhaps this… episode is not without an upside.”
Out of the corner of your eye you see him swallow, his throat bobbing. You see his hands clench and let go. “Bruce.” His voice is smaller than you’ve ever heard it. “What if I—what if somebody realizes?”
“They won’t,” you say curtly, and there’s no reason for you to be so sure aside from your own stubborn wishes. Careless and reckless. You turn fully to face him, confronting the top of his bent head. “We’ll lighten the color a little at a time,” you say. “Work up to strawberry blond.” You ruffle the hair in question, smiling as he jerks indignantly away.
“It’s red, jeeze!” His expression is caught somewhere between outraged teen and mortified child, and nothing is better guaranteed to remind you why you need to put more room between you.
Ducking back into the spray, you finish rinsing and shut the valve off. “At any rate, we’ll leave it as is for tonight.”
He frowns at that, but he follows you into the locker bay without protest, catching the towel you throw him with the ease of long practice. You wrap one around your hips, take another for drying. Your skin takes little time and then you deal with your hair: Jason is whistling behind you, rattling around in his locker. You drop the towel and turn around.
His back is to you and he’s pulling a pair of worn sweats up over his hips. His hair is still wet, dripping down the back of his green t-shirt. “Hold still,” you say as you reach for his discarded towel.
“Aw jeeze, Bruce, I’m not five.” His voice comes muffled from under the towel you just draped over his head.
“Start acting like it,” you say, ruffling him dry. “Maybe I’ll believe you. There.” His face emerges, his cheeks flushed as red as his messy but non-dripping hair. You tap his lower lip, protruding just enough to be noticeable. “That isn’t helping.”
For a moment mutiny lingers within the event horizons of his pupils. Then he snorts something like a laugh and grins at you. And he is rumpled and damp, fifteen and irritable with it and you, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Your fingers are stiff with want of skin and your breath catches in your throat because he is still the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. Will ever see.
Your hand lifts; you can’t stop it. It brushes the hair off his forehead and lingers, testing remembered texture.
As thick as Dick’s but softer: it used to be before the dye wore away some of its resilience. It’s wrong and you’re going to tell him, but Jay makes a small, low noise and you jerk your hand away and look at him, stricken.
He looks back, his eyes huge. His mouth shapes your name and you close yours to keep in all the useless things you could say.
“Bruce,” he says again, pushing the sound out, pushing toward you through the weight and drag between you to lay his hand in the center of your chest. Giving you the skin you thought you wanted, and even now, in the middle of the mess you’ve made, it’s still not enough.
His hand moves. Up, calluses tracing your collar bone, your jaw. His thumb grazes the corner of your mouth.
You should call him Robin. Send him to do his homework, let Alfred feed him, make him go to bed by himself. You say, “Jay,” and he sighs, his fingerprint dragging at your lower lip. Dragging you down to him.
You bend with the pull and his other hand reaches up, curves around the back of your neck. The next time he says your name, you taste it.
you let them wear the tights
TDKSA (Millerverse) | Bruce Wayne, Carrie Kelley/Lara | PG-13 | 277 words
notes: I categorically loathe Frank Miller and all his works. Sometimes I also love specified bits of said works. But mostly with the loathing. Strong reactions, blah blah fannish propensities blah, ie: eventually I wrote something.
Not with humans. If that isn’t just like Clark. Lois must’ve laughed in his stupid face. His offspring doesn’t have that luxury.
He lied to himself and now he’s given her the same. Lies he believes with all his inhuman heart. She would have believed them too. If not for Carrie.
Darling Carrie. Catgirl. My Robin.
And Lara. Just the one name, no daughter of El bullshit for her. She’s Amazon enough for it. Amazon enough to know her own drives.
I’ll give Diana that. She’s a stone bitch, but she didn’t raise any half alien cornhusker. Her genes bred true. Truer than Krypton’s. Better than Ma and Pa Kent’s Midwestern morals.
I wouldn’t have let her in otherwise.
Now look at them. Playing like a pair of feral leopard cubs. Half mauling, half petting. Selina would be so proud.
