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Now that Dick thinks about it, he’s never had a proper teenage existential crisis. Maybe it’s a bit too late to have one now, but he never gave his relationships that much thought before. It always just kind of happened, pieces falling into the right places, the other person’s wishes and affections carrying him along like a strong current, and he never really tried to swim in the opposite direction.
Zatanna was the one who awakened him to the many joys of adulthood, and she will forever have a special place in Dick’s heart for that. He was fourteen and at the stage of his life where kissing anyone didn’t make much sense: he couldn’t think of any reason why he would want to have another person’s saliva in his mouth. Then, Zatanna showed him, and Dick understood: sometimes, he wonders what would’ve happened had Zatanna not been older and quite a spectacular kisser; maybe he would’ve pulled away and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and there would be a lot of awkward glances and nervous silences.
But as it happened, Zatanna knew exactly what to do and Dick relented, because it felt too good to pass up. She was pretty, which helped, but mostly she was nice and witty and generally strong-willed, and Dick couldn’t help but admire that. He also couldn’t help but sigh and try to hold back the surprised yelps when she put her hand in his pants, and proved that kissing was not the only thing she could handle.
She told him it wouldn’t work out just a few weeks later, thirty-eight days filled with groping and kissing and roaming hands, Dick’s curious sloppiness slowly growing into wary self-assurance and profound enlightenment about human bodies. He let her go without a fuss, because as good as it felt, if she lost interest, there wasn’t much he could do about it. They remained on friendly terms afterwards, and Dick didn’t understand Wally’s or Kaldur’s cautious questions about their friendship, because really… Zatanna was still the same smart, kind girl and Dick liked her alright, so why would it change just because they stopped putting their mouths all over each other?
After Zatanna, there was Kory, and Dick found out that every person’s kisses tasted and felt different – even if at first, he attributed it to the fact that Kory wasn’t exactly human, in strictly biological terms. She’d been born a princess, used to people fulfilling her wishes, and while she wasn’t exactly bossy, not in the obnoxious way that got women called bitches, she knew what she wanted and how to get it. When she grabbed Dick’s shirt in that garden and pulled him closer, there was no trace of insecurity or doubt in her kiss, and Dick liked that quite a lot. Kory had also been married before, and did things to Dick that made his breath come out in ragged half-sighs as he clutched at her like a desperate, drowning man.
This time, it wasn’t Kory who said it wouldn’t work out – not at first. But having a friend-turned-evil-psycho kill your priest at your wedding kinda puts some strain on things, and now, years after it happened, Dick knows that it was a good thing they didn’t get married; that Kory was right when she said that they were rushing things.
Dick’s time at the university also put a lot of things into new perspective. For example, when his roommate pushed him against the shelves in the library and proceeded to suck every bit of air out of Dick’s lungs, leaving Dick weak-kneed and trembling. At the back of his mind, Dick wonders if he shouldn’t have had some sort of a freak-out about not being gay: but Luke feverishly whispered hot nonsense right into Dick’s ear, and Dick found no reason to struggle, because hey, Luke was a good guy and felt really great as he pushed his thigh between Dick’s legs and sank his teeth into Dick’s neck.
Luke taught him all the places where tongues could be put that girls usually didn’t think about, at least not those Dick had been with. Luke also taught him that not everyone was as financially lucky as Dick when the handsome, blonde physics major did not come back the next year due to family debts. Dick kinda missed him for a few weeks, but he never had that much trouble adjusting to new people, and his new roommate proved a good company, even if it meant a lot less sex and a lot more cram sessions.
Barbara came as a kind of surprise, if Dick were to be honest. He’d known her for a long time, and there were some uncertain hints of something from both sides; in hindsight, Dick thinks that one had to grow into Babs. She was smart, independent and self-confident: in some moments, she reminded Dick of Kory a lot, in that he could imagine Babs being a successful Queen of some country or a planet. She conquered him wisely, steadily and with a lot of strategy involved, Dick was sure, even though he didn’t really analyze her moves when she straddled him, burying her hands in his hair and her tongue in his mouth. She wasn’t as creative or experimental as most of Dick’s previous bed-partners, but she knew what she liked and she wasn’t afraid to express it.
