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seriousficTitle: New Year’s Resolution
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Donna/Kory
Word Count: 9,938
Series: The Other Wife
Summary: Dick tries a trial separation.
Month 5
Month 6 – January - New Year’s Resolution
Dick and Barbara weren’t speaking. That was by unspoken (natch) consent, although Dick’s silence toward Kory was self-imposed. About the only one in the Clocktower that he could talk to was Donna. He found her in the couch, watching Looney Tunes with Kory.
“That is definitely too violent for the baby to watch,” Donna said through her giggles.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought it was sexuality that all you Americans were hung up on.”
“Bugs does cross-dress.”
“Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played girl bunny?” Dick asked.
“Donna, love, do me a favor.” Kory rested her head on Donna’s shoulder imploringly. “Dick still thinks his schtick of quoting from movies and then me not getting it because I’m an alien is funny. So could you humor him?”
Donna rolled her eyes over to Dick. “The things I do for her. No, I did not find Bugs Bunny attractive when he cross-dressed. I was a Red Hot Riding Hood girl.”
“Then d’ya mind taking a basket to Grandmother’s house? I need to talk to Kory in private.”
Donna checked her watch. “Fine. I need to get going anyway. Meeting with the Chinese delegate to see if I can move the Great Ten off the Taiwanese border.”
Kory kissed her, long and loving. “For luck.”
Donna was grinning all the way out the door.
Dick waited for the door to shut behind her. Carefully aware of each step, Dick walked between two chairs and switched off the television. Kory sensed his mood. She sat up a bit straight and set her legs together. Dick walked over to her as if he were going to sit down beside her, but thought better of it and stood instead. She looked up at him, folding her hands in her lap.
“Can I go first?” she said.
“I didn’t know you wanted to say anything.”
“I do.” Her nostrils flared as she took a rapturous breath, clearly excited by the very thought. “I think you should fuck Donna.”
Dick choked on saliva and, coughing, he nearly bent in double before recovering. “Why would I do that?”
“Because she doesn’t get enough man-love. I suppose I could seek out Roy or Kyle, but I’d rather share her with you. And I know you can show her a much better time than those two… well, maybe not those two, but either of them separately, for certain.”
Dick covered his eyes with his hand, rubbing at his face. “And Barbara?”
“If I’m not jealous, I don’t see why she should be. You’d like fucking Donna. She screams.” Kory leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “She screams loud.”
“I’m not going to fu… to do that with Donna. I’m not going to do that with anyone but Barbara.”
“Except me, right?”
Dick bowed his head. “Can I talk now?”
“Of course.”
“I know Gotham isn’t your favorite city… in fact, me and Babs were thinking of moving to Metropolis once the baby arrives, but that’s neither here nor there.” Dick circled his hand before realizing what he was doing and stuffing it in his back pocket. “And I know what it’s like to lose a home… the circus was my life, you know…”
“Any time you start to approach your point, let me know.”
“Sorry.” Dick took a plane ticket from his pocket. “I was thinking you might want to take a break from all this, so I bought you tickets to the Caribbean.” He thumbed the ticket so that it split, revealing there was another one behind the first. ”Tropical paradise, so long as you watch out for the pirates. You and Donna can go, soak in the sun… I hear Intergang has a new chapter there if you want to fight crime.”
Fingers pressed into the armrest, Kory lifted herself up. Dick met her eye to eye. “And what if Donna doesn’t want to go?”
Dick was too quick to answer. “You can stay here, or in stately Wayne Manor, while me and Babs take a vacation. If I can pull her away from the keyboard for two minutes, that is. You know she made me solve a crime on our honeymoon? I was all ‘no, baby, let’s have more sex, let the police handle it,’ but she insisted…”
“How much did those tickets cost?” Kory interrupted.
Dick smiled proudly, charmingly. “Eight hundred dollars, plus expenses. I got a hotel all lined up…”
Kory hung her head. “Is it really worth that much to you to get away from me?”
Dick didn’t say anything. His jaw twitched and he sputtered a little, but finally he looked away for a long moment before refocusing on her. This time his gaze was frighteningly clear.
“I think it’s best for both of us to spend some time apart… neither of us meant for that to happen…” He blew out air between his lips. “At least, I hope we didn’t…”
“Don’t blame me,” Kory said furiously. “I was just… living in the moment.” She prodded him in the chest with the heel of her hand. “You wanted it as much as I!”
Dick’s teeth gritted. He wanted to deny that, he so wanted to deny that, but he never had managed to get the hang of lying to her. Smarting, he took a step backwards. Then, more soothingly, but still heated:
“I’m not blaming you for what happened, it’s your nature.”
“My nature?” Kory repeated flatly.
“If you did it, it’s obviously your nature.”
Kory crossed her arms. Her baby kicked. “What does that make your nature?”
“You seduced me!” Dick shouted.
“Because you invited me!”
Dick grabbed her hand roughly and slapped the tickets into her palm. “Take the fucking tickets!”
Kory wasn’t so much there with him as she was back just before he’d proposed to her, when all they could do was yell at each other. Maybe because they thought that was the only way the other would listen. They would both be wrong on that account.
Quiet wasn’t much better. “You made a mistake marrying Barbara and not me. We all know it, and putting me out of sight won’t change that.”