Selina…
She’s laughing up at me from hell. Her whip just popped some undeserving bastard in the ass. By the time I get down there the whole damn place’ll be fixed up like her favorite dungeon.
Save me a spot on your rack, darling. I’ll be a while yet.
I won’t die before Clark. Won’t give him the satisfaction. Hell, I’ll probably take him with me. There’s no one else can keep the son of bitch in check like me. Barry, Ray, Oliver… even Diana. Not one of them has what it takes.
Hal, maybe. But he stopped being human too long ago.
I’ve never been anything else. Clark will never be anything close. And I’ve got my girls to consider.
They’re coming at me. Flying. Leaping and tumbling and attacking.
Wearing the tights.
This would be a good death. But not today.
epidermis
DCU | Dick/Tim | PG-13 | 424 words
notes: For Meg. Tim in a skirt: everyone should write it once.
She’s as gorgeous as she is hot and when she smiles at Dick and holds out her hand he takes it and lets her pull him onto the floor, grinning like an idiot all the way. She flashes the smile again at him over her shoulder, she tugs him easily past the hands and arms trying to engage them, and then she turns around, turns into his arms, and Dick dies and goes to heaven, or maybe just that place where gorgeous, fantastic dancers who like him live.
It’s not often he gets a partner who can keep up with him, but she moves like she already knows how he’s going to before he does it. She was made to bend around him, made to slide her hand into his hair and her finger across his mouth. “You’re incredible,” he says into her ear, and she is, she’s amazing, and then she tips her head to the side and looks up at him with a tiny smile. And she’s still gorgeous. Still amazing and incredible, and she’s also Tim.
“Surprised?” Tim says, because of course he knows that Dick knows that he—
“Jesus Christ,” Dick says, and it’s not blasphemy, he’s as devout right now as he’s ever been in his life.
Tim’s smile curls upward a little further. He curls his fingers tighter into Dick’s hair. His thigh is smooth under his skirt and Dick’s hand, and Dick wants to keep going up, wants to find out if everything is that smooth. “Did you shave?” he says, and then he groans because Tim just snaked a hand down to his ass and pulled their hips together.
“Hmn,” Tim says, and that’s his mouth on Dick’s skin. Jesus.
His thigh is already between Tim’s legs. He presses and god, Tim has to be taped because there’s not—he can’t— “What are you doing here?”
Tim’s mouth is slightly open and moving on his throat. “I don’t think I’m going to tell you,” he murmurs. “Not here.” He falls deliberately back, letting Dick take his weight. Looking up at him from half-closed eyes. “But if you’re very good, I’ll let you take me home and tell me all kinds of things.”
Hair that isn’t his falls away from his face and his hand is still on Dick’s ass. He smiles at Dick like he did before Dick knew, and Dick says, “I’m good with that.” And if it isn’t exactly true right now, he’s not too worried about it. He’s pretty sure it will be.
Pre-Crisis | Bruce/Jason | PG-13 | 1515 words
notes: The decision to dye Pre-Crisis Jason’s hair was his own. Like Tim and Carrie after him, he initially stole the suit and Robin’s persona without Bruce’s permission. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Morrison.
He’s soaped up and wet by the time you follow the yellow green red trail pointing the way into the showers.
“I assigned you a locker for a reason,” you say as you strip off the cowl, tossing it into your own locker. “Cleanliness isn’t applicable to hygiene alone.”
He laughs, turning unerringly toward your voice without opening his eyes. He’s scrubbing stripping agent into his hair and the soapy, muddy-looking residue is dripping down his face and shoulders. “I know,” he says. “I’ll do it as soon as I get out, promise! I just wanted to—”
His voice trails off but his expression is as clear as words would be. He wanted to wash the past month off of him as quickly as possible, a feeling you can’t help but share. You peel off your leggings and toss them and your uniform shirt on top of his tunic – it all needs to be cleaned and there’s no reason to make Alfred go hunting through the lockers – and step into the shower.
The tile is slipperier than usual. You avoid the obvious patches of slick and reach past Jason for the controls, your hand brushing against his shoulder. “Is that why you’re doing this?” You tug at a lock of his hair and he yelps, opening his eyes.
