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Dick hasn't spoken to Bruce for eleven months, so it's particularly unfortunate that the first time he sees his former mentor in nearly a year is while pulling a five-inch needle dosed with aphrodisiac out of the meat of his thigh. He should have known better than to think he could get away with investigating anything in Gotham. And he definitely shouldn't have put off upgrading the material of his new suit.
The H.I.V.E. have been branching out, developing some sort of fatal sex drug and trying to test it out under the radar across the river. It targets the nervous system, creating arousal, mild euphoria, inducing heart palpitations and, eventually, cardiac arrest that are only alleviated by a particular hormone cocktail. In short, if you don't have a really mind-blowing orgasm, your heart gives out. The college kids have been calling it pecker poppers, which makes it extra embarrassing that Dick is about to die via pecker popper-induced boner.
"Nightwing?" Bruce says again. "What's in that needle?"
Dick would be incensed that Bruce, what, thinks he's come to Gotham to shoot up? Thinks that he'd do that at all, especially in uniform? But mostly he feels nauseous, and lightheaded, like his brain has come disconnected from the rest of his body. Also maybe the hardest he's ever been in his life. The drug moves fast, apparently, at least if you get it intravenously. He could really do with some of that euphoria right about now.
"Is that—" Bruce says, but Dick doesn't hear the rest of the sentence, because he's trying to figure out how to faint without giving himself a head injury on top of everything else.
When he wakes they're on the warehouse's second floor, tucked into a dark corner far away from the booby-trapped pile of boxes Dick had managed to set off. His head is pillowed on something firm— a thigh. He turns to nuzzle at it, and freezes when he sees the Bat-shaped buckle of Bruce's belt. Right.
"Who should I call?" Bruce says. "You'll need help."
"I don't think there's time." Dick's fingers are trembling, and he can't quite control his own lips. His tongue feels like cotton. "For anyone else to get here. The drug isn't usually injected."
There's a firm hand pushing Dick's sweaty hair back from his forehead. "All right," Bruce says. He has his mission voice on now. He's probably staring manfully ahead into the middle distance, resigning himself to the necessity of having sex with Dick because Dick had gotten himself whammied by the oldest trick in the book. His jaw looks very square, even from underneath.
"I didn't want it to be like this," Dick admits, half-apology, half a childish desire for acknowledgement. When he'd first gone to New York he'd wanted nothing to do with Bruce, too furious at the rank hypocrisy of Bruce shoving him away because of his own fear. But at the same time in the back of his mind had been the thought that maybe, in a few years, he would prove himself. Bruce would see him as the equal partner he'd always paid lip service to, and then that final part of Bruce's life would be open to him. It was such a Bruce kind of thought to have, thinking that time could fix what had gone wrong with them.
"I know you didn't," Bruce says. His fingers burn where they're pressed to Dick's wrist, taking his pulse. "I know."
Dick realizes he's rubbing his forehead into Bruce's hand like a stray cat, and yanks back. The drug has made him clumsy, and he overbalances, lands hard on his hands, the grit of the warehouse floor lodging itself in his palms.
Bruce makes a noise that Dick's foggy brain classifies as hurt, but is probably just surprise. He reaches back and unclips his cape, lays it down with a flourish like he's spreading a fucking picnic blanket. He bears Dick down onto it. His hands are very gentle as he arranges Dick's uncooperative limbs. At some point he unclipped the gauntlets, and the heat of his skin raises paradoxical goosebumps even through Dick's suit.
Dick stares at the broken rafters above them, listening to the soft clinks of Bruce busying himself with something in his belt. The roof is a solid piece of sheet metal, so there aren't any holes despite the lack of support. No chance of seeing the sky.
Bruce comes back with two foil packets, and Dick almost laughs at the absurdity of Batlube and Batcondoms before he realizes they're probably for Selina, and the laughter sours on his tongue.
Bruce reaches for him, and Dick arches into it instinctively, and just as instinctively shies away. They're caught in a ridiculous impasse, Bruce's hand hovering above Dick's waist, Dick's whole body frozen in an agony of indecision.
"Your suit," Bruce says. His mouth looks like one of the crumbling beams above them. Something not yet fallen, but about to. "I was just going to— maybe it's better if you remove it yourself."
"You can do it," Dick says. He's been trying to suppress the tremors, but it's harder in the extremities. He's not sure he could manage the clasps.
"Alright." Bruce waits for Dick to sit up. He taps out the code to unlock the suit's clasp with ease, touches Dick only where he needs to: the nape of the neck, between the shoulder blades, the curve of Dick's spine. Every touch a lit match. It's only as he's slipping his arms from their sleeves, cold air brushing Dick's back, that Dick realizes he never told Bruce the right sequence to unlock the zipper.
