[DC] The lover we never had

[runespoor7]

Title: The lover we never had
Fandom: DC
Pairing: Cass/Dick
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Batman has no inclination for his protégés' touch.
Notes: written for the dc_kink. Request: “Dick/Cass - Post-RIP angst-ridden sex. I definitely wouldn't be opposed to some "fucking Bruce through you" overtones from either or both of them.” Identity porn.

They don't talk about it. She doesn't because she doesn't talk. Not much, not enough to devote any of it to-- this. He doesn't because he wouldn't know what to say.

He doesn't know what to say to her, so he doesn't, and he doesn't know what to say about it to anyone else, so he locks it away. She makes it easy. She only comes after patrol; in the strange hours after night and when daylight is only a half-remembered lie. It's possible - probable - that Alfred knows. But the boy who is Robin doesn't, and no-one else remains who would look over the private footage. Death is keeping them busy.

Dick doesn't wait for her. He never does, of course. If she always finds him there, it's because the mission has kept him awake. Files to update; reports to complete, faithfully, the way he's been taught and which he's expected to uphold. And other traditions, as well. It's not the glass case with the Robin suit that Dick loses himself gazing at, but the similarity is otherwise striking.

When she makes her presence known, Dick is still wearing the cape. The cowl rests on his shoulders, and until he sees her he's almost forgotten how heavy it is.

“Dick,” she says. Her voice is quiet, halting.

Dick's never sure what to call her, either. The costume makes everything blurry in ways he's never been accustomed to. He should have expected it, maybe; the first time around, when it was only him and Tim (Batman and Robin), he'd been aware of the distance between himself and the costume. The cowl bridles his movements in ways that are less easy to explain than how it impedes him in battle.

She's always the one who touches him first, but he leans and gives into it in a manner that he knows he can't blame on the Batman costume.

If Batman had any type of inclination for his protégés' touch--

His breath catches when Cass cups his cheek, almost gentle under the harsh gauntlet. It's only practice that lets him swallow his whimper. Even then, he can't not lean into it, and let his eyelashes flutter closed, only for a second. Only a moment, enjoying a touch that never, never would've gone on, never would've lasted long enough for him to gather the courage to turn into it. Take the thumb into his mouth. Leaned on his toes and into a kiss.

Even now, he doesn't have to. The person in front of him doesn't wait for him to go against years of forbidding reinforcement.

Cass pulls him into a kiss, hard lips forcing his open, gauntlets dragging into his hair and tangling. Dick staggers and sighs and opens his lips, lets her push her tongue into his mouth, as if she was entitled to it. He can't repress the whimper rising from his throat, he grabs her shoulders to hold on and tug her close, closer, as close as he can get her.

She releases the kiss, and his lips make a smacking, wet sound in the cold air as he tries to continue to kiss her, befuddled by her sudden absence.

“Bat--” he begins. He wants to wince when it comes out as a whine.

The hands clasped on his shoulders stop his next words, whatever they might have been. He's known what that touch means for a long time.

“Is-- is this alright?”

She doesn't get the voice right.

Dick nods fervently, not trusting himself to speak. Not at once. He closes his eyes, swallows. And stammers “yes”, and shivers under the hand Cass runs down his cheek.

The tilt of her head, the force of the gauntlets on him, the sudden swooping that makes Dick lose his breath, all that is perfect. The next sound escaping his mouth could be a laugh, or a sob, and doesn't go past Cass' lips. She angles her head, and the kiss is wet, demanding, and-- desperate, or is it only on Dick's side?

When her teeth sink into his lower lip it stings, exactly as much as it should. Kissing Bat-dressed people comes with a warning, handle with care, visible only to those reckless and impulsive enough to fly fast through it.

He can't stop from making small sighs into her mouth, or from letting his hands skid on her cape.

The back of his thighs hits the console, and suddenly Dick is sitting down, his legs too weak to carry him, grateful for the excuse. To have the Bat crowd him, loom over him, and to be unable to do anything else than open himself.

He's never so weak that his body just stops obeying him and acts and shuts down on its own, not out there, even before Batman started training him, but here and now it seems that all the training, all the teaching he's gone through have prepared him for just this, the inexorable, invisible accumulation of a life of trying, ready to give in at the first sign the waiting might be over. It shouldn't be so. He shouldn't be that-- He's been trying.

