[fic] Perfect Example (Bruce/Tim - Sins of Youth, adult)
Title: Perfect Example (source)
Pairing: Bruce/Tim, age-reversed
Setting: Sins of Youth
Rating: Aged up to adult
Summary: "I'll put it in the past when the past is history."
Disclaimer: DC, not me.
Notes: Right. This is loosely connected to the Jason/Tim Terms of Psychic Warfare and the unwritten Bruce/Tim ephebeophilia saga of ahhhngst. It can, obviously, be read separately. thete1 audienced and cajoled and kept me typing and generally *rules*. Yes. Enjoy!
Tim never gets to drive the Batmobile. Sometimes he gets to *move* it from one spot in the Cave to another, but that doesn't count.
*
Things were different, briefly, during Klarion's spell.
When Bruce flipped his Robin cape and reached for the driver's side door, all Tim had to do was clear his throat to make him stop.
He got a mulish look, then a put-upon sigh, before Bruce raised his hands and backed away. "After you. *Batman*."
Tim nodded and slid into the car. Robin took his sweet time walking around the back, nearly sauntering, before he opened the passenger door and got in.
"Where to?" Robin did not slump so much as -- look as if he'd like to. In profile, his mouth was quirking, deepening, at the corner.
"Something amusing?" Tim asked eventually, once they had exited the Cave.
Robin snorted and turned to look out his window. He scratched absently at his knee through the tights. Drummed his kneecap, shifted a little, never looked at Tim.
He moved quite a bit more than Bruce did as an adult. It should have been unsettling.
Beyond the Batmobile's hood, Gotham unfurled rapidly, tangled lights and shadowy spires. While Tim knew, of course, that he'd seen the sight a thousand times, and would see it again just as often, he let himself, for a moment, appreciate it from this position.
Batman guards Gotham. Tonight, temporarily, surreally, he was Batman.
Loving the city was just part of the job description.
Tim relaxed his grip on the wheel and hit the gas.
*
They found, as usual, much to do that night: Dealers, several recalcitrant pimps who quavered under the messy, but effective, ferocity of Robin's kicks, a pack of feral dogs in the southern reaches of Robinson Park.
Batman needed to pull Robin back several times. He wasn't about to do *real* damage, but there was something frankly disquieting about him. It may have been the snarling curve to his mouth, the sheer enthusiasm with which he dove into the fray, or simply his tendency to shoulder Batman aside.
"Easy, Robin," Batman said now as the Animal Control vans pulled away.
Robin kicked a hedge, then again, before turning to Batman. Hands planted on his hips, chest heaving with exertion as Bruce's rarely did, he looked, for a moment, oddly *blank*.
"What?" Robin demanded. The sneer returned.
"Just --" Tim felt his hand curl, adjusted once more to its (slightly) increased size, then touched Robin's shoulder. "Easy."
Robin swiped the sweat from his cheeks and mouth and shook his hair out of his eyes. He dislodged Batman's hand easily. "Why?"
The sky never fully darkens over Gotham, but it was paling a bit now beyond the park's foliage, lavender mixing in with the dirty brown. "Perhaps we should --" Batman cleared his throat. "I'm calling it a night."
Robin bounced on his toes, making his cape swish. "Just getting warmed up."
"Is that so?" He turned for the car. He expected Robin to follow without having to -- ever -- say so explicitly.
He rested his hand on the hood, idly stroking the finish as he never (rarely) dared do when he was Robin, and waited. He could hear the crackle of twigs and bodily thumps behind him.
As interesting -- and, well, *amusing* -- as it was to watch Bruce fight the limits of his gangly, adolescent body, Batman would never spare a look back.
"Robin --" He bit off the name and squared his shoulders, though it must be said the uniform, though padded to fit him, did that admirably.
"Shit!" Robin shouted, just as more shrubbery crashed.
Batman drew a short breath before turning around.
He found Robin struggling to extricate himself from a hedge whose vines and brambles would have been worthy of Pamela Isley's design.
"Would you like a hand?" He had, of course, run into his own share of embarrassment when he first became Robin, but --.
Really nothing quite like this, at least not within Batman's line of sight.
Robin thrashed a bit more, his legs going in opposite directions, one arm thrown over his face to protect it. "I got it, I --"
"Here." Batman gripped Robin's ankle and dragged him free. Afterward, as Robin got to his knees, then his feet, *glowering* at him, Batman flexed his hand against the remembered *width* of bone and muscle. "All better?"
