![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Yes, Koriand’r, there is a Santa Claus
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Kory, Donna, Roy/Dinah, Lian, Teen Titans,
Word Count: 7,366
Series: The Other Wife
Acknowledgements: Thanks to thyme and M. for the betaing.
General Summary: For a year, Dick and Barbara had the perfect marriage. Then came Kory…
Chapter Summary: Dick kissed Kory, Roy and Dinah took their relationship to the next level, Lian is old enough to say hell, and Barbara throws a Christmas party. Then, things get complicated.
Month 4
Month 5 – December - Yes, Koriand’r, there is a Santa Claus
When Dick woke from a wet dream about Kory that made him feel sixteen again, he went to the kitchen for breakfast. Kory was waiting. He considered making a break for it.
“Please don’t go,” she said.
“It won’t happen again,” he told her plainly.
“I’m not even sure I want it to.”
“You shouldn’t. I’m a married man.”
“Don’t make me out to be one of your Jezebels.”
“I’m not,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “I just love Barbara so much… I can’t lose her. I can’t even risk losing her…”
“Friends kiss all the time. Donna and I…”
“This isn’t like that.” Dick slammed his fist down on the table and hated himself for how Kory jumped. “I wanted to do more and I can’t do more and I can’t want to do more and you and me? We can’t be together.”
She nodded dolefully. “It won’t happen again.”
“Yeah.”
Kory worked her jaw. “You are among my best friends. I would be lost without you. I don’t want to lose that either. But then, I didn’t want to lose your place in my bed either.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what he was apologizing for.
“I’m sorry too. I would never want to hurt Barbara… not like I’ve been hurt,” she added in a bitter tone that broke Dick’s heart. “But when I’m with you, something comes over me. I make… bad choices.”
She went to the JSA calendar and changed the page, bringing them to December and a picture of Wildcat with a Santa cap on. “Twenty-four shopping days until Christmas.” She slipped back on the happy mask that she had worn for so long that sometimes it was her face. Usually it was, but at times like these it was all too clear that it was just a mask. “Do you think we should chip in on something for Babs?”
The thought of going shopping with Kory struck Dick as an immensely bad idea. “You buy her anything you want, I’ll go half and half with you on it.”
And everything would be all right, go right back to normal, if he just squelched the desire and choked it and didn’t give Barbara a single hint that it existed. It would go away, in time. He just had to control himself until then.
***
“So, that was us being stupid?”
Roy said as he helped Dinah look for her stockings. She’d left one of them on, but the other one had been kicked off in the excitement and given the fact that a state of emergency could be called in his bedroom on messiness alone, two pairs of eyes were required.
“What? The sex?”
“Yeah. The sex.” He found it. Watched her pull it on and smooth it out over her toned leg.
“I don’t know. I usually have a little warning bell that I ignore when I make a sex mistake… you didn’t ping.”
“Thanks. I never got that warning bell. I get into bad relationships and genuinely think they’re good ideas.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“Why? Are we in a relationship?”
“Are you implying I just have sex with random guys?”
“No!” Giving up, Roy wrapped his arms around her and tried really, really hard not to think of how many times he’d seen Ollie do the same thing. “We see each other every day. The fact that I’ve been inside you is a bit hard to forget. So did that mean anything?”
“It always means something.” She luxuriated in his hands over her bare stomach. She was undressed except for her bra, panties, and the fishnet stockings. Judging by what was pressed up against her butt, he hadn’t wasted much time with clothes either. “The truth is, it just seemed like a good idea to a time. I don’t really put a lot of thought into my love life.”
“I never would’ve been able to tell.”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “It’s why I could never stay mad at Ollie. And why I kissed Batman—“
“You kissed Batman?”
“Yeah.”
Roy pulled his shirt on. “You kissed Batman?”
“That’s what I said.”
“What did his breath smell like? Blood?”
“What does blood even smell like?”
“Copper. That’s what it says in all the crime novels. Best friends with a librarian; don’t you read?”
Dinah threw some pants at him.
“Hey, my old CBI costume! I was wondering where this got to…” They could pass for civilian clothes, despite the jodhpurs. He pulled them on. “I have to take Lian to school. You wanna talk afterwards?” He smiled a little. “See if it’s still a good idea?”
***
An hour later, they were bringing justice to the ghetto, busting up crack dens and meth labs as Arsenal and Black Canary.
“This feels good,” Dinah said as the crack den burned down around them. She was seated on a lab table, Roy in-between her thighs. “I think we should keep doing it.”
***
Outside and hundreds of feet below, the great temple of the Gotham City Square Christmas Tree was being erected and slowly spun with ornaments from a hundred carefully chosen families, who bustled about it on painter’s ladders. Barbara watched a streaming video of it on her iPhone, then snuggled closer to Dick as It’s A Wonderful Life came back from commercial.
“December at last. Now I can finally stop freaking out about how no one pays any attention to Halloween or Thanksgiving these days.”
Dick had a hand over her pants and under her shirt, right where her love handles would be if she hadn’t turned into such a fitness nut in the past few weeks. Something about how Kory had stayed beautiful despite her expanding belly.
Speak of the devil. Kory emerged from the kitchen with a cucumber dipped in peanut butter. Her once-loose T-shirt rose up at the belly, failing to cover the swell of her pregnancy. With a deliberate strut that seemed determined not to be a waddle, Kory made her way over to them and sat down next to Dick. Both women had learned not to be territorial about the couch. Dick had learned to always sit in the middle.
“We’ll need to go shopping for new clothes soon,” Kory said, fingering what was left of her belly button, part of the board stretch of skin exposed by her bulging body. “Or I could just go naked.”
“I’ll take you,” Barbara volunteered.
Dick sighed in relief. The thought of being alone with Kory was like a landmine planted in his brain, primed to go off. Kory misunderstood.
”I’m not that fat…”
“You’re not fat, you’re festively plump,” Barbara grinned. She reached across Dick to rub Kory’s belly. “Has she kicked yet?”
Kory shook her head. She was in a waiting game with her child, having been told that human babies usually started kicking around this time. She was taking the lack of a kick as a sign of the baby’s Tamaranianness.
“He,” Dick corrected. “Could be a boy. Tests weren’t sure.”
“Don’t be greedy, Dick. A daughter of Tamaran is a fine thing. And I’m sure Barbara would be more than happy to give you a son someday.”
Barbara petted Dick’s arm, up and then down to this hand, which she squeezed. Barbara gulped. She wasn’t a cryer, but tears always seemed to swell up at the memories. Not just of sadness. After her shooting, in the depths of her depression, the news that a pelvic infection had rendered her infertile was just one more reason not to go on. Of course she couldn’t have children. The Joker had touched her life and everything the Joker touched was poison. She’d even thought it was punishment for her own carelessness. She’d literally let the Joker in, allowing her own father to be tortured and nearly driven mad. She’d allowed herself to be used as a weapon in the Joker’s war on civilization.
She hadn’t told anyone, not even her father, until two weeks before the wedding. It was just a casual comment that prompted it, but then she was telling Dick everything about the scarring in her fallopian tubes and the terrible feeling that it was punishment for something and because of her, Dick would never be a father, James Gordon would never have grandchildren, and as irrational as it was, she felt like she’d failed some test. Then Dick had taken her in his arms and told her how little it mattered to him. And in a small way, for the first time since the nightmare began, she’d felt whole again.
Kory was a grotesque reminder that no matter how Barbara felt, there were still parts missing. I’m sure Barbara would be more than happy to give you a son someday.
“I don’t see that happening,” Dick said gently.
***
It was that night that Kory crawled into bed with them. Dick was awake first, his senses attuned to the intruder in the room before he recognized Kory’s breathing. He shook Barbara awake and was, as always, spellbound by how she woke up. Green eyes resolving into their usual intelligence within moments, face tightening from the slackness of sleep, as beautiful in those first few moments of wakefulness as anything could make her.
“Hmm?”
“It’s Kory,” Dick whispered.
The woman herself stood at the foot of the bed, as if contrite. Her legs descended from a pair of his boxers and one of Barda’s camisoles fell from her shoulders to her bare stomach.
“I had a nightmare,” she said, and her tone made it clear it wasn’t just any nightmare.
The first year they’d known each other, Kory had told him about her nightmares of her time with the Gordanians. Unlike other nightmares, they were so vivid she believed she was back there. She had torn her room apart in an escape attempt, only calming down when Vic held her hands still long enough for Dick to comfort her. After that, they’d seen a psychiatrist who’d prescribed her some sleeping pills. She didn’t need them (or, more accurately, the drug with a similar affect that they synthesized for Tamaranians) for long, but her fear of the dreams was what had prompted Dick to sleep in her room for the first time. It was something altogether different that prompted him to sleep in her bed.
“Still?”
“Not for years now. But tonight I dreamed our child was in danger, I… it was worse than the old dreams.”
“Dick, you can’t really be thinking of…”
Dick pushed Barbara over, then scooted over himself. Kory started forward at the obvious invitation, but stopped when Barbara pressed Dick down against the mattress.
“She is not sharing our wedding bed!” Barbara hissed, then forced herself to calm down and looked at Kory. “Koriand’r, I know you mean a lot to… us. And we’ve obviously shared a lot. But this isn’t like that. There have to be boundaries.”
Dick really should’ve backed her up on this. She was his wife and the guilt was rising up inside him like bile. But Kory was a friend and if he could just make Barbara understand…
“Babs, you remember when I came to you? After Bludhaven?”
Barbara did. He’d come to her a wreck, both emotionally and physically, and she’d turned him out onto the streets because it hurt her too much to be his support. It’d been the most selfish thing she’d ever done and something she tried to atone for every day she spent with him. He must’ve seen that pass over her face, because he continued.
