Chapter Text
“It is late,” Starfire said.
Robin looked over at her and grinned. Like clockwork, she was waiting outside the evidence room for him. He had started to expect her with how often she’d been coming to lull him away from overworking himself recently. He put his hands up in surrender.
“I’m coming,” he said.
As she stood in the doorway, the light from the hallway radiated behind her, casting her shadow over the wall of newspaper clippings. It was an eerily familiar sight. Robin’s fixation on Slade had become a thing of the past, but he was reminded of his shortcomings if only for a brief moment. He couldn’t blame her for being wary. He supposed he’d given her enough of a reason to be. He took a few minutes to finish up and Starfire came inside to watch him. She put her hands on his desk, peering over his shoulder.
“Can you not provide yourself with more light than a small desk lamp?” Starfire asked, “the atmosphere is quite moody is it not?”
“I’m used to it.”
If Robin was being honest, the dim lighting was almost reminiscent of the Batcave—not that he did that on purpose. Pages from Bruce’s book found him in the strangest ways. He made a mental note to brighten up the space.
He moved towards the doorway and Starfire followed closely behind him. As soon as he passed into the hallway, a wave of fatigue washed over him, and he silently thanked her for her interruption. Time easily got away from him, that much didn’t change.
She reached for him instinctively and he felt the weight of her hand rest against his shoulder. It was a friendly, even professional gesture of affection, nothing out of the ordinary, but the warmth from her palm ignited a nervousness within him. This wasn’t the most intimate of touches they shared, but when everyone was asleep, and it was just the two of them, it felt so much louder. Like the smallest brush of contact was a blaring noise that could awaken the entire city. But even so, he didn’t shrug her off.
Starfire walked with him in silence until they stopped just outside the door to his room. She removed her hand and Robin watched her tuck her arms behind her back as she bid him goodnight, but neither of them moved to leave.
“I can take care of myself, you know,” Robin said. It wasn’t malicious, just slightly teasing, but she looked at him indignantly.
“Must you always be a hero?” she asked.
Of all of her questions this was the first he couldn’t answer directly.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You can care for yourself, but you do not. You spend all of your time caring for others. The city, our friends,” she started playing with a strand of her hair and quieted her tone, “I believe someone must care for you.”
And there it was. Robin could swear there was a drug laced in the late-night quiet. Nothing else could explain this shift in mood that made his exterior collapse. It was as if it had stripped him, or both of them as it seemed, defenseless.
He offered her a soft smile.
“I guess so,” he said, a little sheepish.
The harsh fluorescent lighting reflected against her face, and revealed the way her features twisted in thought. The events of Trigon left so much unsaid between them. The minimal amount of reprieve he’d given himself didn’t help. Her mind only unfolded to him in snippets during these bursts of time alone together. He was about to ask what was bothering her when she beat him to it.
“Robin, We have only known you as ‘Robin,’” she reached for the edge of his mask, “but what of the man beneath?”
He flinched away impulsively and she immediately retracted her hand. She seemed to take it as a rejection.
“I understand. I apologize for overstepping,” she said.
“Wait, Star,” Robin said. He took hold of her bicep to keep her there. She turned her head toward him, but he was at a loss for words. He felt a drumming under his ribs and wasn’t sure where to go from there.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it. He’d wanted to show her and the rest of the team, eventually, but something had always stopped him. And that something was his loyalty to Bruce, even though he’d left things icy between them.
But Starfire was his best friend. He trusted her with his life a million times over. It only made sense for her to know. He squashed down Bruce’s berating voice and adjusted his grip to take Starfire’s hand, leading her into his room. He made his decision.
He watched the door close behind her and they were left in the dark again, only being illuminated by the moonlight. She was wide-eyed and hopeful. He lifted his hand to his face, but she gently brushed it away.
“I do not wish to pressure you—“
Robin cupped her hand and assured her, “I want to.”
He peeled the mask away, slowly, and let it fall to the ground. Starfire looked at him in wonder and approached him gingerly.
She traced the outline of where it once was, marveling at the new territory to explore. Her fingertips brushed against his eyebrows, disrupting the hairs there, then moved to the creases by his eyes, pausing at each individual groove like she was studying each memory behind their formation. She grazed the tenderness of his eyelids and ran down the bridge of his nose, contrasting the softness and hardness of the features, and punctuated the moment by cupping his cheek.
Each time he pictured this scenario, he imagined it to weigh much heavier, but there was no transcendent shift in the universe. It was just them in his room, standing a foot apart, setting free what had been left dormant for so long.
“Robin—“
“Dick,” he corrected her, “it’s Dick.”
She was so close, it came out as almost a whisper. Her face glowed in response.
“Very well, Dick,” she paused, testing the name on her tongue, “I thank you for entrusting me with your eyes.”
She reached for them once more.
“They are…quite magnificent.”
With the only barrier left between them thrown aside, it gave way to an uncharted closeness. Like a dam had been broken. He was breathing in her air and noticing, as if for the first time, the greenness of her eyes that his mesh-covered vision had cursedly dimmed. And hearing her say his name, his name, only elicited a maddening hunger for more of her.
He gave life to his limp arms and caressed her cheeks as she did his, his thumb nudging just barely against her bottom lip. They were drawing nearer and nearer, every breath dampening the world around them until all he could think, or feel, or see was her.
Her lips had just ghosted over his when the alarm sounded. They jumped apart like they’d been electrocuted, and Robin rushed to replace his mask without hesitation. The moment had expired and a crushing clarity hit him over the head. He steeled himself as he rushed to join the others. He only turned around once to see Starfire lingering behind, just a second longer, in the flashing red, before following his lead.