Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dick's hands were on Tim's legs, trailing up and down the sore muscles. Sometimes hard, sometimes feather-light.

Tim tugged at the ties around his forearms, just for something to do. He wanted Dick to do this to him, to take him apart and let him fall back together. Because when Dick touched him, Tim knew that Dick noted the way Tim's blood pumped under his skin, the way Tim's joints shifted under pressure. But no matter how much Tim wanted it, he still couldn't bear it.

"If you dislocate your shoulder, you're putting it back in yourself."

This was how Tim had gotten trapped. With Dick's mouth spilling words onto his skin that would send others running. Dick was such a hard person at his core, only ever able to appear soft when he was next to Bruce. And people so rarely let him step away from Bruce.

"Liar. You'd like to hurt me that much."

A hand strayed close to his cock and Tim tried to cant his hips forward, but it was gone.

"You're so pretty when you're in pain."

And like a Gothic bride in the middle of a moonlit night, Tim's breath was stolen.

Tim's legs had ached all day, pain radiating down to his feet and up to his back in slow pulses that left Tim dizzy. So here was Dick. He didn't really want to fix Tim's pain, nor did he want to make it worse. All Dick ever seemed to want was to get as close to the broken parts of Tim's body as he possibly could. It felt possessive and obsessive and manic and Tim wanted to claw his skin open to make the job easier.

"I want-" Tim couldn't say the words. Stuffed them down so much their hooks caught on his ribs when they tried to come out.

"Say it," Dick said, and ran his tongue across the knife scar on the inside of Tim's thigh.

"I want you...inside me."

Fucking wasn't enough, Tim needed Dick under his fucking skin. Tim hadn't taken a breath that Dick Grayson wasn't a part of since he was five years old.

"Oh honey." Dick pushed himself up, bright eyes gleaming. He hovered over Tim, arms braced on the bed. Tim felt pinned, like a butterfly. "I am inside you. I'm so far inside of you, I'm in your fucking blood."

He leaned down and Tim thought he was going in for a kiss, but his mouth went to the pulse point under Tim's jaw.

"I'm in your skin," he whispered, moved down to Tim's heart. "I'm in your muscles."

He glanced up, grinning, the look sharp and predatory through his messy hair.

"You're my brother. I'm so far inside you, you shouldn't be able to speak without feeling me."

Tim whined, yanking on the bindings. Dick knew how to bind him, knew anything around his wrists would be painful, but ultimately useless. The forearms though...Tim was stuck.

"We share a father," Dick murmured, his words spoken into the flesh of Tim's always-roiling stomach. "We share a house. We almost shares genes."

Dick ran his tongue up Tim's cock. It didn't feel like he was aiming to pleasure. It felt like ownership.

"I couldn't be more inside of you if I cut you open and forced my way inside." He sounded like he was willing to give it a try.

His hands slid down Tim's torso, finding the still-swollen bruise from where Killer Croc had slammed him into a railing. He pressed down and Tim arched.

"Please," Tim said, unable to say it. Begging always felt like too much, and yet he was desperate for it.

"You're a slut," Dick responded, and Tim fell apart right there on the bed. Dick shoved his legs apart and all Tim could do was lay there, all of his stitches undone.

It had happened dozens of times. Probably over a hundred. But Dick fucking him never felt anything less than magical. A violent kind of magic, one that made Tim almost scared his joints would fall apart and his veins would split open from how full he felt.

His own orgasm was an after-effect. A consequence of Dick taking ownership of Tim's body.

Later, once Tim had been untied and the daze had stopped and the flare-up had continued, both Dick and Tim heard a door shut down the hall. The difference in reactions should have been studied. Dick started to fix his face like a performer getting dressed for a show, and Tim felt a sickening coldness bloom in his chest.

Dick stood and grabbed his sweatpants off of the ground, not looking at Tim. He pulled his shirt on, ran a hand through his hair. That was part of the Dick Grayson brand of magic, too. The ability to fix himself in seconds.

"I'll leave now. Bruce just came in." Voice careful.

And here was the ugly part. Dick's complicated knot of emotions around Bruce kept everything cloaked in night, hands brushing out of sight and kisses happening in dark closets.

"Goodnight-"

"Tell me again," he said, keeping his gaze on the window. "Tell me again why no one can know."

A sigh. The bed shifted as Dick sat back down.

"As I said to you literally five minutes ago, we are legally brothers. The public would go insane. The Wayne image would be ruined."