“That’s Kory. I’m not asking you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. But she does need someone.”
“So what?” Barbara hated herself for being as selfish as before, for not growing since that disastrous day, but if she didn’t get angry she’d cry. “I’m just supposed to move aside for you two?”
“You’ve lived with her all this time. Don’t you care about her at all?”
“I care. I care more about us.”
“There’ll still be an us in the morning.”
Barbara bit her lip. “Swear to me you won’t lay a hand on her.”
“Jesus, Babs, you think I need…”
“It’ll make me feel better, all right?” Barbara had raised her voice loud enough for Kory to hear.
“Do it, Dick,” Kory said.
“I swear I won’t touch her. There. Happy? Now do you mind if I comfort the mother of our child or should we play more games?”
Kory climbed into the bed on Barbara’s side, so that the hacker was between her and Dick. The sight of Kory’s pregnancy filling out a bedsheet instantly made Barbara feel guilt to the point of nausea. She really didn’t mean to be jealous, but when a supermodel who just happened to take your husband’s cherry was hanging around your bed… she was entitled to be paranoid. Dick didn’t know what was best for him, sometimes, and she could keep him from making a mistake. That was what wives did, wasn’t it? Deep down, he thanked her for keeping him from making exactly these kinds of mistakes.
Kory turned on her side. Her stomach was between them so that Barbara’s arm brushed against it.
“Barbara, are you still awake?” she asked.
As if Barbara could get any sleep.
“Barbara… I have always hoped that I would mate with one such as Dick. But in my wildest dreams, I never would’ve imagined that I would have the honor of such a brave, intelligent woman to help raise this child.”
Barbara shut her eyes and tried not to look at her. Maybe things would be easier if she didn’t look at her. “Thanks.”
“So you two can’t sleep either?” Dick asked, keeping a vigil on the ceiling. “Well, long as we’re up… baby names. We’re gonna have a hell of a time deciding on ‘em, might as well get it out of the way.”
“Actually, that should be simpler,” Barbara pointed out. “Odd number of parents, means majority rules.”
“But I am carrying the child!” Kory protested. She wrapped her forearms around her stomach possessively. “My body, my choice!”
“Okay, can we just pitch ideas at you?”
“I like that idea. Dick, you go first.”
Dick thought about it. “If it’s a boy… Bruce.”
“No.”
“Hell no,” Barbara added. “Majority rules.”
Eventually they argued their way to sleep, settling on Mar’i (the inflection was easy enough) if it was a girl and Ryan if it were a boy. They fell asleep before they could settle on a last name. Just as well. Kory didn’t think Barbara would take well to learning she wanted her child’s last name to be Grayson.
***
Barbara woke up first, her internal alarm clock blaring. Kory was curled up on one side of her, Dick sprawled out on the other. One leg peeked out from under the covers and off the bed. She smiled at his ability to get comfortable despite anything and kissed his cheek, itching her lips on his stubble. He stirred and she kissed him until he was awake.
“Morning,” he said, then was looking over her shoulder.
Kory was walking away from the bed, peeling her camisole off. Barbara took his face in both hands and recentered his gaze. He smiled at her.
“You would’ve looked,” he said.
Barbara tapped him lightly on the cheek, miming a slap. “Go wash your mouth out with Listerine for me.”
“Yes ma’am.”
***
Kory dropped a Nightwing suit into Dick’s lap during breakfast. He looked up at her from the comics and Barbara lowered her newspaper (they divvied it up) to glare at the newcomer. Kory was dressed in a slender morning gown that left her long legs mostly bare as she hovered up to sit on their breakfast table.
“Try it on. See if it still fits.”
Barbara stabbed her grapefruit like it was a voodoo doll. They were both kinda orange, after all.
Dick straightened the suit out, finding an old battle scar on the shoulder. He grinned a little. “I don’t really… feel the need…”
“X’hal, you’ve been going stir-crazy in here. Dawn will not be here for another hour. Go out, do some good… we’ll be fine without you.” Kory turned to Barbara, shifting one leg over the other so they were crossed the opposite way. “Don’t you think a little air would do him some good?”
Barbara hadn’t noticed any cabin fever in Dick, despite the fact that it’d been months since he’d last put on his suit. But looking at him there, she could see his eyes lighting up with wanderlust and felt the old gloom in the pit of her stomach that he would never be hers, not fully. There would always be a part of him that loved jumping off a zeppelin with bullets at his heels more than being with her.
And she was okay with that.
“Go on, give your legions of fangirls something to talk about. We’ll be here when you get back.”
Dick practically leapt out of his chair. He kissed her, the suit slung over his shoulder. “You know you’re the only fan I want to please.”
He moved off, revealing to Barbara that Kory was sitting in his seat, calmly slicing up a roll of summer sausage. There was something perversely subversive about that completely open and honest smile.
“It’s good for him to get out of the house,” she said. “We can have some girl time.”
“Yeah,” Barbara replied sarcastically, “rent scary movies, talk about boys, fix popcorn, do each others’ hair…”
“You’d look good in buns,” Kory said without an ounce of irony. “Pass the milk, please.”
Barbara did. Kory used it to fill up Dick’s half-eaten cereal bowl to the brim. Then gulped the whole thing down in one extremely long swallow.
“I’ll try to be home by five,” Nightwing said, adjusting his mask as the spirit gum sealed.
“Be careful,” Barbara said.
“Don’t get killed.”
“Yes to the second, eh to the first,” Dick said, wobbling his hand back and forth to demonstrate.
As he moved past Kory, he ran a hand over her pregnant stomach. Kory held onto his arm as it passed out of her grip, their fingers briefly flitting. Barbara very calmly considered what would happen if she screamed at the top of her lungs.
***
Roy handed another piece of junk mail to Lian for origami practice. Jade insisted… but Lian enjoyed it too. The next envelope was a surprise. Roy was still turning it over in his hand when Dinah finished drying her hair and came out of the bathroom.
“It’s the Graysons,” Roy said, the name said in the same tone Lian used to refer to bullies and people who thought Pokemon was dumb. “Think it would be too melodramatic for me to burn it in the fireplace?”
“Daddy, daddy, you’ve gotta remember to put the fire out on Christmas Eve so Santa’s butt doesn’t get burned.” Lian held out a note from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. “Look, look, a swan!”
Dinah snatched the envelope from him. “That’s a very nice swan, Lian.” She thwapped Roy with the envelope. “It’s in Barbara’s handwriting.”
Roy grunted and started making his own swan out of his credit report, to Lian’s immense delight and criticism. Dinah tore the envelope open and scanned the letter.
“Oh, they sent a Christmas card.” She held it out to Roy, who turned his nose up at it, then to Lian. She opened it. It played a Christmas carol.
Dinah held the letter in front of Roy’s face. Although the card had been signed by Dick, the letter only had Barbara and Kory’s signature. “They invited us to their Christmas party.”
Roy made a hmm sound. “Is it snowing in Gotham?”
“Yes.”
“So hell has frozen over. That would explain it.”
“Daddy said the H-E-double-hockey-stick word,” Lian said.
“Lian, you’re a big girl now, and you’re mature enough to say ‘hell’.”
Dinah sat down next to Roy. “Babs is my friend.”
“So go. I’m not stopping you.”
“Hell yeah!” Lian chorused.
“I wanted us to go together. All our friends will be there.”
“So will Dick.”
“Including Dick.” Dinah latched onto Roy’s side, rubbing his arm. “And Kory, who you really should be happy for. I’m sure they’re as anxious to be friends again as you are.”
“I’m not,” Roy said, crossing his arms. “And I don’t see why I should have to grovel in front of him when he’s the asshole who quit.”
“If you want groveling, I can call Barbara. I’m sure we can arrange something.”
Roy stood up, further breaking off Dinah’s grip. He stomped his way over the rug and probably would’ve kept going right through the coffee table if he hadn’t wheeled back on them. “Fine! The Outsiders will throw our own Christmas party and he can come over here to grovel!”
“Hell yes!”
“Hell no. Thunder is introducing Grace to her parents, Katana is in Japan, Rex is with his family… Owen might be up for it, but he doesn’t seem the Christmas cheer type.”
Roy groaned and fell over the back of the couch, landing upside-down on the cushion. He rubbed his temples. After a moment, Dinah took over for his fingers. A moment after that, Lian walked up to his head and shoulders, which were dangling off the couch, and gave him a hug.
“You don’t wanna go to a stupid party, do you?” Roy asked Lian. “We could stay in, watch movies with your Aunt Dinah…”
“Party with Unca Dick!”
Dinah giggled and tousled Lian’s hair.
“We could have pizza and ice cream,” Roy desperately bribed.
“Unca Dick’s party!”
Dinah pulled Roy up by the lapel until their foreheads touched. “And if you don’t go…” she glanced at Lian. “Well, no ‘sleepovers’ until we go to that Christmas party. Whether that’s this year or next is up to you.”
“Go, daddy!” Lian urged. “Sleepovers are fun!”
Dinah was so shocked that she dropped Roy. He landed upside-down again.
“…never say that again and it’s a deal.”
***
In the Clocktower, Kory (dressed in maternity jeans and one of the Christmas sweaters that Wally’s mother had knitted for all the Titans so long ago) flew softly around the tree, hanging ornaments on it. She had insisted on it being one of the larger ones, so they’d had to open up one of the easy-access roof panels (for flying superheroes) to fit the top in. Barbara was passing ornaments to Kory, although occasionally it looked more like she was skeet-shooting with bat-themed baubles. Dick had already snatched one of the candy canes from under Barbara’s watchful eyes and was sucking at it. Kory picked him up by the scruff of his shirt collar and dropped him in the much-patched Gordon family easy chair. He ‘oof’ed when she descended on his lap.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I’ve been a good girl or not?” She tickled his chin, enjoying the way his face flushed. He wasn’t feeling guilty about being friendly with her. It was a start. “Remember our first Christmas together?”