“Ow, Bruce!” He sticks his head under the water, rinsing his face then pulling back to glare at you out of soap-stung eyes. “Why’d you hafta go and do that? Now I’ve got to start all over again.”
You laugh quietly, somewhat surprised you still have the ability. You lost it for a while after Dick left for New York, but Jason’s given it back to you. He’s showed you how to laugh with him and now you learn how to laugh at him while he frowns at you, his eyes cautious slits of blue. You wipe a stray streak of dye off his cheek with your thumb and say, “Turn around. I’ll finish it for you.”
It gets you another narrow, suspicious glare, but he’s already giving you his back. You wonder, not for the first time, what you’ve done to earn such complete trust. Not even Dick was so willing to surrender his person into your hands.
Jay arches into your hands like a cat with an itch that needs scratching. He butts his head against your chest, marking you with diluted dye, pushing into the push of your fingers through his hair. “Mmm,” he says. “‘S good.”
It takes everything in you not to pull him in hard and touch him everywhere you never let yourself. “Good to know,” you say, keeping your tone light and your hands where they belong. “But that’s not the point. Close your eyes and duck your head.”
He obeys, bending forward into the stream of water, and you keep running your hands through his hair, sluicing the last of the suds and two kinds of dye out of his hair and off of his skin. You lean back, let the light hit him, and it’s finally, after two years, the right color. The same color it was the first time you saw him.
“I should have just left it in,” he gasps, flinging his head back out of the water. “Already put more black on. But—”
“I know,” you say. And you do. One night posing as Malone’s pretty blond rent boy would have been too much. Nearly a month and you’re going to have a hefty water bill to show for it. “We caught them,” you tell him. “They’ll never hurt anyone again.”
His head tilts back, resting against your shoulder. His lashes lift and he looks up at you, and you see the children on that stage reflected in his eyes. “They won’t,” he says, and he sighs, and he looks, he is too tired for his age. “But somebody else will.”
There was very little left of his innocence after he saw his parents’ bodies. Even less after this month. You wish, fiercely, to preserve the small amount remaining, but you know better than anyone how pointless it would be to try. “Jay,” you start to say, but his head moves against you, a tiny negation.
“I’m okay,” he says, and pushes away from you. The mischievous spark is dulled but there when he looks back up. “Better catch some of the hot before it runs out.”
You shake your head and reach for the soap – there’s not much chance of running out of hot water even down here – and you see him glance at his locker. He runs a hand through his hair and frowns at the floor.
“I really need to get this done tonight. Would you—?”
“No.” Too harsh. You know as soon as it’s out of your mouth, but you can’t take it back. Can’t stop the wide startled flight of his eyes back up to your face. You can only try to gentle your tone and hope he won't misinterpret your meaning. “Leave it as is,” you say, and his eyes widen even further.
“But Robin,” he says. “Don’t you—”
You’re already shaking your head. “I would never have asked that of you,” you tell him as you finish soaping yourself and lean into the water. “Perhaps this… episode is not without an upside.”
Out of the corner of your eye you see him swallow, his throat bobbing. You see his hands clench and let go. “Bruce.” His voice is smaller than you’ve ever heard it. “What if I—what if somebody realizes?”
“They won’t,” you say curtly, and there’s no reason for you to be so sure aside from your own stubborn wishes. Careless and reckless. You turn fully to face him, confronting the top of his bent head. “We’ll lighten the color a little at a time,” you say. “Work up to strawberry blond.” You ruffle the hair in question, smiling as he jerks indignantly away.
“It’s red, jeeze!” His expression is caught somewhere between outraged teen and mortified child, and nothing is better guaranteed to remind you why you need to put more room between you.
Ducking back into the spray, you finish rinsing and shut the valve off. “At any rate, we’ll leave it as is for tonight.”
He frowns at that, but he follows you into the locker bay without protest, catching the towel you throw him with the ease of long practice. You wrap one around your hips, take another for drying. Your skin takes little time and then you deal with your hair: Jason is whistling behind you, rattling around in his locker. You drop the towel and turn around.
