Halloween: To mix light into the gray // Dick and Tim

[needsarobin]

Not rain, nor sleet, nor being aged down to a tiny tot will stop a Robin from doing his job. Luckily, Dick knows that and takes Tim out for patrol. Tim's asleep on his feet by the time it's done and bird boy snuggling is accomplished. The next morning, it's all business again. Set October 31 and November 1



Tim stood with his hands on his hips, looking defiantly up at Dick. His shoulders were set, his chin was up, his mouth was set in as hard a line as baby fat would let him. There was no question at all that he was geared up for a fight; no matter how long it took, he was going to get his way. "It's time for patrol," he informed Dick in no nonsense Robin tones that weren't helped at all by the higher pitch of his voice. He soldiered on through, "And irrespective of the cavalier way that you've blown off all my other duties today, this one stands. You can either come with me, or I can go alone but one way or another, I'm doing my job tonight."

For a few seconds, Dick wants, badly, to laugh. It's possible that teeny ninja Tim attempting to boss him around is the cutest thing he's ever seen. Part of him wants to put his foot down and watch Tim get madder and madder, but he might get so mad he cries. Dick would never forgive himself for that. So he tousles Tim's hair and smiles. "Of course we're patrolling. It's what we do." His lips press together in a soft frown. "One condition. When I say enough, you let me carry you the rest of the way. Small bodies can't take all the swinging and jerking."

Tim's eyes, huge and blue in his soft child's face, narrowed dangerously. He suspected that there was more to it than Dick simply wanting to keep him from injuring himself. Even ridiculously sensible Morgan hadn't been able to contain her reaction to his current form and Dick wasn't nearly so good at keeping his impulses to himself.

Still, it would end up being its own punishment in the end. "You're going to regret all of this lifting and carrying tomorrow," Tim informed his brother, with some satisfaction. "And I'll still be too small to work out the knots properly."
"You really don't want to hear me say 'you'll be sorry if your face freezes that way'." Dick grins at the attempt at 'don't fuck with me' in a roundly innocent face. If he had a mirror, he'd hold it up and mortify Tim with how ridiculous it looks.

Instead he cups Tim's baby-soft cheek and tilts his head up. "Too late for that. My shoulders and quads have been screaming since two. And if you're still small tomorrow, I'm sure Monet will be happy to have me naked under her hands."

Tim gave some thought to kicking Dick in the shins but decided that he wouldn't be allowed--oh, and that was so annoying to realize that it was being allowed--to patrol if he did. "You really shouldn't speak that way in front of children," Tim admonished instead, folding his arms. "Let's go."

Dick grins and considers hefting Tim over his shoulder now to save time and screaming later. "You're the one who has spent the entire day reminding me 'I'm not actually five, Dick'." He gives Tim a look. "Reap what you sow, little brother. And also, some of us still fit in our uniforms."

"This is no time to be building up bad habits." Tim chose to ignore the dig at his lack of uniform. The ninja costume would have to do. No matter how much his pajamas looked like the uniforms he'd been given last time he'd been a child, they were not suitable for flying through trees. He strapped on his belt like a bandolier and lifted his grapple gun. "Are you coming or not?" he tossed over his shoulder as he headed for the roof.

"I wouldn't worry your chubby little cheeks about it. You're in a class by yourself." Which was true, and complimentary, even if Tim would never see it that way. The idea that how he relates to Tim might have anything at all to do with the rest of the world just, as O would say, Does Not Compute.

His uniform takes slightly longer to put on than Tim's especially without all the innovations of their various lairs that kept their suits ready to be put on with peak efficiency. He's still quick, though, and catches up with Tim before he can leave the roof. "All right. Let's go, little bird. You first." That way Dick can catch him if he falls.

Tim didn't fall. He flung himself out into space, grapple firing, and flew like the baby bird he was, a fledgling leaving the nest. His body curved, cupping air to slow himself and with a flip to clean up the landing, alighted easily onto a new branch. There he waited for Dick to follow and let himself grin behind the concealing face mask.