Dick laughed. “How could I forget?” He spotted Barbara and explained, looking past Kory’s shapely shoulder and vast mane of hair to see her. “We were going to volunteer at the Midvale Orphanage, so I dressed up as Santa Claus. Kory thought some supervillain had aged me.”
Kory thumped him on his flat stomach. “And fattened you up. I was afraid he was going to be eaten!”
“Me and Gar and the rest explained the whole thing. So Kory decided she was going to be one of Santa’s helpers…”
Kory giggled, lost in the nostalgia of the moment. It had been good, but she also remembered the feelings of loneliness and isolation that had driven her to do anything to belong… and how those feelings went away when she was with the then-Robin.
“Have you ever shopped for stockings, little jingle-shoes, and stocking caps on the night before Christmas? They do not carry them in Kory’s size. She ended up looking like Bill Bixby hulking out.”
Kory pinched his cheek. “Santa smash!”
Barbara gritted her teeth. Alright, this called for dirty pool. “Dick, remember our first Christmas together?”
Dick blinked, surprised that Barbara would bring up the painful subject of her days as Batgirl, but then he remembered. “We spent the whole night chasing down the Riddler.”
Kory shifted on his lap as he told the story of how Edward Nigma had set out to disprove the existence of Santa in one of his more dickish crime sprees. Barbara pulled a plate of cookies from the oven, shouting from the kitchen to correct some of Dick’s more fantastic story elements (the Riddler had not, in fact, spliced Velociraptor DNA to create flesh-hungry reindeer hybrids. The plot point had elicited Kory putting her hands to her cheeks in worry, which was almost certainly the desired effect) before rolling up to join them. Cookies and milk were on a plate on her lap and Dick stuffed his face while Barbara joined in the retelling, revealing that it was indeed her who had solved most of the riddles.
“Did I mention he had these two babes working for him? Query and Echo?”
“I remember that they were slutty,” Barbara said.
“Yeah, like I said, babes.”
Barbara stuffed a cookie in his mouth.
“Leave some of those for Santa,” Kory chided. The doorbell rang. “That could be him now!”
“He comes through the chimney,” Dick said, muffled through his cookie gag.
“Hmm, we’ll have to remember to put out the fire before morning.” Kory glanced at the fireplace as she went to answer the door.
Dick and Barbara shared a look.
“She still thinks Santa is real?”
“We never had the heart to correct her. Besides, big fat guy who travels all around the world in one night and leaves presents… not the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“The mother of our child believes in Santa.”
“If you had the Speed Force, you could visit every nice child in one night.”
“Not in the Miracle on 34th Street way, nope, she thinks The Santa Clause is a documentary.”
“She cried when the old Santa died.” Dick rubbed his chin. “You know, if one had a power-ring, you could make presents for all the good boys and girls too.”
“How would you know what everyone wanted?”
“Well, it would take a great deal of prep time,” Dick said with a twinkle in his eyes.
Kory led Zinda in. The aviatrix had on a demure evening dress, her blonde tresses pinned back and even her usual boots had been replaced with slippers.
“Hoo-ah! I ain’t been snookered like that since Roosevelt was Prez!”
“Kory, you snookered her!?” Dick yelped, sitting up and spilling a cloud of cookie crumbs onto the floor. “You only just met!”
“It’s tradition,” Kory said. “Mistletoe.”
“I think I just figured out why this is your favorite holiday… next to Valentine’s Day.”
“Next to Valentine’s Day,” Kory confirmed, nodding. “Oh, I made us stockings!”
She tasked Dick with hanging them
***
“See, Anissa, I told you, they just throw themselves at me,” Grace said as she left Kory and the front door behind.
“Uh-huh. You’re lucky I’m skinnier than her.”
Dick brought Barbara another cup of punch. Having nothing better to do, and not being in a partying mood, she had joined in the group commentary on Die Hard… the old Titans Christmas favorite. Mostly she let others do the riffing, commenting only to say that Alan Rickman was hot and there was no way Hudson Hawk should’ve been able to beat him.
“Hey, babe,” Dick said, sitting down next to her. “Has the dad from Family Matters shown up yet?”
“Yeah. He’s investigating the terrorists.”
“Shh, we’re trying to watch the movie,” Cyborg said, then chorused with Gar “WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL!”
“Did I miss the welcoming to the partying?” Kory asked as she sat down beside Barbara, moving a lamp from an endtable to sit on it.
“Only just. Cyborg, rewind.”
Cyborg pointed at the TV and the DVD rewound itself to the appropriate point. Kory stole Barbara’s drink.
“Whoa, whoa, hold on…” Dick took the punch from her. Barbara beamed. “Gar, you spike the punch?”
“Not… yet?”
“Yes or no?”
Gar took a flask from his vest and shook it. “Okay, no.”
Dick handed the punch back to Kory. “Go ahead.”
Kory drank it as she went to answer the doorbell. Barbara hurdled herself, in a gentle sort of way, onto Dick’s lap and leaned against him as they watched Bruce Willis kill some more terrorists.
“Maybe on next year’s greeting cards we could put down that Kory plans to kiss everyone that comes by. That would get some of your more reluctant guests to drop in.”
“Nah. The last thing we need is Guy Gardner gate-crashing.”
“He would!” Dick said, hooting. “He totally would! Oh, I’ve gotta make up a joke about that.”
Barbara felt a strange, insistent need to make him prove himself to her. “Dick, could you get me some more punch?”
“Sure thing. Yo, Wally, punch!”
Wally blurred and returned to Linda’s side as if he had never left. There was a Dixie cup of punch on the coffee table in front of Dick.
“Next time, coaster,” Dick said as he handed the cup to Barbara.
***
Kory opened the door. She kissed Roy, then Dinah, then Lian on the top of the head. Roy shifted the fruitcake in his hands to keep from dropping it, first at the sensation of being kissed, then at seeing one of the most beautiful women on Earth kiss the most beautiful woman on Earth.
“Maybe coming here was a good idea,” Roy said. Dinah smiled at him through her teeth
“Your goatee tickles,” Kory said to Roy, then crouched down as best she could to talk to Lian. “Hello there, little one.”
“My daddy says you have a baby inside you.”
“That is correct, Lian Harper.”
Lian put her hands behind her back and rocked back and forth on her heels. ”He said Unca Dick put it inside you.”
Roy and Dinah exchanged worried looks.
”Mmm-hmm.”
“Did it hurt?”
“No, little one, it felt very good.”
“Can I have a baby?”
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Roy shouted.
“Maybe you can hold the baby when she comes,” Kory said nicely.
“Hells yeah!”
Dick turned the corner; a friendly greeting died on his lips. Roy walked up to him. Dick crossed his arms. Roy held out the fruitcake, bulging his eyes as if to dare Dick to take issue with it.
“A fruitcake?” Dick took it. He grinned, shaking his head. “Man, you must be pissed.”
“Hell yes he is!”
“Lian!” Dick exclaimed. “You kiss your father with that mouth?”
“I said she could say it.”
Lian ran up to tackle-hug his leg. “I’m a helluva big girl!”
“I can see that.” Dick picked Lian up. “OOF! Roy, you got a little anvil here. What’ve you been feeding her?”
“Pizza!” Lian answered for him.
“Ooh, you like pizza, huh?” Dick planted her on his shoulder. “Roy, you wanna get some pizza with us?”
“Breadsticks?”
“You know it.”
“Lead on, Grayson.”
“Always do.” He turned, hiding his smile at the reconciliation. “Lian, airplane.”
“Aye-aye, captain!”
Lian held her legs straight back and her arms spread wide as wings. Dick, balancing her with a hand on the small of her back, carried her to the buffet table. Roy trailed behind them.
“Excuse me, I was told to expect groveling?”
”I’m sorry.”
“Better.”
“Hell yes!” Lian said, pumping a fist. “I mean, vrrooom!!“ She kept humming an airplane noise with her lips as Dick took her into the next room.
***
“See, I told you Die Hard was a holiday tradition,” Wally said to Linda.
“We should’ve gone to the JLA party. The Kents would’ve had a proper Christmas movie.”
Wally picked her up and sped her under a doorway. “We still can. But as for right now, Die Hard 2: Die Harder is a proper Christmas movie.”
“You get that one, but Die Hard With A Vengeance doesn’t take place on Christmas. By the time that rolls around, we’d better be chugging nog with Wonder Woman.”
“Pleasant mental image.”
“Take me back to the couch before I defenestrate you.”
“Not yet,” Wally said, glancing upward. He’d parked them under a mistletoe.
***
The party was getting pretty crowded, Titans and Outsiders and Birds, and some of the earlier arrivals had left on food runs, gone to restaurants or nightclubs, or hooked up behind the Christmas tree in the case of Anissa and Grace.
Kory gave everyone a warm goodbye which left them with smiles. She shook their hands, gave them hugs, and wished them a merry Christmas with an easy charisma Barbara wished she could muster. Scowling, she held out her Dixie cup to Gar.
“Spike me.”
“See? See?” Gar thumped Vic on the shoulder. “I told you women told me that all the time.”
Barbara shook her cup. “I mean top me off, Mr. Green Genes.”
Gar thumped Vic again, hard enough to sting his hand. “That’s what she said.”
Barbara sighed. There was a reason she led the Birds of Prey instead of the Teen Titans. Leaving saving the world to the men would bring about the Apocalypse quicker than six out of seven seals.