"Fine," Robin mumbled, brushing himself free of twigs and brambles. "I had it, though."
"Did you?" It should have been difficult to hide his smile, but the cowl helped.
Snorting, Robin paced away and scrambled up the high brick wall. "Your costume *sucks*, you know."
"I..." Batman strode back to the car. Hitching one leg up, he sat on the hood, knee clasped, bootheel on the tire. "You designed it."
Robin extended one leg into the air, nearly parallel with his waist. "The tights. They --"
"I don't think you'd appreciate the shorts," Batman said. "Not if you're going to fall into hedges everywhere you go."
Robin dropped to a crouch and swung off the wall. He was still coltish -- Tim was beginning to doubt if he'd ever get used to his new-old body before the spell got reversed -- and then, suddenly, he --. Was no longer so.
He stalked forward, and he was smaller than Bruce, as an adult, would be, but he *moved* like Bruce.
"What are you *looking* at?" Robin stopped a few paces shy of the car. The effect of indignant tension running through his frame was marred when he tugged at the tights and scowled. "These things *chafe*."
"You're...bigger," Batman reminded him and did not move. That was one prerogative of age to which he dearly looked forward.
"So?"
"They don't chafe me."
Robin ran his knuckles over a scrape on his cheek. When, apparently, that failed to relieve the sting, he tugged his glove off with his teeth and scratched hard. "You're still *looking*. What?"
The abrasions glowed a little under the light from the ornate streetlamp. Livid, barely more than a change in texture over Bruce's rounded jaw, they snagged Batman's attention for just a little too long.
"Were you really this obnoxious at fifteen?" Batman took his time sliding off the hood and drawing himself up.
"You're always *looking*," Robin muttered. It sounded as if he were trying to convince himself --. No. It sounded, exactly and precisely, as if he were saying aloud thoughts that he had long had.
"Mm," Batman said and, because he could, wrapped his hand around Robin's wrist and tugged his hand away. "You're just making it worse."
"I'm not making --" Robin yanked his arm free and pulled the cape over his chest. He seemed to realize, belatedly -- and when did Bruce hone his attention so well that he became impervious to momentary confusion? -- that Batman meant the scratches, not the --.
'Looking', Robin had called it. As if Tim were doing something --.
"-- well, *any*way," Robin said, throwing a few right-hooks and jabs as he bounced. "Let's hit the road."
Batman stood his ground. It was easy to wait; he'd been doing it for most of his life. And even if he hadn't, months of working with Young Justice had instilled in him something approaching Zen-like stillness.
He'd never reach enlightenment, but that was not, after all, the goal.
Robin tugged at the inner seam of his tights, just above his right knee. When he caught Batman's eye, he made a show of tugging harder a few more times.
"You didn't answer the question," Batman said when Robin, finally, stopped fidgeting. Mostly.
"I don't remember," Robin mumbled and looked away.
"Robin --"
Robin flinched, hand going to his neck, before he looked back. "I --. Maybe?"
"I see."
Perhaps the strangest effect of the spell was to reveal just how -- *expressive* Bruce could be when he had yet to learn necessary physical discipline. Tim was fairly certain, for example, that the way the mask was twitching indicated a melodramatic roll of the eyes.
"If we're not getting back to work," Robin said, and vaulted one-handed over the car's hood, his movement a slapdash approximation of something that Tim has seen Dick do flawlessly while concussed and sporting a sprained wrist, "then I want to go home."
"Not quite yet," Batman said.
Robin huffed, blowing his bangs up, off his forehead, and yanked open the door. The Batmobile's excellent shocks absorbed most of the ferocious kinetic energy when Robin threw himself into the seat. Most, but not all, such that the car bounced almost placidly.
When he pinched the bridge of his nose, Batman was --. Himself. Tim dropped his hand and took his time getting into his seat.
"Changed your mind?" Robin asked nastily.
Batman gunned the Batmobile, then let it idle. Fingers loose on the wheel, eyes straight ahead, he said, "So you haven't remembered how to act civilized."
"Ha," Robin said. When Batman failed to respond, he kicked at the dashboard.
"Easy," Batman said for the last time that night. His arms were longer now; it was barely any effort to grab Robin's calf and --.
He meant to quiet him. Tim *still* believes that. He meant to lay a not-quite-consoling but certainly *warning* hand and quiet the --.
