[email log] May 12 - the price of a heart - Dick/Tim pg13
Tabula Rasa, Bachelor Auction, eight months later. Eight months since the concrete jungle gave way to the real one and Tim found me in that clearing. Eight months since everything I've spent my life becoming lost its meaning.
Seven since Tim started giving that meaning back. The same way he did when he tried to haul me back to Bruce. The same way he did when he mirrored myself back at me, showing me who I was in his eyes, when I'd lost my way.
Five since we agreed this is a relationship we're having and I stopped sleeping with anyone else. This is the longest I've been monogamous without a pending engagement ever, and I don't even think about it. It's like breathing.
If it's so easy, why am I thinking about it now? Simple. The bachelor auction. I know my reputation, and I still love to make people smile. It's not a sex slave auction, but depending on who buys me...like Monet...it could get uncomfortable. Awkward. So, yeah, it's on my mind. It's on my mind because five months from now, seven, eight, a year, I want it to be the longest I've ever been with one person. With or without an engagement.
As worried as he is about who might buy him, that's how serene he is about who will win Tim. They've got nothing but time here, but even if he worked two full-time jobs like he did in the Haven, he wouldn't have blinked before bidding one hundred hours on Tim. And none on anyone else.
He finds Tim and slips an arm around his waist, drawing him up against Dick from behind. "I'm prepared to pay double whatever the winner paid for a day alone with you."
There was a part of Tim that was never going to be totally comfortable with affection in public spaces. He'd been bred to a certain sensibility regarding displays of attachment and propriety and Dick...ignored all of them. The island was a far cry from Gotham's glittering upper class and, short of actually performing adult rated sexual acts, they probably wouldn't even be remarked upon but nevertheless, that moment of tension remained.
However, while it was still present, it was no longer permanent. Tim rested back against Dick and turned his head to look at him. "Only twice? You might get me very cheaply, then." He was teasing. He was sure that Dick had bid on him, as he'd bid on Dick. He had not a single qualm about bidding the full 100 allowed hours. It wasn't a question of needing to win. It was a question of ensuring that Dick was bid what he was worth.
The fact that it's an event, perversely makes him want to drag Tim off to a coatroom or a balcony, a niche behind a statue or a garden behind a hedge, at first. But when their bodies fit together, recognizing and adjusting to each other, the impulse fades in favor of intimacy.
"I have it on good authority it won't be cheap at all." Dick cranes his head around Tim's to steal a soft and quiet kiss off his mouth, then slide his fingertips through Tim's belt loop. Propriety's a concern, but less so than it would be at a similar event in Gotham. And the way they're standing now, even the kiss, wouldn't amount to anything more than flashbulbs in their faces - as long as they weren't with each other. That's the big difference between here and home. The public here doesn't care if Bruce Wayne's heirs like men and are in love with each other.
Tim looked up at him. "What did you do?" he asked with more humor than suspicion. The results would be announced soon and Tim would know what it was that Dick had done but asking and speculating was part of the fun of this. Or so Tim supposed.
"Never mind, nosy little bird." That begs a kiss on the nose. He delivers it with a bright smile behind it, then a teasing tsk. "Wait til the results are announced--" Which should be any minute now. "Or puzzle it out for yourself."
"It's more practical to wait," Tim replied as though his mind wasn't already leaping through logic trains and emotional responses. He smiled as he reached his conclusion and reaches up to stroke his fingers against Dick's jaw. He'd been hesitant about the whole auction idea, but the cause was good -- contributing to the overall good of the island community -- and the risk was worth it. It might have been awkward if certain people had bid on him but the likely outcome of Dick winning the auction had been reward enough. "What do you want to do with your day? Do you have a plan yet?"
His chest tightens a little with the wash of affection at Tim's touch, and his eyes close with the automatic tilt of his head into Tim's hand. I love you. It will never stop being amazing when Tim reaches for him, never stop amazing him that the smallest caress from Tim can pull him out of his head and quiet his need to move. Happy with the certainty in Tim's tone, he smiles, eyes opening again with the brilliant blue gone dreamy. "Plans are your department," Dick teases. It's both true and not, since they both know he's a brilliant strategist. "But I have a few thoughts."
"Penny for your thoughts then. Just a regular sized one, however." He wanted to hear them before the results were announced. It felt important somehow, like the last magical minutes before the sunrise brought an end to the night and gave power back to the day. It was a distinction that meant less here, when night and day were both something that he could spend with Dick but night had been his only time with his big brother for too long to really give up the impulse or the metaphor.
