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Dick thinks about it.
He can’t stop thinking about it, to be honest. He’s given the situation more consideration than he normally gives whatever particular case he happens to be working on, or at least it feels that way.
The situation being one Timothy Jackson Drake, current ‘Robin’, also known as Dick’s—
Dick’s really not comfortable labeling their relationship right now.
More specifically he’s been thinking about naked Tim. Naked, wet and soapy Tim.
It’s not like he’d never thought about it before. Never wondered, in the dark safety of his bed and on the edge of sleep. If you work with someone long enough it’s bound to happen, and given that Dick has never tried too hard at keeping his imagination in check…
But that was never with intent.
Or in the middle of patrol.
Dick watches from a low rooftop as Tim delivers a spinning back kick to the ribs of an unsuspecting thug and finds himself thinking about Tim’s surprisingly long legs, sleek and muscled under the thick red tights.
He shakes his head and focuses back on the fight, feeling a little guilty for taking the opportunity to just sit up here and watch the action, but there are only two of them and Tim really has it under control.
Besides, this has always been his favorite part. That moment where Robin stops looking like a joke, a kid in bright clothes with a smart mouth, and starts looking like a genuine threat.
One more move and Tim has the first guy laid out in the dirty alleyway, unconscious, and rounds on the second, a smaller man who looks like the type to squeal.
Which he does, loudly and thoroughly.
Once Tim has him cuffed he looks up and grins, eyes unerringly finding Dick where he’s hidden in the shadows. He motions up to the roof but Dick waves him off, pointing in the general direction of the manor. Tim nods, and they both take off in opposite directions.
It’s been two weeks since he’s been in Gotham. Two weeks since he ended up in the shower with an exhausted Tim. An exhausted Tim who happened to mumble something that makes Dick think that it might be possible to be naked with him again, sometime. Or at least he mumbled something that suggested that he wouldn’t be entirely opposed to it, or rather, a *certain* part of him wouldn’t be entirely opposed to it. It’s a lot for four slurred together words to say, but there it is.
And Dick usually likes to inspect any opportunity to be naked around someone he actually likes, who actually knows everything about him, even if it is his—
Tim.
So he’s been avoiding Gotham. Moreover he’s been avoiding Tim, for all that he couldn’t resist spying on him during his patrol, and as an extension of that he’s been avoiding Bruce. Because Bruce, he’s sure, would see right through him, would see every single dirty thought in his head and would know exactly how many times he’s woken up lately with his sheets stuck to his skin like a teenager.
Which was only once, actually, but considering the fact that it’s been a long time—
It doesn’t mean anything.
It’s been a while since he’s been with anyone, and beyond that he’s been busy. Too tired to even jerk off before he falls asleep at night, and it’s just his body’s way of dealing with all that pent up—
Denial is a lovely thing. His grasp on it is unwavering.
So right now he’s heading for the cave, to use Bruce’s magnificent and extensive database to work on a case because his own is crap right now and he’s hit a roadblock.
Late evening is fading into night by the time he reaches his destination, and the air is crisp and cool as he pulls into the cave. He pats his bike affectionately before heading off to take a quick shower and change into some street clothes.
Two hours later finds him clicking through the files without really looking at them. His mind has wandered off somewhere else entirely, smooth skin under his hands again, lithe body relaxed against his own, completely trusting.
“Whatcha looking for?” a voice asks, right in his ear.
Dick jumps in his chair, spinning around in surprise. Tim has backed away, his eyes wide and his mouth open.
“Did I sneak up on you?” he asks, sounding almost scandalized.
“What?” Dick has to take a moment to figure out what he means, because his heart is suddenly thundering in his ears. “No. No, of course not.”
Tim laughs. “I totally did! You didn’t even know I was there,” he crows, grin lighting up his face.
“It doesn’t count if you weren’t trying,” Dick retorts. Tim makes a face and Dick finally gets a good, non-panicky look at him, taking in his damp hair, the droplet of water rolling down the side of his neck, and realizes that he’s wearing normal clothes. At 9 pm.
“What are you doing back so early anyway?” Tim shrugs. His thin white shirt says ‘Hudson University’ across the front in blocky blue letters, and Dick knows, with absolute certainty, that Tim took it from him at some point. Probably borrowed it and never brought it back, and whether it was on purpose or not doesn’t matter, it still warms Dick right up.
“Slow night,” Tim says, like it happens all the time instead of almost never. “Bruce sent me home.”
“You looked busy when I say you earlier,” Dick observes, turning back to the monitors.
Tim snorts. “The only time tonight.” He hops up on the workspace counter, which brings him into Dick’s view again, his kneecaps and thighs in the periphery of Dick’s vision, muscle and sharp bone softened by the thick cotton pants he’s wearing.