And tonight - and now - is the proof that he was never good enough. Bruce would've been disappointed, if he'd seen enough through Dick's pathetic efforts at sublimation not to be outright disgusted by the discovery.

Cass growls against his mouth, pushing a leg between his thighs and rocking against his jock. The pressure makes him throw his head back and moan, fumble for a hold on her cape - not as rigid as it should be, not quite as heavy, but through his gloves and the blood pounding in his ears he doesn't feel the difference.

He could close his eyes and lose himself, right there, groaning on the Batcomputer and swaying against the Bat standing between his legs. Pretend that his uniform is thin enough even if it doesn't bare his legs.

The tip of the Bat's gauntlets raking down his cape set his teeth on edge, pulling on his shoulders, his neck, his chest, too heavy. Its rigidness too restricting for the scenario it should be.

“Batman,” Cass says, flat and accusing.

Dick can't whimper in protest, can't deny what Cass' haul on the cape is knocking back into him. He can only open his eyes and put his hands on Cass' hips, looking her in the eye.

Neither of them flinches, though he wants to - god, it feels so wrong.

Cass holds his gaze for a moment, and then, deliberately, she lowers her eyelids and arches against him. Thin, small-- the symbol stretched over her chest.

Even under the costumes, she feels hard, almost bony, and her rocking only emphasizes it. She moves as if she's trying to punish either or both of them, or-- like she wants punishment to come, in a shape that they can only attempt to imitate, grab at. As if she's fighting.

It's never just a figure of speech with Cass; she knows what she's saying when she thrusts against him, digging her hip into his side. None of them equals her at reading body language, but-- Dick's been speaking it since he was a kid. And Batman-- well. Everyone knows that Batman was often happier to let his fists do the talking, and most of Bruce's confessions were wordless. Bruce was always more likely to put a hand on Dick's shoulder than to say he cared.

She gives a shove, bucking against him aggressively. Too aggressive for who she is.

He bites his lips, shaping his hands on her hips to steer the brutality of her moves into circles.

She makes a high, keening sound in the back of her throat, and again as his fingers clench. Dick lays his lips against her ear, chastely, making her grit her teeth against a hiss and jerk back a step. It lets him slide off the console. He's not sixteen or twenty-three anymore, and what's an appropriate fantasy for Robin or Nightwing or just Dick-- doesn't necessarily fit the costume. He has to be Batman, and he's ready for that, can imagine nothing more meaningful, but he's not sure Batman can be him. All of him.

Deepest in his heart, there's the knowledge that Batman is Bruce. And Cass won't disagree.

She's the one doing most of the walking them to the mats. She often is. It's easier for Dick, or maybe better, to let her manage him. In part it's because she's worn a Bat symbol longer than he has, and more naturally than him; in part it's because she's young and impatient in a way that is so very easy to imagine could be Robin's. Dick's.

He knows she doesn't like it. It sets her teeth on edge, and she makes him pay for it by drawing on his cape, insistently, repeatedly, until Dick has no choice but snap back into the role, if he wants to keep the right to wear the symbol. Sometimes Dick thinks she understands the Bat better than any of them.

Tonight Dick is a little slower to react to her reminders than usual. Working with Damian is almost never the same as working with Robin; Robin's a name the boy will accept in the field before claiming the title of Batman, and Damian doesn't understand what either of them means. Doesn't understand that sometimes Dick was Robin for Bruce, and that standing as Dick in front of Batman was each time an ineluctable transgression. That being Bruce's son , working with Batman, and carrying on the Mission, are very different things.

Dick misses Tim.

Dick misses Babs, and her none-too-gentle irony.

Cass smells like Bruce always did; Gotham after patrol and the steely hint of the soap he used.

If he keeps his eyes closed, for a few seconds Dick can pretend.

Can be pinned to the mats and buck.

“Stop... moving like that!”

Like that. Not like him. Cass understands the costumes very well indeed. Dick may not agree to it, Batman makes certain... demands... which are not within Dick's rights to refuse. The question of whether Bruce might have felt allowed to refuse, of course, is entirely moot, and-- Dick isn't sure how much he'd like to know the answer.

If he ever grew so anxious, he'll always be able to ask Cass. Chances are she'll know. She knows how Batman works, and when Dick's not being honest.