His smile sharpens a little for old Abe, but his thumb-stroke over the curve of Tim's lip stays soft, gentle. "I thought we could make a day where you do everything I tell you without disobedience." He presses down with his thumb, just enough to focus Tim's attention. "Or maybe I'd make the rule that you've have to tell me what you want, so I can give it to you." The fingers of his free hand hook into Tim's belt loop and tug him a little closer. "I could tie you up all day, but I'd rather have you free to be with me however you want to. Maybe we could work on a hut for us to live in." The last sentence he spits out quickly and casual, as though it's nothing, haha, something he just thought up.
They'd already retreated to the top of the Exiles treehouse and turned it into their own oasis from the rest of the teams. Building a hut elsewhere was a step further than that. Tim's heart skipped a beat over it then stole all the breath from his lungs and held it hostage. "Those are all interesting thoughts," he managed to say with what little air he could force out of his chest past his strangling heart.
"Worth every penny?" Dick teases, rubbing Tim's hipbone with his thumb. Tim's face is doing that thing where he forgets to emote because he's too busy trying to remember to breathe. It's okay, he knows how Tim's face feels. His brain stopped working with the word 'hut'. It keeps rolling over all the reasons that was the dumbest possible way to bring it up with Tim. With Cassie and Donna moving out, and Kon on Babs' floor, and all of them splitting apart, they don't need to move out for privacy. It's just the forever he's been envisioning for them has a double hammock, a skylight and a wrap-around patio.
"Worth millions of them." It was hard to remember why they're standing there when Dick was touching him. He wanted to leave, find a place that was just them long enough to make running away worth it. His priorities needed adjusting. Which way...was becoming harder and harder to decide. They weren't needed here the way they were at home. The only one who needed him. Who wanted him for who exactly what he was....was Dick.
Dick pulls Tim against him, hugging him hard for the feel of him. "You've always been willing to listen to every stupid thing out of my mouth." Tilting his head down, he kisses Tim's forehead and then his mouth, soft, chaste, acceptable for a milling crowd, then stops when he notices the results seem to be in. Abruptly he's nervous again and twines his fingers into Tim's, his and his only.
Tim's head remained fuzzily focused on Dick several seconds after the kiss actually ended and it was only the press of Dick's hand in his that brought him out of it. Back home, this would have been dangerous. Unwise to be so narrowly focused on just one person. Tim made himself pay attention to the results and couldn't help laughing when he did, a barely audible chuckle that only Dick would hear. "Well, that's unexpected."
The results knock every thought from Dick's head. Every single thought, and leave him what would be gaping for anyone not a Bat, but blank, face scrubbed free of all calculated emotion in favor of sheer surprise. He swallows and turns and fights the impulse to drop to his knees for his beautiful, perfect little brother right here around all these people and...do something more ridiculous than asking him to build a house together. "Timmy... I..." He licks his lips and tries again. "I shouldn't be surprised, but..." Nuh uh. Words fail.
Tim turned to face Dick, a small smile still playing around his mouth. "I thought about sharing and letting someone else win. But I had to be sure that it wasn't less than what you're worth. Like a reserve price on eBay." He wondered if Dick was ever going to realize that when Tim said he loved him, he didn't put any restrictions on that at all.
"What I'm worth?" He shouldn't need this so much. It shouldn't make him melt like chocolate chip cookies out of the oven every time Tim approves of him. He outgrew the need for this kind of affirmation years ago. His head dips forward, overly long bangs sliding into his eyes to hide the sheen of way too much emotion. "How are you so perfect for me?"
"Lower than what you're worth technically. The top bid was somewhat drastically under the reserve." He wasn't ignoring Dick's question. It was just hard to answer without reminding Dick again that Tim had built himself to be exactly this. Perfect for Dick in any way that Dick wanted him because any scrap of attention would have been good enough. Tim wasn't exactly proud of his obsessive tendencies, even if they were unavoidable.
It's too much public. Too much exposure. Two things no one in the world would ever expect from him of all people - the amazing Flying Grayson, the original Robin. But he is a Bat and some things, some things like the way Tim unmasks him, need to be private. "We need to be somewhere else. Now." And if his tone's a little urgent and his thumb is rubbing a hole in Tim's palm, he thinks, no, he knows, that Tim understands why.