"How—" Bruce begins, then clears his throat. "You have some options, for how we proceed."
"B, it's sex pollen, basically. Like that Star Trek episode. I know you read the dossier." The dossier had been on Dick's laptop, because this was Dick's case, but he knows better than to think that means Bruce isn't informed.
"I know." Bruce's mouth pinches. "I only meant— I want to minimize your discomfort. There are options beyond simple penetrative sex."
Dick's eyes are hot. His whole body is trembling. There's no guarantee that a handjob will actually release enough endorphins to neutralize the drug's effects. He'd brushed aside Bruce's hesitant offer to call someone earlier for several reasons, but one of them was because he'd thought that doing this with Bruce would be like anything else with Bruce: intense enough there wouldn't be room to think. But if Bruce wants him to call all the shots—
"I just want this to be over," Dick says, and Bruce's mouth ratchets a few degrees tighter. "I don't want you to jerk me off and then we realize it didn't work and we have to slowly escalate through every sex act you can think of." He swallows. "I know you don't really want to fuck me," he says, though he suspects it isn't quite true, or at least not the whole truth. He remembers how Bruce had been starting to look at him. This part is true, though: "I won't hold it against you." He quirks his best wry smile, though it comes out a little wobbly.
"All right," Bruce says, and begins to unbuckle his belt. He keeps the rest of his clothes on, which makes sense. They're in a warehouse. Dick wants to touch him so badly, wants to feel the heat of Bruce's chest beneath his palms. His wiry hair, just beginning to silver, the familiar scars scattered across his skin, the thrum of his pulse— none of that is for Dick.
Bruce can stay fully armored, but Dick's suit is a single piece, and that means that he has to push it down his thighs in order for anything to happen. His legs tangle in his boots, clumsy; he feels foolish, lying here on Bruce's cape, tingling at every brush of air against his skin. His cock, of course, is rock hard, bobbing like a cheerful idiot against his stomach. He wants to touch himself, but he knows if he starts he won't be able to stop.
Bruce's fingers are less cold than he'd imagined. He must have warmed the lube while Dick was spiraling. Dick makes an embarrassing noise when Bruce finally slides one into him, and Bruce freezes, one hand on Dick's thigh. Fuckmefuckmefuckme, Dick chants inside his head. "You can go faster than that," he says, aloud.
"I don't want to hurt you," Bruce says, and Dick is too slow to stop himself from saying, "but you already have."
If Bruce was frozen before, now he's adamantine. "If you'd like to call someone else," he begins, but Dick is already shaking his head. "I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't have said that. You should just ignore me, really, nothing I say like this means anything."
Bruce's lips purse in the way that means he wants to argue and is purposefully holding back. His finger is a brand inside of Dick, blunt and hot, the calloused pad of his finger brushing Dick's prostate, his knuckle scraping his rim. Dick lets out a humiliatingly loud moan, which the warehouse helpfully echoes back at him. He claps a hand over his mouth when Bruce slips a second finger in.
It's too slow, but Dick can't tell Bruce he doesn't need this much prep without explaining that he has actually had sex before (mortifying) or risking Bruce hearing another one of those awful sounds (excruciating.) So instead he just has to lie there while Bruce carefully opens him up like he's not someone who knows all of the limits of his own body. Like he's fragile.
The heat keeps building in his stomach. He can feel his heart fluttering in his throat, his face, his fingertips, the unnerving suspended sensation as it skips a beat. He really needs Bruce to hurry the fuck up, or he might die after all, and naked on Batman's cape is not how he has ever imagined going out.
Bruce must figure that out too, because the next thing Dick feels at his entrance is the latex-covered head of his cock. It catches on his rim as Bruce tries to line himself up, and Dick muffles a whine in his palm. The drug is kicking his body into overdrive; every part of him is sensitized. His breath comes too fast in his ribcage, a lurching sensation just to the left of nausea.
Bruce runs his palm down Dick's naked side in a gesture that's probably meant to be soothing, but he's barely touched Dick this whole time, and so instead Dick arches like he's been hit. Bruce's cock slams into him like a fist, like a wall, like an anchor.
