Title: Suppliant on your curious knees (Title reference) Series: How to Marry a Millionaire (set mid-Moonlighting) Summary: More than anything else, he wants to throw his mask at Bruce and demand an honest conversation. Pairing: Nightwing/Bruce Wayne Rating: Adult. Content some readers may find disturbing. Notes: Lots of people listened. Jamjar handled the beta, AskMeHow helped, and Betty smacked it around a little more. Dick has adjusted to the ritual of sneaking in Bruce's window in his full Nightwing uniform entirely too easily for his own comfort. There are rarely any signs that Bruce has been anything but a man whose life is only wealth and pleasure, rather than the absolute truth that he never arrives more than half an hour before Dick does. He has new wounds, sometimes, and the explanations to go with them ring hideously false. Dick learned not to ask after the time he'd sewn that cut himself and Bruce laughed it off with a line about learning to use a shrimp fork. He's still got the remnants of the scar on his thigh. Shrimp fork. Bowie knife. It makes normal things a lot more disturbing. When he sees the scrapbook, he knows that it has to be Tim's, couldn't be anyone else's -- but the order is wrong, the acid-free paper is wrong, and the binding is labelled differently. Bruce is sitting up in bed reading, flicking idly through the scrapbook. The real reason is that the Scarecrow had hit them and the only antidote was an adrenaline cocktail that's only starting to wear off. The other reason -- "I shouldn't accept late-night lattes, no matter how charming the barista is," Bruce says, chuckling at himself, "but at least I get to see you strip for me." "I'm not particularly good at that kind of thing," Dick says, shrugging. It's certainly nothing he's tried -- except for the time that Kory had asked, and that was a farce. "I don't think there's much of a challenge to it." Bruce turns another page in the scrapbook. "I was thinking about your costumes again the other day, and -- you certainly are well-covered these days. For you, I mean." Dick winces. "It's much more practical." "And less embarrassing, I'm sure. What was the point of those -- those panties, anyway? It's perverse, if you ask me. What was he thinking?" This is not a discussion he wants to have with anyone, ever, but especially not with Bruce being ambiguous and pretending he doesn't know anything. "It wasn't his idea." "He was the grown-up in the team, right?" He taps a picture -- not Batman, but the Teen Titans, not long after Roy joined. "He should've had enough sense for both of you. Why didn't you ever ask him how he'd feel running around in green panties?" Dick blinks and then remembers that Bruce will pretend not to see his confusion. "It never occurred to me." "I'm not sure whether it was worse before or -- later." The next page Bruce pauses on is years after the other Titans picture -- he remembers when it was taken. "It's one thing to have a boy running around dressed in nothing, but a young man? Ridiculous. I wonder if he ever thought about what he'd look like in them." "Bruce," Dick says. Just like every other time he's used that tone, Bruce breezes on. "Didn't you ever wonder?" Bruce crosses his legs under the blanket. "A grown man with his underwear on the outside -- no offense to your friend Superman, but at least he's got tights." "They're not exactly tights," Dick says. But that's not the point. "And -- it was just -- normal, I guess." Bruce laughs. "Normal. Bright green normal panties, darling? Really?" Dick takes off his boots. "It wasn't any stranger than anything else." "Not back in the day, I suppose, when all your little friends were wearing underwear as outerwear too, but --" Bruce shakes his head. "You were on your way to college, Nightwing, wearing shorter pants than your average swimsuit model. Didn't it ever feel strange?" More than anything else, he wants to throw his mask at Bruce and demand an honest conversation. This is too close to the things that matter to play with like this -- but Bruce isn't going to stop playing until he's ready, and he's not ready yet. "I was just used to it. I really was." He doesn't have to meet Bruce's eyes when he's got the lenses, anyway, and the benefit of the game is that Bruce won't call him on it. "All of your assets just out there, in front of god and everybody," Bruce says, shaking his head slightly. "You're quite the performer, really, and I can imagine you didn't exactly mind being the show, but -- there are limits. You must have had an audience in mind." "No," Dick