It wasn’t hard to fall for Babs or to imagine a future with her: but then, Bruce needed help and Dick couldn’t just leave him to fend for himself in such a state. Bruce needed Dick, and Dick had always been a sucker for people who needed him. Babs wanted him alright, but with her strength and wisdom and independence, she never really learned to need him too badly, and when she said they weren’t ready to tie the knot, Dick kissed her, smiled and walked away with no hard feelings.
There have been others, of course. Once awakened to the world of physical pleasure, to that sense of completely getting lost in another person, it is impossible to give it up. Sometimes, Dick tries, or forgets to miss the intimacy when there’s so much to do in Bludhaven, when there are villains to be captured and people to be protected, people who need him because no one is there for them except Nightwing. There are other times, though, when the villains are all gone in Arkham or cemeteries or their tight little hiding holes plotting something malicious and stupid; when there’s no imminent danger to the city or to the people Dick cares about most, when Nightwing is not too busy to become Dick Grayson again.
At such times, there are people who will readily greet Dick with open arms and a lot of other things that stretch far beyond common hospitality. He’s never had to pay for it; never even considered it, when there are so, so many people willing to become a part of his world, even if only for a moment. There are women and there are men, and Dick kinda likes every single one of them: after all, he’s out for pleasure, and for him, that involves a certain degree of trust and care. He goes through his lovers: sometimes, they linger for more than just a few nights, sometimes they don’t. Each of them is like a Christmas present waiting to be opened, layers of pretty covers and a little bit of joyous surprise inside; they all teach Dick new things, or re-teach him the old, steady ones he thinks he already has a grip on. Dick knows the effect he has on people: he is told, in no uncertain terms, and quite often; listing his physical merits among all the moans seems to be a favorite pastime of the people he sleeps with.
And still, nothing can quite prepare him for the shock of seeing Damian Wayne get hard for him.
It’s a hot summer in Bludhaven; even Dick’s costume, light and designed for agile movement as it is, gets stifling and oppressive in a matter of minutes. When he gets home, his apartment building supplies liquid rust instead of water, and Dick feels like he’s stewing in his own sweat. It takes two days of trying to wash off the dirt with store-bought bottled water for Dick to finally give up and take a short trip to Gotham – and Bruce’s technically superior, but most of all working, shower.
It’s close to midnight when he finally gets there – unsurprisingly, Alfred is still up and Dick wonders if Bruce is out; then, he finds Damian sprawled on the couch in one of the living rooms, the one that is closest to the kitchen and the back stairs, the one that Dick used to like best when he still lived at the manor because it was the least grandiose and the most homely room in the whole enormous house. He has no doubts that Damian is using it out of convenience, not sentiment, but the sight of the boy sitting there still feels like coming home.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed already? It’s a school night,” he grins at Damian, who finds him worthy of looking up from the laptop resting on his knees, and shooting him a brief, scathing glare in response. Damian is only wearing shorts and a tanktop, and Dick draws mischievous amusement out of the way Damian seems to be mildly irritated by his state of undress, as if the unbearable heat in the whole country was a personal challenge to his existence, one that he failed to stand up to properly.
Then again, Damian does look mildly irritated rather often.
“It’s hot, isn’t it,” Dick makes another attempt at a conversation, but he does not actually hope for any response: he’s known Damian for too long to think he’ll rise up to the basic pleasantries.
Defying expectation as usual, Damian looks up again, and Dick briefly wonders if it should be biologically possible for any teenager to look like that at his elders.
“If you have come all this way from Bludhaven to talk about weather, your social life must be even more pathetic than you let on.”
“Not sure if you of all people should be making snide remarks about someone’s social life,” Dick grins, shrugging off the bite in Damian’s words. It’s not like it gets to him anymore, not really; at least not when Damian’s not actually trying.
“I’d like to point out that I was perfectly fine without any conversation altogether,” Damian sneers, and an obligatory glower later, he is once again lost in whatever it is he’s doing alone at midnight with his laptop. The need to smell like a human being acquainted with basic hygiene overpowers Dick too much to linger and prod Damian some more.