Dick's never honest these days. Not with the costume on, when he has no choice but being Batman the way he hasn't wanted to be since too long to count, and not when he eschews that constraint and the responsibility Bruce entrusted him with. No wonder Cass only comes at night. When Dick isn't sure which of them he is anymore, and which he should be.

And when they're--

Having sex manages to be both literally truthful and utterly off the mark, fucking makes him wince, together is the biggest lie. When they're doing this--

The tips of her fingers dig on his neck, close to his jaw, on the exact place where a nerve strike would leave him paralyzed. It's not a threat, merely Cass being frustrated.

“Be him.” She squirms on him, the inside of her thighs teasing him, even through all the layers they haven't yet started to remove, the jock and his costume and hers and the capes getting in the way. Her thighs feel like they're cradling him, close and yet not close enough, and he grabs her and makes her move. Make her grind against him in time with the breathy little moans she probably doesn't know she's making, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clutched on the front of his cape.

A strand of hair, damp with sweat, gets in front of her eyes, sticking to her forehead in a curl pointed inwards. His hand is shaking when he brushes it away. The gesture does nothing for him else than the disruption of a visual-- pattern. Black gauntlet faltering against black hair. They could be in the middle of patrol, on a rooftop somewhere, or they could've been fighting until the violence turned into kissing with their whole bodies.

The first time Cass and he did this, they were still fighting long after they found themselves naked enough and tangled into each other. Maybe they haven't stopped fighting since.

It sends a jolt through his arm when she seizes his wrist, hard. Unyielding, unforgiving. Dick doesn't resist as she brings his hand to her breast. He responds without thinking, cupping her breast through the costume, his thumb crossing into the symbol. She pushes against it. More when he presses; grinds down onto him with her knees around his chest, clenching and unclenching in time with his breathing.

“Oh--”

His other hand fumbles to her hair again. Her neck, thin and taut under his touch. The blood drumming too fast in the pulse point there. The fold of her cape guiding his hand to the front, and her shivers guiding his hand under the cape, over her shoulder, resting over the hidden zipper.

The only sign he has that she's mirrored his actions on his own costume is the sudden chafing of Nomex/Kevlar cape against the small patch of suddenly naked skin. And Cass' fingers slipping into the opening. His eyelids droop - the texture of the gauntlets - and he moans, his limbs tensing - the boots aren't light enough to let his feet flex and brace on the ground like they try to, so he's left rubbing against the weight and feel of--

When he opens his eyes again, Cass is bending down to him, her face shadowed. Just close enough that he can hear her breathing, shorter than usual. Sending puffs of air tickling on his cheek. He can't see her expression, but he knows that she's staring at him as she kneads circles on the skin she's bared. Watching, spying, hungry for anything that could draw her closer to--

Dick's doing the same thing.

The way his diaphragm stifles his hitched gasps, the denial of what it is he needs, the dissociation between mind and body, all he owes to Bruce. Whether they were conscious lessons or not. Whether they were lessons Dick wanted to learn or not.

He can control the twinges, at least well enough that Cass doesn't make him breathlessly loud when she strips pieces of the armor off him. Efficient, and letting him savor long, perfect strokes when she does, like she feels the muscles hardening when she touches them, like the checking done one thousand times before, she can finally let herself savor, like the shivering isn't a cause for concern but instead an opportunity to be reveled in. There's nothing perfunctory about it, except that finally it ends.

She's good at it. She's so good. Every time it's exactly like it should have been, one of the hundreds of should-have-beens Dick's imagined over the years.

Not because she reads him, not because she knows how and where he wants to be touched. Not because when Dick is dying for a bite on the shoulder blade Cass might lean down and imprint sharp, small teeth.

But she can move like Batman, and she knows how he thought. She wants many of the things he did, and she's able to guess at the rest. She knows him as well as Dick ever did, and it would hurt if Dick didn't know in his bones that she knows him almost the reverse way than he does, and that she and he have met in their knowledge of him only incidentally, because in the middle of Bruce's inevitability winding paths criss-crossed through his identities, and they stumbled across one another looking to him.

They don't love him from the same place, but the end result is that sometimes it hurts to look at Cass, because mirror images don't teach you how to avoid mistakes.