“That doesn’t look much like a holly-jolly Christmas,” Dick said in a too-rare moment of sensitivity. “What’s up?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Maybe, but it’s one of those nothings that’s important to you. C’mon, let me fix it.” She opened her mouth to speak and he interrupted “And don’t give me the ‘some things can’t be fixed’ spiel. After everything I’ve accomplished, after everything we’ve done, I think I’m entitled to give it a shot.”
Her lips turned a little ways upward. Some days it was really easy to remember why she married him. “You’re going to think I’m silly, but… why didn’t you check to see if my drink was spiked? Because you did for Kory.”
“Kory’s pregnant,” Dick said, as if that explained everything. “And to be honest…” He goosed her. “You could do with some loosening up.”
Barbara wasn’t amused. “Not Kory, though. She doesn’t need any loosening up?”
“Kory’s Kory. You’re you. I appreciate both of you for who you are… but I married you.” He kissed her, and it was really, really easy to remember why she married him. “Stay right there. I’m going to go get your present.”
“You’re going to give it to me here? In front of all these people?” she asked, mock-shocked.
“It’s not that kind of present.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I was thinking of my present.” She tapped him on the end of his nose. “After daddy’s party.”
“That is going to make conversation with ‘daddy’ awkward.” He got up, looked at her with shock over his shoulder when she squeezed his ass.
“Why don’t you ever do that to me?” Wally asked Linda.
She spanked him.
“Oww! That hurt! Do it again.”
***
Kory greeted her friend at the door. Donna was in her Troia costume, constellations of red blood joining the white stars.
“Donna! Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Santa Claws tried to rob the Salvation Army. I took the Kris out of his Kringle.”
“Come in, I’ll help you wash up.” She felt at the cut on Donna’s scalp. It was nothing in comparison to some of the injuries Kory had seen her receive, but it was still a besmirchment to her body. Fitter and trimmer than Kory’s, Kory considered Donna a monument to Earthly beauty. “One thing, though: Mistletoe.”
Kory kissed Donna hard and more aggressively than she would greet any other. Her tongue passed between Donna’s wetly parted lips. Her arms circled Donna’s trim waist to crush their bodies together. A hand settled on Donna’s smooth, rounded ass and pressed her hard against Kory’s pelvis. Donna moaned up into Kory’s mouth as the cold metal of the Tamaranian’s belt buckle chided her. Her hips would’ve thrust up to increase the brushing contact, but Kory pulled away. Grinning.
“Come. There’s so much to show you.”
They left the boys watching the same guy get into the same shit again for the sequel and adjourned to Dick and Barbara’s bedroom. Kory set Donna down gently on the bed and fetched a medical kit from behind the mirror in the adjacent bathroom. Through the parted bathroom door, Donna watched Kory strip off her Christmas sweater and dump it in the clothes hamper. Underneath she was wearing a white T-shirt that didn’t manage to cover the whole bulge of her pot belly. She wasn’t wearing a bra beneath the thin cotton.
“Great Demeter, Kory, you’re glowing.”
Kory smiled shyly. “Thank you. Now I know how you felt when you were pregnant. Thank X’Hal I can still fly, or my feet would murder me…”
Donna smiled dutifully, but looked downcast. Kory sat down next to her and gently brushed the hair from her eyes.
“I am sorry, I did not mean to remind you of your family…”
“No, no…” Donna put a hand on Kory’s thigh to let her know it was alright. “There are good memories there too.”
Kory put a hand over Donna’s hand. Slowly moved it up her thigh, over her crotch, and onto her belly. “Don’t you want to feel the baby kick? If she did, you’d be the first. That would be a new memory. A new, good memory…”
Kory’s flesh felt as it always did, warm to the point of fever, but Donna could always remember there being an undercurrent of muscle there. But through her stomach, Donna could feel only life. She smiled.
“May I…?” she asked; Kory smiled and nodded.
Donna got down on her knees between Kory’s legs and put her head against Kory’s stomach. Her highly attuned senses picked up the baby’s heartbeat, a tiny echo of Kory’s. She giggled in disbelief.
“Damn, Kory, you don’t do anything small.”
She rested her head fully against Kory, who stroked her hair. Donna was reminded of nights at Titan Tower, the long evenings when they would comb each others’ hair and danced… there had been so little dancing after Terry came into her life. Kory had been so jealous, smoldering under her happiness for Donna.
“Kory?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Does something trouble you?”
“What could trouble me? I am loved, my womb is full…”
Donna winced a little at that last part. Even after all these years, Kory’s handle on language could… squick. She kissed Kory’s belly. “Earlier, at the Tower, you said you were jealous of Barbara.”
“I was being foolish.”
“You also told me that it was foolish to deny your… our emotions.”
“That was a long time ago,” Kory said, carefully neutral. Back when they had danced.
“You don’t have anyone, do you?” Donna looked up into Kory’s eyes, a very dull jade, and saw the beginnings of tears at the sides. Kory petted her hair fitfully.
“I am loved, but it is platonic. I will never be the most important one in Dick’s life. In time, I will be second even to…” she rubbed her stomach. “Her.”
Donna rocked back on her knees. Two tears, tinted green, escaped Kory’s eyes and rolled down either cheek. She wiped them away quickly.
“Kory, you can’t… you can’t resent your kid.”
“I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t!” Kory choked out a sob and Donna was up, hugging her. “Some days I feel like just an incubator for the child Dick and Barbara wish to have. And all because that dumb, crippled cow is so selfish as to demand all his love for herself…”
Donna patted her back, rubbed her hand up and down, felt the cotton bunch up where she caressed.
“Shh, shh.” She supported Kory’s head, feeling the old scars where the control-collar had gone around her neck. “Maybe the problem isn’t that you’re not the most important person in Dick’s life. Maybe the problem is that he’s the most important person in yours.” Kory’s face came away from Donna’s chest, eyes still wet with tears. She looked at Donna wonderingly. “You have other people who care about you. And your child will be one of them.”
“Yes, yes of course… thank you, Donna.”
Kory’s hands circled around her waist, coming to rest on her lower back… just above the softness of her rump.
“You’ve always been a light to me… such a good friend… and so much more…”
Donna was finding it difficult to control her breathing. “I don’t do that anymore.” She almost said I’m married, but instead went with “My husband…”
“Has long since been mourned. Kyle, Roy… they love you, but not as I loved you…” Her hand moved along Donna’s face, caressing its side from scalp to jawline. “Never as I love you…”
“You still love me?” Donna asked, her face burning. She remembered what came after the dances.
“Donna, my sister, my love, I have never stopped.”
Donna felt Kory’s lips press against hers, so much more real and immediate than even the passionate kiss she’d received under the mistletoe. All the years of bad relationship, the millstone her life had been ground against, even the haze of her death and resurrection, none of them could contain the memory of Kory’s total devotion. Or the new, stronger evidence of it now.
One of Kory’s hands stole out to Donna's rapidly heaving breast, where it kneaded and caressed. The starlight of her costume flared against Kory’s hand.
Cringing away, Donna gasped "Aphrodite! Kory, that’s…” Then she moaned as the gently caressing hand moved to the other breast. “Aph-ro-di-te!”
In the next instant, the two women were clinging to each other, their mouths seeking and finding each other. Their tongues entwined and their hands searched feverishly along each others’ lush curves – Donna’s understated figure, Kory’s full voluptuousness – to find places to caress and fondle. And then they were on the bed in Dick and Barbara’s bedroom, Donna so unused to this love after the long gray years following their break-up, but willing to learn all over again and remembering as much as she was taught.
Kory moved the thick straps of Donna’s costume, just enough to pull the tight bodysuit down below her cleavage. Kory appreciated the symmetry of Donna’s breasts far more than the modest size; being a woman who preferred the naturalistic beauty she personified to the blonde, saline-breasted airbrushees of Playboy. Donna’s breasts were wonderfully real, pale with that most Earthly of inventions, the tanline.
Kory moved her fingers up and down where a bikini top would’ve gone. Donna blushed. Those mornings on the roof of Titan Tower, before the boys woke up, when they had sunbathed… Kory, nude, soaking up the sun, cajoling Donna to expose herself before the dawn’s rays. It had taken months for Donna to give in, and months more for Kory’s strong hands applying suntan lotion to become Kory’s mouth between Donna’s thighs.
It was that memory Kory conjured up. She laid Donna down on the bed and her hungering tongue was buried in the flesh between Donna's outspread legs. Even through the thin layer of cloth, Kory tasted Donna’s joy, tender and sweet… She undid the sash around Donna’s slender waist and looped it up around Donna’s neck, another means of touch, of reminding Donna what had gone before and promising her what was to come.
“Hera, I don't know how I’ve gone without this all these years…" Donna gazed lovingly at the other woman with smoky, full-lidded eyes.
Something, or nothing, made Kory glance to the side. Over Donna’s black-sheathed thigh she saw Dick. His mouth was slightly open, as if in shock, and lust was written all over his face. An erection strained at the crotch of his pants. Donna saw him and all three of them froze in stunned tableau. Dick’s knees were weak and he took the first action, sitting down heavily on a chair in the corner.
Month 5
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Kory, Donna, Roy/Dinah, Lian, Teen Titans,
Word Count: 7,366
Series: The Other Wife
Acknowledgements: Thanks to thyme and M. for the betaing.
General Summary: For a year, Dick and Barbara had the perfect marriage. Then came Kory…
Chapter Summary: Dick kissed Kory, Roy and Dinah took their relationship to the next level, Lian is old enough to say hell, and Barbara throws a Christmas party. Then, things get complicated.