He stands under the shower who knows how long, letting the water wash away the sweat and strain of his days. It’s only after he steps out that he remembers he should’ve brought spare clothes: he briefly considers putting on the shirt and jeans he arrived in, but Alfred must’ve worked his magic while Dick was busy wasting enough water to satisfy demands of a small African country; Dick’s clothes are nowhere to be found in the bathroom, so he shrugs and wraps a towel around his hips instead. Walking almost naked through the corridors of Wayne mansion brings back a peculiar, tingly sense of home, and Dick is grinning by the time he gets back to Damian’s hiding place.
He half-expects the boy to be gone already, but Damian is still very much present, feverishly typing away on his laptop, his face a mask of frowning concentration that hasn’t changed at all ever since he was born (or at least since Dick first saw him). He turns at the sound of bare feet on the floor, even though Dick considers himself pretty much inaudible, and regards Dick with his usual cool glare.
At least for the first two seconds. Or maybe it just takes Dick that long to register an undercurrent in that gaze, the very same heat he is used to seeing in people’s eyes, just not in Damian’s. In that brief moment, it is as if a veil has been lifted from Dick’s eyes: Damian seems to grow a few inches, his features lose the baby roundness that Dick is so used to seeing, and instead come together sharp, defined, mature. There is something of Bruce in Damian’s face, of course, but not enough to leave room for any confusion: this is Damian, the boy Dick has known for years, the boy who has, somewhere in those years, turned into a man without Dick noticing.
And that man is observing Dick like prey, his dark eyes soaking in the contours of Dick’s body, slipping over Dick’s skin like an obscene, inappropriate touch. It sends shivers down Dick’s spine, and he tries telling himself he’s just imagining things: it’s the heat, it’s the ungodly hour, it’s the fact that he hasn’t had sex in quite some time.
He tries to break the mesmerizing, terrifying trance that has set in his bones, and moves: one step, followed by another, and he’s walking closer as if Damian was willing him to. Maybe he is: maybe he’s got some strange powers inherited from his mother, powers that make Dick notice things he should not be noticing, come closer when he should be leaving and dismissing the whole situation as a momentary lapse of judgment.
He rounds the couch, and Damian is still staring, as if embarrassment was beyond him: and Dick makes up for it by feeling a little flustered himself when his eyes betray him and he catches a glimpse of the bulge in Damian’s shorts.
Damian makes no move to conceal his apparent hard-on: he could easily slide his laptop up his thighs, cover himself, if he wished to, but he doesn’t move, just stares at Dick, in a question, in a challenge, and Dick finds himself sitting down with a cheesy grin.
“Like what you see, huh?” he winks, expecting (no, wishing, needing) Damian to look away, blush, try to hide himself or leave. Anything except that long, bone-deep stare.
But of course, Damian never makes it easy on other people. Never acts the way a normal person would.
“Yes,” he answers, a faint nod and an even fainter hint of a smirk in his eyes, and Dick swallows hard, his throat too tight, too dry to manage sound.
He is pretty sure he should not be noticing Damian like this – but it’s an immediate response somewhere in the primal, basic parts of his brain, to react when hot people find him attractive. And Damian is hot, oh god, Dick sees it now, the way his shoulders have widened in the past few months, the muscles in his arms and legs more defined under the pale skin; the way his lips are curved up in a hidden sneer and suddenly, it’s not infuriating at all, not like before, not like when Dick was still allowed the merciful illusion of Damian the child. It couldn’t be said that Damian’s a perfect copy of his father, not by any standards – but he’s inherited everything that Dick ever found even vaguely attractive about Bruce, and the thought is distressing on so many levels that Dick can’t even decide what to be horrified about first.
And Damian is still there, right in front of him, staring and smirking and waiting for Dick to react somehow to the fact that he had just admitted to finding Dick pleasing to the eye (and apparently, also to other organs).