His back is to you and he’s pulling a pair of worn sweats up over his hips. His hair is still wet, dripping down the back of his green t-shirt. “Hold still,” you say as you reach for his discarded towel.
“Aw jeeze, Bruce, I’m not five.” His voice comes muffled from under the towel you just draped over his head.
“Start acting like it,” you say, ruffling him dry. “Maybe I’ll believe you. There.” His face emerges, his cheeks flushed as red as his messy but non-dripping hair. You tap his lower lip, protruding just enough to be noticeable. “That isn’t helping.”
For a moment mutiny lingers within the event horizons of his pupils. Then he snorts something like a laugh and grins at you. And he is rumpled and damp, fifteen and irritable with it and you, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Your fingers are stiff with want of skin and your breath catches in your throat because he is still the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. Will ever see.
Your hand lifts; you can’t stop it. It brushes the hair off his forehead and lingers, testing remembered texture.
As thick as Dick’s but softer: it used to be before the dye wore away some of its resilience. It’s wrong and you’re going to tell him, but Jay makes a small, low noise and you jerk your hand away and look at him, stricken.
He looks back, his eyes huge. His mouth shapes your name and you close yours to keep in all the useless things you could say.
“Bruce,” he says again, pushing the sound out, pushing toward you through the weight and drag between you to lay his hand in the center of your chest. Giving you the skin you thought you wanted, and even now, in the middle of the mess you’ve made, it’s still not enough.
His hand moves. Up, calluses tracing your collar bone, your jaw. His thumb grazes the corner of your mouth.
You should call him Robin. Send him to do his homework, let Alfred feed him, make him go to bed by himself. You say, “Jay,” and he sighs, his fingerprint dragging at your lower lip. Dragging you down to him.
You bend with the pull and his other hand reaches up, curves around the back of your neck. The next time he says your name, you taste it.
you let them wear the tights
TDKSA (Millerverse) | Bruce Wayne, Carrie Kelley/Lara | PG-13 | 277 words
notes: I categorically loathe Frank Miller and all his works. Sometimes I also love specified bits of said works. But mostly with the loathing. Strong reactions, blah blah fannish propensities blah, ie: eventually I wrote something.
Not with humans. If that isn’t just like Clark. Lois must’ve laughed in his stupid face. His offspring doesn’t have that luxury.
He lied to himself and now he’s given her the same. Lies he believes with all his inhuman heart. She would have believed them too. If not for Carrie.
Darling Carrie. Catgirl. My Robin.
And Lara. Just the one name, no daughter of El bullshit for her. She’s Amazon enough for it. Amazon enough to know her own drives.
I’ll give Diana that. She’s a stone bitch, but she didn’t raise any half alien cornhusker. Her genes bred true. Truer than Krypton’s. Better than Ma and Pa Kent’s Midwestern morals.
I wouldn’t have let her in otherwise.
Now look at them. Playing like a pair of feral leopard cubs. Half mauling, half petting. Selina would be so proud.
Selina…
She’s laughing up at me from hell. Her whip just popped some undeserving bastard in the ass. By the time I get down there the whole damn place’ll be fixed up like her favorite dungeon.
Save me a spot on your rack, darling. I’ll be a while yet.
I won’t die before Clark. Won’t give him the satisfaction. Hell, I’ll probably take him with me. There’s no one else can keep the son of bitch in check like me. Barry, Ray, Oliver… even Diana. Not one of them has what it takes.
Hal, maybe. But he stopped being human too long ago.
I’ve never been anything else. Clark will never be anything close. And I’ve got my girls to consider.
They’re coming at me. Flying. Leaping and tumbling and attacking.
Wearing the tights.
This would be a good death. But not today.
epidermis
DCU | Dick/Tim | PG-13 | 424 words
notes: For Meg. Tim in a skirt: everyone should write it once.
She’s as gorgeous as she is hot and when she smiles at Dick and holds out her hand he takes it and lets her pull him onto the floor, grinning like an idiot all the way. She flashes the smile again at him over her shoulder, she tugs him easily past the hands and arms trying to engage them, and then she turns around, turns into his arms, and Dick dies and goes to heaven, or maybe just that place where gorgeous, fantastic dancers who like him live.