Dick's gloved hands meet in front of him for three quiet claps. Beneath his mask, he's grinning. "Point proven, and gracefully." At Tim's current age, Dick could do a double and was well on his way to the triple. Launching himself from the treehouse up, he does one now, just because he can, and because Tim has always loved to watch...him... fly...for...him... Dick's rotations seem to slow as his mind locks in on what his heart already knew. He alights next to Tim, scooping him up before his momentum even stops. "You're five."

Tim automatically locked arms and legs around Dick, letting him be the stabilizing force while they're here, so high above the ground. "Or there about, yeah. Been that way all day. You might have noticed when you were nagging me earlier." He hadn't heard the shift in Dick's tone, didn't know yet what it meant or what Dick was telling him.

Dick holds onto him, running a hand over his hair. "I was twelve..."

At which point it hit Tim, hard enough that his small body tensed around Dick. Scent memory is the strongest of all and that was what came back first -- popcorn, hay, cotton candy, animals and heat. The faint acid tinge of sweat, years before he'd learned to enjoy it. Tim turned his face into Dick's neck instinctively, shivering in the warm tropical night. "You promised to fly for me," he said after a few moments.

Since it's going to be a few minutes before he trusts himself to speak, Dick fires a grapple and dumps them into free fall, not tumbling but holding Tim to his chest. It's several more leaps before he stops where there are lights ahead. "Sometimes I wish you hadn't seen it. Other times..." Other times Tim's dimples and his smile were the face of his crowd, the reason to keep going. "I've been flying for you ever since."
Tim's heart raced as Dick flung them into space, he held on firmly but not so tightly that Dick couldn't move. Of course, Dick compensated perfectly for his weight, nothing so small as Tim would ever shake that grace. When they finally are still again, high above the jungle floor, in sight of the rest of the settlement, and Dick spoke, Tim's grip tightened again. "I have the picture we took that day." His voice was breathtakingly neutral, jarring in contrast to the way he was holding on.

If Tim's pulse wasn't pounding where his wrists met Dick's neck, he would've launched them again, run from the cascade of images those eight words provoke. As it is, he's standing stock-still, blowing like a Thoroughbred after a race and trying not to think. It takes a full minute to pull himself back together. When he does, he looks out past Tim's head, seeing his parents the way they were that day. And even though he knows, he asks, "Is she is as beautiful as I remember?"

It was natural that Tim would first think of his mother, not Dick's. It confused him for a few seconds, even though his heart screamed yes, she is that beautiful. Several pained moments passed before Tim could think of Mary Grayson, slender and athletic in the bright colors that were still echoed in his uniform. His small hand gripped Dick's shoulder, comforting. "They all are. When we're done with patrol, I'll show you."

He's almost grateful for the delay. It gives him time to settle, breathing through the loss that never really gets easier - only farther away. Other losses are closer. More acute. Now's not the time for any of them. If he's ever been this sore, he doesn't remember it. "Maybe not today, Tim." He drops a gentle kiss to the silky mop of black hair resting on his shoulder.

Tim accepted that without a fight and lifted his head off Dick's shoulder, only just realizing how tucked against him he'd been. There was no need for a mirror to know what this scene looked like, a child with black hair and blue eyes held protectively in the arms of a man with the same. They really would look like brothers right now. Or father and son, the family that both had lost. His lower lip trembled and he bit it to make it stop. "You can put me down now. We have a lot of ground still to cover tonight." And he wanted, right now, nothing more than to go home.

Wide blue eyes looking back at him, lip trembling - which he's not supposed to see but night vision goggles means he does but doesn't have to acknowledge it.. Dick knows perfectly well what an outsider would see. A heart to heart conversation between father and son. They might imagine, not incorrectly, that the mother had been lost or never arrived. It wouldn't look any less heartwarming if they saw him touch his forehead to Tim's head. "Let's make it quick then. Your body needs sleep and mine needs to be horizontal."