Month 4
Month 5 – December - Yes, Koriand’r, there is a Santa Claus
When Dick woke from a wet dream about Kory that made him feel sixteen again, he went to the kitchen for breakfast. Kory was waiting. He considered making a break for it.
“Please don’t go,” she said.
“It won’t happen again,” he told her plainly.
“I’m not even sure I want it to.”
“You shouldn’t. I’m a married man.”
“Don’t make me out to be one of your Jezebels.”
“I’m not,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “I just love Barbara so much… I can’t lose her. I can’t even risk losing her…”
“Friends kiss all the time. Donna and I…”
“This isn’t like that.” Dick slammed his fist down on the table and hated himself for how Kory jumped. “I wanted to do more and I can’t do more and I can’t want to do more and you and me? We can’t be together.”
She nodded dolefully. “It won’t happen again.”
“Yeah.”
Kory worked her jaw. “You are among my best friends. I would be lost without you. I don’t want to lose that either. But then, I didn’t want to lose your place in my bed either.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what he was apologizing for.
“I’m sorry too. I would never want to hurt Barbara… not like I’ve been hurt,” she added in a bitter tone that broke Dick’s heart. “But when I’m with you, something comes over me. I make… bad choices.”
She went to the JSA calendar and changed the page, bringing them to December and a picture of Wildcat with a Santa cap on. “Twenty-four shopping days until Christmas.” She slipped back on the happy mask that she had worn for so long that sometimes it was her face. Usually it was, but at times like these it was all too clear that it was just a mask. “Do you think we should chip in on something for Babs?”
The thought of going shopping with Kory struck Dick as an immensely bad idea. “You buy her anything you want, I’ll go half and half with you on it.”
And everything would be all right, go right back to normal, if he just squelched the desire and choked it and didn’t give Barbara a single hint that it existed. It would go away, in time. He just had to control himself until then.
***
“So, that was us being stupid?”
Roy said as he helped Dinah look for her stockings. She’d left one of them on, but the other one had been kicked off in the excitement and given the fact that a state of emergency could be called in his bedroom on messiness alone, two pairs of eyes were required.
“What? The sex?”
“Yeah. The sex.” He found it. Watched her pull it on and smooth it out over her toned leg.
“I don’t know. I usually have a little warning bell that I ignore when I make a sex mistake… you didn’t ping.”
“Thanks. I never got that warning bell. I get into bad relationships and genuinely think they’re good ideas.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“Why? Are we in a relationship?”
“Are you implying I just have sex with random guys?”
“No!” Giving up, Roy wrapped his arms around her and tried really, really hard not to think of how many times he’d seen Ollie do the same thing. “We see each other every day. The fact that I’ve been inside you is a bit hard to forget. So did that mean anything?”
“It always means something.” She luxuriated in his hands over her bare stomach. She was undressed except for her bra, panties, and the fishnet stockings. Judging by what was pressed up against her butt, he hadn’t wasted much time with clothes either. “The truth is, it just seemed like a good idea to a time. I don’t really put a lot of thought into my love life.”
“I never would’ve been able to tell.”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “It’s why I could never stay mad at Ollie. And why I kissed Batman—“
“You kissed Batman?”
“Yeah.”
Roy pulled his shirt on. “You kissed Batman?”
“That’s what I said.”
“What did his breath smell like? Blood?”
“What does blood even smell like?”
“Copper. That’s what it says in all the crime novels. Best friends with a librarian; don’t you read?”
Dinah threw some pants at him.
“Hey, my old CBI costume! I was wondering where this got to…” They could pass for civilian clothes, despite the jodhpurs. He pulled them on. “I have to take Lian to school. You wanna talk afterwards?” He smiled a little. “See if it’s still a good idea?”
***
An hour later, they were bringing justice to the ghetto, busting up crack dens and meth labs as Arsenal and Black Canary.
“This feels good,” Dinah said as the crack den burned down around them. She was seated on a lab table, Roy in-between her thighs. “I think we should keep doing it.”
***
Outside and hundreds of feet below, the great temple of the Gotham City Square Christmas Tree was being erected and slowly spun with ornaments from a hundred carefully chosen families, who bustled about it on painter’s ladders. Barbara watched a streaming video of it on her iPhone, then snuggled closer to Dick as It’s A Wonderful Life came back from commercial.
“December at last. Now I can finally stop freaking out about how no one pays any attention to Halloween or Thanksgiving these days.”
Dick had a hand over her pants and under her shirt, right where her love handles would be if she hadn’t turned into such a fitness nut in the past few weeks. Something about how Kory had stayed beautiful despite her expanding belly.
Speak of the devil. Kory emerged from the kitchen with a cucumber dipped in peanut butter. Her once-loose T-shirt rose up at the belly, failing to cover the swell of her pregnancy. With a deliberate strut that seemed determined not to be a waddle, Kory made her way over to them and sat down next to Dick. Both women had learned not to be territorial about the couch. Dick had learned to always sit in the middle.
“We’ll need to go shopping for new clothes soon,” Kory said, fingering what was left of her belly button, part of the board stretch of skin exposed by her bulging body. “Or I could just go naked.”
“I’ll take you,” Barbara volunteered.
Dick sighed in relief. The thought of being alone with Kory was like a landmine planted in his brain, primed to go off. Kory misunderstood.
”I’m not that fat…”
“You’re not fat, you’re festively plump,” Barbara grinned. She reached across Dick to rub Kory’s belly. “Has she kicked yet?”
Kory shook her head. She was in a waiting game with her child, having been told that human babies usually started kicking around this time. She was taking the lack of a kick as a sign of the baby’s Tamaranianness.
“He,” Dick corrected. “Could be a boy. Tests weren’t sure.”
“Don’t be greedy, Dick. A daughter of Tamaran is a fine thing. And I’m sure Barbara would be more than happy to give you a son someday.”
Barbara petted Dick’s arm, up and then down to this hand, which she squeezed. Barbara gulped. She wasn’t a cryer, but tears always seemed to swell up at the memories. Not just of sadness. After her shooting, in the depths of her depression, the news that a pelvic infection had rendered her infertile was just one more reason not to go on. Of course she couldn’t have children. The Joker had touched her life and everything the Joker touched was poison. She’d even thought it was punishment for her own carelessness. She’d literally let the Joker in, allowing her own father to be tortured and nearly driven mad. She’d allowed herself to be used as a weapon in the Joker’s war on civilization.
She hadn’t told anyone, not even her father, until two weeks before the wedding. It was just a casual comment that prompted it, but then she was telling Dick everything about the scarring in her fallopian tubes and the terrible feeling that it was punishment for something and because of her, Dick would never be a father, James Gordon would never have grandchildren, and as irrational as it was, she felt like she’d failed some test. Then Dick had taken her in his arms and told her how little it mattered to him. And in a small way, for the first time since the nightmare began, she’d felt whole again.
Kory was a grotesque reminder that no matter how Barbara felt, there were still parts missing. I’m sure Barbara would be more than happy to give you a son someday.
“I don’t see that happening,” Dick said gently.
***
It was that night that Kory crawled into bed with them. Dick was awake first, his senses attuned to the intruder in the room before he recognized Kory’s breathing. He shook Barbara awake and was, as always, spellbound by how she woke up. Green eyes resolving into their usual intelligence within moments, face tightening from the slackness of sleep, as beautiful in those first few moments of wakefulness as anything could make her.
“Hmm?”
“It’s Kory,” Dick whispered.
The woman herself stood at the foot of the bed, as if contrite. Her legs descended from a pair of his boxers and one of Barda’s camisoles fell from her shoulders to her bare stomach.
“I had a nightmare,” she said, and her tone made it clear it wasn’t just any nightmare.
The first year they’d known each other, Kory had told him about her nightmares of her time with the Gordanians. Unlike other nightmares, they were so vivid she believed she was back there. She had torn her room apart in an escape attempt, only calming down when Vic held her hands still long enough for Dick to comfort her. After that, they’d seen a psychiatrist who’d prescribed her some sleeping pills. She didn’t need them (or, more accurately, the drug with a similar affect that they synthesized for Tamaranians) for long, but her fear of the dreams was what had prompted Dick to sleep in her room for the first time. It was something altogether different that prompted him to sleep in her bed.
“Still?”
“Not for years now. But tonight I dreamed our child was in danger, I… it was worse than the old dreams.”
“Dick, you can’t really be thinking of…”
Dick pushed Barbara over, then scooted over himself. Kory started forward at the obvious invitation, but stopped when Barbara pressed Dick down against the mattress.
“She is not sharing our wedding bed!” Barbara hissed, then forced herself to calm down and looked at Kory. “Koriand’r, I know you mean a lot to… us. And we’ve obviously shared a lot. But this isn’t like that. There have to be boundaries.”
Dick really should’ve backed her up on this. She was his wife and the guilt was rising up inside him like bile. But Kory was a friend and if he could just make Barbara understand…
“Babs, you remember when I came to you? After Bludhaven?”
Barbara did. He’d come to her a wreck, both emotionally and physically, and she’d turned him out onto the streets because it hurt her too much to be his support. It’d been the most selfish thing she’d ever done and something she tried to atone for every day she spent with him. He must’ve seen that pass over her face, because he continued.
“That’s Kory. I’m not asking you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. But she does need someone.”
“So what?” Barbara hated herself for being as selfish as before, for not growing since that disastrous day, but if she didn’t get angry she’d cry. “I’m just supposed to move aside for you two?”
“You’ve lived with her all this time. Don’t you care about her at all?”
“I care. I care more about us.”
“There’ll still be an us in the morning.”
Barbara bit her lip. “Swear to me you won’t lay a hand on her.”
“Jesus, Babs, you think I need…”
“It’ll make me feel better, all right?” Barbara had raised her voice loud enough for Kory to hear.