When she's kneeling between his legs and tracing the quivers in his thighs, when she wraps her hand around his erection - he's naked, he couldn't tell you how but he knows he's been helpful and lost, as he always is - he sees enough of her that he doesn't beg Bruce to jerk him faster.

It's not fair to her.

“Oh-- Cass--”

She looks up at him. Lets go of him and his thighs twitch further apart, and the sound he makes is pained and obvious. Reassuringly she pats his thigh, twice, before she starts removing her gauntlets. And it wasn't a Cass reaction and it's not a Cass gesture, but the way she bites her lip isn't pretend and the hunch of her shoulders is something she does naturally, and Dick realizes he's catching his breath when the first glove is off. She bites the tip of a finger glove and pulls, gleams of white flashing, jerking her head back rhythmically.

When the second gauntlet falls on the ground, her hands are the only thing naked on her except for her face. The reflection of his own need Dick sees in her eyes.

He reaches toward her, trailing against the cape as the flat of her palms holds his thighs to the mats, warm, and the kind of calluses all the manicures in the world wouldn't be able to smooth away.

“I-- you're not-- we should-”

She bends her neck to nip on the inside of his thigh, twisting a convulsion and a mewl out of him. And stays there, her hair tickling him, her breath warm.

“You'll give me head. After.”

The squeeze she gives him cuts short what he was going to say. There's a lot to be said, he knows that, but he can't focus on what it is he wanted to say. Cass' hair teasing him as she nibbles a line down his thigh, with the same rhythms as she works him is driving him crazy, his thighs shivering open and shivers rolling up his spine. He gasps and tries to buck, but her other hand nails him back down, against the mats, and-- it's not near any particularly vulnerable strike point, he could shake it off if he wanted, but--

Warm, and firm, and a hand holding his thigh down, and it's enough, it's more than enough to make Dick hold it. Hold the position and try to lock his muscles and try to still, and it-- he's still shuddering, of course, but he's no longer struggling for more, it counts for something, it's got to count for something--

And he tries to calm his heartbeat, control, and that's when he realizes that he's babbling, been babbling for who knows how long.

“You don't have to-- oh, this, you're so good-- you don't need to--”

The fingers are bobbing steadily up and down his cock, down to touch his sac, and it sparks something through him again, and. Writhes.

And gasps.

“Oh, oh, Cass--”

Bucks like an explosion when she lets him feel her tongue, just above the inner side of his knee, and it's-- His hand fly down, the one that's not uselessly scraping at the mats, but it's not like he could let go even if he tried to, grasping for her head. Without a glance up she snatches his wrist out of nowhere, lashing through the air. Like she knows this, what to expect, knows him, too well for the too short time they've been doing this.

It makes her hair brush more against him, and he's not even midway through another gasp and the back of his hand thumps against the mat, because she's pinning it.

“Let me touch you--”

And tightens her grip until the bones in his wrist grind together, and the shadows of the Cave reach out in front of him, blacking out everything and tautening him. His whole body is strained, agitated with pulsations. A bridge too breakable to be crossed under the wind, his hips lifted off the mats, writhing until the hand that's not a vise around his wrist pushes him back down.

Suddenly his cock is free and needing, and it makes him blink his eyes open, crane his neck until he can see her.

She's got one hand on his hip, one hand around his wrist, and none at all on his erection, leaking and desperate for attention.

And she's staring at him as though she's waiting for him to stop being so indisciplined. No trace of impatience in her expression, but Dick's used to reading through shades of blankness, and this one...

He grins at her like even if he wasn't naked he wouldn't be wearing a Bat costume, and like she's wearing the right one. Grins wider when the tension of her facial muscle shifts - if her face was shadowed so would the shadows - and she's expectant and staring at him now.

Forcibly he makes himself stop clawing at the mats and with that hand he beckons her close. The tips of his fingers feel hot, tingling with abrasion.

“Hey,” he says, and smiles. It's easy to smile when faced with that look; it's one Dick's been seeing since it feels like forever. Not just on Bruce's face, it's a family look. Babs sometimes had that expression, and Tim, like they were not quite sure what Dick was about to do and weren't quite sure they were going to approve of it, but wouldn't look away because... well, because Dick's a performer at heart and he loves to give a good show.