"Okay," Tim wriggled a little, indicating Dick should set him back down. "We can cut the full sweep out to the far side of the island short. The people out there tend to be the sort that can take care of themselves."

Every muscle in his back screeching protest for repetitive stress, Dick takes the hint and lowers Tim to the tree branch. "Good idea. Seems like whoever's in charge here makes a point to do whatever it's going to do when there's no one to see. So, we'll concentrate on the strictly human sorts of evil tonight."

Tim wasted no further time on discussion. This was his patrol, so he led, through trees, over huts, in and out of the meager lights. It wasn't anything like being home, nothing could be, but the knowledge that Dick was right there, just behind him, made it a little better.

He follows, joy in flight tempered by exhaustion and the pain waiting for his hind-brain to pronounce it safe to let down and indulge it all. There are flips, doubles and triples, but no more quads. Not tonight. His parents are the only other humans who ever possessed the skill. In all the years he's been patrolling, he can't remember more than a handful of nights he's wanted to be done before they even started. Only Tim, there ahead of him, got him through.

Another quiet night on Tabula Rasa. Tim had no idea that he'd ever actually miss the muggers, the pimps, the dealers. They had given him purpose, a reason to put on the suit every night. This had been what he'd wanted all those years ago, the chance to see an end to crime, and end to the need for their kind of justice. The return to the treehouse was as uneventful as the trip out had been. The wood was damp when Tim landed, his sneakers skidding across the roof. Rainshowers here were usually brief. He caught himself and turned to watch Dick land.

Dick misses the physicality of it as much as the sense of purpose. He misses the comraderie of it. As strained as his muscles are, he'd give almost anything to be dropping from the treetops with Tim, thoroughly outnumbered. Taking out two with a straddle kick before he even lands. Then spinning to join Tim to put the fear of Bats in the rest. Even though he'd wanted to be home and horizontal, getting there without a single fight is anti-climatic, wearying in a way that's already old two weeks later. His heart hits the roof of his mouth when Tim's feet skid -- too little -- but he catches himself and Dick restrains his drop to a single front sommie pike, pointed toes slapping his boots to the roof and holding him fast. "Never thought I'd miss Fast Eddie Fremont."

Tim tugged his mask off again, taking deep breaths of the humid air, the smell of it earthy and clean in a way that's still strangely alien after two years. He ran his hands through his hair, sweat-damp. "Bet he doesn't miss you," he returned with a smirk that turned into a yawn.

"Unless things are different with me than you, he doesn't even know I'm gone," Dick replies, curling his hand around the back of Tim's head and drawing him against his leg. "Bedtime for baby bird." They'd wash up quick and shower in the morning.

Tim nodded, leaning in a little against Dick. Sleep sounded good, even though it was comparatively early for him. This body just didn't have the same kind of stamina as he usually did. Even the nap he'd taken in the middle of the day had done little to stave off the inevitable. By his calculation, it wasn't yet midnight and yet as the adrenaline wore off, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually been in bed before midnight. His jaw cracked as he yawned, "Good night, Dick."

A fond smile quirks his lips as he tousles sweat damp hair. "Wash up first, sleepyhead. Come on. Want me to carry you down?" This, here, this moment with Tim makes everything worthwhile. The exhaustion, the shrieking pain that's starting to take over his capacity for logical thought, the empty ache of a patrol with nothing to do and no way to protect people against what's attacking them. This is something worth doing.

Tim made a face, probably about to protest again that he was not actually five but he had to stifle a yawn instead and his eyelids drooped. "Yeah, okay," he agreed instead and lifted his arms up to Dick.

Dick brushes the back of his hand against Tim's cheek before he lifts him, then tucks his sleep-slowing Robin into his chest and climbs down into the treehouse. It'll be a miracle if Tim makes it through a scrub-up awake, and he's not far behind him. He sets him down by the wash basin, and starts stripping his suit automatically, methodically, mind and body trained by long practice, not requiring thought to function.