“Well,” Dick smiles, taunting, amused, as he shifts in his seat, pulls one leg up on the couch, spreads out invitingly: because Damian is still just a kid, no matter how much grown-up he looks, and he will surely not take that step. But Dick likes provoking him, the same way Damian likes crossing the line just a little bit too much with him. It’s a neverending cycle Dick has tried to escape before, with no success at all: one taunt always leads to another with him and Damian. “Aren’t you gonna do something about it then?”
Again, he expects Damian to pull back, to get up from that couch, wordlessly admit defeat and stalk out of the room with a few choice words on his lips just for Dick.
And again, Damian defies all expectation.
“No,” he says, as if they were discussing pizza for dinner, and Dick raises an eyebrow, thrown off-balance once more by the brat in front of him.
“No?” he asks, confused, and Damian smirks, with far more confidence than a horny teenager should have.
“No,” he repeats sternly. “I refuse to be one of those idiots who allow you to hop on for a free ride anytime you wink.”
Now that has Dick confused even more and he leans forward, his elbows propped up on the couch’s armrest.
“…what?”
“Don’t play dumb, Grayson… even if you’re pathetically good at it. You know very well what I mean.”
For a moment, only the clicking of Damian’s keyboard is heard in the room, as Dick is doing his best to make sense of Damian’s words.
“Are you saying… I’m a whore?” he asks slowly in the end, eyes narrowed and fists clenched. Because he likes sex alright, and doesn’t necessarily need a ring on his finger to have it, a lot of it, actually… but he never presumed he would be judged by Damian of all people, Damian who is usually so quick to cast off morality in the name of a more important goal.
Damian snorts at him, shaking his head.
“Yes, among other things. You’re an emotion whore, Grayson. If someone shows the slightest interest in you, you simply go along with it, for as long as the other person wants you.”
Dick huffs and sits up properly, both feet on the cold marble floor, and he throws a disapproving frown at Damian: but something in him prevents him from saying much in his defense. It all plays through his head, they way things ended with Zatanna, Kory, Babs, all the other girls and guys he slept with in his life… and never had any trouble letting go. Yes, he was sad, devastated even, a few times… but he never really put up much of a fight.
Maybe he is expecting people to leave, somewhere at the back of his mind. Maybe it’s a childhood trauma, maybe it’s just who he is – letting people go when they want to. Maybe it’s that stupid saying he’s heard somewhere, about setting the ones you love free, and they will return if they truly belong to you.
Nobody ever has, not really.
And to have this sort of an epiphany because of a sixteen-year-old kid just feels like a massive slap in the face from Life.
Damian’s eyes seem to judge and taunt at the same time as Dick stands up – the air in the room is too thick and he needs to breathe, to process what just transpired between them.
“What,” Damian smirks, “no snide comments about how you at least have emotions, unlike me?”
“I know you can feel,” Dick grunts. “Even if you could start watching what you say.”
“Where would be the fun in that?” Damian laughs quietly, and it’s a deep, rich sound that vibrates through Dick down to his core. Suddenly he’s almost sorry that Damian hasn’t just lunged at him and kissed him right there. That would be easier to deal with than having all the protective layers around his soul stripped away with a few biting remarks, leaving him bare and raw in front of a merciless judge.
“Not everything in life is fun. I have to go,” Dick forces out of his lungs, feels like he’s drowning. He needs air, but Damian’s eyes boring into him pin him right where he’s standing.
“No need to run away on my behalf,” the boy smirks, obviously pleased with himself, with how easily Dick has succumbed, how quickly he started falling apart, even if all he originally wanted tonight was a shower and a cold drink. Dick hates him for that smirk; he hates himself more for not leaving when he still could.
“What do you want from me, Damian?”
“I’m not hiding what I want,” he smirks again, and glances down at his lap, forcing Dick’s eyes to travel down that perfect body again, to the shorts still tented with unfulfilled desires. Dick cannot understand how Damian can be so calm and composed with a raging hard-on, but maybe that’s just something in Wayne genes, to not be distracted by even the strongest impulses of one’s own body.
Reluctantly, Dick has to admit that witnessing this kind of complete control is somewhat arousing.
“But the question is,” Damian continues, looking up straight to Dick’s eyes, daring him again, “the real question is what do you want, Grayson.”