Boy, Robin. *Brat*, as he insisted on being perceived.
Bruce.
Robin kicked back, spinning in his seat, boot bouncing off Batman's shoulder armor.
"Bruce --" His hand slipped inside the gauntlet and he tried again, fingers spreading over Robin's ropy thigh.
He didn't mean to quiet him. Not any longer. He --.
"Oh, *jeez* --" Robin bit his lower lip too late to stop the pained crack in his voice as he bucked upward, against Batman's arm. "Oh, *crap*, I --"
Tim tightened his grip and knew that it was impossible, the sense that he could *feel* Bruce's thigh flex in response.
"Robin --" That was Bruce, ripping off the mask and hissing at the sting, then burying his face in the seat, hips jerkingly pumping. "-- *Tim*, uh --"
The Batmobile's windows were impossible to see through at high noon. Now, at the crack of dawn, off the tack trail in the park, there was nothing to fear.
Not from the outside.
Unmasked, he was still Robin, writhing and thumping one fist on the dash.
"Robin --"
He went still and opened one eye. Squinted at -- *Tim*, before Bruce sneered, nearly baring his teeth, and --. "What're you gonna do about it?"
"Stop."
Another flash of teeth, and Robin's voice was --. Not Bruce's, younger and creaky, but *Gotham* and guttersnipes and the kids who break windows to amuse themselves. "Make me."
Tim unlatched the cape's gorget and shifted in the capacious seat, bringing his other hand to Bruce's opposite knee. He increased the pressure of his grip, fractionally, and Bruce jolted back, then sideways.
Then upward, reaching with bare hands for the cowl, his mouth twisted and eyes wild.
Batman leaned just out of reach and grasped Bruce's legs -- higher. And more tightly.
"Take it off," Bruce muttered, the kind of desperate, hopeless thing one repeats in the middle of *weeping*. His voice broke *again*, the words stopping, then wailed when Tim's hands slid all the way up, thumbs meeting below the ridge of his jock, fingers *gripping* the crease of his thighs.
"Easy," Tim said, and tried for the basso command voice. "Easy."
"I --. *Shit*, I --" Robin's -- Bruce's -- his head *thrashed*, he bucked again, and it should have been difficult to pull the leggings down. The angle was wrong, Robin would not stop moving, he still wore the gauntlets -- but he succeeded, pulling one boot off in the process.
And Robin leaned against the door, ass nearly off the seat, panting. Looking at Batman like he -- like he knew what to do. Like for the first time (that night, ever), he would --.
He brushed the flat of his palms over the chafe-marks on Robin's -- on Bruce's thighs.
"See?" Robin said -- indignantly and faintly all at once.
"I do," Batman said and touched the convex lump of the cup. "I --. I do --"
Bruce shivered as he pushed the cup out of the way, shivered some more and bit his lip before looking up through his bangs.
He had schooled the shudders and was, for some unbearably long moment, *still*.
He said something on his exhale, a single syllable as Batman ran his gauntlet up Robin's torso, over the *R*, but Batman --.
Didn't quite hear it, not over the creak of the seat's leather, over the high whistle of Bruce's breath, over the nearly-*mechanical* thrum of his own pulse.
Batman was -- opaque, oblique, conveniently deaf. When he had to be, when Robin squirmed and asked and said "please" again, when --.
Bruce's hand skated over the side of the cowl, fingertips curling under the edge. Hooking him there, and Tim inhaled sour-sharp sweat, sharper than Bruce's was, or had been, in the showers, and --.
"Please?" Robin, bent at the waist, fingers hooked into the cowl, bucking into Batman's grip, looked --. Crazed, pupils blown in a pinched face, darkly flushed.
Before this, and since, Tim had never known himself to take advantage of a very simple, an almost *elementary*, fact.
Batman can't refuse Robin.
Not when it matters.
"Yes." The sibilance was crushed by Robin's kiss, all teeth and clacking, yanking *need*, as he thrust up and Tim struggled to slip free of the gauntlets.
His hand was bigger, though Bruce was -- large, as large as he would be later -- and his palm slipped in smeared pre-cum. Robin shoved his tongue inside Tim's mouth, curling it behind his upper teeth, *sucking* something vital out of him as he fucked Tim's fist, gasping and cursing.
Tim's other hand pressed hard against the R-shuriken until its edges scored his palm, and then harder yet, as he jerked his fist and bit at Bruce's tongue.