“The only mistake I made was…”
Barbara knocked on the door, giving them ample warning before coming in. Dick exhaled all the air in his lungs, deliberately draining himself of all his rage and tension. It nearly worked, too. He turned to look at Barbara.
“Something the matter?” she asked.
Kory wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“No. Kory was just leaving. She and Donna are taking a vacation.”
“Oh.” Barbara couldn’t say that she wasn’t happy to see Kory go… but strangely, she wasn’t. “Well, have fun.”
***
Kory showed up at Donna’s doorstep in a state of Tamaranian agitation. Titanic sobs were wracking her body and entire boxes of tissues were sniffled away before her melancholy subsumed. Donna came home to find her sitting on the embassy’s stope, anguishing over a pair of Wayne-Air tickets.
“Kor? Something wrong, baby?”
Kory tried to stand, stopping halfway up with an “oof!” of stress. Slower now, the dizziness gone, she stood to greet Donna with a hug and a quick kiss. “Nothing troubles me when I am with you.”
Donna grinned, but wasn’t fooled for a second. Both hands on Kory’s left arm, she led her girlfriend into the Themysciran embassy. She’d been staying there on and off since her resurrection, unable to find time to lock down an apartment. Inside, Man’s World staffers (mostly female) and Amazons (many security, and so in armor) were busy as bees. All eyes focused on the two newcomers. Donna was an old favorite among the Amazons and Kory had her admirers as well.
Life, especially new life, was revered among the Amazons and soon Kory was crowded with fawning Amazons, eager to feel the baby kick. Kory titillated them with tales of the conception, carefully leaving out any names. Dick became “he,” Barbara became “she,” and they were both referred to as “my lover.” It was all rather archetypal, even Jungian, Donna thought.
Finally, the afterglow of the story trailed off, the ending heralded by a chorus of sympathetic sighs from the Amazons. Donna practically had to drag her lover away from the outpouring of adoration.
Donna’s room was decorated in the Doric order favored by the embassy, with lacy, embossed curtains detailing her struggles. She hadn’t had time to decorate much, so most of the furnishings were either provided by the embassy or inherited from her past life. Kory sat down heavily on a couch that Kyle had returned to Donna upon her resurrection.
“Can I get you anything?” Donna offered, running her hand over the plane of Kory’s shoulders.
“Some warm rr’lxeth juice would be heavenly, but in lieu of that, anything with mangoes in it.”
“Mango juice, coming right up.”
Kory tried to get comfortable on the couch despite the fetus tap-dancing in her uterus. She managed to calm the child by floating just a little, and lighting her starbolts enough to infuse her body with warmth. Donna returned to find an extremely welcoming sight waiting for her. Kory was hovering above the couch in repose, jacket and shoes off, hair trailing off her like a comet’s frozen tail. Despite the well-deserved adoration her mentor received, Donna’s conception of beauty was built around Kory.
“You’re bringing my old photography instincts back to life,” Donna told Kory, presenting her with both the juice and a plate of crackers topped with tangy Amazon cheese. Kory popped two crackers into her mouth, delightfully “oooom”ed as she chewed, then washed it down with half a cup of mango juice. Her eyes lit up at the taste.
“Speaking of photography…” Kory licked crumbs from her lips, making Donna’s heart race. “What is it you do these days?”
“Day job? Mainly I help out around the embassy. I guess you could say I’m Diana’s aide de camp, although I’m afraid I’m not half as helpful as that would imply.”
Kory finished off her drink, wiping at her lips with the back of her hand. “So they won’t mind if I steal you away for a couple days… weeks…”
”Months… who knows?” Donna finished, mock-glumly.
“No, just days or weeks. So, can I kidnap you without fear of reprisal?”
“Did you see them back there? As long as you kiss and tell, they’ll let you keep me forever.”
Kory pinched Donna’s arm. “Not a bad idea.”
“As long as we’re making plans, how about dinner at Octavia? Unless you’d like to fill up on cheese and crackers.”
Kory swallowed the last of a cracker, licking the cheese off the top before eating it. “Octavia sounds wonderful… pardon the pun.”
“Pardoned. Pick you up at eight.”
Donna got up to find a pen and paper to write down Octavia’s address… after all, it’d been a while since she and Donna had gone there, back when it was just an Italian restaurant… but Kory grabbed Donna’s hands. Donna was surprised to find herself being held back, but then she felt Kory’s thumb petting her knuckles.
“Who said I was going anywhere?”
And under Donna’s devilish grin, Kory began to pleasurably undo her friend.
***
Afterward, they took an elongated catnap. Their traditional spooning was hampered by the baby kicking Donna in the back like it was going out of style. Which, as far as Donna was concerned, it had after the first dozen hits. Donna wondered idly how Kory had become impregnated with the second coming of Bruce Lee. Shame, too. She really liked being in the shelter and warmth of Kory’s powerful arms. The Tamaranian had enough body heat for both of them.
As soon as Donna massaged Kory awake, the two women showered and dressed in silken Amazon finery. Robes that would be nearly translucent if Donna didn’t insist on piling on and wrapping them up until they were suitable protection against the night chill, along with boots with metal filigree… self-defense. Kory nearly put on a one-woman fashion show in the mirror before Donna tugged her off to join a band of off-duty Amazon guards headed for Octavia.