He glances back to his laptop, and the rhythm of typing breaks the moment into tiny little standard-news-font-shaped pieces.
Dick flees that real question while he still can, without thinking too much about the answer.
…………………..
Damian continues to haunt him for the next four months. Dick doesn’t tell anybody about their strange encounter in the manor, about Damian’s blatant physical interest in him or about Damian’s accusations of Dick’s emotional deficiency. He doesn’t know whom he could tell even if he wanted to, so he keeps quiet about it, willing the memories of the situation to just go away.
They stay firmly rooted in his brain despite his efforts. Wherever he goes, he sees Damian’s smirk; when he actually goes near Damian, he gets defensive and clumsy and suspicious. There are a few attempts at releasing the tension with other people, but Dick can’t shake the feeling that it’s somehow wrong, cannot forget Damian’s judging stare, and keeps questioning his motives with the people in his bed. It always ends up with him sitting hunched at the edge of his bed, listening to the front door slamming behind someone’s irritated back.
Sex used to be a refuge for Dick; now it seems constricting, binding, way more serious than it should, way more wrong. Damian has a gift for shifting the world in ways ordinary people cannot even imagine, and Dick feels like he can hardly gain any leverage with all these new angles that Damian imposed on him. It’s a slippery slope, and Dick doesn’t know how to pull himself up.
He tries avoiding Damian altogether; but they’re still bound together by the immovable constant of their lives that is Bruce. He tries daring Damian, provoking him with well-aimed remarks and small smirks and subtle touches, and that doesn’t work either, because Damian merely seems amused or barely noticing at all. It gets to the point where Dick can’t even look Bruce in the eyes for a prolonged period of time, because he fears what he might find there, fears that somehow, Bruce’s opinion of him is the same as Damian’s.
He doesn’t want to be that person, that ‘emotion whore’, wants to be the one in charge of his life; after all, that is why he is Nightwing now, not Robin. He left Bruce’s shadow and side to take his life, his fate, in his own hands, to steer it where he wanted it to be.
And he has been doing a piss-poor job of it so far, apparently. With a sigh, Dick gets over himself, grabs his jacket and walks out on letting life toss him where it will.
“I hate it when you’re the smarter one,” he announces to Damian without any greeting: Damian is having his dinner at that moment, the only one to occupy the large dining table that Dick always hated with passion, because it made him feel small and unimportant and misplaced. But Damian seems perfectly at home, regally towering over the mahogany and silver and honeyed duck.
“You should have gotten used to it after all those years,” he mouths off with a small smirk: it gets kissed off his lips the next second, Dick’s fingers buried in Damian’s hair and his other hand clawed in Damian’s shirt. It’s loud and messy and leaves something to be desired in terms of mouth alignment and teeth caution, but Dick is breathless by the time he tries to pull away and is dragged back by a steely grip at the back of his neck.
“Air,” Dick sighs, and Damian lets him go with an amused leer.
“I take it you have figured out what you want,” he raises an eyebrow, and there’s a merest hint of question in it, betraying Damian’s composure as a façade. Nobody else would probably notice. But Damian needs someone who can see under his thick, insufferable surface shell, and in that, Dick can see how he is the perfect choice. Damian always made his choices with perfect calculations: Dick can imagine Damian’s heart doing the same. But he doesn’t mind, at all.
“So all this torture was just because you wanted to be conquered?” Dick asks, chuckling, and in the next moment Damian is rising from his chair, taking the height advantage right out of Dick’s hands as his fingers grip Dick’s hips, steady, steely, pressing the older man into the hard mahogany of the table.
“Not really,” he smirks and licks into Dick’s mouth with insistence and arrogance only a teenager and a Wayne can muster. “I know you’re not very good at this dominance thing.”
Dick laughs and gives in, because one of them has to comply in the end, and he knows it will most likely be him, anyway. Damian is not playing games anymore, rock hard all over, pressed up against Dick, and it doesn’t feel like it had all those other times that Dick gave in to someone else’s lust.
In hindsight, his growing up with Batman might’ve forever ruined him for people who aren’t a little bit on the dominant side. But that’s okay, too, because Damian, unlike Dick, knows dominance all too well.