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Cabernet. Dick smells cabernet sauvignon from the cellar, similar to the one he'd snuck two years ago, even before he hears the clink of a glass on the table next to the chair he's led to and the tell-tale slip of silk as Bruce loosens his tie but not Dick's blindfold.
It brings back memories, that smell. Kori and Wally and him wine-drunk for the first time at Titans Tower, indulging in their dwindling free hours with a touch of inebriation and countless games of spin the bottle more often than not. Stupid young teenagers. Free teenagers. Well, if Dick thinks about it, he's still a teenager, but now he's neither stupid nor free.
It's his 18th birthday. Bruce had made comments in passing before about it. When he thought Dick couldn't hear. In little moments when the high of touching and being touched faded but didn’t lull him right to sleep, on the bare cusp of consciousness. In dangerous moments when Ivy changed the formula for her sex pollen and they were caught unprepared, or fear toxin caused Bruce to relapse into looping nightmares of the day his parents died. Bruce always ended up coming to him with a confession, convinced he was unaware. “I can’t lose you, Dick,” he would choke out. Sometimes it was, I can’t lose you, Robin. “Even when you grow up, I can’t lose you. I’m sorry,” he would say, before damning himself. “I have to clip your wings eventually.”
He hadn't exactly resisted. But he didn't make it easier on himself, either, falling into this familiar grasp. Dick knew better than anyone else that Bruce could make good on a promise he cared about. He had wanted, though, to experience his life, his milestones, on his own terms. At least for a while. He isn’t sure if that was the right choice at the moment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
The last milestone had been at 14, when Dick had reached the age of consent in Gotham. The way he got to ‘celebrate’ then hadn’t been his choice, so why can’t he have the right to choose how he celebrates now? He knows the reason already, and the truth of it is that this situation is all complicated and jumbled up even in his own head. Sometimes he wants to stay. Sometimes he wants to go. Mostly, he wants to stay. Bruce… did things that Dick hadn’t asked for, sure. Every so once in a while he still does, the rare occasion when Dick doesn’t come to him right away or is too far for too long. And yet here Dick is on his 18th birthday, a willing participant in the game that was set up for him. Laying unmoving in the trap that was laid for him four years ago, of his own volition. If he had wanted to prevent his inevitable capture, he would have done it differently. Done anything other than what he had been doing for the past four years, returning to Bruce and his bed time and time again no matter what happened. He would have told someone, a member of the Justice League. Kori. Wally. He hadn’t done that. Somewhere in him, he knew this was going to happen, and he was just waiting for the day it did with open arms.
Blindfolded in the Batcave, naked as the day he was born. He would like it more, probably, if Bruce would free his cock of the custom titanium cage he had sealed it away in.
As if reading his thoughts, Bruce jangles the keys and chuckles in that deep, rich way of his that indicates he’s near the threshold of getting tipsy. “Dickie, you don’t have to look so pained. I can see you frown with the blindfold on.”
Dick sighs. “Was I so obvious? I just – don’t understand. We haven’t done this before. Blindfolds, sure, but not…”
“Not caging. I know, I’m sorry. It was a necessity.”
“For what?” Dick asks, as if he doesn’t know the answer to a difficult math problem. Nevermind that he excelled in math.
Bruce elects not to answer him, at first. He hears the sound of another glass clinking, cabernet pouring into it. His lips are plied with it, and Dick drinks from the chalice offered him mindfully, swallowing in the mannered way Bruce taught him to six years ago the one time they had both attended church for a memorial service and took communion.
After his third sip, Bruce sets down the glass. Dick hears him crouch close next, a strong hand clutching his thigh. If Dick were able to see through the blindfold, he expects Bruce would be watching him with an owl’s fixed stare.
“Does it taste the same as you remember?” comes the hot, breathy murmur in his ear.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“This is a bottle from the same batch as the cabernet you took from the cellar two years ago.”
“Oh. I didn’t know you knew about it.” Dick had, of course, been aware that Bruce would find out. He simply didn’t anticipate being confronted on it so long after the fact.
“I have a very robust security system.”
“I know. I watch over it the same as you do.”