says, and it's only the truth, but Bruce smiles like he's winning. "Really. Not even him?" Dick covers the urge to hit him in the nose until he stops being an idiot by taking off his gloves. "Especially not. Really not. No." "Methinks the vigilante doth protest too much," Bruce says, and now he's leering. "Or were you more interested in being him?" In the field Dick doesn't have a lot of trouble controlling his responses to things, but there's rarely anything quite as pointedly mindboggling as Bruce. He has to stop himself from gaping with a lot of conscious effort. "No -- I -- I never wanted to be Batman." Bruce's expression of surprise is entirely over the top. "Really! So you've never -- tried on his costume." When I was fourteen and he was out of the country for a week, but it was just the cowl and I missed him, Dick definitely doesn't say. "A couple years ago I -- I did his job for a while." More surprise, and it's getting annoying. "Oh, really. Was that you in that overly armored thing the news was so hot about?" "No!" Dick turns away -- he can't watch this charade of re-explaining what Bruce already knows perfectly well. "No, that was someone else." He peels his tunic off. "I'm exhausted, Bruce. Can we just -- talk about this later?" When he looks back, Bruce is smiling at him, but there's still something a little manic in his eyes. "Just when we're getting somewhere interesting? So you were Batman in the classic model. That's intriguing," Bruce says, and he's licking his lips. With anyone else, it would be because it's ungodly late at night and he's been talking. But this is, after all, Bruce. "Do you still have the costume?" "It was never mine to begin with," Dick says, and he sits on the bed to finish undressing. "I gave it back when I was done." "Pity," Bruce says, sitting up to run a hand down his back. It makes him shiver. "I'd love to see you in it." "Sorry, can't help you there." He tosses his leggings into the pile with the rest of his uniform and gets into bed. Bruce chuckles and puts an arm around him. "I wonder how hard it is to find one of those costumes -- in the right size, of course." Dick shivers again. "I guess that depends on your resources." If they're going to play games -- well, it's not like he doesn't know how to tease, too. "True." Bruce kisses his ear lightly. "And I do have modest connections. Some affluence." "False modesty," Dick says, laughing, and pins his wrists down. This, at least, is part of the game that wouldn't work any other way. "When it's useful," Bruce says, grinning up at him. "Can I convince you to play Batman for me, then? You do owe me one." Dick squeezes his wrists gently and tries not to try to understand. There's just too much there to make any sense of it. "If you really want me to." "I find the idea fascinating," Bruce says, and that more or less settles the matter. <center>* * * * *</center> Two days is not a reasonable interval for the construction of a complicated costume to specifications. The Batman uniform must have been in storage. Dick gets that, and why, and holds onto that logic tightly. Because the other uniform is complete already. Bruce has been planning this, and that's almost as disturbing as the way he looks. "I wasn't expecting --" There's something terrible about the sheer number of scars on Bruce's legs, and he knew they were there before, but with his legs shaved -- "I'm not sure how I could have been any less subtle," Bruce says, and his cape, his bright screaming yellow cape, swishes when he walks across the room to give Dick the box with the Batman suit. "Get dressed already. I've been expecting you." They went their separate ways twenty minutes before, if that. "Bruce -- I --" Bruce kisses him lightly. "I want to see you all dressed up and scary." He tugs at his -- with his height and the length, yes, they're green panties. His thighs -- his -- everything is right there, exposed and -- everything he was saying makes a different kind of sense. "I'm not really feeling scary myself." "Scary wasn't the point," Dick says, but he sounds faint even in his own ears, and it's all he can do to follow instructions instead of demanding some kind of an explanation. Chances are good he won't get one past the obvious, which is that Bruce wants this. That's even more obvious in the -- panties. There must be a reason why, something more complex than, "Those boots do wonders for your calves," but it's another mystery. If he ever figures it out -- It's not going to be while he's wearing this cowl, this suit, these boots -- that