Tim's breath caught in his throat. There was nothing for him, nothing at all that felt as right and good as Dick wanting him. Nodding was almost too complicated to manage and he licked his lips, hand tightening involuntarily on Dick's. "Yeah. Now is good."
No clear destination in mind except not here, Dick all but drags Tim away. His strides eat up the ground, putting distance between them and the auction, until their out of earshot and line of sight. Then he spins Tim around and pushes him against a palm tree. "Kiss me. Tim, kiss me." The way he needs Tim scares him, deeply, but not as much as not having him.
Tim's hand fisted into Dick's shirt and pulled him in, bringing him close enough for Tim's mouth to claim Dick's, hard and greedy and assured. There wasn't even the faintest edge in the kiss that feared rejection, that worried this might not be good enough. The greatest gift that Dick gave Tim was the knowledge that he needed to be nothing more than who he was and want nothing other than what he did for Tim to be exactly the person Dick wanted him to be.
God. Dick's eyes close, body yields, fingers clutch, slide, clutch again finding Tim's hair and the tree behind them. Of all the ways Tim fits him perfectly, this one never fails to rock him. The way sweet, affection-starved Timmy spins on a penny to be this, strong, confident, demanding, the safe place for Dick to let go and never fall. After he turns inside out and right side in again, he tips his forehead against Tim's and watches his fingers play along Tim's shirt buttons, asking when and where. "Did you know what that would do to me?"
His free arm slid around Dick's waist, hand dipping low on the small of his back. "I had hopes." His fingers pulled at Dick's shirt, tugging up the hem to brush against skin and dip low into the waistband of his jeans. "You should feel the way that I do when I'm with you. It's only fair."
Tim's fingers pull a slow, rolling shiver through him, and the ache of need that follows thickens his voice, leaving him rasping and breathless. "You feel like whimpering breathlessly and dropping to your knees in the middle of a crowd of innocent bystanders?" Because the most amazing thing about this minute is that he's somehow coherent enough to speak.
"I have a little more shame than that usually," Tim said quietly, "but that's pretty much accurate. You make it hard to remember where I am or how I should act. It's all about you."
"I used to make fun of...okay, no I didn't. Roy used to make fun of sappy love songs." His smile is as soft as his eyes are dark with need when he opens the top buttons of Tim's shirt and pushes it off the shoulder. "I always sort of believed in them." His lips graze the scars, no less a touchstone for Tim having pointed it out. "Now I'm living lyrics from Lonestar."
"Lone Star?" Tim repeated, confused but mostly just distracted. The fact that he knew the scars were one of the ways Dick reclaimed him always rocked him back in his steps. It was overwhelming. "Is that a song?"
"Band." His mouth's busy at the moment, mapping the scars he knows by heart. But his brain catches up a few beats later, when it clicks Tim has no idea what he's talking about. He lifts his head to meet Tim's eyes, face flushing. "They have this song, Amazed, that's probably the most requested prom song ever." He quotes, but he definitely doesn't sing. At all. Except maybe a little at the end: 'I don't know how you do what you do. I'm so in love with you. It just keeps getting better. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you by my side. Forever and ever. Every little thing that you do. Baby, I'm amazed by you."
Tim started blushing before Dick was halfway through and thoroughly touched by Dick's half-sung explanation. "Never made it to prom." He dipped his head to steal a kiss from Dick's mouth. "That's a good song. Sounds like how I feel." He pulled his boyfriend up against him. "We have two whole days to ourselves. What should we do with them?"
"This?" Dick answers helplessly. Kissed, adored, embraced, it's a miracle he gets even that word out. All he can think right now is that it's way too far to anywhere they can be naked and horizontal. Blinking back the golden haze from dilated pupils, Dick licks over his mouth and tries again. "Maybe we should try to talk about this after we both claim what we've won."
They really do need to live closer to the compound at times like this. "I'll race you home," Tim proposed because the alternative--who cares how exposed we are?-- was NOT a good plan. Even if it sort of sounded like one inside his head.
His protest comes out a whimper, the one he's been suppressing for twenty minutes now. "Beach hut?" he pleads, looking longingly in the direction of the hut they've been running away to since Valentine's Day. "It's much closer."
"Closer is better. Much better." The right response was not to seal that statement with a kiss, not when they're both having trouble with their willpower. The beach hut is closer but that's not the same as close and they have a ways to go without jumping each other for that to work. "I love you, Dick. I love being with you."