“As is your duty, Robin,” Bruce removes his hand from Dick’s thigh to cup his jaw. “What isn’t your duty is whoring yourself out to your teammates.”
“I had relationships. You know I always came home. I didn’t forget you, or your needs.”
“That’s not the point I’m making. The point is you’re officially old enough to know better. You’re 18. And that means taking on a certain responsibility.”
Dick bites his lip, thinking, Yes, I know. I’ve known since my fourteenth birthday, and I don’t even care anymore. I like you enough. I like my autonomy more, but – I like you enough.
He doesn't say what he’s thinking. That would make him more vulnerable than he’s willing to stand right now. Instead, he asks, “What’s my responsibility?”
The hand on his jaw lifts his chin. “To remember our ties together, Dick. Batman is to Robin as Robin is to Batman. Bruce is to Dick as Dick is to Bruce. You’re mine, in all the ways that matter. You’ll stay that way.”
Dick doesn’t say, and what if I don’t want that? because a part of him does want this, wants Bruce to make good on his promise. On his claim. Four years of fucking the man and nothing to show for it seems a poor return on investment to that part of Dick. That part of himself jumps with undisguised glee in his chest, chanting, it’s happening, it’s happening! The other part of him has gone quiet. He knows already what he’s going to do. He’s going to agree and figure out this new life, whatever it is. He’s resigned to that. It’s not a bad thing. He likes Bruce. Loves him, even. It’s a little Stockholm-y, a little earnest. A concoction of the best and worst moments of his life mixed into one phial.
“Okay,” says Dick. “Does that make you mine, too?”
“Well, my Robin. I don’t sign myself over easily, but yes.”
A kiss seals the deal. Wet and passionate like all their best trysts begin.
Dick gasps in a stolen breath, “Are you gonna take the blindfold off?”
Bruce sucks on his lower lip and answers, “Later. You look too pretty with it on, baby.”
So Dick endures. He imagines the back of Bruce’s palm as he shudders and moans through the extrasensory experience of his hole being scissored with those thick fingers and a blindfold on. He pants around Bruce’s cock as his mouth is fucked to make the give slick and easy and filthy when Bruce hoists him up and starts pounding his ass like he’s convinced if he tries hard enough, he can breed him. Like he can stake a claim and put a baby in Dick even without a womb for it to grow in. It’s territorial, and fast, and it leaves Dick whining, begging in Bruce’s arms.
“Bruce, I need to–”
“Shh, Dick. It’s okay.”
“I want to cum, I need you to unlock the–”
Bruce pinches at his nipple and Dick yowls. “No, Dick. The cage stays on. Later, you’ll see.”
Dick can’t protest. Bruce is jerking his hips hard up into his prostate, fucking him like a human ragdoll. “Mine,” he grunts in between thrusts. “Mine, mine, mine.”
He cums inside Dick after a few more minutes. It’s his greatest indulgence and favorite kink. Stuffing Dick means the world to him.
For his part, Dick likes it, too. Horribly and not-so-secretly. Enough to drag Bruce into another long makeout session that coaxes Bruce into unlocking the cage.
He thinks he’s won. Not his freedom, no, but the symbolic battle between them.
“Good idea,” Bruce says, once the cage is open. “I had something in mind, if you remember.”
Dick raises an eyebrow. “Which is?”
“I was thinking, we’ll need some handy symbols so that everyone knows you’re mine.”
Foolishly, Dick thinks Bruce refers to hand symbols. A kind of sign language. If he makes a bat with his hands in the Nightwing costume, that could work. He nods his agreement without thinking.
He then catches the look in Bruce’s eye, the depths projecting a desperate I-need-to-make-you-mine, and realizes that they are most definitely not on the same page.
“Bruce,” Dick feels the name stretching like taffy out of his mouth. “I don’t know if I – I mean, I’m–”
“You can do it for me. I know you can.” Bruce leans in to kiss him again, his demeanor completely out of touch with the gravitas of what he’s suggesting. “Happy Birthday, Dickie.”
Oh, fuck, am I doomed? Dick wonders.
…Yes. Or so the new cock-piercing and tattoo on his neck would indicate.