As usual, it was jumping with robed women, both Amazons and posers. Guests to the subculture milled around in fashionable street clothes; leather and fur were frowned upon. As a concession to modernity, the music merely sampled the lyre and other traditional Amazon instruments into the driving, de rigueur techno. Donna led Kory to the comparatively quiet cella, where the bartender floated them a cup of mango juice, straight up, and a Michelob.
Their waitress showed up soon in a toga and sandals. Donna was grateful to see both her breasts were intact. Not only were they nice breasts, but far too many extremist adherents to Athena’s principles took to self-mutilation out of misguided fervor. It just made the moderate Amazons look bad in the eyes of the media.
Donna ordered a salad and Kory asked that a steak be made as raw and as large as possible. Donna gave it the okay. After all, Kory was eating for two now. They shared the appetizer, a thick loaf of bread with chunks to be broken off and dipped in dressing.
“So what was that talk earlier about taking me away, Kor-gon?” Donna asked.
“You remember that far back? X’Hal, must be losing my touch.” Kory put a piece of bread in her mouth and chewed it slowly, belatedly swallowing. “I bought us two tickets to the Caribbean. I thought we could go, get away from it all.”
“And Dick’s okay with this?”
Kory waved her hand about. “If he doesn’t like it… if he misses me… tough.”
“Good on ya, Kor.” Donna mock-punched Kory on the chin. “Show him it’s the princess that calls the shots, not the pauper.”
“Yeah.”
Kory waited for the food to arrive and wondered when it was that she’d last felt like a Princess of Tamaran.
***
Barbara had packed her bags and moved to a state of disbelief. On the satellite feed, she watched as a red and blue blur effortlessly routed the hostage situation in the Sudan, ending the tense stand-off she’d been agonizing over for days. Bootheels clicked on the ground behind her. She took off her glasses. She didn’t need them to know Superman was running through his powers, disabling every revolutionary without a lick of harm.
“I spent two days assembling a team to handle that situation. Do you know what I had to do to get Rose and Thorn on the team?”
Dick felt out her neck, unerringly locating a crick that had been bothering her and zapping it out of existence. “And now Clark’s handled it in two minutes. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”
Much as it pained her to do so, Barbara took Dick’s hands off where they were massaging. “I thought I told you never to interfere in an op I was running. Barging in like that could’ve…”
“I told him all about the meta hostage and the rich kid playing terrorists. We ironed out a fix.” She could feel his smiling breath on the lobe of her ear. “What, you thought I listened to all your shoptalk because I was interested?”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “Keep massaging, man wonder. Sidekicks should be seen and not heard.”
“Oh?” His lips drew closer to her ear. “Not even if I want to tell you that…”
Barbara’s eyes widened with the next few words.
“Alright, then. You can say whatever you like.”
“I love you.”
“Say it again.”
***
The plane trip was long and difficult. Kory didn’t like flights that weren’t under her own power, especially when there was little to occupy her. Then their flight passed through a storm, so they had to stay in their seats for the duration. Donna petted Kory’s hand and read to her from a beach novel she’d bought. She had the feeling that mother and daughter more enjoyed the soothing sound of her voice than Lee Child’s prose. Kory’s baby, judging by Kory’s nauseous look, hated air travel more with every bit of turbulence they encountered.
The flight was eight hours, and they had actually started on the next adventure of Jack Reacher when they landed. By then, Kory was reading to a tired Donna, petting her back with the hand that wasn’t holding the paperback. There was something glorious in just being able to hear Kory’s voice, Donna thought. Kory’s voice rumbled with emotion: it grew frightened at the tense sections, triumphant at the heroes’ victories, and sultry at the love scenes. Donna liked sultry.
They landed. After the usual airport rigmarole, they retrieved their luggage and got to a rental car. Kory was changed into a swimsuit before they’d even left the airport. A wide straw hat and sunglasses completed the ensemble. Donna giggled at the look; her friend in swimwear in the middle of the city. Kory retaliated with a calculated undressing, rolling up Donna’s jeans to above the calf and unbuttoning her blouse. As Donna was driving their rented jeep, there wasn’t much she could do to protest.
Finally, Kory ran out of things she could take off without getting them pulled over. She consulted the map, charting their route to the Isle de Frijoles (“The Island of Beans?” “Apparently, the guy who discovered it really wanted to raise some.”). On the way there, they passed an old JLI embassy, converted into a community center after long years of inactivity. A group of Rastas were having a reasoning in the courtyard. Kory waved to them as they drove by.
After a forty-minute drive through the jungle, they reached a long, lonely stretch of beach. Dick’s claim of hotel reservations was duplicitous; their “apartment” was a cabin. Passing an outhouse, they walked down a wooden pier-bridge to a sandbar the size of an apartment block. There was a cabin on stilts in the middle of it, big enough to be comfy without being cramped. Kory’s feet had barely tossed sand before she was undressing. Donna considerately picked up her clothes and sandals and took them inside with the luggage.
The cabin was decorated in Early Pirate Movie, with lots of seashells and paintings of boats on the walls. The furniture was made of wicker with plush cushions covering it. It had most modern conveniences, although Donna’s cell-phone reception was spotty.
“Donna, come out here, you must see this!” Kory yelled from outside.
Grabbing her one-piece (although they had Isle de Frijoles all to themselves, Donna couldn’t bring herself to turn it into a nude beach), Donna quickly changed out of her bulky clothes and into the fashionable, skintight bikini. She gave herself a few tucks in the mirror, just to make sure Kory’s eyes would pop out of her head. Then she picked up a bottle of sunscreen and went outside.