Especially if it requires audience participation, and he smiles brighter and wider as Cass inches closer.

“I think it'd be better if you let me do something for you right now.”

He gestures at his lower abdomen, and the way his cock-- it's lucky that Cass doesn't need to look at it to know what he means, because just that might be enough to trigger his orgasm. The phrase 'so hard it hurts' comes to mind, and... Let's just say that Dick is congratulating himself on being so articulate. It's only possible because he's had so much practice at it, but. It's not so bad, considering.

She gets closer, and his fingers graze against her cheek, trembling a little as he follows the curve. She bites her lip and Dick tries to make his hand steady, constant, but he's shivering too much. The caress keeps breaking over the pure line of Cass' face, so in the end he lays the whole of his hand, cupping her cheek with his palm and his fingers.

“Cassandra,” he says. “Come over here.”

This time she's the one shuddering. Her breath hitches as she crawls over him, straddling his thighs.

If it were him in her place, he'd close his eyes and lean into the touch, it's how he's imagined it for longer than he knew what it meant, but she's not him, and even their position fits nowhere in Dick's imaginings.

This is not how it would have happened for him, and the range of his fantasies, memories, wishes, fails him.

He covers his hesitation pretty well, slips his other hand from under Cass' loose fingers, freezes the smile before it can make its way to his lips, rueful, apologetic, bright, happy, a distraction technique he's practiced since he was an artist under the big top and which wouldn't do anything for Cass but remind her who she's really with.

But she's Cass, and she can see the instant when he doesn't know what to do, the instant where he starts making it up as he goes. And Bruce might do the same if he were with her, but not the same way.

She covers the hand he has on her face with her own, nudging her fingers between his, and she tugs it away, softly, slowly.

Until their hands are clasped together and they're looking straight at each other.

“Together?” he suggests. He can't help the poor, derisive smile constricting his lips.

At first it looks like nothing will change, and he will fail this too, fail her in this like he's failed everyone in everything else. He looks at her and he feels like he's drowning in unfathomable eyes, and his lips part, and it's going to be an apology to the one he's failed most of all, he knows it is like he knows Bruce's look in Cass' eyes, and then-- the look in her eyes changes.

Stops being unreadable as her face scrunches up, and she gives a squeeze to Dick's fingers, sliding away from him, before she lets go of his hand and starts peeling away at her costume.

Dick's uncertain whether she'd accept his help. In doubt for once he stays immobile. Where she put him, and watches her do away with the black of her cape and the black of her tunic and the black of her tights.

Under it all she's shockingly pale and scarred.

Every time it's a revelation. Dick's eyes follow the web of old lines, and like every time he thinks of Bruce. Bruce wore more scars than he should have been able to survive long before Dick was no longer Robin. Dick doesn't have so many; no-one he knows does. Except Cass, whose myriad of scars is by far the closest to those Dick used to glance at, under the showers or after training, until he knew them as well his own.

He's still searching for Bruce on her skin riddled with scars when she grabs his hand again and folds down onto him, guiding his cock inside her with her other hand.

He groans and grips her fingers as she settles, slowly, slick and hot around him and gripping his hand back. She's all lithe and muscled, on him and around him, flexing...

“He loved you.”

Dick gasps and jolts. She won't let go of his hand, and she doesn't drop her gaze. Her eyes are planted into him like a thousand knives Dick can feel cutting to his soul. His neck tenses and he can feel a muscle twitch, but he's as unable to look away as if-- heh. As if it was Bruce on the other side of that look.

It's a look that makes Dick want to beg for mercy, implacable and unrelenting, like her knees jabbing into his sides. If it was Bruce Dick would be paralyzed, unable to utter a word to defend himself. Unable to ask for forgiveness, because Batman wouldn't look at him this way if he didn't deserve it. Batman knows. And Dick would take his hostility.

Batman's standards are the only ones that have mattered to him in the long run.

“Cass, I'm not... He loved all of us.”

The sharp bones of her knees jab into his ribs, making him wince. She narrows her eyes.

“Do not. Take it lightly.”

If they were up Dick would start pacing by now, probably on his hands. As it is, with Cass weighting him unforgivingly down, he can only flit a thought for the rings and the bars and the rest of the equipment surrounding them. This is not a conversation he's ever wanted to have.