It hurts. Dick's glad. He's not sure he could have survived this if it had been nothing but perfect, unadulterated pleasure. The raw stretch of Bruce's cock inside him feels real, like nothing Dick could have dreamed up. Bruce is too large, and Dick is too keyed up to relax properly, and this, like the grit stuck in his palms, like the jagged shards of the ceiling above them, is an edge he can cut himself on to remind himself this isn't some besotted fantasy. He's not in a chair somewhere with electrodes in his head, being fed everything he ever wanted. He never wanted it like this, some plausibly deniable mistake that will nevertheless send Bruce running for the hills as soon as Dick's cardiac rhythm is no longer a danger. He wanted— well, it doesn't matter what he wanted, really, lying in his bed in Titans Tower, staring at the ceiling of his room in the Manor. He was never going to have it.
Bruce has started to move, but his earlier slip seems to have spooked him. His thrusts are glacial, endless burning drags across Dick's prostate. Dick can feel him throb, blood-hot, even through the condom. Bruce reaches down and runs his hand along the line of Dick's jaw, across the back of his palm where he's still trying to muffle his sounds. Down to the line of Dick's throat. He's taking Dick's pulse, but he's also stroking his thumb across the hollow between Dick's collarbones, which has to be messing with the measurements. And even after he's done he keeps touching Dick, his hand in his hair or stroking down Dick's chest, his arms, his thigh where it's wrapped around Bruce's waist. Dick doesn't know why Bruce keeps doing it, as though he's trying to fuck Dick not as Batman but as Bruce. Doesn't he know he's making things worse? Dick has kept his own fist carefully clenched in the familiar silky fabric of Bruce's cape this whole time. He couldn't touch Bruce even if he wanted to.
Bruce has barely made a sound since Dick stuck his foot in his mouth. All the noises Dick can hear are his own: the pounding of his blood in his ears, his muffled moans, the wet squelch of his body as it opens for Bruce. "Talk to me," he says, though he knows as soon as the words leave his mouth it's a mistake.
Bruce frowns. "I don't know what you want me to say."
"Pretend," Dick gasps. Bruce is an auger inside him. "I know you know how to do this. Just— something, I need to get out of my head, please—" This has to work. He can't have kicked up the ashes of his relationship with Bruce for nothing. If Dick comes and the drug is still in his system and Bruce has to do something else, something even more—
Bruce's mouth twists. "Sweetheart," he says, a little tentative, and that's so much worse than anything Dick could have imagined on his own that he lets out a sob and then bites his lip hard enough to taste blood.
"Don't," Bruce is continuing. "Don't hurt yourself, Nightwing, it isn't worth it. Let me—" he's fumbling with Dick's cock now, rubbing his thumb over the head, too gentle, it makes Dick want to scream— "just let me take care of you. You're so close, aren't you? You're almost there. It's almost over."
It's not even dirty talk. It's just a statement of fact. Dick turns his head to the side and pants, open-mouthed, Bruce's rough hand so careful on him that it feels infinitely more intense than if he'd just jerked him properly. Bruce's thrusts are slow but powerful, sliding Dick back across the cape so he has to brace himself to try to stay in place, and that tightening of muscle is almost enough— he just needs—
"Robin," Bruce groans, and Dick comes so hard it feels like vomiting, like his orgasm came out of some bloody cored-open pit in him rather than his cock. He's blinking spots from his vision when he realizes Bruce's thrusts are stuttering, his shoulders shaking. He's glad Bruce is wearing the cowl. He doesn't want— he can't know what Bruce looks like when he comes.
For a moment Bruce is completely still inside him, chest heaving, one hand still clutching at Dick's upper arm. Something breaks across his face, and for all his years of experience reading Bruce's microexpressions Dick finds himself out of practice. But then Bruce pulls out and turns away to busy himself with the logistics of condom and belt, and by the time he returns to check Dick's pulse again there's nothing on his face at all.
"So doc, am I cured?" Dick's voice comes out a little shaky.
Bruce clears his throat. "Your pulse and respiration are certainly slowing. Another five minutes, and we should know for sure."
Dick feels— well, he feels like Bruce just fucked him in an empty warehouse to save his life. So pretty bad. But the burning sensation is starting to leach from his limbs, and the tremors have stopped, and he no longer feels dizzy or nauseous. All signs point to Bruce's magical healing cock having done the job, except for how now the reality of the situation is crashing down on Dick like a ton of bricks.
Bruce has turned away again. Without his cape in the way Dick can see the muscles of his back shift and roil like an uneasy tide. He doesn't think he can bear it, any of it: going back to his city, his team, the independence and responsibility he'd fought so hard to have. Bruce, closed to him. His own mistakes, marching back across the years, failure on compounding failure. I'm sorry, he wants to say, but he knows Bruce won't understand what he's really apologizing for.
"How do you feel?" Bruce asks. He looks as solicitous as he ever did for any of Dick's childhood scrapes.