never had heels, exactly, but definitely make him taller. Bruce is staring at him and adjusting his own tied-on mask. It doesn't matter that Dick is still shorter than him. He's Robin, now, and that means he's not really using his height. God knows what he wants from all this. The question makes Dick's head hurt and his mouth dry. "Bruce --" Bruce laughs and kisses him -- softer than normal, easier, as if he's not the one bending down for it. "Please, not when I'm in costume, Batman." Dick chokes and tries to find anything that will work, anything that can get him out of this mess. "Robin," he says, and his Batman voice has never been perfect, but it's worse now. Too tentative, and Bruce is raising an eyebrow at him. He puts one hand in its black gauntlet on Bruce's chest -- red breast, god -- and pushes him away. It's not gentle; he's Batman, tonight. "It's inappropriate for you to kiss me." "Oh." Bruce takes another step back, frowning at him. The tunic was definitely made to the right size but it still looks too small across his broad chest. "Why can't I?" This, at least, is a speech Dick has heard a thousand times in his mind. "It's not a functional part of our working relationship -- Robin." It only takes a slight hesitation to get the name out, and it makes Bruce shiver. "It would be a distraction from our professional responsibilities. Moreover --" and he never says words like that out loud, but this speech is too ingrained to change "-- my personal and legal responsibilities to you preclude any such action." Bruce has his hands on his hips and his pelvis tilted. He's not looking up at Dick -- he can't -- but there's a defiance in his stance that works anyway. "So what you're saying is -- you're not gonna kiss me," he takes a little step closer, letting his hands fall, "because you're my partner," and another, a swagger, "and you don't wanna take advantage of me?" He's close enough now that Dick can feel his breath when he talks, warm against his cheek. Batman has so little exposed skin, but Bruce knows how to use it to best advantage. "Yes." Close enough that when he says, "That's completely fucking idiotic," his lips brush Dick's cheek and he leans in, armor to armor and groin to groin. There's just enough time for a fleeting thought of, "But I would never have said that, not when I was Robin," before Bruce kisses him hard. It's almost impossible to stay in character enough to push him away. "Robin --" Bruce keeps his balance and leers at him. "Jesus, Batman, I can tell you want this. You've been staring at me -- you've wanted this since --" He -- it's got to be cheating, somehow, for Bruce to lean in again and grind against him. "Give it to me." Dick has spent time before pondering the ever-present question of exactly how much self-control Batman really has, but it's never been quite such a pressing issue before. He never let it be. And this -- "Robin," he says, and if his voice is choked, that's not out of spec, not like this. "This is just --" Bruce is cheating, Bruce is unfastening the smooth black panels of the costume -- but it's not cheating because he had it made and he's kneeling "-- it's adrenaline," he stammers. "It's not what you think, you're confused --" "Am I?" Bruce looks up at him, stroking him with one green-gloved hand, and the bangs, the mask -- everything is just perfect. "So you're not harder than hell, and you don't want me?" "I do -- but --" He groans, and -- Batman should -- he pushes Bruce away. "Robin, you need to stop." "I don't see the problem." Bruce looks up at him again. "You want it. I want it. We spend every night outside the law, here." He puts his hand on Dick's hip and pulls him forward, half a step. "Give it up." It's too harsh. "Bruce," Dick says, losing the Batman voice. He looks startled, but he stops. "What?" "You're not exactly -- Robin." Bruce sits back on his heels. "No? Okay. Give me a hand here, gorgeous. A few pointers." Dick bites his lip. "Stop --" being Jason. "Stop swearing. And -- don't push so hard. I mean -- I wouldn't have." "You didn't get what you wanted, though, did you." It's not a question and it doesn't have to be. "So maybe pushy is --" "No." Dick clenches one hand into a fist. "Maybe if I were really him it would work, but -- I don't think so." "I guess that's something you'd have to ask him if you're not sure." Bruce says with a shrug. "Next time I catch him off-guard," Dick says, and makes himself laugh at the absolute impossibility of having anything like that conversation in any way except how they're having it right