“Do it, Dick,” Kory said.
“I swear I won’t touch her. There. Happy? Now do you mind if I comfort the mother of our child or should we play more games?”
Kory climbed into the bed on Barbara’s side, so that the hacker was between her and Dick. The sight of Kory’s pregnancy filling out a bedsheet instantly made Barbara feel guilt to the point of nausea. She really didn’t mean to be jealous, but when a supermodel who just happened to take your husband’s cherry was hanging around your bed… she was entitled to be paranoid. Dick didn’t know what was best for him, sometimes, and she could keep him from making a mistake. That was what wives did, wasn’t it? Deep down, he thanked her for keeping him from making exactly these kinds of mistakes.
Kory turned on her side. Her stomach was between them so that Barbara’s arm brushed against it.
“Barbara, are you still awake?” she asked.
As if Barbara could get any sleep.
“Barbara… I have always hoped that I would mate with one such as Dick. But in my wildest dreams, I never would’ve imagined that I would have the honor of such a brave, intelligent woman to help raise this child.”
Barbara shut her eyes and tried not to look at her. Maybe things would be easier if she didn’t look at her. “Thanks.”
“So you two can’t sleep either?” Dick asked, keeping a vigil on the ceiling. “Well, long as we’re up… baby names. We’re gonna have a hell of a time deciding on ‘em, might as well get it out of the way.”
“Actually, that should be simpler,” Barbara pointed out. “Odd number of parents, means majority rules.”
“But I am carrying the child!” Kory protested. She wrapped her forearms around her stomach possessively. “My body, my choice!”
“Okay, can we just pitch ideas at you?”
“I like that idea. Dick, you go first.”
Dick thought about it. “If it’s a boy… Bruce.”
“No.”
“Hell no,” Barbara added. “Majority rules.”
Eventually they argued their way to sleep, settling on Mar’i (the inflection was easy enough) if it was a girl and Ryan if it were a boy. They fell asleep before they could settle on a last name. Just as well. Kory didn’t think Barbara would take well to learning she wanted her child’s last name to be Grayson.
***
Barbara woke up first, her internal alarm clock blaring. Kory was curled up on one side of her, Dick sprawled out on the other. One leg peeked out from under the covers and off the bed. She smiled at his ability to get comfortable despite anything and kissed his cheek, itching her lips on his stubble. He stirred and she kissed him until he was awake.
“Morning,” he said, then was looking over her shoulder.
Kory was walking away from the bed, peeling her camisole off. Barbara took his face in both hands and recentered his gaze. He smiled at her.
“You would’ve looked,” he said.
Barbara tapped him lightly on the cheek, miming a slap. “Go wash your mouth out with Listerine for me.”
“Yes ma’am.”
***
Kory dropped a Nightwing suit into Dick’s lap during breakfast. He looked up at her from the comics and Barbara lowered her newspaper (they divvied it up) to glare at the newcomer. Kory was dressed in a slender morning gown that left her long legs mostly bare as she hovered up to sit on their breakfast table.
“Try it on. See if it still fits.”
Barbara stabbed her grapefruit like it was a voodoo doll. They were both kinda orange, after all.
Dick straightened the suit out, finding an old battle scar on the shoulder. He grinned a little. “I don’t really… feel the need…”
“X’hal, you’ve been going stir-crazy in here. Dawn will not be here for another hour. Go out, do some good… we’ll be fine without you.” Kory turned to Barbara, shifting one leg over the other so they were crossed the opposite way. “Don’t you think a little air would do him some good?”
Barbara hadn’t noticed any cabin fever in Dick, despite the fact that it’d been months since he’d last put on his suit. But looking at him there, she could see his eyes lighting up with wanderlust and felt the old gloom in the pit of her stomach that he would never be hers, not fully. There would always be a part of him that loved jumping off a zeppelin with bullets at his heels more than being with her.
And she was okay with that.
“Go on, give your legions of fangirls something to talk about. We’ll be here when you get back.”
Dick practically leapt out of his chair. He kissed her, the suit slung over his shoulder. “You know you’re the only fan I want to please.”
He moved off, revealing to Barbara that Kory was sitting in his seat, calmly slicing up a roll of summer sausage. There was something perversely subversive about that completely open and honest smile.
“It’s good for him to get out of the house,” she said. “We can have some girl time.”
“Yeah,” Barbara replied sarcastically, “rent scary movies, talk about boys, fix popcorn, do each others’ hair…”
“You’d look good in buns,” Kory said without an ounce of irony. “Pass the milk, please.”
Barbara did. Kory used it to fill up Dick’s half-eaten cereal bowl to the brim. Then gulped the whole thing down in one extremely long swallow.
“I’ll try to be home by five,” Nightwing said, adjusting his mask as the spirit gum sealed.
“Be careful,” Barbara said.
“Don’t get killed.”
“Yes to the second, eh to the first,” Dick said, wobbling his hand back and forth to demonstrate.
As he moved past Kory, he ran a hand over her pregnant stomach. Kory held onto his arm as it passed out of her grip, their fingers briefly flitting. Barbara very calmly considered what would happen if she screamed at the top of her lungs.
***
Roy handed another piece of junk mail to Lian for origami practice. Jade insisted… but Lian enjoyed it too. The next envelope was a surprise. Roy was still turning it over in his hand when Dinah finished drying her hair and came out of the bathroom.
“It’s the Graysons,” Roy said, the name said in the same tone Lian used to refer to bullies and people who thought Pokemon was dumb. “Think it would be too melodramatic for me to burn it in the fireplace?”
“Daddy, daddy, you’ve gotta remember to put the fire out on Christmas Eve so Santa’s butt doesn’t get burned.” Lian held out a note from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. “Look, look, a swan!”
Dinah snatched the envelope from him. “That’s a very nice swan, Lian.” She thwapped Roy with the envelope. “It’s in Barbara’s handwriting.”
Roy grunted and started making his own swan out of his credit report, to Lian’s immense delight and criticism. Dinah tore the envelope open and scanned the letter.
“Oh, they sent a Christmas card.” She held it out to Roy, who turned his nose up at it, then to Lian. She opened it. It played a Christmas carol.
Dinah held the letter in front of Roy’s face. Although the card had been signed by Dick, the letter only had Barbara and Kory’s signature. “They invited us to their Christmas party.”
Roy made a hmm sound. “Is it snowing in Gotham?”
“Yes.”
“So hell has frozen over. That would explain it.”
“Daddy said the H-E-double-hockey-stick word,” Lian said.
“Lian, you’re a big girl now, and you’re mature enough to say ‘hell’.”
Dinah sat down next to Roy. “Babs is my friend.”
“So go. I’m not stopping you.”
“Hell yeah!” Lian chorused.
“I wanted us to go together. All our friends will be there.”
“So will Dick.”
“Including Dick.” Dinah latched onto Roy’s side, rubbing his arm. “And Kory, who you really should be happy for. I’m sure they’re as anxious to be friends again as you are.”
“I’m not,” Roy said, crossing his arms. “And I don’t see why I should have to grovel in front of him when he’s the asshole who quit.”
“If you want groveling, I can call Barbara. I’m sure we can arrange something.”
Roy stood up, further breaking off Dinah’s grip. He stomped his way over the rug and probably would’ve kept going right through the coffee table if he hadn’t wheeled back on them. “Fine! The Outsiders will throw our own Christmas party and he can come over here to grovel!”
“Hell yes!”
“Hell no. Thunder is introducing Grace to her parents, Katana is in Japan, Rex is with his family… Owen might be up for it, but he doesn’t seem the Christmas cheer type.”
Roy groaned and fell over the back of the couch, landing upside-down on the cushion. He rubbed his temples. After a moment, Dinah took over for his fingers. A moment after that, Lian walked up to his head and shoulders, which were dangling off the couch, and gave him a hug.
“You don’t wanna go to a stupid party, do you?” Roy asked Lian. “We could stay in, watch movies with your Aunt Dinah…”
“Party with Unca Dick!”
Dinah giggled and tousled Lian’s hair.
“We could have pizza and ice cream,” Roy desperately bribed.
“Unca Dick’s party!”
Dinah pulled Roy up by the lapel until their foreheads touched. “And if you don’t go…” she glanced at Lian. “Well, no ‘sleepovers’ until we go to that Christmas party. Whether that’s this year or next is up to you.”
“Go, daddy!” Lian urged. “Sleepovers are fun!”
Dinah was so shocked that she dropped Roy. He landed upside-down again.
“…never say that again and it’s a deal.”
***
In the Clocktower, Kory (dressed in maternity jeans and one of the Christmas sweaters that Wally’s mother had knitted for all the Titans so long ago) flew softly around the tree, hanging ornaments on it. She had insisted on it being one of the larger ones, so they’d had to open up one of the easy-access roof panels (for flying superheroes) to fit the top in. Barbara was passing ornaments to Kory, although occasionally it looked more like she was skeet-shooting with bat-themed baubles. Dick had already snatched one of the candy canes from under Barbara’s watchful eyes and was sucking at it. Kory picked him up by the scruff of his shirt collar and dropped him in the much-patched Gordon family easy chair. He ‘oof’ed when she descended on his lap.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I’ve been a good girl or not?” She tickled his chin, enjoying the way his face flushed. He wasn’t feeling guilty about being friendly with her. It was a start. “Remember our first Christmas together?”
Dick laughed. “How could I forget?” He spotted Barbara and explained, looking past Kory’s shapely shoulder and vast mane of hair to see her. “We were going to volunteer at the Midvale Orphanage, so I dressed up as Santa Claus. Kory thought some supervillain had aged me.”