Maybe it was just sense memory, that was what he'd claim later anyway, but once Dick had him curl into his arms, Tim had a very hard time not dropping right off. He grumbled sleepily when he was forced to find his feet and picked fussily at his costume, shedding pieces of it little by little, folding each element with the obsessive nature he usually managed to keep in check.

Soreness makes his normally fluid movements awkward while he washes himself off, and more than once water drips to the floor before the cloth makes it to his body. Bit by painful bit, he manages to sluice away the sweat and the acrid scent of exertion under Nomex-Kevlar. Fresh as a daisy is definitely pushing it, but he won't offend the ghosts who share his bed. He glances at Tim wondering if it's wrong to hope he'll wake full-grown just so that able to massage the worst of this away.

Tim was leaning on the wall, half-dressed and fully-asleep on his now bare feet. His hair was damp and a washcloth dangled from a limp hand, so it was clear that he made some kind of effort before his body gave out. They all had long ago learned how to sleep anywhere, at any time but this was pushing it even for them.

Shaking his head, smiling, Dick rescues the washcloth from Tim's fingers and tosses it in the basin. Alfred would tsk at him for not tidying up, but five year-old Tim asleep on his feet came first. One more time, Dick lifts him into his arms and carries him toward the bedrooms. Maybe it should be strange to have his eighteen year-old best friend and brother cradled to his chest as a child. It wasn't. Bruce taught them to take care of each other and put each other first. This is just one more way of doing it.

When he gets to Tim's room, he pauses for a second but shakes his head and keeps walking to his own. After such a long day and with Tim sleeping so hard, Dick doesn't want him waking up alone and afraid. Setting Tim in the middle of the bed, Dick snares a clean (if faintly hideous) pair of boxers on his foot, slides them on, then lies down, pulling the blanket up over them both.

Tim stirred once when Dick lay down, curling toward the warm body, but that was the only sign of life in the small Robin. His hands were open-palmed, slightly curled. He slept like a child even when he was full grown though it wasn't usually quite so obvious, lips parted, stomach rising and falling with each soft breath. There was a distinct sense that you could have played a whole marching band through the room and he wouldn't have so much as fluttered an eyelash.

Dick smiles when Tim curls into him, fighting sleep and the micro-tears in the muscles all along his delts and down his spine to press a kiss to the crown of Tim's head. "Good night, little Robin." With effort, he manages to twine an arm around Tim, and promptly drops off to sleep between one thought and the next. They've been trained to catch sleep where you can and wake for a hitched breath.

Which makes it all the more extraordinary that neither of them wakes when it happens. One second Tim is five and tiny, the next he is eighteen, two inches shorter than Dick, and almost equally cut. Dick notices all this in the distant way that a man used to having another adult body in bed with him notices: he wakes with his top arm curled around Tim's waist, his leg thrown over his hip, his back to his chest, his lips to his shoulder...and morning wood nestled comfortably in the crack of his ass.

The subtle transition of someone else waking up was enough to disrupt Tim's sleep, his eyes remained closed but he woke enough to identify the scenario--bed, blanket, Bart. The blanket part was sort of unusual. Bart had a tendency to steal it and end up wrapped in it like a cocoon. It was enough to draw Tim the rest of the way awake, eyes blinking open without any of the usual blurriness. Not his room. Which meant that the body behind him was not his boyfriend.

A glance down at the arm around his waist gave the answer, familiar scars though he hadn't seen them from this position since Gotham's no man's land. He made a confused noise then remembered. Halloween. Dick must have just put him to bed in his own bed. It made perfect sense, in Dick sort of way. Though it had resulted something of an awkward position. Hmm.