It might not be the right response, but Dick leans in and kisses Tim again. What starts slow and sweet, quickly deepens until he's moaning into Tim's mouth and regretting the self-indulgence. It's just going to make it harder, pun very much intended, to get to the hut. "I love you, too, ves'tacha. Just hurry." Without waiting for a response, Dick takes off at a sprint for the beach hut, knowing Tim's going to follow and hoping it somehow got five minutes closer since the last time they were there.
Tim's head spun in the most pleasant way and it was a couple of seconds before he could take off after Dick. Running with a hard on had never been his favorite thing, and Tim killed a few of the minutes of the trip trying to decide if it sucked more or less than doing so in an armored jock. It gave him something else to focus on and the discomfort lessened by the time he and Dick reached the hut. Or, at least, his physical reaction lessened. The pounding in his heart, the adoration in his mind, that remained strong as ever.
Breathless from Tim and not from running, Dick grabs him and spins him against the door as soon as they've stopped. There's no thud, no jarring jump off the wood, because Dick's body follows, pressing full-length against him out of need. He opens his mouth to say he loves Tim but "touch me" comes out instead, and before he's even finished saying it, his mouth has found Tim's throat and latched gently to the pulse.
Tim needed no urging. His hands streaked greedily over Dick's shoulders, down his back, under his shirt to claim skin. His thighs parted around Dick's, opening up to him physically the way his heart was already open and given away. There were times when Tim couldn't believe that he wasn't living in some endless dream, an induced coma aimed at finding the most hidden parts of his psyche and exploiting them. If that was the case, he hoped that whoever was responsible for it had been prepared to discover that the heart of Tim Drake was the love of Dick Grayson. "Always been you. All my life."
The balance of their relationship had altered so gradually Dick had barely noticed it at first, but now Tim's hands moving over him make him shake and shiver and ache the way his had done for Tim months past and do still. But if Tim's heart had always been his, Dick's had taken longer for loving so many others before him. His body arches, pushing insistently against Tim, needing to take or be taken, it doesn't matter which as long as it's Tim and no one else. Tim and no one else, ever. He lifts his head from Tim's throat to meet his gaze, bright blue eyes open and pooled with black. "Always be you. For the rest of mine."
Seven since Tim started giving that meaning back. The same way he did when he tried to haul me back to Bruce. The same way he did when he mirrored myself back at me, showing me who I was in his eyes, when I'd lost my way.
Five since we agreed this is a relationship we're having and I stopped sleeping with anyone else. This is the longest I've been monogamous without a pending engagement ever, and I don't even think about it. It's like breathing.
If it's so easy, why am I thinking about it now? Simple. The bachelor auction. I know my reputation, and I still love to make people smile. It's not a sex slave auction, but depending on who buys me...like Monet...it could get uncomfortable. Awkward. So, yeah, it's on my mind. It's on my mind because five months from now, seven, eight, a year, I want it to be the longest I've ever been with one person. With or without an engagement.
As worried as he is about who might buy him, that's how serene he is about who will win Tim. They've got nothing but time here, but even if he worked two full-time jobs like he did in the Haven, he wouldn't have blinked before bidding one hundred hours on Tim. And none on anyone else.
He finds Tim and slips an arm around his waist, drawing him up against Dick from behind. "I'm prepared to pay double whatever the winner paid for a day alone with you."
There was a part of Tim that was never going to be totally comfortable with affection in public spaces. He'd been bred to a certain sensibility regarding displays of attachment and propriety and Dick...ignored all of them. The island was a far cry from Gotham's glittering upper class and, short of actually performing adult rated sexual acts, they probably wouldn't even be remarked upon but nevertheless, that moment of tension remained.
However, while it was still present, it was no longer permanent. Tim rested back against Dick and turned his head to look at him. "Only twice? You might get me very cheaply, then." He was teasing. He was sure that Dick had bid on him, as he'd bid on Dick. He had not a single qualm about bidding the full 100 allowed hours. It wasn't a question of needing to win. It was a question of ensuring that Dick was bid what he was worth.
The fact that it's an event, perversely makes him want to drag Tim off to a coatroom or a balcony, a niche behind a statue or a garden behind a hedge, at first. But when their bodies fit together, recognizing and adjusting to each other, the impulse fades in favor of intimacy.