It was ragged, poorly angled, *strange* in ways that had nothing to do with the physical, but when Bruce's mouth opened fully on a shriek that Tim inhaled like air and he came with jolting spurts over Tim's hand, it was right.
Or -- accurate. Fitting.
"There," Batman -- he had to remember the stillness -- said and released the shuriken, unwrapped his hold on Robin's --. On Bruce. "There."
When he sat back, the low, insistent *heat* of his own erection buzzed in his jock, went high and whining as static.
Two breaths, and he could manage the discomfort.
He could have managed it.
He could have, had Robin not unfolded himself from his sprawl and *knelt* on the seat, one sticky hand on Tim's face, thumb hovering over his lower lip but never making contact.
"Batman," he said.
"Robin," Tim replied and tried to take another breath. He thought about smiling. He failed to summon the necessary effort for that.
For pushing Bruce away when he reached for the jock.
For stopping what should not happen, what was necessary as much as it was --.
For anything, really, because Bruce was, at fifteen, wide through the shoulders and mouth, nimble-fingered and stubborn as --.
As he would later be, but he was also far more *impatient*.
"You --" Robin said, and bent, and looked up one more time as Tim clenched his fingers around the steering wheel. If he hadn't, hanks of Bruce's hair would be in his hold. Bruce smiled like -- like he must have *used* to, when he was this age, a little ferally, ironically to the end. "Batman needs Robin."
At that, Tim's leg jumped, knee knocking the edge of the wheel, and his chest clenched, and then he *was* grabbing Robin's hair, thrusting up to meet him.
Tim knew, even then, that he was good at *playing* Robin, but as for *being* --.
Robin's teeth scraped his cockhead, his tongue wrapped and soothed, then -- just *wrapped*.
As for being, that was -- Dick. And Jason, and *Bruce*, all Bruce, hungry and amateurish, drooling every bit as much as he lapped and sucked, and Tim was --.
Not that, never like that, never chuckling and eager, fearless and *effusive*. Tim had both hands on Bruce's head and his hips worked as slowly as he could make them work, and he pushed and pushed --.
Into Robin, all of them, away from his own body, deep and deeper *inside*.
Past, and up, and down, and saw the distorted lump on Bruce's abraded jaw, saw the Robin-red jersey and his own red cock, and felt his eyes sting as his chest expanded, inevitably, as he came hard enough to make Robin splutter and cough and knock his head on the steering wheel.
His thumb cleaned the worst of the mess from Robin's mouth while the other hand petted, clumsy and sincere, Robin's sweaty hair.
Bruce's overbite shone, suddenly prominently, when he bit that thumb and sucked briefly before pulling himself up.
Tim rearranged the costume, locking the groin armor, relatching the cape. Neatly, quickly, while Robin took his time, languorously pulling on his leggings.
Like they had all the time in the world.
"Can we go *now*?" Robin said, later, his hair still a mess, his cheeks shining with sweat. Sulky again, and, Batman suspected, *sleepy*.
The car leapt out of the park, swung a hard right onto Finger, and the Bat never smiled, as the forward momentum tugged them home.
"Make sure," Batman said, when they returned, when the fluorescence of the Cave leached them both wan and foot-heavy, "that Alfred makes a good breakfast for you."
Robin's hand twitched at his side; his mouth curved. And it was more, much more, than a trick of the light that made Tim *see*. The Case, and Robin, and Bruce flickering between Jason -- who would flip him off for that suggestion -- and Dick -- who would grin and bob his head -- and --.
Himself, reflected in the glass, tipping up his chin and shading his eyes.
"Yeah," Robin said, and turned, and mounted the steps. "Night."
Batman stood -- alone -- in the cave. The footfalls echoed as the heat evaporated off the car's hood.
*
They never, of course, spoke of that night again. If they had, Tim would have to lay even money on which of them would offer "hormones" as an excuse first.
The memories did not subside. They --. He realizes, now, that he wrapped them in rationalization like crystal in cotton wool, then stored them away. Hormones, and magic, and all the unreality attendant on both smothered them nicely.
He realizes that, because he can't *not*, as he leans against this gargoyle, bruise-red in the shadows, while, far below, Batman plays lethal tag with Red Hood across six roofs.
Jason, and Dick, and Bruce -- his breath stutters when he thinks Stephanie, but bright laughter is still and always Robin, with or without breasts -- are. Were.