Kory was sitting in the sand, naked, just where the tide started. The ends of her hair fell down to her butt, where the coming tide wetted it. Kory giggled when the white froth covered up her toes and sucked the sand out from under her body, burying her a little ways. The sun was hanging on by its fingernails, ready to go under the horizon in another hour or so.
“Sunscreen, Kor. You’ll burn up.”
Kory looked over her shoulder at Donna as she squeezed a massive blob of cream out onto her palm. Raising one opportunistic eyebrow, Donna rubbed her hands together.
“How ironic. I call you outside to view the natural beauty of the world, while the greater beauty by far is inside our little house.”
Donna fell to her knees and began rubbing the sunscreen into Kory’s stomach with circular motions. Kory moaned, knowing that Donna had picked there because it was between her sensitive breasts and her still more sensitive sex… and those hands could go either way.
“I like your bathing suit,” Kory continued, picking at Donna’s shoulder straps. “But I like your bare skin even better.”
“With the way you touch it, so do I.” Donna held up her arms as Kory tugged the suit down, sat back on her haunches as Kory pulled it past her ass, then kicked her legs enthusiastically as Kory pulled it all the way up.
Kory caught one of Donna’s bicycling feet and licked her pedicure. Which became a lot less suave and sexy when she had to spit out some sand, but Donna blamed that lapse on jet lag.
“Kory, could you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Don’t go for a swim while I’m not around.”
“Donna, I can fly.”
“Even so…” Donna watched Kory pout. “I just want you to be safe.”
“Very well. I do not wish to swim without you anyway.” Kory dipped her hand into the surf as it came up. “Shall we swim now?”
Donna gently moved Kory onto her back, then carefully straddled her. With hands to either side of Kory’s head, pressing into the sand, she bent close to Kory’s lips.
“Not yet. Let the tide come in a little. I want to have a little From Here To Eternity moment.”
A thin blanket of foam crept up the beach, wetting Kory’s back.
“That could take a while.”
Donna sat up and grabbed the sunscreen. “Whatever shall we do to pass the time…?”
The sunscreen was mango-flavored. Kory loved mango.
***
The smell of motor oil assaulted Barbara’s nostrils. She waved her hand about her nose as Dick led her into the underground garage, one level below the garage open to the general public. This one was much smaller and more sophisticated, with passageways leading into Gotham’s subway and sewer systems. A stained workman’s jumpsuit, Dick’s, hung on the hook of a wince. Barbara tsked as she passed the partially disassembled fuselage of the old Whirly-Bat.
“Dick, you know you never fly that thing.”
Dick gave one of the rotors a loving rub as he passed. It wobbled up and down. “I always wanted to, though. Maybe on the weekends.”
Barbara steered herself around a toolbox Dick had left lying on the floor. She was waiting for him to unlock the side-door of the van when Dick walked right by it. Patiently waiting with her elbows propped up on her armrests, Barbara watched him walk up to a tarp. He grabbed it and looked at her expectantly.
“What, no drum roll?”
She tapped her wristwatch. “That do?”
With a shrug, Dick pulled the tarp off.
“No way.”
“Way.”
Dick idly twisted the sidebars, listening to the crackle of the front tire shifting on the floor. The motorcycle was a thing of beauty, but what impressed Barbara the most was the sidecar attached to it. If impressed was the word.
“Dick, I’m… stunned, I guess. Yeah, definitely stunned.”
Dick sat down across the seat. “Would it be insensitive to ask for you to hop in? I already packed the folding wheelchair.”
“I was, uh, wondering where that got to.” Barbara wheeled closer. Reluctantly, she ran a hand over the thick forks. “Been a while.”
“I know it’s not the same,” Dick said as he crouched to eye level with her. “But it is better than nothing. Right?”
Barbara took hold of his arms and gestured for him to swing her into the sidecar. “Right.”
***
The hammock was only big enough for one, so Kory slept there. Donna slept under and alongside her, beach towels serving as both blanket and pillow. Kory’s hand and hair hung off the netting. Donna touched both as wakefulness left her.
Her dreams were the usual kaleidoscopic mix of Greek mythology and her own past. Kory had center stage tonight. She sang a song in a language only stars could understand and grew a baby Robin inside herself, which flew out to peck at the ground at Donna’s feet. Donna backed up, into Kory’s arms, and felt Kory’s hair. Like a net.
When she woke up, the hammock was empty. Kory was vomiting outside. Morning sickness. Donna prepared ambrosia tea and a breakfast high in proteins and carbohydrates. One of the lessons she’d picked up from Terry’s endless pregnancy prep. By the end, he’d probably known more about pregnancy then she did from being pregnant. Donna wiped away the tear that had come to her right eye, watching as another from her left eye fell and hit the rim of the teacup. It rolled down to the center and Donna drowned it with the tea she’d brewed.
She fixed them some eggs and stole one of the frozen yogurts they’d packed for Kory. Out the window, she saw Kory wash her mouth out with seawater and spit that out onto the pad as she walked back, her belly rolling with each step.
“Breakfast is served,” Donna announced, and Kory instantly brightened. Her breath tasted of sea salt when they kissed on the cheek. Donna was going to wait for that ambrosia tea to go down before she gave any tongue.
“I had a wonderful dream,” Kory said over breakfast.
“Oh really?”
“I was watching you and a redhead making love. At first I thought it was us, but then you rolled over… you were in a bed, a really big bed… and I saw that it was you and Barbara. Barbara was really enjoying how gentle you were. I think she expected all lesbians to play rough, like me.”
“And what were you doing?”
“I was watching. Just watching. Dick was sitting next to me, with his head on my shoulder, and we were masturbating. Ourselves and each other, it made no difference. And after a while, the four of us climbed into bed together. But we didn’t all sleep with our heads on the pillows. Barbara slept at the foot of the bed, with her head on my thigh, and you slept across the middle of the bed, covering us all like a second blanket, and Dick slept with his arms around me and an arm on you and a leg intertwined with Barbara. And it was the best sleep I ever had. Then I woke up in the dream and I woke up in real life too.”
“And why would I want Barbara Gordon when I could have you?” Donna asked, smirking.
“Variety is the spice of life. Otherwise, why would I want to eat you out when I could just finger you?”
“Because I taste like the blood of your enemies and the purest water you ever tasted all rolled into one.”
Kory kissed her. “I take it back. You taste better.”
After breakfast, they swam together. Donna wore her swimsuit, but that didn’t last long. Kory could swim circles around her. With guerrilla attacks, she undressed Donna at sea. They left the bikini floating on the surface as Kory pulled Donna down, making love until even their superhuman air reserve ran out. Reluctantly, their heads popped back up to the surface. All Kory wore was her wet hair, which she slickened over her front as she walked out onto the beach. Only her belly emerged from that curtain of dripping red locks. It covered more than most bathing suits.
After gathering up her bathing suit, a task which required a nude fly-over, Donna came back ashore. Kory was sunbathing again, her body already gleaming with suntan lotion. Nonetheless, she made room on her beach chair for Donna to sprawl beside her and together they read aloud another beach novel. Donna found it unbearably cute that after all these years, Kory still had trouble pronouncing a few words. They came to a stopping point and Kory pointed out that Donna had dripped dry… which meant she probably needed some suntan lotion.
“You’ll burn up,” Kory teased as she lathered her hands up.
***
The air of Gotham City was so cold it bit. Barbara felt it break across her face like she was the prow of a ship. The cool air tightened her nipples, but couldn’t chill her heart. With both hands around Dick’s leg, she urged him to go faster, faster. They took the corners at the unsafest of speeds, Barbara burying her face in his thigh and digging her nails into his flesh. It just made him burn the rubber all the hotter.
Far too soon, the first leg of their journey was over. They’d stopped at a red light. Barbara giggled ecstatically before kissing his knee. She felt his touch right through her helmet and his glove, then moving lower to pet her chin. She bit at his leather-clad finger. The whole thing had her out for blood.
“I knew you like… what’d you call it… flying on wheels? So, uh, I know it’s not the same as being in control, but if you trust me… I’ll be your wings.”
Barbara contentedly rubbed her cheek against his silk-smooth pantleg. “Oh, baby… you know I’m going to be able to get you to do anything by threatening to tell someone you said that, right?”
Dick shrugged. “It’s how I feel,” he said nonchalantly.
“Stop digging the hole and go back to being the emotionally semi-retarded man I married.”
“You don’t like the sensitive chick-lit thing?”
She bit his thigh, leaving a brief indentation in the leg of his tuxedo.
“You’re feeling frisky,” he said as the light shifted.
“No. I’m feeling alive.”
They drove the rest of the way, Barbara finding Dick surprisingly reluctant to reciprocate her affections. At one point, he told her to lay off, he was driving. True, she was unzipping his fly, and it was dangerous, but wasn’t that the point?
She wondered if he’d let Kory get away with it before burying that thought in the Earth.
Dick found them a handicapped parking spot. He set out the wheelchair, gentlemanly, and Barbara situated herself in it. Together, they walked up to the box office. Dick bestowed their reservations on the usher like a prince bearing gifts. Together, they took the elevator up to the balcony, and then to their seats. There, they settled in for three hours of opera.
“I suppose a make-out session would be frowned upon?” Dick suggested, an impressive twenty minutes in.
Barbara had even timed it. “That is looked down on.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anyone who would look down on me telling the most beautiful woman in Gotham that she is, in fact, the most beautiful woman in Gotham?”
Unbidden, the fact that Kory wasn’t currently in Gotham leapt to the forefront of Barbara’s mind. It resisted all attempts to dislodge. Damnit, what was wrong with her? She couldn’t enjoy a simple evening out with her husband without turning it into an exercise in paranoia?
“Maybe you’d do better talking to the second most beautiful woman in Gotham. The most beautiful is trying to watch the show.”
“C’mon, it’s in Latin!”
“Italian.”
“You can understand it?”
“How do you think people enjoy the opera?”
Dick waved the playbill.
“That’s for the posers.”
Dick closed his eyes and tried very hard to meditate until the fat lady sung.
***
As the day wore on, Kory’s one complaint was twofold. Although she loved having Donna all to herself, she also had the Tamaranian need to proclaim her love, to shout it from the rooftops… to have a little company, in other words. Besides, she wanted to wear a few of the swimsuits they had bought.
Dressed for the first time since noon, Kory and Donna flew out to the nearest public beach. Donna wore a conservative one-piece, Kory wore a long-skirted two-piece. They landed… or submerged… just past the breakers. No one took any notice of them, except perhaps a lifeguard. They swam in and from afternoon to evening splished and splashed with the other beach-goers. Donna, worn out by Kory’s indomitable energy (and multiple pleasurings), stayed on the beach to build a sandcastle with Themysciran architecture.
As night fell, Kory finally came in, dripping wet. Unerringly precise, she found Donna. Lifted her to her feet and led her to a pier. As they walked there, a skateboarder flew down the pier and dropped off the end, diving into the water. Kory and Donna gave him five points a piece. Watched as he swam out to join the rest of the beach-goers.
“What are we doing here, Kor?”
Kory cornered Donna against a wooden pillar. “What do you think, Donna? I get a little cranky when I don’t have sex for four hours. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Donna dodged Kory merrily as the alien moved in for the clinch. “You are insatiable, you know that?”
“Mmmm… you love it.” Kory dropped her bikini top. “Don’t make me start without you…”
“Maybe I’m a voyeur,” Donna said, hiding behind a pillar. “Maybe I like to watch.”
“Then watch.”
Kory’s hands played over her breasts, squeezing and kneading the abundant flesh. Her entire body shuddered in symphony with the groping. Soon, she had to lean against the pillar for support. Donna came out from behind her own pillar, knowing from long familiarity with Kory’s body that her love was demanding to be touched down below… and was saving that privilege for Donna. Her pelvis jerked in that direction, bikini bottom riding low on Kory’s hip, her musk already overriding the salty smell of the sea.
“Kory, someone could see!”
“I don’t care. I don’t care if the whole world sees. I want them to know what love looks like.”
With each step Donna took, the sand spread out under her feet and Kory grew closer. Kory’s closing hands were using more force, leaving red marks on her tits, the fingernails pressing in deep enough to draw blood. Kory’s breath sounded in Donna’s ears like war drums, going faster and faster and louder and louder. With a hand that was steady as the earth, Donna reached out and caressed Kory’s hair.
“No, not there!” Kory whined as Donna twisted a loop of hair around her fingers. “Down low… please… I need it there!”
“For a warrior, you beg quickly.” Donna yanked on Kory’s hair. “An Amazon would never give up so quickly.”
“Their loss,” Kory said before she kissed Donna, her touch aggressively ripping the straps from her shoulders.
Donna trembled. “Do that again.”
“Lie down.”
Donna promptly did.
“Now who’s giving up quickly?” Kory said, as Donna opened up her bikini at the sides. She spread herself out on the sand for Kory, feeling clothed by the darkness.
“It’s a mutual surrender. That you did first.”
Kory kneeled at her feet like a supplicant and worked her way up with maddening slowness. She didn’t rush a single instant; instead she oozed up Donna’s legs, not pausing at her sex, but running her hands against the swimsuit fabric like she could rip through it at any time. Her nails nipped at its folds like a cat at a scratching post. Donna sighed as those bedeviling hands finally found their way to her face. Every finger seemed to find a pressure point as they meshed on Donna’s face.
“That you did first,” Kory corrected gently.
Donna’s hips were jerking up involuntarily. At a loss, she just wrapped her legs around Kory.
“Do it.”
“Surrender.”
“I have been,” Donna said. “From the moment I saw you, from the moment you embraced me, I’ve been yours.”
Kory was touched and couldn’t help but show it. “And what’s mine… is always valued.”
Like a match being struck, their bodies touched. Donna’s one-piece was stripped away, shoved down around squirming thighs, Donna’s face a mask of pleasure as Kory’s hands caressed her. With a war cry, she rolled them over and awkwardly maneuvered into a 69. Kory nipped at her limbs with impatience. Finally, they clung to each other, rising in ecstasy. Their skin caught fire. Kory made a sound so deep in her throat that it could only be pleasure. Donna’s mouth was too occupied to give voice to what she felt, but the way her body kicked and writhed and throbbed was proof enough of her orgasm.
Kory rolled off of her and laid back, her body awash in sweat, saltwater, come, and sand. She wore it like a runway model. “Donna, could you ever be satisfied with one person in your life?”
“If that person was you, sure.”
“But if you could have more than one…” Kory rolled onto her side. “Wouldn’t you want someone who could touch you differently, kiss you differently, love you differently?” She brushed her fingers through Donna’s pubic hair. “Someone like Dick?”
Donna frowned. “Haven’t thought about him that way in a long time.”
Kory grinned, lasciviously and happily. “But you have thought about him.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, he runs around in that skintight suit…”
“And sometimes he walks around with only a towel on?”
“You know what I think?” Donna reached down to grab Kory’s hand and force it between her legs. “I think he likes the attention. He knows that he could have any woman in the room and he likes being reminded of it.”
“Any woman in the room?” Kory raised an eyebrow. “What if you were in the room with him?”
“Oh, he’d never make a pass at me. Not when he has Barbara.”
“He’s not that in love with her. He’s been with her before, hasn’t stopped him from sniffing around elsewhere. Even me,” she giggled. “He would come to me, moaning about how Barbara had dumped him and been ever so misunderstanding, because he knew I understood him. I made him so happy. And he made me happy.”
“And do I?”
“Donna, you make me ecstatic.” Kory ground her hand against Donna’s sex as she lowered her voice to a falsetto of Dick’s. “’Donna, would you like to come by my place later and see some of my etchings?”
“Dick would never say that.”
“That is a genuine Dick Grayson line. Come up here.”
Kory laid down on her back and Donna laid down beside her. Slowly, Donna began to heap sand from the beach onto Kory’s stomach.
“You can’t tell me you don’t miss cock.”
“I could ask you to wear a strap-on.”
“It’s not the same. The weight of it, the heat of it, the smell and taste and throb of it.” Kory swiped a finger up Donna’s mons. “And Dick’s is the best in the business.”
“Ahhh.”
“His fingers are different too. They aren’t dainty, like ours. When he fingers you, his hand is like a machine. He doesn’t caress, he fucks.” To demonstrate, Kory began fingering her lover. “I can’t do it, but it’s kinda like this.” She turned her head to whisper huskily in Donna’s ear. “Only better.”
“Mmmm. Looking to make your dream come true?”
“I wanna watch him fuck you. I wanna see how you come when you’ve got a cock inside you. I wanna see how you look covered in his come. But right now, I’ll settle for you screaming my name.”
Donna did. Kory added another finger.
“Now scream Dick’s name.”
Donna’s eyes bulged. Kory twisted her fingers inside Donna and the Amazon obeyed.
“Now scream Barbara’s.”
Donna did, for the third and final time. Exhausted, she collapsed and didn’t resist as Kory rolled her over, covering her damp body in sand. They played in it, coated their bodies with it, picked up damp sand from the beach and slathered it on themselves. Finally, Donna couldn’t take anymore and just held Kory tightly, loving that it was her that those golden arms were holding.
“Wash off in the ocean? We can swim back.”
“You’re on.” Donna got up, brushed some sand off her body, then clutched her discarded swimwear in one hand and ran for the ocean. “Last one back’s an Athenian boy-lover!”
Kory flew after her, laughing happily. Donna was hers and she was Donna’s and for the moment, that was more than enough.
***
The drive home was just as enthusing to Barbara as the drive out. Dick pushed the bike to its limits, not ignorant of the way Barbara’s fingers curled up his inner thigh, nails scratching lightly at the flesh underneath. By the time they got back, she was in fine form.
Barbara had a secret little hum as they went up in the elevator, her eyes hooded and casting numerous appreciative glances at him as they rode up. Dick smiled. It was the tuxedo. Chicks dug the tuxedo.
“So, any other plans I should know about?” Barbara asked when the doors parted. “Or will I finally be able to catch up on Ugly Betty?”
Dick’s hand roamed over the skin exposed by the back of her scoop-necked dress. She arched back into the touch, favoring him with an utterly gratuitous, even pornographic moan. He quirked an eyebrow.
“I might have plans,” he confessed.
“I figured.”
“Wait in the bedroom while I get out of the monkey suit?”
“You could always get out of the monkey suit in the bedroom.”
“Promise to close your eyes?”
Barbara crossed her fingers. “Promise.”
In the bedroom, Barbara took off her earrings and necklace. Dick undid his cufflinks at a very deliberate pace. Barbara hugged herself, hands splayed over her bare shoulders. Dick took off his jacket and bow-tie. Carefully folded them and put them next to the hamper. Through the folds of his dress shirt she could see his musculature rippling with each motion. Subtly, not a flexing, preening effort like a bodybuilder on TV. More like a predator on the hunt. And approaching her, slowly.
“Thought I told you to close your eyes.”
“So I’m supposed to do this by touch?” She reached up and undid the button at the top of his shirt. “And this?” She undid the button below.
“Eyes closed,” he ordered, his voice authoritative. A growl.
She closed her eyes. Felt herself being lifted out of her chair and gently deposited on the bed, face down. Hands ghosted over her back, prickling the soft hair there. The shoulders of her dress were tugged down, leaving her exposed down to her shoulder blades. The same hands pressed down on her shoulders. She let out a very unladylike grunt at the actual touch finally happening.
The hands slithered downward, fingers just trickling a ways down her sides, pushing her dress down to expose the soft black of her bra strap. The hands pulled back and Barbara almost protested, but she could barely breath, let alone speak. It was times like this she knew he was hers, not Kory’s, not anyone else’s, hers. Their bodies hummed on the same wavelength. He could put all his love for her into a touch and she could receive that message time and time again.
A finger, a single finger, went under her bra strap and slid down there, freeing her skin from where the strap had laid, until it reached the hook. That was deftly undone. Barbara squeezed her eyes shut tighter as the bra was slowly drawn out from underneath her. If she didn’t expend conscious effort, she would have to look. She would have to assure herself that he was still there instead of trusting him, and she did trust him. With her life, with everything.
His touch was no more than a pressure drawing her zipper down. Slowly, she felt cool air rushed in to tease her skin. A draft that could’ve been his breath warmed her along her spine. Two fingers, no more, touched the back of her neck and ran down her spine. She breathed out slowly.
“Dick,” she said, a request.
“Shh.”
The tips of all five fingers moved down her, parting the open dress. For a moment, she was disappointed, thinking that her undressing, or unwrapping, was over. She could picture the scene in her mind. Him, standing over her… how much was he still wearing? There was no way to be sure. Her dress undone down to mid-back, her panties underneath it… she’d changed into the sexy ones, just for tonight. Just for him.
With the slow inevitability of the tide, Dick pulled the dress down her legs. She could’ve wept for the sensations she was missing. As if sensing her disappointment, Dick hurried it along as fast as the mood would allow. Finally, her dress was unspooled out on the floor. She didn’t know where his clothes were. She didn’t want to know. Not yet. He could’ve been wearing a costume. He could even have company.
The thought of Kory, watching them in this most intimate of moments, pierced her a thousand times, arousing her as much as it irritated her. Irrationally, Barbara flashed on what Kory had taken from her… Dick’s monogamy, even if she had consented to the threesome. Then Dick’s heir… they could’ve investigated in vitro fertilization, they could’ve worked around the problem… but Kory was gone now, safely away with Donna where she couldn’t take anymore. Still, Barbara had to know.
“Now?”
“Now.”
She opened her eyes. They were alone. In the vanity, she could see Dick. He hadn’t undressed, but his entire body was sexually erect. His muscles were tense with desire and sweat beaded his face. His hands curled into fists when he wasn’t using them. And his eyes… his eyes were on fire. She couldn’t look away. She watched, paralyzed, as he poured a glass bottle of massage oil out into one cupped hand. It smelled like sex. Not bodily fluids, but like kisses trailing down bodies and hands fumbling for catches and fingers digging into flesh.
Dick didn’t tell her it was Tamaranian.
She should’ve been cold. Atop her bed in just her panties. But she wasn’t. She was burning up. Then he touched her and she discovered what heat really was.
A hand, warmer than before, slicker, touched a shoulder blade. She tensed at the touch, so sudden and so much more than she had expected, but relaxed into it. The warmth oozed into her flesh, relaxing her more than she had ever remembered. There went the concerns about her body, about how he could ever love half-a-woman. How could she doubt that when his hands were on her, doing what they were doing? How could he touch anyone other than the woman he loved like that? One by one, her fears laughed themselves to death. She was safe. Her tensions dissolved. She could’ve died and found the peace of the grave without ever knowing it. She could’ve woken up from a bad dream and been the Barbara Gordon who’d run before this nightmare had ever started. Or she could’ve been in Dick Grayson’s arms.
Everywhere he touched left the memory of his hands in oil, permeating into her pores, actually seeming to grow hotter under her skin. Her breathing went from deep to swift to labored. Dick’s hands went harder. Her body quaked. Wanted more. She wanted more too.
She let out a long, deep, song of a purr. Dick would remember it for the rest of his life. The woman he loved, perfectly content. Because of him. Slowly, trying his hardest not to dislodge the equilibrium of the moment, Dick brought his knee up onto the bed. The mattress shifted under Barbara, but her fingers just squeezed deeper into the bedsheets. His other knee came up and Dick was kneeling on the bed.
He took a hand off her back. The other was at her neck, thumb and forefinger squeezing like he was wringing it. This slightest of touches was making her press bonelessly down into the bed, burying herself in it. Dick planted his hand on the mattress, supporting himself there. The oil on his fingers stained the sheets. He lowered himself down on top of Barbara until they were spooning, their faces side by side.
She reached behind herself and grabbed both his hands, forcing them to her sides. He knew what she wanted. His hands tickled up the sides of her body, reaching her breasts and cupping them. She rolled them over with her arms, pushing herself into Dick’s arms. His legs wrapped around her, thighs squeezing her waist. His hands, sticky with oil, moved up to her face and turned it until he could kiss her.
With nothing left to do, Barbara began undressing him.
“I know what this is about,” she said as he painted her body with what was left of the massage oil.
The hands stopped touching her. “You do?”
“You’re trying to make up for your little Superman-can’t-see-through-it lead balloon of a suggestion. Relax.” She tickled the back of his neck. “I overreacted.”
“Oh. Okay.” Dick’s hands still weren’t moving.
Barbara pulled Dick’s hands up to her chest and placed them on her breasts. She’d always been sensitive there, and after the shooting it was the most erogenous place on her body. There were bras she couldn’t wear because they made her nipples erect just by the way they chafed.
Fingers mixed with his, she encouraged him to grope and tug. He followed her lead. “It’s not like you cheated on me or anything. As far as it comes to open relationships, even though I don’t want to pass you around like a dry fruitcake, I do want you to feel free to say whatever’s on your mind. If you want to fuck other people, I’d much rather hear it from the robin’s mouth then catch you in bed with some skank.”
“Yeah, of course. Love you.”
“Damn right.”
He lowered her back to the bed and the next time she felt his slick hand, it was at her hip, hooking into her panties and tugging relentlessly…
***
Back at the cabin, Donna and Kory ate dinner, talking animatedly about nothing in particular. Donna had much to tell, of space and the things she had seen of the multiverse. Kory’s concerns, ironically, were more down to earth. She had big dreams for her child. They all seemed to revolve around a father figure. After Kory’s disappointment with King Myand’r, that only made sense. Still, Donna could only let her jaw twitch with a sort of listless anger as she heard Kory list all the things the man in her life would teach her daughter. The afterglow of their sex on the beach, once reality had set in, had been contaminated somehow. Dick and Barbara’s names were hoarse on her throat, and being thought of as just one of Kory’s lovers was taunting her.
Afterward they cuddled on the couch, Kory’s fingers relentlessly soaking into Donna’s back. “You’re so tense. Your back feels like it’s been welded together!”
“Can’t imagine why…” