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"I don’t understand how this keeps happening," Bruce mutters as soon as he lays eyes on him.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Batman says, innocently almost, but that’s a play and Bruce knows it. Dick is still wound up, running on leftover adrenaline and lack of sleep. His grin looks deranged, his cuts are bleeding, and the smell of danger and subsequent victory is fresh on him. He stands illuminated by the Batcave’s floodlights like some kind of tattered war god and Bruce, and Bruce drops his pen like a swooning secretary.
He wants to take every part of him in his mouth at once.
He pulls down his own cowl to face him, but it’s his codpiece that suddenly feels tight and restricting.
Dick sees him looking, and opens his arms to present himself, ragged cape fluttering behind him, his face a mix of chagrin, pride, and amusement. Bruce blinks, feeling slow waves of heat roll across his armored body. He’s seen this before (he’s seen it, and most of Gotham’s criminal underworld has seen it, which makes his pulse flutter angrily), but the image seems to singe his brain every time.
Gotham’s Batman is still in his suit, but it’s not clear how. It’s hanging in rags, peeling from his body like the thinnest layer of additional skin. The first tear runs asymmetrically across the chest, revealing olive skin, some sculpted chest and exactly one perky, hard nipple, with the other one still covered. Bruce can’t look away, and again he can’t fathom how, that area isn’t meant to tear. The second cut took off the costume’s side, which now hangs open to show half a narrow waist and a curvy hip bone peeking out of the fringes. Bruce can see the steady clench of Dick’s toned stomach while he draws short, excited breaths, he can see the gooseflesh. The third of the big cuts – the one that makes Bruce shudder with something that’s not boorish arousal for once – has opened the suit right between the left thigh and the pubic bone. A vulnerable spot. A deadly spot.
And those are only the big incisions.
This used to happen to Robin, then it used to happen to Nightwing, at which point it became a curious mix of irritating and titillating. And now it’s. Now it’s happening to Batman, but that’s Dick in the suit, and something about that combination makes Bruce just want to drop to his knees and crawl between his strong legs, submit to him.
He licks his lips; tries to find his voice somewhere in his throat. “Come here,” he prompts Dick, sounding hoarser, sultrier than the situation warrants.
Dick strides over, and Bruce sees the restlessness in every springing step. He knows – they both know – that there is no urgent reason for him to be here, no briefing, no new intel to trade. He could’ve changed clothes, could’ve rested, could’ve treated his cuts before coming here. But he didn’t. He’s come to let Bruce see him, open and bleeding and still running hot. He’s come because he’s all riled up, and he wants help to wind down, and the idea of what that means has Bruce’s fingers itch in his gloves. It’s all in the way Dick is standing in front of him now, with half his body out of his suit, looming over his sitting mentor. It’s all in the slightly widened stance of his long, lean legs, the busy up and down of his partly visible stomach. The cowl is somehow still intact, but he’s turned off the visor, letting Bruce see the wild gleam in his eyes.
Bruce hasn’t slept, either. He’s dizzy and delirious, halfway past questioning himself. And for the two of them, that makes for perfect opportunity.
Dick is so close, he is inches from feeling Bruce’s breath graze his hot skin.
Bruce’s throat feels very dry as he clears it; he feels very thirsty. He tries to push all of that down to focus on the more pressing matters.
"That one," he growls, pointing at the cut close to the thigh.
"Yeah," Dick looks meek for the first time since he’s entered. "Would’ve taken it clean off, I know. I got lucky on that one. Hey, did you know that Penguin has a pair of ice-skating twin assassins now?”
"Tell me their names," Bruce says, still eye to eye with Dick’s crotch and not really displeased with it.
"They’re called –" Dick’s breath hitches when Bruce leans over to see if the cut drew blood, which it didn’t. "They’re called Slice ‘N Dice, and trust me, they arenot as fun as that sounds,” he continues, voice more raw than before.
"Seems about right. Brought them in," Bruce inquires. He wants to touch, and he feels Dick’s desire to be touched, but first things come first. Meanwhile, his blood is quietly boiling. His cowl is down and he’s sure that his cheeks are flushed.
"Not yet," the other Batman replies, leaning in a little more in the hopes to make something happen, but still reporting dutifully. "They did the old smoke-and-dash, got clean away. Stopped them from raiding that chemical factory on 5th, though.”
Bruce nods. Dick doesn’t need a pat on the back or further instructions from him; Bruce has no doubt in his mind that, if he needs to catch a duo of blade-wielding figure skaters, he’ll do it. It’s this knowledge that enables Bruce to travel the world building Batman Inc. instead of watching over Gotham like over a poisonous treasure that he doesn’t want to share. Dick is … he is more than capable. He is more than.
He doesn’t need his advice on this. But what he does need is –
"I’ll get the first aid kit," Bruce says, voice growing softer now, less business. He’s about to get up, when Dick – Batman – plants his foot on his shoulder, pushing him back into the chair. The gesture is firm, but not rough.
"I don’t want –" Dick’s voice is, however. "The first aid kit."
They lock eyes, and Bruce sees a flash of something flicker across Dick’s cowled face for a second – a shadow of doubt, as if he’s wondering if this was too cocky, if he took it too far. He looks determined, but there is something vulnerable, something coy and quintessentially Dick there, and Bruce feels his entire body respond to it. Holding back suddenly seems too hard, so he leans over until he finds the spot between Dick’s legs were fabric gives way to tender skin, and finally presses his lips there, buries his mouth in it, makes love to it. And Dick lets him. Bruce feels sweat and tastes heat and he knows that Dick is aroused beneath that codpiece he’s wearing, probably has been for a while, doesn’t mind him knowing. Dick’s lean body goes into tremors, and the sound he’s making – not Batman, something softer – is a thing of beauty. Then his hands are there, running through Bruce’s matted, tousled dark hair, clumsily petting him with hard, re-inforced gloves, and Bruce knows he can’t wait until he gets to take those off, those, and everything else.
"Robin …?" Bruce mutters warmly against his warm skin.
There’s a small beat where Dick seems to wonder if Bruce means him. Then when he speaks, his voice sounds shaky, hoarse. “Sent him … ahead. Should be … ah … u-upstairs. Alfred…?”
He sounds almost shy in anticipation of whatever is about to happen, now that they’re making sure they’re alone, his stiff gloved fingers still stroking Bruce’s hair.
"Mmm. Free for the evening unless there’s an emergency," Bruce tells him, and he finds that his voice wavers, too. Dick does this with him, whether they admit things to each other or not, he makes him feel awe-struck and clumsy, as if he’s discovering his heart for the first time. That’s what’s left when it’s all stripped away, two awkward, naked people reaching for each other.
"Can I – " Dick mumbles, voice scraping in his throat.
"Let me –" Bruce offers at the same time.
And then they fumble for each other and meet in the middle, their lips meet, with Bruce half out of his chair and Dick hovering over him in a torn cape, and it’s a kiss that seems to seize Bruce by the balls and the heart simultaneously, and when Dick squirms against him with another nervous moan, he thinks – dreams, hopes – that it’s much the same for him.
"Sorry ‘bout the suit," Dick murmurs as they part, sounding still horny but somehow also genuinely regretful.
"We’ll make a new one," Bruce promises, eyes closed as he presses his face against Dick’s face. "And then another one. We’ll make as many as you need."