"Fine," Dick says. "I feel fine." He slaps a smile on his face. It's not his best work, but Bruce doesn't call him on it. Instead his lips flatten. "I hope you won't— I hope our working relationship won't be—"
"Our working relationship?" Dick would laugh, if it weren't so painfully obvious that Bruce is trying to crack the right words out of the stone facade he keeps all his feelings trapped behind. "B, we don't have a working relationship. And anyway it was my failure."
Bruce flinches. "I think that's unfair."
"What part?"
"Both."
"You shut me out first." Dick knows he sounds petulant, childish, but he can't help it. He starts to roll his suit back on, sliding the fabric up his legs, slipping the cup back over his wet, oversensitive cock. He can't be naked for this conversation.
"Can you understand how—" Bruce starts, and then changes course mid-sentence. "I thought I would lose you."
"So you pushed me away and lost me anyway," Dick snaps. He's almost all the way back into his Nightwing costume now, twisting around to seal the zipper at the back.
"I know." Bruce sounds sick with it. "I know, but I— what could I have done? I couldn't keep you safe. I was putting you in danger, all the time. Not just in the field," he adds, wretchedly, to Dick's noise of protest. "And now you have a Titans communicator and a speedster on your team. And instead of reminding you of that, I—"
Dick has never heard Bruce speak so hesitantly before. Usually everything he says is so definite. Like one of Roy's arrows, you have to wait for him, but he always cuts right to the heart of the matter.
"B," he says, and he's never regretted the necessity of the masks more than in this moment. "B, I know. It's okay."
Bruce is shaking his head, his lips pressed together so tightly they're white.
"Or maybe it isn't, but it's— I don't know. I trust you. I've always trusted you, more than anyone I know. Even when you've hurt me, even when I'm furious with you."
"Can't you see that makes it worse?"
"No!" Dick shouts. "Because if I'm going to trust you I need you to trust me as well." That was what had hurt more than anything else, more than leaving, more than not speaking to Bruce, more than the stupid bullet in his shoulder. Knowing that Bruce no longer trusted him the way he had. Knowing that Bruce no longer trusted himself, not just because of those flashes of attraction but because Bruce had trained Dick and chosen him to be his partner. So if Dick wasn't good enough anymore, then Bruce's judgment wasn't either.
"Trust that I know what I want," Dick says. Now isn't the time to unload his whole litany of hurts, but he needs Bruce to listen to him, instead of just hearing his own fears mirrored back. "I've known the whole time."
"What do you want?" Bruce sounds like he's frightened of the answer.
"I want to be your partner."
"You can't want that."
"Why not?" Dick's an adult, and their legal relationship expired two years ago. But maybe Bruce knows that's not the objection that will sway Dick, because what he responds with is,
"You have a life, a team. I won't ask you to be Robin again."
"So do you. You always have. And I don't want to be Robin again. I told you, I want to be your partner."
Bruce stares. Dick can see that formidable mind cycling through all of his arguments, trying to find the one Dick will listen to.
"If you don't want that, you can say no," Dick says. He puts his gloved palm on Bruce's arm, the material of their costumes transferring only the muted sensation of pressure. "But don't use my own desires as an excuse. If there's someone else—"
"No," Bruce says. "There's no one." Some old grief is lurking under that sentence, something more than just Bruce's stubborn loneliness, and Dick wants to ferret it out, but he also knows how Bruce hoards his griefs.
"Well then," Dick says. "It really comes down to a pretty simple question, I think. What do you want?"
Bruce looks at him, agonized. And then he seizes Dick's face in his hands and kisses him with all the intensity he'd been holding back so carefully earlier.
Dick had spent quite a bit of time imagining how Bruce might kiss. He'd seen Bruce kiss people before, both for the mission and for himself, and sometimes both. He knows Bruce kisses like he does anything else: completely, absolutely, with all of himself. But all those stolen glimpses didn't prepare him. Bruce is kissing him like he'll never get another chance; his mouth feels like his cock all over again, a slow fiery consuming press.
Dick pulls back, and Bruce is looking at him the way he had right after he'd come, that same strange broken-searchlight expression on his face. Dick thinks he knows what it means, now. "I thought you were trying to be careful with me, earlier. That you didn't think I could take it."
"No," Bruce says. He swoops in to kiss Dick again, like he can't help himself. "No, that wasn't it at all."
"I see that now," Dick tells him. Bruce never put his gauntlets back on. His hands, when they pull Dick in, are warm. Under his own gloves Dick's palms are still raw; the fabric digs into the scrapes when he wraps his arms around Bruce's shoulders. He doesn't mind.