Tim turned, something humming in his bones. The lamplight bounced off of Dick's face, reflecting off of scars and bumps and burns. He wasn't Dick like this. He put on facial expressions like most people put on shirts, but the truth still shone through if you looked at it right. Or had seen the real face.

"I'm not saying we need to alert the public. We don't need to start making out at galas, we don't need to release a press statement. But why can't they know?"

"Bruce-"

"Fuck Bruce!"

Tim turned, taking pleasure in the hint of shock in Dick's eyes. He was so tired of all of this. He was in pain constantly, spent his nights being in more pain, and he had to pretend that the only thing to make him feel good simply did not exist.

Tim breathed in slowly.

"Bruce is not the end all be all. How many people are coming to dinner tomorrow night? Ten?"

Tim liked that Dick trusted him enough to be his real self around him. But he liked it significantly less when it made Tim feel like he was having a conversation with a brick wall.

"Dick..." He leaned forwards slightly, trying to catch Dick's eye.

"It would ruin everything," Dick snapped, and then he was gone with the speed of someone good at what they do.

Tim hated these moments of sitting on his bed, feeling very vividly eighteen-years-old and in a fight with his boyfriend.

He understood it. He really did. Knew what you got when you found the difference between Tim's birth year and Dick's. Could imagine what would haunt the maze of Bruce's mind - the worst-case scenarios and nightmare imaginings.

He also understood that, logically, hearing your childhood hero and longest-running crush tell you that touching you would tear the family apart was...not great.

Sleep was rough.

...

Dick acted normally. He always did. He complained about how the winter cold made his joints ache, laughed at Damian's snark, rolled his eyes behind Bruce's back. He was the brightness from a sunbeam on a kitchen floor, the warmth of a hug from your favourite person, neon-bright and love-warm. Tim could see it, hanging in the back of the kitchen. The hungry way Bruce watched Dick, the nervous tracking of Damian's eyes when Dick's shirt rode up, the way Jason melted into Dick's hugs even as he pulled away from them. Everyone arrived for dinner, and everyone loved Dick Grayson.

We have the same condition, Tim thought. We're the closest brothers out of all of them. Why can't I love him louder than everyone else?

Maybe he was taking the messy teenage love aesthetic too far.

Dinner was delicious, obviously. He liked this, being around everyone. Liked hearing Cass' quiet laugh and Stephanie's loud one. The way crutches and wheelchairs and canes filled up the corners of the room. The connection of everyone being equally ruined and equally happy.

It would've been better if he wasn't busy trying not to feel like a scorned lover.

It also would've been better if partway through, Bruce hadn't asked, "What are those bruises on your arm?" in a voice that was half conversational and half the manic curiosity that sent him to the rooftops and alleyways and shadows of the city.

Tim did not look at Dick, but he could imagine every line of his face. The tight corners of his eyes in amusement and the furrowed brows in annoyance because it was Bruce and the way his tongue pushed forward against his lips a bit when he was trying not to smile.

Tim wished it didn't eat a hole in him. He wished he could sit down with his brain and show that logically, one more secret in an ocean of them was nothing.

"Actually," Dick said, and Tim did look at him in surprise. "I left them when I tied Tim up and had my way with him last night."

The table went silent.

...

Okay, in the moment it had been pretty funny. The resulting interrogation was not.

Tim was fairly certain half the table had thought Dick was joking, until Dick had pulled a shocked Tim in for a kiss.

"You've been dating for how long?" Stephanie was not as horrified as she could've been. Tim was fairly certain that, once the shock wore off, she would be happy for him. Crack jokes about 'Dick's dick', probably.

"A year," Dick repeated, and Tim felt the wave of surprise all over again. Dick was openly admitting to this. Was Tim hallucinating?

Bruce's chair scraped against the floor as he stood and left. Tim felt like his stomach was opening up and spilling itself everywhere. He couldn't bring himself to look at Dick.

"Congratulations?" Duke offered, obviously baffled.

"Thank you, Duke," Dick said warmly, though no one missed the pointed show of appreciation. "And with that, I'd like to take my boyfriend upstairs now, because he's starting to look like he's going to pass out."

There was an audible reaction to the use of the word "boyfriend", but Dick grabbed Tim's arm and pulled him up. Tim felt bizarrely out of his body. Nothing had happened like how he had imagined, and on top of it all, he was having an episode.

"How are you feeling?" Dick asked, voice low.

"My vision is going spotty," Tim muttered.

"Good." Dick tucked him close, and they both heard conversation start in hushed tones behind them. "I'm kind of in the mood to hunt you down."