Even with Cass, who must have known even when Dick refused to admit it to himself.

He can't make himself smile.

“I'm not. Cassandra... He loved all of us. I-- you know he did.”

She's rocking and each of her moves focuses heat low in his abdomen, he can hear the little sucking noises the motion makes as it takes her a little off of him and then back, until she has all of him in her. The rhythm of her, the control, it's like she's dancing. Practicing. Some advanced and unknown martial art that she's easing into before taking her opponents down with it.

Her free hand lazies to his nipple, skims a circle around that makes him throb.

“He. Loved you. The most.”

Enough, that's enough and too much and too little and he shouldn't hear this, but when he squeezes his eyes shut he can't shut his ears the same way. And Cass continues, in the same pitiless voice.

“He thought you were-- beautiful. Not cautious. When he looked at you, he thought of... grace.”

A tremor makes his hips jump before he can catch it. Her eyes are cold and hot and she's using her body like a weapon. No. Like a tool, something that has uses and no soul, and which is barely worth thinking about. (Bruce never took good enough care of himself.)

He feels himself tingling everywhere they're touching, and everywhere he can feel her look, and everywhere he knows Bruce looked. Even if it was to check on his progress and to point out his mistakes. Everywhere.

“He never. Wanted you. To be Batman.”

She's gritting her teeth now, her words as choppy as Dick feels.

Sparks shooting off from his lower back, his shoulders, from behind his eyes, ground from Cass' smooth motions and her stone-hard thighs. Sharp and unremitting and crushing gasps out of Dick.

More urgent when she braces her hands on his chest and her eyes flutter closed for a moment, and she shoves back to fuck herself back on him. And keeps going, damp hair whipping around her face, nails raking red-hot trails into him with every thrust back.

Dick's body is driving upward, and he can't feel anything except her, he's out of control--

“Cass--”

And she's hot and clenching around him, and wringing herself down viciously, and he gasps and it's much too late to keep the orgasm from breaking through him.

It cuts his breath off and blanks the world out. For a moment there's nothing but perfect, endless nothingness where even heartbeats are a myth, and conscience a non-issue. It lasts only an instant before Cass' continued grinding reminds Dick that he exists.

Cass' skin is flushed, she breathes harshly. Even the way she moves-- it was violent before, now it's getting just rough. She's not getting enough of what she needs. And Dick can feel himself softening inside her, can feel the moment where he'll be dislodged and slip out. She tilts her hips forward so she can-- try-- to get the stimulation from bearing down against him, growling in frustration when even her best moves don't--

It's clumsy, but Dick gets his fingers against her and feels for her clit. Even Batgirl gets a little lost in the middle of sex.

Good, since it means he can make her react. Like slipping a finger between the lips of her pussy, slick as anything, and pushing a little on the small nub. Not too light, but nowhere near the violence she's spending.

Friendly-like, and it makes her spasm under his hand and open her thighs. She doesn't stop undulating, but she doesn't disable his hand, so he takes that as an invitation to continue.

“'S not going to take long, I promise,” Dick pants, rubbing with short strokes. The angle sends flares in his shoulder, but when he twists his finger she thrashes. And lifts a little, and that's an encouragement as well, so he adds another finger next to the first, firmer. “Just this, you're almost there--”

She throws her head back, sending her hair flying and arching with her hips and the crook of her back and the taut line of her waist and her breasts jutting toward the sky. Beautiful and focused. Riding him. It wouldn't look strange suddenly if they hadn't taken all their clothes off, if Dick caught flashes of the Bat on her chest. If she growled and smiled at him in between.

“You're perfect,” he breathes.

Crooking his fingers and she comes, curling back over him, keening low in her throat, and stills.

She's trembling, he notices; as much as he is when he takes his hand off of her, with a sucking, obscene sound.

He can't bring himself to look at her, when she shifts carefully on him. Dick would like to say something, move, tell her that he's sorry he's a dumb moron and she's beautiful and she doesn't need to leave, hug her and coop her up to bed and talk about the Bat and Bruce and Babs and Robin and Batgirl and where Cass and Dick fit and how, act out how it used to be when it was just Bruce and him and Alfred and Barbara like it's a Cinderella story, until she please, please stays.

But Batman isn't effusive, and in this his impersonation is as good as Cass'.