Dick continues to page through the files, but half of his attention is on Tim, who has gone quiet. He’s studying his own hands, and after a few minutes it becomes clear that he wants to say something but can’t quite figure out how.
Eventually he says, “Uh, I wanted to say thanks for taking care of me the other night.”
Dick closes his work on the computer, both because it’s getting him nowhere and because this is, at the moment, more important. Tim is smiling at him, small and, he would guess, a little embarrassed. There’s a faint line of color across his cheeks.
Dick means to say ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘no problem’ but what comes out of his mouth instead is, “What are you doing tonight?”
“Oh,” Tim says, straightening up a little, obviously caught off guard. “Aside from catching up on some homework? I don’t have any plans…”
There’s a treacherous voice in Dick’s head that would like him to remember that Tim is a *high school* student. He ignores it.
“I’m starving. Want to help me raid the kitchen?”
Tim relaxes. “Oh,” he says, smiling. “Sure, I can eat.”
“So now Wally has nightmares about flying spatulas.”
“Really?” Tim asks, scraping up another spoonful of ice cream. Dick steals the carton from him and grins.
“For Christmas Fire got Zatanna to magic up this really expensive chef spatula that flew out of the box and chased him around the room for an hour. You could hear him screaming half a mile away. I still don't know what the hell he did to her, but I'm a little afraid of that woman.” Dick takes another bite of ice cream and smiles around the spoon when Tim laughs, long and hard.
Dick laughs with him, even though it means he can’t watch, doesn’t get to see his flushed cheeks or his crinkled up eyes.
Tim wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. Every few seconds another bubble of laughter escapes him. Dick leans against the counter and soaks it up, the sound of laughter and the feeling of uncomplicated happiness that just radiates off of him.
Tim is perched on the kitchen counter, legs dangling against the cabinets, and Dick is leaning next to him. There are containers scattered around from where they raided the fridge for leftovers, bowls and cutlery that Alfred had insisted they use before he headed down to the cave to wait for Bruce. They got the ice cream out once he left, eating out of it with serving spoons. Tim had looked at Dick with wide eyes when Dick handed one to him, and Dick had rolled his eyes and said “Live dangerously” before Tim would dig in.
There’s a smudge of chocolate on the corner of Tim’s mouth, dark and running in the tiny lines of his lower lip. Dick wonders what would happen if he just leaned in and licked it away, and he stares so long that Tim notices and stops laughing.
“What is it? Do I have food on my face?” he asks, licking the last of the chocolate off of the spoon.
Dick swallows. “Yeah, just…” his voice is lower than he means for it to be, and it sounds obvious. Tim’s eyes are dark and utterly unreadable in the dim light of the kitchen, but his mouth seems parted, inviting.
Dick sets the carton of ice cream down and crowds him against the counter, opening his already spread legs so he can stand between them. Tim’s breath catches, an undeniable hitch of his chest under the thin shirt, and Dick thinks ‘yes’.
“Just at the corner of your mouth,” he says slowly, and reaches up to wipe it away with his thumb, his other hand coming to rest high up on Tim’s thigh.
Tim is holding himself rigidly still, his eyes wide, and he doesn’t move at all until Dick’s thumb brushes against his lower lip. His mouth falls open then, and Dick leans in, his thumb pressing the soft velvet crush of his lip down as he licks the corner of Tim’s mouth and then in.
The spoon clatters to the floor.
Dick’s imagined this, this kiss, a million times in the last two weeks. It’s nothing but shadows and ghosts compared to the real thing, Tim’s small soft mouth, awkward scrape of his teeth and the reality of his strong thin fingers spreading out against Dick’s chest and hip.
The way he doesn’t just let Dick kiss him but kisses back, following Dick’s tongue back into his mouth.
He tastes like chocolate and sugar, cool and smooth, his mouth sweet and open and deep enough to drown in…
“Ahem.”
Tim jerks away like he’s being electrocuted, but between Dick’s hands and body and the counter top there’s nowhere for him to go. Alfred is standing somewhere behind them, probably in the entrance to the kitchen, and Dick absolutely cannot turn around. There is, quite possibly, nothing in heaven or hell that could make him move at the moment. Tim drops his head to Dick’s shoulder and Dick can hear him mumbling “oh God, oh God, oh God,” over and over.
“I thought you may wish to know that Master Bruce will be returning home soon,” Alfred says, sounding damn near uncomfortable. “If you would like I could clean up this mess—“
The implication isn’t exactly obvious, but it’s enough to make Tim’s hands convulse against Dick’s sides, so Dick interrupts him. “No. No, uh, we can clean up.”
“Very well.” There’s a pause, as if Alfred wants to say something more but he’s not sure if he should. “Goodnight, boys.”
“Goodnight,” Dick says. Tim’s voice faintly echoes behind him.