"I have it on good authority it won't be cheap at all." Dick cranes his head around Tim's to steal a soft and quiet kiss off his mouth, then slide his fingertips through Tim's belt loop. Propriety's a concern, but less so than it would be at a similar event in Gotham. And the way they're standing now, even the kiss, wouldn't amount to anything more than flashbulbs in their faces - as long as they weren't with each other. That's the big difference between here and home. The public here doesn't care if Bruce Wayne's heirs like men and are in love with each other.
Tim looked up at him. "What did you do?" he asked with more humor than suspicion. The results would be announced soon and Tim would know what it was that Dick had done but asking and speculating was part of the fun of this. Or so Tim supposed.
"Never mind, nosy little bird." That begs a kiss on the nose. He delivers it with a bright smile behind it, then a teasing tsk. "Wait til the results are announced--" Which should be any minute now. "Or puzzle it out for yourself."
"It's more practical to wait," Tim replied as though his mind wasn't already leaping through logic trains and emotional responses. He smiled as he reached his conclusion and reaches up to stroke his fingers against Dick's jaw. He'd been hesitant about the whole auction idea, but the cause was good -- contributing to the overall good of the island community -- and the risk was worth it. It might have been awkward if certain people had bid on him but the likely outcome of Dick winning the auction had been reward enough. "What do you want to do with your day? Do you have a plan yet?"
His chest tightens a little with the wash of affection at Tim's touch, and his eyes close with the automatic tilt of his head into Tim's hand. I love you. It will never stop being amazing when Tim reaches for him, never stop amazing him that the smallest caress from Tim can pull him out of his head and quiet his need to move. Happy with the certainty in Tim's tone, he smiles, eyes opening again with the brilliant blue gone dreamy. "Plans are your department," Dick teases. It's both true and not, since they both know he's a brilliant strategist. "But I have a few thoughts."
"Penny for your thoughts then. Just a regular sized one, however." He wanted to hear them before the results were announced. It felt important somehow, like the last magical minutes before the sunrise brought an end to the night and gave power back to the day. It was a distinction that meant less here, when night and day were both something that he could spend with Dick but night had been his only time with his big brother for too long to really give up the impulse or the metaphor.
His smile sharpens a little for old Abe, but his thumb-stroke over the curve of Tim's lip stays soft, gentle. "I thought we could make a day where you do everything I tell you without disobedience." He presses down with his thumb, just enough to focus Tim's attention. "Or maybe I'd make the rule that you've have to tell me what you want, so I can give it to you." The fingers of his free hand hook into Tim's belt loop and tug him a little closer. "I could tie you up all day, but I'd rather have you free to be with me however you want to. Maybe we could work on a hut for us to live in." The last sentence he spits out quickly and casual, as though it's nothing, haha, something he just thought up.
They'd already retreated to the top of the Exiles treehouse and turned it into their own oasis from the rest of the teams. Building a hut elsewhere was a step further than that. Tim's heart skipped a beat over it then stole all the breath from his lungs and held it hostage. "Those are all interesting thoughts," he managed to say with what little air he could force out of his chest past his strangling heart.
"Worth every penny?" Dick teases, rubbing Tim's hipbone with his thumb. Tim's face is doing that thing where he forgets to emote because he's too busy trying to remember to breathe. It's okay, he knows how Tim's face feels. His brain stopped working with the word 'hut'. It keeps rolling over all the reasons that was the dumbest possible way to bring it up with Tim. With Cassie and Donna moving out, and Kon on Babs' floor, and all of them splitting apart, they don't need to move out for privacy. It's just the forever he's been envisioning for them has a double hammock, a skylight and a wrap-around patio.
"Worth millions of them." It was hard to remember why they're standing there when Dick was touching him. He wanted to leave, find a place that was just them long enough to make running away worth it. His priorities needed adjusting. Which way...was becoming harder and harder to decide. They weren't needed here the way they were at home. The only one who needed him. Who wanted him for who exactly what he was....was Dick.
Dick pulls Tim against him, hugging him hard for the feel of him. "You've always been willing to listen to every stupid thing out of my mouth." Tilting his head down, he kisses Tim's forehead and then his mouth, soft, chaste, acceptable for a milling crowd, then stops when he notices the results seem to be in. Abruptly he's nervous again and twines his fingers into Tim's, his and his only.