Obviously Tim's awake. Equally obviously he's encompassed the situation. Considering the state of his cock, it would be difficult to miss. The awkwardness doesn't come from that, for Dick - or, if he really thinks about it, Tim. Both of them know its an autonomic reflex. It's a little harder to explain the way his lips had been skating along Tim's shoulder in the moments before he realized in his fore-brain who it was. The fact his hind-brain knew perfectly well and still thought kissing would be a good idea, he's not even going to think about right now.

"Morning." He drops his forehead to Tim's shoulder, unwinding carefully. Brushing his hand against Tim's morning erection isn't going to make any of it less strange. "Sorry about that," he says when he's flat on his back, arms securely behind his head. Granted the sheet's tented at his waist, but at least it's covering him. Shame has never been a Dick Grayson strong suit.

Tim rolled to his back then sat up. The pants of the ninja costume had grown with him, and like every pair of pants since the dawn of time, had rumpled up to his knees while he slept. He adjusted them back down, fussy, more bothered by that than the circumstance. His voice reflected it when he spoke, "It's a perfectly natural biological response. I won't take it personally. Did you sleep well?"

For a hot flare of a second, Dick wants to pin Tim and tell him maybe he should. Maybe it is personal. Discretion is definitely the better part of sexual attraction when it comes to family, and Dick ought to know. Of everyone, Dick definitely ought to know. Fortunately, he's pretty sure he can't move right now unless his life depends on it. He grunts, intending for it to sound like Bruce. It comes out more like an animal in pain. "I slept fine. I think I'm stuck." His shoulders have seized so hard, it's almost not an exaggeration.

Tim frowned and reached over, sliding his hand behind Dick's shoulder, fingers pressing up against the muscle--too warm and rock hard. "Hot springs and a massage for you. You over did it yesterday. Roll over and I'll adjust your back first." None of them are chiropractors and only Tim had any kind of real medical training but they've been doing these sort of adjustments for each other since forever. Alfred made sure they all knew how.

Dick lifts an eyebrow for the tone, but Tim's hand feels good and he has no problem following orders from teammates and partners that make sense. "Now you tell me there's a spa and hot masseurs on the island," Dick complains, even though that's not what Tim said. He rolls carefully - more because he's still damned hard than because of his shoulders. "My quads are a screaming mess too. Worse than the day after the circus burned." He'd carried a lot of scared and crying kids that day, too.

Tim knelt next to Dick, smoothing a line down his back to check the alignment of his spine then centered his hands between Dick's shoulder blades. "Deep breath," he ordered, then on the exhale pressed down sharply, the crack of it audible. "Hot springs, not a spa And me, not a hot masseur. Probably for the best, most people would be afraid to hurt you and you wouldn't feel any better after."

Pain lances out through his muscles. Dick grits his teeth and manages, barely, not to whimper. Another two breaths and his body relaxes. "I might kiss you for that," Dick says, mostly to the pillow. On the up or, well, downside, the pain's taken care of his other problem. "So some enterprising soul has set up a beauty spa in the cave next to the hot springs. With body wraps and mud facials and pedicures. Right? And, exactly," he teases, safer now that he's not ready to nail the nearest warm body just for being warm. "A hot masseur."

"Ha. Ha." Tim returned, deadpan. He moved his hands over Dick's back clinically, checking for any other trouble spots, any strains or pulls that would need more coddling than just a trip to the springs to cure. Once he was satisfied that Dick really was just paying the price for over extending himself, he patted his shoulder and prepared to get up. "I should go check on the others. And I'm starving."

So is he, but not for food. It takes a real effort not to arch into Tim's hands and purr at the pleasure of being touched, even so...efficiently. Dick stretches his arms out over his head and lifts his ankles to stretch his lower back. When the burn's too much, he drops and slides his forearms back under the pillow. "I could make breakfast..." It's clear he's not going anywhere, and the quirk of his smile says it's a joke. Dick always makes breakfast the morning after. Roy says it's "classy, shortpants". Dick thinks of it as a way of ensuring another invitation.