Kids.
He's going to drive the car home.
[end]
Pairing: Bruce/Tim, age-reversed
Setting: Sins of Youth
Rating: Aged up to adult
Summary: "I'll put it in the past when the past is history."
Disclaimer: DC, not me.
Notes: Right. This is loosely connected to the Jason/Tim Terms of Psychic Warfare and the unwritten Bruce/Tim ephebeophilia saga of ahhhngst. It can, obviously, be read separately. thete1 audienced and cajoled and kept me typing and generally *rules*. Yes. Enjoy!
Tim never gets to drive the Batmobile. Sometimes he gets to *move* it from one spot in the Cave to another, but that doesn't count.
*
Things were different, briefly, during Klarion's spell.
When Bruce flipped his Robin cape and reached for the driver's side door, all Tim had to do was clear his throat to make him stop.
He got a mulish look, then a put-upon sigh, before Bruce raised his hands and backed away. "After you. *Batman*."
Tim nodded and slid into the car. Robin took his sweet time walking around the back, nearly sauntering, before he opened the passenger door and got in.
"Where to?" Robin did not slump so much as -- look as if he'd like to. In profile, his mouth was quirking, deepening, at the corner.
"Something amusing?" Tim asked eventually, once they had exited the Cave.
Robin snorted and turned to look out his window. He scratched absently at his knee through the tights. Drummed his kneecap, shifted a little, never looked at Tim.
He moved quite a bit more than Bruce did as an adult. It should have been unsettling.
Beyond the Batmobile's hood, Gotham unfurled rapidly, tangled lights and shadowy spires. While Tim knew, of course, that he'd seen the sight a thousand times, and would see it again just as often, he let himself, for a moment, appreciate it from this position.
Batman guards Gotham. Tonight, temporarily, surreally, he was Batman.
Loving the city was just part of the job description.
Tim relaxed his grip on the wheel and hit the gas.
*
They found, as usual, much to do that night: Dealers, several recalcitrant pimps who quavered under the messy, but effective, ferocity of Robin's kicks, a pack of feral dogs in the southern reaches of Robinson Park.
Batman needed to pull Robin back several times. He wasn't about to do *real* damage, but there was something frankly disquieting about him. It may have been the snarling curve to his mouth, the sheer enthusiasm with which he dove into the fray, or simply his tendency to shoulder Batman aside.
"Easy, Robin," Batman said now as the Animal Control vans pulled away.
Robin kicked a hedge, then again, before turning to Batman. Hands planted on his hips, chest heaving with exertion as Bruce's rarely did, he looked, for a moment, oddly *blank*.
"What?" Robin demanded. The sneer returned.
"Just --" Tim felt his hand curl, adjusted once more to its (slightly) increased size, then touched Robin's shoulder. "Easy."
Robin swiped the sweat from his cheeks and mouth and shook his hair out of his eyes. He dislodged Batman's hand easily. "Why?"
The sky never fully darkens over Gotham, but it was paling a bit now beyond the park's foliage, lavender mixing in with the dirty brown. "Perhaps we should --" Batman cleared his throat. "I'm calling it a night."
Robin bounced on his toes, making his cape swish. "Just getting warmed up."
"Is that so?" He turned for the car. He expected Robin to follow without having to -- ever -- say so explicitly.
He rested his hand on the hood, idly stroking the finish as he never (rarely) dared do when he was Robin, and waited. He could hear the crackle of twigs and bodily thumps behind him.
As interesting -- and, well, *amusing* -- as it was to watch Bruce fight the limits of his gangly, adolescent body, Batman would never spare a look back.
"Robin --" He bit off the name and squared his shoulders, though it must be said the uniform, though padded to fit him, did that admirably.
"Shit!" Robin shouted, just as more shrubbery crashed.
Batman drew a short breath before turning around.
He found Robin struggling to extricate himself from a hedge whose vines and brambles would have been worthy of Pamela Isley's design.
"Would you like a hand?" He had, of course, run into his own share of embarrassment when he first became Robin, but --.
Really nothing quite like this, at least not within Batman's line of sight.
Robin thrashed a bit more, his legs going in opposite directions, one arm thrown over his face to protect it. "I got it, I --"
"Here." Batman gripped Robin's ankle and dragged him free. Afterward, as Robin got to his knees, then his feet, *glowering* at him, Batman flexed his hand against the remembered *width* of bone and muscle. "All better?"