now with Bruce on his knees. "I can't exactly say, 'Hey, did you ever sleep with Jason?'" Not even the faintest twitch. "The way you talk about him," Bruce says, smooth as anything, "I'd bet the farm -- hell, the entire enterprise -- that you already know the answer to that." "Maybe," Dick says. "Oh, come on." Bruce gets up and puts an arm around his shoulders for all the world like they're wearing the opposite costumes. "Jason who?" He's going to answer -- somehow, he's not sure what to say to that -- but Bruce keeps going. "Anyone too foolish to seduce you, darling, is clearly immune to masculine charms." It shouldn't be nearly as reassuring as it is, but it's not misdirection, exactly, and there's a warmth of conviction in Bruce's voice. Dick hugs him, then lets him go and frowns. "So -- where'd you get your ideas of what Robin's supposed to be like?" Bruce waves a hand lightly, and the sincerity is gone as if it had never been there. "Oh, here and there. Old rumors. Old friends." Dick takes a deep breath. "Well, you're way off base." Bruce sighs. "But we already said the way you would've done it wasn't going to work." "What you were doing won't work either." "No, you're entirely right." Bruce looks at him -- really at him, despite the lenses and the masks -- and the sincerity flickers back for one honest moment. Then he leans in for another kiss and it doesn't matter. "Maybe you're going to have to break character a little." "If that's all right with you," Dick says. "I didn't dress up like this for the ventilation," Bruce says, laughing. "Just relax a little. Maybe the Batman you know wouldn't do this -- but you wanted him to, right?" It's too obvious a conclusion to be really embarrassing, but Dick looks at the floor. "Yeah." "So be that Batman." Bruce kisses his cheek gently. "I wouldn't know the difference unless you told me, anyway." Dick smiles at him ruefully. Hopefully, that's the biggest lie he's told all night. "Fair enough. I'm not sure what you want from this, that's all." Bruce shrugs, managing to seem entirely too at ease in Robin's armor. "To find out what you see in him, and why you put up with this outfit for so long. And -- what you think this was supposed to be like," more softly. Maybe more honestly. Maybe not. "It's not that easy," Dick says. "What I used to want -- well, it doesn't make sense." "Darling," Bruce says, chuckling, "it's a sexual fantasy. It doesn't have to make sense. That's the point." "But it wasn't realistic." Bruce's grin is crooked. "That's why they call it 'fantasy.' Show me." Dick takes another deep breath and settles into the Batman voice again. "Robin --" Now Bruce smiles at him -- and finally it's a familiar expression. There's no subtle dig there, just a real smile. Real as much as it can be real when it's Bruce pretending to be him -- but that's a different issue. "Yeah, Batman?" The simplest answer is a kiss. Bruce leans into it and against him as if he's been expecting this all along -- which he must've been -- and Dick runs his hands down Bruce's back, over his cape. "Is this what you want?" Bruce shivers against him. "Almost." "Then -- what?" "Show me what you want," Bruce says, and kisses him, tentatively, then letting it deepen and feel more familiar, closer to real. Dick pulls off his gauntlets so he can feel the absolutely authentic fabric of Bruce's mask and the slight stiffness of whatever it was that he used on his hair, his bangs. "This," Dick says, careful to keep his voice pitched low. He eases them forward and thinks how strange it is that he's making Bruce back up. When they reach the bed and Bruce sits, it's easier to kiss him, to lay him down and touch the uselessly reinforced tunic, the armoring on his shorts, and the too-smooth hairlessness of his legs. "This is what I need from you." Bruce shudders as obviously and fully as he ever does. "Anything you need." Dick sits up and Bruce reaches for him. "Please -- don't stop." "I won't." There's a level of denial that's necessary to look at Bruce and see the masks without demanding more, and he's had a lot of practice doing it. It's easier to help Bruce out of his shorts, getting rid of his boots on the way, than to keep seeing them and thinking of their significance. The scars on Bruce's thighs make Dick wonder, not for the first time, how he's avoided bleeding out. Bruce is wearing one of the answers to that question right now. Part of it, anyway. "Are you just gonna look at me all night?" Bruce asks, wriggling his hips to tease as he edges up the bed to make room. At least -- at least he's not swearing. "No," Dick says, and he bends down to lick a wet stripe up Bruce's thigh along an old knife wound. Bruce moans, and it shifts lower when Dick sucks, raising a bright mark on the inside of his thigh. "No fair," Bruce protests, slamming a fist into the bed. Dick laughs and finds a scar on his other thigh to treat similarly. "Protesting fairness accomplishes nothing, Robin." "You're driving me crazy," Bruce says breathlessly, halfway between his affectedly careless tones and something that might be an approximation of Robin-voice. "Please -- oh god that tickles --" It would be impossible to pin Bruce's legs down; Robin gives in easily. "Patience, Robin," Dick says. There are so many scars, and he knows precisely how infuriating it is to wait while they're appropriately recognized and decorated. He doesn't mention to Bruce that he has Batman's voice in the back of his head reminding him that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. A hickey for a hickey only accomplishes minor damage to surface capillaries. More than that, it makes Bruce moan and clutch at his head. "I don't want to be patient. I -- god -- your mouth --" "Patience is a virtue," Dick says in his most sonorous Batman voice. Bruce laughs at him and writhes. "I'll be patient later, I promise, I just -- please." Dick nips at another scar and makes him yelp. "That's not an option." Two more bright marks, and he sits up, running his hands over the network of scars and bites. "You're going to have to stay in the shadows tomorrow." "I --" Bruce takes a quick breath. "I don't care who sees." "Don't you?" Dick runs his fingernails down Bruce's thigh and he shivers. "What will they think of you?" Bruce props himself up on his elbows. "That someone wants me. That someone --" he looks away enough for it to be clear, even in the mask, that he's avoiding Dick's eyes. Or Batman's. "That someone loves me." "Someone," Dick says, pressing a bruise until Bruce hisses. "I wouldn't let anyone else do this to you." Bruce licks his lips. "I know. I -- I don't care if they know, too." Dick pets his thigh. "Fools rush in, Robin." "I don't care!" Bruce insists, covering his hand -- and he's still wearing gauntlets. They make his fingers hard and harsh. "It's not like they don't think it anyway. If they know -- at least it's true." Dick takes a breath and lets the silence hang -- though it's hard, it's right. It makes Bruce ask, "Isn't it?" Another beat of silence. Two. Dick raises an eyebrow at him, and it's almost invisible under the cowl, but Robin would see it. "Do you have to ask?" Bruce frowns. "Do you have to not answer me?" Dick takes hold of his wrists. He can't quite manage the low humming rumble that Bruce would make under the circumstances, but the approximation of it makes Bruce smile faintly and shiver. "Never ask a question you know the answer to, Robin," he says, and saying that name, in that voice, close enough that Bruce can feel the breath on his erection -- it's wrong, so wrong, and yet it's absolutely right. "Batman," Bruce says on a sigh, "I -- please tell me --" And that's right, too, that insistence; it's the same feinting and blocking they've been doing, mirrored, since this could really have happened, since Robin could have been pinned to a bed and begging. "I won't repeat what you know," he says, using the Batman voice. He ends the conversation -- decisively, definitively -- by taking Bruce's cock in his mouth and tasting the familiar saltiness, sharpened with the chemicals left from the uniform manufacturing process. Bruce wails and pulls against Dick's grip on his wrists, arching his hips off the bed and shuddering hard -- more than he would normally. He doesn't hold back -- not here, in this bed -- but now -- It's as though he's more naked than normal instead of far less so. "I -- I can't," Bruce says, his voice already hoarse. "Please, I need you -- please --" He twists his wrists so ineffectually it has to be on purpose. "Tell me. Please tell me." There's no space for words between Bruce's gasps, even if Dick wanted to let him go long enough. It's better to suck him a little harder and make him fight for it, moving faster and shuddering, however dizzying it is to hear Bruce say, "Batman, please." The burr in his voice is familiar, and that twist in his hips -- Bruce is struggling for control and letting himself lose, so fast, so desperate, that it has to be in character. This is Robin, for Bruce, too passionate to wait for an answer, too desperate for an answer to let it go. "God," and he shudders from head to toe. "You have to tell me -- oh -- god -- please --" and he arches off the bed again, holding the stretch -- too much, but not for Robin, never that -- as he comes, whimpering with it. Dick lets him catch his breath for a few long moments before he lies down and puts an arm around Bruce. "I don't need to tell you anything," he says against Bruce's hair. The punch is just slow enough for him to block it. "That's not fair," Bruce protests. "I told you --" "Nothing I didn't know," Dick interrupts him, and Bruce glares at him. "Robin -- you're not subtle." "You're too subtle, then," Bruce says, subsiding with a sigh. "Am I?" Dick touches his chin lightly, tipping his head up to kiss him. "I don't think I've been opaque in the least." Bruce moans against his mouth. "Then why won't you just --" he pulls Dick down into another kiss. "Just say it." "Let me show you." Dick runs his hand up Bruce's thigh and strokes him lightly. Bruce turns his head, biting his lip. "Stop asking the same question." "I -- Batman, dammit --" and that's not too much, it's fair. And Bruce is rocking into his hand already. "It's all right, Robin." Dick kisses him again and reaches for the bedside drawer. Bruce bites his lip and bends one leg, bracing his foot against the mattress. "It's not all right," Bruce says, petulantly in a way that's too familiar. "But if it's what you'll give me --" He shrugs a little. The cowl can't actually cover Dick's grimace at that from someone who's worn it so long, but there are enough masks to make excuses. "I'm giving you exactly what you asked for." Bruce watches him spread lubricant on his fingers and bites his lip. "Are you? Because I asked for --" he chokes off the words at the first press of a fingertip. "I --" "You want to know the truth," Dick says, keeping his voice carefully level. "Watch." "Watch!" Bruce laughs, gasping in the middle. "I can -- I can only feel -- you -- god." He squeezes Dick's shoulder hard through the armor. "More -- please --" "Still impatient?" It's hard to keep his voice low enough, amused enough. "Remember this, Robin." Bruce turns his head and muffles a moan against the pillow when Dick pushes another finger inside him. "I could never -- never forget -- god, that's -- don't stop." "No, I won't. Take a deep breath -- there, yes," and Bruce whimpers, erasing whatever he was going to say next. Dick sighs. "Robin." Bruce makes a fist in the sheets and looks at him, shivering. His mouth is bright red from biting his own lips and he looks glazed even with his eyes hidden. "What?" Dick lets him go and tries not to hear his groan of protest. "Turn over for me." "Thought you wanted me to watch," Bruce says, grinning at him, but he shifts onto his hands and knees smoothly. "Nothing to see -- oh --" The taunt dies when Dick moves over him and moves his knees farther apart. "You said you could only feel," Dick says. He opens a condom with his dry hand and puts it on with shaking fingers while he says, "This will be enough to feel without seeing anything." There's no sense in using protection -- against what, after everything they've done without it? -- but it's part of the charade. Breaking one character would break the other. It ought to feel more ridiculous than it does to push the sunshine-yellow cape up Bruce's back and spread him open. It might if it didn't make him shudder hard and press himself backward. "God, Batman, yes. Do it." Dick is intensely proud of himself for being able to say, "Patience," without it cracking in the middle. Bruce whimpers and shudders, making himself hold still for half a second before he thrusts back again, demanding more. "What -- what's wrong?" Bruce gasps for breath -- and maybe it's an act, maybe he's too far in character to be honest, or maybe he's lost because of it. "Don't wait, not now. Don't make me wait." There's nothing left to wait for. Bruce whimpers and shakes his head and says, "Yes, yes." There's nothing to do but agree and give in, give him what he wants. "No. No more waiting." Bruce shudders and lets his head fall, making some incoherent noise. Dick knows without being able to see it that his hair -- his bangs are stuck to his forehead with sweat. "Is this -- is it what you want?" "Not -- not quite." Dick controls his own breathing, but it's becoming a lost cause. The heat, the sounds Bruce is making -- even Batman has limits. He squeezes Bruce's hip and strokes his cock. They moan together, which wasn't what he wanted. It's better. "Please," Bruce says, and the time for arguing, for prolonging this, is past. "Whatever you want -- do it." "This," Dick says, pushing into him, leaning over him and letting the heavy black cape fall around them. "This is -- everything." There's no patience here for either of them -- he's been waiting and Bruce is falling too far into character again. "God -- yes. I -- I know, I --" Bruce's voice cracks, or Robin's does -- or -- he shudders. "Yes, please, yes." "Robin," Dick says. His throat hurts from trying to be someone he's not for so long, and the words are getting lost. "This is -- this --" He means to say more, but Bruce interrupts him before he knows what to say. "God, I love you, please --" "Yes," Dick says, and whether it's Nightwing's voice or Batman's or Dick's isn't important. "I -- I love you so much --" It's too much, and he's losing the rhythm in the urge to come. Bruce throws himself backward, arches his neck back, and trembles with the force of his own words. "I know, I know, I know --" It's like sobbing and laughing, on the ragged edge before orgasm hits. If it were only true -- Dick thrusts into him again and loses words and character and control in a long, shuddering groan. It's all he can do not to fall, not to stop stroking Bruce until he comes, shaking. Dick doesn't want to break the silence afterward because he knows who will answer him. Bruce shakes himself a little and pulls away, clucking his tongue. "Good thing there are extra sheets," he says, and it's -- It's too predictable to be disappointing in any way Dick's going to show. "I'll help you change them." "I should hope so," Bruce says, turning to give him that particular crooked smile that only ever comes out at times like these. "You certainly helped me make them filthy enough." He sits back on his heels and unties his mask, then reaches over to push Dick's cowl off. It should mean he's out of character, but here, there's no such thing. "I know." Bruce pulls him into a slow kiss. "Well, I still don't know what you see in him." Dick raises an eyebrow and trusts Bruce to read it through the mask. "Don't you?" "An obstinate strong-and-silent type who pushes you around and won't even answer your demands for, ah, affection in a damn fantasy?" Bruce's grin tilts more. "You can do so much better than that." He has to swallow before he can speak. "With you, for example?" Bruce laughs. "This is just a liaison, Nightwing. Nothing so fraught as your entanglement with your obtuse mentor." There's nothing clear here; whether it would hurt more from someone who really didn't know, or whether Bruce is trying to make it hurt, it stings either way. He's learning to ignore the bite of irony, and sometimes to counterattack. It's not a lesson he ever wanted. "Where's your amour-propre, Bruce?" It makes Bruce's eyes light up with something that might be pride if he weren't so -- well -- obtuse. "I have less faith in your patience than in my charms," he says, and gets out of bed. "Really, Nightwing -- telling me to be patient all those times." Watching Bruce take off the cape, the tunic, Dick still wants him out of character. Tonight is not that night, not with Bruce saying, "I had a feeling you were talking to yourself, there -- or your younger self. If that's who you think I was being." Dick takes off the heavy cape and realizes that this uniform is going to need serious cleaning before it goes back into storage. "Something like that, I guess." "You need to have more faith in yourself, then," Bruce tells him. He's blithely naked, entirely ignoring the way this exposes all of his scars, all the truth of who he is. He offers Dick a hand up and helps him take the uniform off, piece by piece. "You had plenty of patience for this game, and I'm sure it was rather stimulating." He smiles. "At least, it was for me." He doesn't have to fake a yawn to get out of the conversation. "While it lasted, I suppose." "Poor thing." Bruce ruffles his hair lightly. "I'll have to hold you up in the shower." He ducks away out of habit as much as anything, though it's been quite a while since anyone tousled his hair like that. "Just don't let me drop the soap." "Don't worry on that score. You're not the only one who's rather spent." Bruce kisses him lightly. "If I were you, I'd be more concerned about keeping me from drowning." "I think I can prevent that, at least." Dick puts an arm around him. "All that highly advanced training has to be good for something." "It seems to have a thousand applications," Bruce says, and they start for the bathroom. Off the record
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