Tim's head remained fuzzily focused on Dick several seconds after the kiss actually ended and it was only the press of Dick's hand in his that brought him out of it. Back home, this would have been dangerous. Unwise to be so narrowly focused on just one person. Tim made himself pay attention to the results and couldn't help laughing when he did, a barely audible chuckle that only Dick would hear. "Well, that's unexpected."
The results knock every thought from Dick's head. Every single thought, and leave him what would be gaping for anyone not a Bat, but blank, face scrubbed free of all calculated emotion in favor of sheer surprise. He swallows and turns and fights the impulse to drop to his knees for his beautiful, perfect little brother right here around all these people and...do something more ridiculous than asking him to build a house together. "Timmy... I..." He licks his lips and tries again. "I shouldn't be surprised, but..." Nuh uh. Words fail.
Tim turned to face Dick, a small smile still playing around his mouth. "I thought about sharing and letting someone else win. But I had to be sure that it wasn't less than what you're worth. Like a reserve price on eBay." He wondered if Dick was ever going to realize that when Tim said he loved him, he didn't put any restrictions on that at all.
"What I'm worth?" He shouldn't need this so much. It shouldn't make him melt like chocolate chip cookies out of the oven every time Tim approves of him. He outgrew the need for this kind of affirmation years ago. His head dips forward, overly long bangs sliding into his eyes to hide the sheen of way too much emotion. "How are you so perfect for me?"
"Lower than what you're worth technically. The top bid was somewhat drastically under the reserve." He wasn't ignoring Dick's question. It was just hard to answer without reminding Dick again that Tim had built himself to be exactly this. Perfect for Dick in any way that Dick wanted him because any scrap of attention would have been good enough. Tim wasn't exactly proud of his obsessive tendencies, even if they were unavoidable.
It's too much public. Too much exposure. Two things no one in the world would ever expect from him of all people - the amazing Flying Grayson, the original Robin. But he is a Bat and some things, some things like the way Tim unmasks him, need to be private. "We need to be somewhere else. Now." And if his tone's a little urgent and his thumb is rubbing a hole in Tim's palm, he thinks, no, he knows, that Tim understands why.
Tim's breath caught in his throat. There was nothing for him, nothing at all that felt as right and good as Dick wanting him. Nodding was almost too complicated to manage and he licked his lips, hand tightening involuntarily on Dick's. "Yeah. Now is good."
No clear destination in mind except not here, Dick all but drags Tim away. His strides eat up the ground, putting distance between them and the auction, until their out of earshot and line of sight. Then he spins Tim around and pushes him against a palm tree. "Kiss me. Tim, kiss me." The way he needs Tim scares him, deeply, but not as much as not having him.
Tim's hand fisted into Dick's shirt and pulled him in, bringing him close enough for Tim's mouth to claim Dick's, hard and greedy and assured. There wasn't even the faintest edge in the kiss that feared rejection, that worried this might not be good enough. The greatest gift that Dick gave Tim was the knowledge that he needed to be nothing more than who he was and want nothing other than what he did for Tim to be exactly the person Dick wanted him to be.
God. Dick's eyes close, body yields, fingers clutch, slide, clutch again finding Tim's hair and the tree behind them. Of all the ways Tim fits him perfectly, this one never fails to rock him. The way sweet, affection-starved Timmy spins on a penny to be this, strong, confident, demanding, the safe place for Dick to let go and never fall. After he turns inside out and right side in again, he tips his forehead against Tim's and watches his fingers play along Tim's shirt buttons, asking when and where. "Did you know what that would do to me?"
His free arm slid around Dick's waist, hand dipping low on the small of his back. "I had hopes." His fingers pulled at Dick's shirt, tugging up the hem to brush against skin and dip low into the waistband of his jeans. "You should feel the way that I do when I'm with you. It's only fair."
Tim's fingers pull a slow, rolling shiver through him, and the ache of need that follows thickens his voice, leaving him rasping and breathless. "You feel like whimpering breathlessly and dropping to your knees in the middle of a crowd of innocent bystanders?" Because the most amazing thing about this minute is that he's somehow coherent enough to speak.
"I have a little more shame than that usually," Tim said quietly, "but that's pretty much accurate. You make it hard to remember where I am or how I should act. It's all about you."