"Fine," Robin mumbled, brushing himself free of twigs and brambles. "I had it, though."
"Did you?" It should have been difficult to hide his smile, but the cowl helped.
Snorting, Robin paced away and scrambled up the high brick wall. "Your costume *sucks*, you know."
"I..." Batman strode back to the car. Hitching one leg up, he sat on the hood, knee clasped, bootheel on the tire. "You designed it."
Robin extended one leg into the air, nearly parallel with his waist. "The tights. They --"
"I don't think you'd appreciate the shorts," Batman said. "Not if you're going to fall into hedges everywhere you go."
Robin dropped to a crouch and swung off the wall. He was still coltish -- Tim was beginning to doubt if he'd ever get used to his new-old body before the spell got reversed -- and then, suddenly, he --. Was no longer so.
He stalked forward, and he was smaller than Bruce, as an adult, would be, but he *moved* like Bruce.
"What are you *looking* at?" Robin stopped a few paces shy of the car. The effect of indignant tension running through his frame was marred when he tugged at the tights and scowled. "These things *chafe*."
"You're...bigger," Batman reminded him and did not move. That was one prerogative of age to which he dearly looked forward.
"So?"
"They don't chafe me."
Robin ran his knuckles over a scrape on his cheek. When, apparently, that failed to relieve the sting, he tugged his glove off with his teeth and scratched hard. "You're still *looking*. What?"
The abrasions glowed a little under the light from the ornate streetlamp. Livid, barely more than a change in texture over Bruce's rounded jaw, they snagged Batman's attention for just a little too long.
"Were you really this obnoxious at fifteen?" Batman took his time sliding off the hood and drawing himself up.
"You're always *looking*," Robin muttered. It sounded as if he were trying to convince himself --. No. It sounded, exactly and precisely, as if he were saying aloud thoughts that he had long had.
"Mm," Batman said and, because he could, wrapped his hand around Robin's wrist and tugged his hand away. "You're just making it worse."
"I'm not making --" Robin yanked his arm free and pulled the cape over his chest. He seemed to realize, belatedly -- and when did Bruce hone his attention so well that he became impervious to momentary confusion? -- that Batman meant the scratches, not the --.
'Looking', Robin had called it. As if Tim were doing something --.
"-- well, *any*way," Robin said, throwing a few right-hooks and jabs as he bounced. "Let's hit the road."
Batman stood his ground. It was easy to wait; he'd been doing it for most of his life. And even if he hadn't, months of working with Young Justice had instilled in him something approaching Zen-like stillness.
He'd never reach enlightenment, but that was not, after all, the goal.
Robin tugged at the inner seam of his tights, just above his right knee. When he caught Batman's eye, he made a show of tugging harder a few more times.
"You didn't answer the question," Batman said when Robin, finally, stopped fidgeting. Mostly.
"I don't remember," Robin mumbled and looked away.
"Robin --"
Robin flinched, hand going to his neck, before he looked back. "I --. Maybe?"
"I see."
Perhaps the strangest effect of the spell was to reveal just how -- *expressive* Bruce could be when he had yet to learn necessary physical discipline. Tim was fairly certain, for example, that the way the mask was twitching indicated a melodramatic roll of the eyes.
"If we're not getting back to work," Robin said, and vaulted one-handed over the car's hood, his movement a slapdash approximation of something that Tim has seen Dick do flawlessly while concussed and sporting a sprained wrist, "then I want to go home."
"Not quite yet," Batman said.
Robin huffed, blowing his bangs up, off his forehead, and yanked open the door. The Batmobile's excellent shocks absorbed most of the ferocious kinetic energy when Robin threw himself into the seat. Most, but not all, such that the car bounced almost placidly.
When he pinched the bridge of his nose, Batman was --. Himself. Tim dropped his hand and took his time getting into his seat.
"Changed your mind?" Robin asked nastily.
Batman gunned the Batmobile, then let it idle. Fingers loose on the wheel, eyes straight ahead, he said, "So you haven't remembered how to act civilized."
"Ha," Robin said. When Batman failed to respond, he kicked at the dashboard.
"Easy," Batman said for the last time that night. His arms were longer now; it was barely any effort to grab Robin's calf and --.
He meant to quiet him. Tim *still* believes that. He meant to lay a not-quite-consoling but certainly *warning* hand and quiet the --.
Boy, Robin. *Brat*, as he insisted on being perceived.