The kitchen is still and quiet as the grave as Alfred’s footsteps fade away, and Tim doesn’t move for a long moment. Dick can only see the dark curve of his head; his face is still tucked against Dick’s chest, his hands clenched in the fabric of his t shirt.
“Tim?”
Tim shakes his head, mute, and Dick starts to worry a little. Enough that the ever present voice in the back of his head starts up, whispering ‘you’ve really fucked up this time.’
“Come on, Tim, say something,” he pleads, rubbing circles over his back, petting the thin cotton under his hands.
Tim laughs, a warm exhalation that Dick can feel through his own shirt. “Nope,” he says. “I can’t. I think I just had a heart attack.”
Dick smiles. “Tim…”
Tim tilts his head back, and he’s grinning now, a little shaky, his face flushed with embarrassment. “Seriously, that was like a bucket of ice water.”
Dick watches Tim unfold, leaning back and letting go of Dick’s shirt. “I mean, I’ve never really thought I could die of embarrassment until this exact moment.” He laughs again, the edge of hysteria bleeding away until he’s just left giggling.
“I’m sorry,” Dick says automatically. Tim falls quiet, looking down at his hands, and they both watch him carefully smooth out the wrinkles he left in Dick’s shirt.
“Are you?” he asks.
“Am I what?”
Tim looks up, his eyes clear and serious in the dim light. “Are you really sorry?”
Oh. He touches Tim’s face lightly, carefully, and watches Tim’s eyes flutter like they want to close. “No. I’m not.”
Tim nods, and Dick can feel him relax a little. “So uh, why?’
“Why?” Dick repeats. “Why what?”
He can’t see the blush get deeper, but he can feel it under his palm. “Why did you kiss me?” Tim clarifies.
Dick doesn’t know what to say. There are a lot of things he could say, and a lot of things he probably should say, but none of them feel right. So he goes with the most honest one, the one that’s been keeping him up at night.
“I can't stop thinking about you.”
Tim’s eyes flash open wide, his mouth parting on a little ‘o’ of surprise.
“I feel—I feel kinda creepy admitting this, but I can’t seem to help it.” He steps in again, until his own legs are pressed against the cabinets, Tim’s spreading out even more to accommodate him. “I keep thinking about you naked, in my arms.” He works his other hand up under the back of Tim’s shirt. “How all that skin felt under my hands. I keep wondering what it would be like if I could touch you like that again.”
“Dick…” Tim breathes out, and Dick kisses him again. Compelled like the pull of the earth to the moon, and Tim rises and falls with him, presses close to kiss him deep until they’re both out of breath.
“You should probably go,” Tim says once they part, reluctant enough to make Dick want to kiss him again.
“I don’t have to. I could just hang out. Watch some movies…”
Tim’s expression shifts to incredulous, more than a little amused.
“Are you going to be able to act normal, because I know I can’t. Even if you aren’t here he’s going to know something’s up, and I don’t—“
“Don’t feel like having that non-talk right now? Yeah, me either.”
Dealing with Bruce could be problematic. He will most likely say nothing, at least until confronted, but that nothing could be filled with the sort of silent tension that tends to make him hard to work with. That he tends to take out on the city.
And Tim likes to take things at his own speed.
Still, there is a point that Dick feels like he should be making here.
“I want to stay,” he says, petting Tim’s back and watching him shiver. Tim kisses him again, quick and chaste.
“You should go,” he says firmly.
“You should come with me,” Dick answers, because he can’t help it. Because Tim should know how much he wants.
Tim bites his lip. “I have school tomorrow.”
School. Right. Dick opens his mouth, but Tim cuts him off.
“But I have tomorrow night off. Free of crime fighting and everything. If you want, I could—“
Dick has to kiss him again for that, to feel the promise in Tim’s words in his own mouth. “I want,” he says, once he pulls himself away. Tim looks dazed for a second. It looks good on him.
Tim shakes his head and shoves at Dick until he can jump off the counter. “I can clean this up,” he says, turning away to collect the dishes. Dick stands there and stares at his back until Tim turns around, because he can’t make himself move.
Tim’s expression is both exasperated and fond. “Go. Before I change my mind and get us both into trouble.”
Dick holds up his hands in defeat. Tim smiles. “Tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Dick says. “Okay.”
It takes every bit of willpower Dick has to make himself turn around. His feet feel leaden, weighed down, and he doesn’t feel light again until he’s on his bike, speeding through the crisp air towards his own city.
He’s fairly sure he could’ve changed Tim’s mind, that it wouldn’t have taken much to get them both upstairs. Into that bed that was once his.
But Tim needs his own space, his own time, and Dick can give him that.
Even if it means he goes home to a cold bed tonight.
He speeds up, weaving around and through the traffic, and thinks about tomorrow night instead.
And doesn’t even try to stop himself.