Kory thumped him on his flat stomach. “And fattened you up. I was afraid he was going to be eaten!”
“Me and Gar and the rest explained the whole thing. So Kory decided she was going to be one of Santa’s helpers…”
Kory giggled, lost in the nostalgia of the moment. It had been good, but she also remembered the feelings of loneliness and isolation that had driven her to do anything to belong… and how those feelings went away when she was with the then-Robin.
“Have you ever shopped for stockings, little jingle-shoes, and stocking caps on the night before Christmas? They do not carry them in Kory’s size. She ended up looking like Bill Bixby hulking out.”
Kory pinched his cheek. “Santa smash!”
Barbara gritted her teeth. Alright, this called for dirty pool. “Dick, remember our first Christmas together?”
Dick blinked, surprised that Barbara would bring up the painful subject of her days as Batgirl, but then he remembered. “We spent the whole night chasing down the Riddler.”
Kory shifted on his lap as he told the story of how Edward Nigma had set out to disprove the existence of Santa in one of his more dickish crime sprees. Barbara pulled a plate of cookies from the oven, shouting from the kitchen to correct some of Dick’s more fantastic story elements (the Riddler had not, in fact, spliced Velociraptor DNA to create flesh-hungry reindeer hybrids. The plot point had elicited Kory putting her hands to her cheeks in worry, which was almost certainly the desired effect) before rolling up to join them. Cookies and milk were on a plate on her lap and Dick stuffed his face while Barbara joined in the retelling, revealing that it was indeed her who had solved most of the riddles.
“Did I mention he had these two babes working for him? Query and Echo?”
“I remember that they were slutty,” Barbara said.
“Yeah, like I said, babes.”
Barbara stuffed a cookie in his mouth.
“Leave some of those for Santa,” Kory chided. The doorbell rang. “That could be him now!”
“He comes through the chimney,” Dick said, muffled through his cookie gag.
“Hmm, we’ll have to remember to put out the fire before morning.” Kory glanced at the fireplace as she went to answer the door.
Dick and Barbara shared a look.
“She still thinks Santa is real?”
“We never had the heart to correct her. Besides, big fat guy who travels all around the world in one night and leaves presents… not the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“The mother of our child believes in Santa.”
“If you had the Speed Force, you could visit every nice child in one night.”
“Not in the Miracle on 34th Street way, nope, she thinks The Santa Clause is a documentary.”
“She cried when the old Santa died.” Dick rubbed his chin. “You know, if one had a power-ring, you could make presents for all the good boys and girls too.”
“How would you know what everyone wanted?”
“Well, it would take a great deal of prep time,” Dick said with a twinkle in his eyes.
Kory led Zinda in. The aviatrix had on a demure evening dress, her blonde tresses pinned back and even her usual boots had been replaced with slippers.
“Hoo-ah! I ain’t been snookered like that since Roosevelt was Prez!”
“Kory, you snookered her!?” Dick yelped, sitting up and spilling a cloud of cookie crumbs onto the floor. “You only just met!”
“It’s tradition,” Kory said. “Mistletoe.”
“I think I just figured out why this is your favorite holiday… next to Valentine’s Day.”
“Next to Valentine’s Day,” Kory confirmed, nodding. “Oh, I made us stockings!”
She tasked Dick with hanging them
***
“See, Anissa, I told you, they just throw themselves at me,” Grace said as she left Kory and the front door behind.
“Uh-huh. You’re lucky I’m skinnier than her.”
Dick brought Barbara another cup of punch. Having nothing better to do, and not being in a partying mood, she had joined in the group commentary on Die Hard… the old Titans Christmas favorite. Mostly she let others do the riffing, commenting only to say that Alan Rickman was hot and there was no way Hudson Hawk should’ve been able to beat him.
“Hey, babe,” Dick said, sitting down next to her. “Has the dad from Family Matters shown up yet?”
“Yeah. He’s investigating the terrorists.”
“Shh, we’re trying to watch the movie,” Cyborg said, then chorused with Gar “WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL!”
“Did I miss the welcoming to the partying?” Kory asked as she sat down beside Barbara, moving a lamp from an endtable to sit on it.
“Only just. Cyborg, rewind.”
Cyborg pointed at the TV and the DVD rewound itself to the appropriate point. Kory stole Barbara’s drink.
“Whoa, whoa, hold on…” Dick took the punch from her. Barbara beamed. “Gar, you spike the punch?”
“Not… yet?”
“Yes or no?”
Gar took a flask from his vest and shook it. “Okay, no.”
Dick handed the punch back to Kory. “Go ahead.”
Kory drank it as she went to answer the doorbell. Barbara hurdled herself, in a gentle sort of way, onto Dick’s lap and leaned against him as they watched Bruce Willis kill some more terrorists.
“Maybe on next year’s greeting cards we could put down that Kory plans to kiss everyone that comes by. That would get some of your more reluctant guests to drop in.”
“Nah. The last thing we need is Guy Gardner gate-crashing.”
“He would!” Dick said, hooting. “He totally would! Oh, I’ve gotta make up a joke about that.”
Barbara felt a strange, insistent need to make him prove himself to her. “Dick, could you get me some more punch?”
“Sure thing. Yo, Wally, punch!”
Wally blurred and returned to Linda’s side as if he had never left. There was a Dixie cup of punch on the coffee table in front of Dick.
“Next time, coaster,” Dick said as he handed the cup to Barbara.
***
Kory opened the door. She kissed Roy, then Dinah, then Lian on the top of the head. Roy shifted the fruitcake in his hands to keep from dropping it, first at the sensation of being kissed, then at seeing one of the most beautiful women on Earth kiss the most beautiful woman on Earth.
“Maybe coming here was a good idea,” Roy said. Dinah smiled at him through her teeth
“Your goatee tickles,” Kory said to Roy, then crouched down as best she could to talk to Lian. “Hello there, little one.”
“My daddy says you have a baby inside you.”
“That is correct, Lian Harper.”
Lian put her hands behind her back and rocked back and forth on her heels. ”He said Unca Dick put it inside you.”
Roy and Dinah exchanged worried looks.
”Mmm-hmm.”
“Did it hurt?”
“No, little one, it felt very good.”
“Can I have a baby?”
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Roy shouted.
“Maybe you can hold the baby when she comes,” Kory said nicely.
“Hells yeah!”
Dick turned the corner; a friendly greeting died on his lips. Roy walked up to him. Dick crossed his arms. Roy held out the fruitcake, bulging his eyes as if to dare Dick to take issue with it.
“A fruitcake?” Dick took it. He grinned, shaking his head. “Man, you must be pissed.”
“Hell yes he is!”
“Lian!” Dick exclaimed. “You kiss your father with that mouth?”
“I said she could say it.”
Lian ran up to tackle-hug his leg. “I’m a helluva big girl!”
“I can see that.” Dick picked Lian up. “OOF! Roy, you got a little anvil here. What’ve you been feeding her?”
“Pizza!” Lian answered for him.
“Ooh, you like pizza, huh?” Dick planted her on his shoulder. “Roy, you wanna get some pizza with us?”
“Breadsticks?”
“You know it.”
“Lead on, Grayson.”
“Always do.” He turned, hiding his smile at the reconciliation. “Lian, airplane.”
“Aye-aye, captain!”
Lian held her legs straight back and her arms spread wide as wings. Dick, balancing her with a hand on the small of her back, carried her to the buffet table. Roy trailed behind them.
“Excuse me, I was told to expect groveling?”
”I’m sorry.”
“Better.”
“Hell yes!” Lian said, pumping a fist. “I mean, vrrooom!!“ She kept humming an airplane noise with her lips as Dick took her into the next room.
***
“See, I told you Die Hard was a holiday tradition,” Wally said to Linda.
“We should’ve gone to the JLA party. The Kents would’ve had a proper Christmas movie.”
Wally picked her up and sped her under a doorway. “We still can. But as for right now, Die Hard 2: Die Harder is a proper Christmas movie.”
“You get that one, but Die Hard With A Vengeance doesn’t take place on Christmas. By the time that rolls around, we’d better be chugging nog with Wonder Woman.”
“Pleasant mental image.”
“Take me back to the couch before I defenestrate you.”
“Not yet,” Wally said, glancing upward. He’d parked them under a mistletoe.
***
The party was getting pretty crowded, Titans and Outsiders and Birds, and some of the earlier arrivals had left on food runs, gone to restaurants or nightclubs, or hooked up behind the Christmas tree in the case of Anissa and Grace.
Kory gave everyone a warm goodbye which left them with smiles. She shook their hands, gave them hugs, and wished them a merry Christmas with an easy charisma Barbara wished she could muster. Scowling, she held out her Dixie cup to Gar.
“Spike me.”
“See? See?” Gar thumped Vic on the shoulder. “I told you women told me that all the time.”
Barbara shook her cup. “I mean top me off, Mr. Green Genes.”
Gar thumped Vic again, hard enough to sting his hand. “That’s what she said.”
Barbara sighed. There was a reason she led the Birds of Prey instead of the Teen Titans. Leaving saving the world to the men would bring about the Apocalypse quicker than six out of seven seals.
“That doesn’t look much like a holly-jolly Christmas,” Dick said in a too-rare moment of sensitivity. “What’s up?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Maybe, but it’s one of those nothings that’s important to you. C’mon, let me fix it.” She opened her mouth to speak and he interrupted “And don’t give me the ‘some things can’t be fixed’ spiel. After everything I’ve accomplished, after everything we’ve done, I think I’m entitled to give it a shot.”
Her lips turned a little ways upward. Some days it was really easy to remember why she married him. “You’re going to think I’m silly, but… why didn’t you check to see if my drink was spiked? Because you did for Kory.”