Bruce.
Robin kicked back, spinning in his seat, boot bouncing off Batman's shoulder armor.
"Bruce --" His hand slipped inside the gauntlet and he tried again, fingers spreading over Robin's ropy thigh.
He didn't mean to quiet him. Not any longer. He --.
"Oh, *jeez* --" Robin bit his lower lip too late to stop the pained crack in his voice as he bucked upward, against Batman's arm. "Oh, *crap*, I --"
Tim tightened his grip and knew that it was impossible, the sense that he could *feel* Bruce's thigh flex in response.
"Robin --" That was Bruce, ripping off the mask and hissing at the sting, then burying his face in the seat, hips jerkingly pumping. "-- *Tim*, uh --"
The Batmobile's windows were impossible to see through at high noon. Now, at the crack of dawn, off the tack trail in the park, there was nothing to fear.
Not from the outside.
Unmasked, he was still Robin, writhing and thumping one fist on the dash.
"Robin --"
He went still and opened one eye. Squinted at -- *Tim*, before Bruce sneered, nearly baring his teeth, and --. "What're you gonna do about it?"
"Stop."
Another flash of teeth, and Robin's voice was --. Not Bruce's, younger and creaky, but *Gotham* and guttersnipes and the kids who break windows to amuse themselves. "Make me."
Tim unlatched the cape's gorget and shifted in the capacious seat, bringing his other hand to Bruce's opposite knee. He increased the pressure of his grip, fractionally, and Bruce jolted back, then sideways.
Then upward, reaching with bare hands for the cowl, his mouth twisted and eyes wild.
Batman leaned just out of reach and grasped Bruce's legs -- higher. And more tightly.
"Take it off," Bruce muttered, the kind of desperate, hopeless thing one repeats in the middle of *weeping*. His voice broke *again*, the words stopping, then wailed when Tim's hands slid all the way up, thumbs meeting below the ridge of his jock, fingers *gripping* the crease of his thighs.
"Easy," Tim said, and tried for the basso command voice. "Easy."
"I --. *Shit*, I --" Robin's -- Bruce's -- his head *thrashed*, he bucked again, and it should have been difficult to pull the leggings down. The angle was wrong, Robin would not stop moving, he still wore the gauntlets -- but he succeeded, pulling one boot off in the process.
And Robin leaned against the door, ass nearly off the seat, panting. Looking at Batman like he -- like he knew what to do. Like for the first time (that night, ever), he would --.
He brushed the flat of his palms over the chafe-marks on Robin's -- on Bruce's thighs.
"See?" Robin said -- indignantly and faintly all at once.
"I do," Batman said and touched the convex lump of the cup. "I --. I do --"
Bruce shivered as he pushed the cup out of the way, shivered some more and bit his lip before looking up through his bangs.
He had schooled the shudders and was, for some unbearably long moment, *still*.
He said something on his exhale, a single syllable as Batman ran his gauntlet up Robin's torso, over the *R*, but Batman --.
Didn't quite hear it, not over the creak of the seat's leather, over the high whistle of Bruce's breath, over the nearly-*mechanical* thrum of his own pulse.
Batman was -- opaque, oblique, conveniently deaf. When he had to be, when Robin squirmed and asked and said "please" again, when --.
Bruce's hand skated over the side of the cowl, fingertips curling under the edge. Hooking him there, and Tim inhaled sour-sharp sweat, sharper than Bruce's was, or had been, in the showers, and --.
"Please?" Robin, bent at the waist, fingers hooked into the cowl, bucking into Batman's grip, looked --. Crazed, pupils blown in a pinched face, darkly flushed.
Before this, and since, Tim had never known himself to take advantage of a very simple, an almost *elementary*, fact.
Batman can't refuse Robin.
Not when it matters.
"Yes." The sibilance was crushed by Robin's kiss, all teeth and clacking, yanking *need*, as he thrust up and Tim struggled to slip free of the gauntlets.
His hand was bigger, though Bruce was -- large, as large as he would be later -- and his palm slipped in smeared pre-cum. Robin shoved his tongue inside Tim's mouth, curling it behind his upper teeth, *sucking* something vital out of him as he fucked Tim's fist, gasping and cursing.
Tim's other hand pressed hard against the R-shuriken until its edges scored his palm, and then harder yet, as he jerked his fist and bit at Bruce's tongue.