"I used to make fun of...okay, no I didn't. Roy used to make fun of sappy love songs." His smile is as soft as his eyes are dark with need when he opens the top buttons of Tim's shirt and pushes it off the shoulder. "I always sort of believed in them." His lips graze the scars, no less a touchstone for Tim having pointed it out. "Now I'm living lyrics from Lonestar."
"Lone Star?" Tim repeated, confused but mostly just distracted. The fact that he knew the scars were one of the ways Dick reclaimed him always rocked him back in his steps. It was overwhelming. "Is that a song?"
"Band." His mouth's busy at the moment, mapping the scars he knows by heart. But his brain catches up a few beats later, when it clicks Tim has no idea what he's talking about. He lifts his head to meet Tim's eyes, face flushing. "They have this song, Amazed, that's probably the most requested prom song ever." He quotes, but he definitely doesn't sing. At all. Except maybe a little at the end: 'I don't know how you do what you do. I'm so in love with you. It just keeps getting better. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you by my side. Forever and ever. Every little thing that you do. Baby, I'm amazed by you."
Tim started blushing before Dick was halfway through and thoroughly touched by Dick's half-sung explanation. "Never made it to prom." He dipped his head to steal a kiss from Dick's mouth. "That's a good song. Sounds like how I feel." He pulled his boyfriend up against him. "We have two whole days to ourselves. What should we do with them?"
"This?" Dick answers helplessly. Kissed, adored, embraced, it's a miracle he gets even that word out. All he can think right now is that it's way too far to anywhere they can be naked and horizontal. Blinking back the golden haze from dilated pupils, Dick licks over his mouth and tries again. "Maybe we should try to talk about this after we both claim what we've won."
They really do need to live closer to the compound at times like this. "I'll race you home," Tim proposed because the alternative--who cares how exposed we are?-- was NOT a good plan. Even if it sort of sounded like one inside his head.
His protest comes out a whimper, the one he's been suppressing for twenty minutes now. "Beach hut?" he pleads, looking longingly in the direction of the hut they've been running away to since Valentine's Day. "It's much closer."
"Closer is better. Much better." The right response was not to seal that statement with a kiss, not when they're both having trouble with their willpower. The beach hut is closer but that's not the same as close and they have a ways to go without jumping each other for that to work. "I love you, Dick. I love being with you."
It might not be the right response, but Dick leans in and kisses Tim again. What starts slow and sweet, quickly deepens until he's moaning into Tim's mouth and regretting the self-indulgence. It's just going to make it harder, pun very much intended, to get to the hut. "I love you, too, ves'tacha. Just hurry." Without waiting for a response, Dick takes off at a sprint for the beach hut, knowing Tim's going to follow and hoping it somehow got five minutes closer since the last time they were there.
Tim's head spun in the most pleasant way and it was a couple of seconds before he could take off after Dick. Running with a hard on had never been his favorite thing, and Tim killed a few of the minutes of the trip trying to decide if it sucked more or less than doing so in an armored jock. It gave him something else to focus on and the discomfort lessened by the time he and Dick reached the hut. Or, at least, his physical reaction lessened. The pounding in his heart, the adoration in his mind, that remained strong as ever.
Breathless from Tim and not from running, Dick grabs him and spins him against the door as soon as they've stopped. There's no thud, no jarring jump off the wood, because Dick's body follows, pressing full-length against him out of need. He opens his mouth to say he loves Tim but "touch me" comes out instead, and before he's even finished saying it, his mouth has found Tim's throat and latched gently to the pulse.
Tim needed no urging. His hands streaked greedily over Dick's shoulders, down his back, under his shirt to claim skin. His thighs parted around Dick's, opening up to him physically the way his heart was already open and given away. There were times when Tim couldn't believe that he wasn't living in some endless dream, an induced coma aimed at finding the most hidden parts of his psyche and exploiting them. If that was the case, he hoped that whoever was responsible for it had been prepared to discover that the heart of Tim Drake was the love of Dick Grayson. "Always been you. All my life."
The balance of their relationship had altered so gradually Dick had barely noticed it at first, but now Tim's hands moving over him make him shake and shiver and ache the way his had done for Tim months past and do still. But if Tim's heart had always been his, Dick's had taken longer for loving so many others before him. His body arches, pushing insistently against Tim, needing to take or be taken, it doesn't matter which as long as it's Tim and no one else. Tim and no one else, ever. He lifts his head from Tim's throat to meet his gaze, bright blue eyes open and pooled with black. "Always be you. For the rest of mine."