“Kory’s pregnant,” Dick said, as if that explained everything. “And to be honest…” He goosed her. “You could do with some loosening up.”
Barbara wasn’t amused. “Not Kory, though. She doesn’t need any loosening up?”
“Kory’s Kory. You’re you. I appreciate both of you for who you are… but I married you.” He kissed her, and it was really, really easy to remember why she married him. “Stay right there. I’m going to go get your present.”
“You’re going to give it to me here? In front of all these people?” she asked, mock-shocked.
“It’s not that kind of present.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I was thinking of my present.” She tapped him on the end of his nose. “After daddy’s party.”
“That is going to make conversation with ‘daddy’ awkward.” He got up, looked at her with shock over his shoulder when she squeezed his ass.
“Why don’t you ever do that to me?” Wally asked Linda.
She spanked him.
“Oww! That hurt! Do it again.”
***
Kory greeted her friend at the door. Donna was in her Troia costume, constellations of red blood joining the white stars.
“Donna! Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Santa Claws tried to rob the Salvation Army. I took the Kris out of his Kringle.”
“Come in, I’ll help you wash up.” She felt at the cut on Donna’s scalp. It was nothing in comparison to some of the injuries Kory had seen her receive, but it was still a besmirchment to her body. Fitter and trimmer than Kory’s, Kory considered Donna a monument to Earthly beauty. “One thing, though: Mistletoe.”
Kory kissed Donna hard and more aggressively than she would greet any other. Her tongue passed between Donna’s wetly parted lips. Her arms circled Donna’s trim waist to crush their bodies together. A hand settled on Donna’s smooth, rounded ass and pressed her hard against Kory’s pelvis. Donna moaned up into Kory’s mouth as the cold metal of the Tamaranian’s belt buckle chided her. Her hips would’ve thrust up to increase the brushing contact, but Kory pulled away. Grinning.
“Come. There’s so much to show you.”
They left the boys watching the same guy get into the same shit again for the sequel and adjourned to Dick and Barbara’s bedroom. Kory set Donna down gently on the bed and fetched a medical kit from behind the mirror in the adjacent bathroom. Through the parted bathroom door, Donna watched Kory strip off her Christmas sweater and dump it in the clothes hamper. Underneath she was wearing a white T-shirt that didn’t manage to cover the whole bulge of her pot belly. She wasn’t wearing a bra beneath the thin cotton.
“Great Demeter, Kory, you’re glowing.”
Kory smiled shyly. “Thank you. Now I know how you felt when you were pregnant. Thank X’Hal I can still fly, or my feet would murder me…”
Donna smiled dutifully, but looked downcast. Kory sat down next to her and gently brushed the hair from her eyes.
“I am sorry, I did not mean to remind you of your family…”
“No, no…” Donna put a hand on Kory’s thigh to let her know it was alright. “There are good memories there too.”
Kory put a hand over Donna’s hand. Slowly moved it up her thigh, over her crotch, and onto her belly. “Don’t you want to feel the baby kick? If she did, you’d be the first. That would be a new memory. A new, good memory…”
Kory’s flesh felt as it always did, warm to the point of fever, but Donna could always remember there being an undercurrent of muscle there. But through her stomach, Donna could feel only life. She smiled.
“May I…?” she asked; Kory smiled and nodded.
Donna got down on her knees between Kory’s legs and put her head against Kory’s stomach. Her highly attuned senses picked up the baby’s heartbeat, a tiny echo of Kory’s. She giggled in disbelief.
“Damn, Kory, you don’t do anything small.”
She rested her head fully against Kory, who stroked her hair. Donna was reminded of nights at Titan Tower, the long evenings when they would comb each others’ hair and danced… there had been so little dancing after Terry came into her life. Kory had been so jealous, smoldering under her happiness for Donna.
“Kory?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Does something trouble you?”
“What could trouble me? I am loved, my womb is full…”
Donna winced a little at that last part. Even after all these years, Kory’s handle on language could… squick. She kissed Kory’s belly. “Earlier, at the Tower, you said you were jealous of Barbara.”
“I was being foolish.”
“You also told me that it was foolish to deny your… our emotions.”
“That was a long time ago,” Kory said, carefully neutral. Back when they had danced.
“You don’t have anyone, do you?” Donna looked up into Kory’s eyes, a very dull jade, and saw the beginnings of tears at the sides. Kory petted her hair fitfully.
“I am loved, but it is platonic. I will never be the most important one in Dick’s life. In time, I will be second even to…” she rubbed her stomach. “Her.”
Donna rocked back on her knees. Two tears, tinted green, escaped Kory’s eyes and rolled down either cheek. She wiped them away quickly.
“Kory, you can’t… you can’t resent your kid.”
“I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t!” Kory choked out a sob and Donna was up, hugging her. “Some days I feel like just an incubator for the child Dick and Barbara wish to have. And all because that dumb, crippled cow is so selfish as to demand all his love for herself…”
Donna patted her back, rubbed her hand up and down, felt the cotton bunch up where she caressed.
“Shh, shh.” She supported Kory’s head, feeling the old scars where the control-collar had gone around her neck. “Maybe the problem isn’t that you’re not the most important person in Dick’s life. Maybe the problem is that he’s the most important person in yours.” Kory’s face came away from Donna’s chest, eyes still wet with tears. She looked at Donna wonderingly. “You have other people who care about you. And your child will be one of them.”
“Yes, yes of course… thank you, Donna.”
Kory’s hands circled around her waist, coming to rest on her lower back… just above the softness of her rump.
“You’ve always been a light to me… such a good friend… and so much more…”
Donna was finding it difficult to control her breathing. “I don’t do that anymore.” She almost said I’m married, but instead went with “My husband…”
“Has long since been mourned. Kyle, Roy… they love you, but not as I loved you…” Her hand moved along Donna’s face, caressing its side from scalp to jawline. “Never as I love you…”
“You still love me?” Donna asked, her face burning. She remembered what came after the dances.
“Donna, my sister, my love, I have never stopped.”
Donna felt Kory’s lips press against hers, so much more real and immediate than even the passionate kiss she’d received under the mistletoe. All the years of bad relationship, the millstone her life had been ground against, even the haze of her death and resurrection, none of them could contain the memory of Kory’s total devotion. Or the new, stronger evidence of it now.
One of Kory’s hands stole out to Donna's rapidly heaving breast, where it kneaded and caressed. The starlight of her costume flared against Kory’s hand.
Cringing away, Donna gasped "Aphrodite! Kory, that’s…” Then she moaned as the gently caressing hand moved to the other breast. “Aph-ro-di-te!”
In the next instant, the two women were clinging to each other, their mouths seeking and finding each other. Their tongues entwined and their hands searched feverishly along each others’ lush curves – Donna’s understated figure, Kory’s full voluptuousness – to find places to caress and fondle. And then they were on the bed in Dick and Barbara’s bedroom, Donna so unused to this love after the long gray years following their break-up, but willing to learn all over again and remembering as much as she was taught.
Kory moved the thick straps of Donna’s costume, just enough to pull the tight bodysuit down below her cleavage. Kory appreciated the symmetry of Donna’s breasts far more than the modest size; being a woman who preferred the naturalistic beauty she personified to the blonde, saline-breasted airbrushees of Playboy. Donna’s breasts were wonderfully real, pale with that most Earthly of inventions, the tanline.
Kory moved her fingers up and down where a bikini top would’ve gone. Donna blushed. Those mornings on the roof of Titan Tower, before the boys woke up, when they had sunbathed… Kory, nude, soaking up the sun, cajoling Donna to expose herself before the dawn’s rays. It had taken months for Donna to give in, and months more for Kory’s strong hands applying suntan lotion to become Kory’s mouth between Donna’s thighs.
It was that memory Kory conjured up. She laid Donna down on the bed and her hungering tongue was buried in the flesh between Donna's outspread legs. Even through the thin layer of cloth, Kory tasted Donna’s joy, tender and sweet… She undid the sash around Donna’s slender waist and looped it up around Donna’s neck, another means of touch, of reminding Donna what had gone before and promising her what was to come.
“Hera, I don't know how I’ve gone without this all these years…" Donna gazed lovingly at the other woman with smoky, full-lidded eyes.
Something, or nothing, made Kory glance to the side. Over Donna’s black-sheathed thigh she saw Dick. His mouth was slightly open, as if in shock, and lust was written all over his face. An erection strained at the crotch of his pants. Donna saw him and all three of them froze in stunned tableau. Dick’s knees were weak and he took the first action, sitting down heavily on a chair in the corner.
Month 5
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 07:08 am (UTC)Lian is adorable. Another great chapter.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 12:24 pm (UTC)For those of us not up on the slang, what's snookered? And while I'm at it, what does goosed mean? That's one I've wondered for a while...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 07:19 pm (UTC)It depends on who you ask. For instance, if you ask Babs...
Uhh... perhaps we'll check in with her some other time.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 06:30 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, I love mixing in some Batfamily and Titans and Arrows into the main action. Makes the whole thing feel less claustrophobic and more like a DC universe story.
Plus, if Dinah's not with Barbara, people might think she's with Ollie. Horrors!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 06:44 pm (UTC)His girls gone wild sense was tingling. There was lesbianism afoot!
And Lian's cursing? Perfect. Sort of horrifying, but Roy's the type of cool dad who would totally give a little kid permission to curse. :)
Lian is going to grow up to be so well-adjusted that she could get into a car accident, suffer a compound fracture, then drag her boyfriend out of the burning car without breaking a sweat.
Because hey, it's not like it's a Daxamite invasion or something hard, is it?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 03:47 am (UTC)Just letting you know I'm loving it ♥