It’s not often he gets a partner who can keep up with him, but she moves like she already knows how he’s going to before he does it. She was made to bend around him, made to slide her hand into his hair and her finger across his mouth. “You’re incredible,” he says into her ear, and she is, she’s amazing, and then she tips her head to the side and looks up at him with a tiny smile. And she’s still gorgeous. Still amazing and incredible, and she’s also Tim.
“Surprised?” Tim says, because of course he knows that Dick knows that he—
“Jesus Christ,” Dick says, and it’s not blasphemy, he’s as devout right now as he’s ever been in his life.
Tim’s smile curls upward a little further. He curls his fingers tighter into Dick’s hair. His thigh is smooth under his skirt and Dick’s hand, and Dick wants to keep going up, wants to find out if everything is that smooth. “Did you shave?” he says, and then he groans because Tim just snaked a hand down to his ass and pulled their hips together.
“Hmn,” Tim says, and that’s his mouth on Dick’s skin. Jesus.
His thigh is already between Tim’s legs. He presses and god, Tim has to be taped because there’s not—he can’t— “What are you doing here?”
Tim’s mouth is slightly open and moving on his throat. “I don’t think I’m going to tell you,” he murmurs. “Not here.” He falls deliberately back, letting Dick take his weight. Looking up at him from half-closed eyes. “But if you’re very good, I’ll let you take me home and tell me all kinds of things.”
Hair that isn’t his falls away from his face and his hand is still on Dick’s ass. He smiles at Dick like he did before Dick knew, and Dick says, “I’m good with that.” And if it isn’t exactly true right now, he’s not too worried about it. He’s pretty sure it will be.
no subject
That was for the last one.
They are all, of course, spectacular.
Morrison is an ass. And Millerverse generally makes me giggle, when it doesn't make me want to throw up. For all that, the first TDKR was one of my first introductions to comic books per se, and will always have a place in my heart because of it. That, and because Batman kicked that self-righteous bastard Superman's ass.
This is getting tangential. Anyway, I loved these, in case you couldn't tell.
no subject
Heh, nice to meet someone who understands my bipolar reactions to the Millerverse. I told a friend of mine to read TDKR and TDKSA because I think every serious Batfan *should*. For good or ill (mostly ill, imo) they've had a huge impact on mainstream Batman comics, and I believe it's important to understand *why*, as well as getting, you know, personal impressions and judgments apart from fandom reactions.
I loathe the Millerverse's big picture, but there are pieces that make me deliriously happy. Carrie, for one. And in TDKSA, the revival of all those heroes who've been *my* heroes for so long made me shriek with glee. God, Plastic Man. ♥ And then Hal Jordan just filled me with so much YES, because I could see him becoming just that.
And then, as if butchering Diana's characterization wasn't enough, Miller killed Dick.
He made Dick something Dick would never have become, which makes me think he was not so much trying to understand the character as getting revenge on him for all those years of Batman and Robin innuendo: you can't tell me that half the straight fanboys out there haven't for years been burning with fury at the implied "injustice" of their dark brooding hero getting it on with his Boy Wonder; you run into that kind of attitude on comics forums all the time. I think Miller killed Dick Grayson the way he did as a kind of fanboy revenge fantasy. He had Bruce reject Dick so totally, he turned him into the freaking *Joker* (RotJ reference, anyone?), aaaaand he gave Bruce a female sidekick who turned into a younger version of Catwoman. On the one hand, I love Carrie. On the other, the implications piss me off.
I also think Miller wrote ASBAR the way he did in reaction to everybody getting so pissed at him for what he did to Dick. He tried to explain away his fuck-up, and in the process he fucked up even worse. I will never recommend ASBAR to anyone, ever. It's an insult and a horror and if I could Zatanna it out of existence, so help me god I would.
And yeah, I guess I feel pretty strongly about this. I have a half-finished essay on the Millerverse sitting on my hard drive. Maybe I'll actually finish it this year. *rueful grin* But for now I'm just gonna just shut up. =P