It was ragged, poorly angled, *strange* in ways that had nothing to do with the physical, but when Bruce's mouth opened fully on a shriek that Tim inhaled like air and he came with jolting spurts over Tim's hand, it was right.
Or -- accurate. Fitting.
"There," Batman -- he had to remember the stillness -- said and released the shuriken, unwrapped his hold on Robin's --. On Bruce. "There."
When he sat back, the low, insistent *heat* of his own erection buzzed in his jock, went high and whining as static.
Two breaths, and he could manage the discomfort.
He could have managed it.
He could have, had Robin not unfolded himself from his sprawl and *knelt* on the seat, one sticky hand on Tim's face, thumb hovering over his lower lip but never making contact.
"Batman," he said.
"Robin," Tim replied and tried to take another breath. He thought about smiling. He failed to summon the necessary effort for that.
For pushing Bruce away when he reached for the jock.
For stopping what should not happen, what was necessary as much as it was --.
For anything, really, because Bruce was, at fifteen, wide through the shoulders and mouth, nimble-fingered and stubborn as --.
As he would later be, but he was also far more *impatient*.
"You --" Robin said, and bent, and looked up one more time as Tim clenched his fingers around the steering wheel. If he hadn't, hanks of Bruce's hair would be in his hold. Bruce smiled like -- like he must have *used* to, when he was this age, a little ferally, ironically to the end. "Batman needs Robin."
At that, Tim's leg jumped, knee knocking the edge of the wheel, and his chest clenched, and then he *was* grabbing Robin's hair, thrusting up to meet him.
Tim knew, even then, that he was good at *playing* Robin, but as for *being* --.
Robin's teeth scraped his cockhead, his tongue wrapped and soothed, then -- just *wrapped*.
As for being, that was -- Dick. And Jason, and *Bruce*, all Bruce, hungry and amateurish, drooling every bit as much as he lapped and sucked, and Tim was --.
Not that, never like that, never chuckling and eager, fearless and *effusive*. Tim had both hands on Bruce's head and his hips worked as slowly as he could make them work, and he pushed and pushed --.
Into Robin, all of them, away from his own body, deep and deeper *inside*.
Past, and up, and down, and saw the distorted lump on Bruce's abraded jaw, saw the Robin-red jersey and his own red cock, and felt his eyes sting as his chest expanded, inevitably, as he came hard enough to make Robin splutter and cough and knock his head on the steering wheel.
His thumb cleaned the worst of the mess from Robin's mouth while the other hand petted, clumsy and sincere, Robin's sweaty hair.
Bruce's overbite shone, suddenly prominently, when he bit that thumb and sucked briefly before pulling himself up.
Tim rearranged the costume, locking the groin armor, relatching the cape. Neatly, quickly, while Robin took his time, languorously pulling on his leggings.
Like they had all the time in the world.
"Can we go *now*?" Robin said, later, his hair still a mess, his cheeks shining with sweat. Sulky again, and, Batman suspected, *sleepy*.
The car leapt out of the park, swung a hard right onto Finger, and the Bat never smiled, as the forward momentum tugged them home.
"Make sure," Batman said, when they returned, when the fluorescence of the Cave leached them both wan and foot-heavy, "that Alfred makes a good breakfast for you."
Robin's hand twitched at his side; his mouth curved. And it was more, much more, than a trick of the light that made Tim *see*. The Case, and Robin, and Bruce flickering between Jason -- who would flip him off for that suggestion -- and Dick -- who would grin and bob his head -- and --.
Himself, reflected in the glass, tipping up his chin and shading his eyes.
"Yeah," Robin said, and turned, and mounted the steps. "Night."
Batman stood -- alone -- in the cave. The footfalls echoed as the heat evaporated off the car's hood.
*
They never, of course, spoke of that night again. If they had, Tim would have to lay even money on which of them would offer "hormones" as an excuse first.
The memories did not subside. They --. He realizes, now, that he wrapped them in rationalization like crystal in cotton wool, then stored them away. Hormones, and magic, and all the unreality attendant on both smothered them nicely.
He realizes that, because he can't *not*, as he leans against this gargoyle, bruise-red in the shadows, while, far below, Batman plays lethal tag with Red Hood across six roofs.
Jason, and Dick, and Bruce -- his breath stutters when he thinks Stephanie, but bright laughter is still and always Robin, with or without breasts -- are. Were.
Kids.
He's going to drive the car home.
[end]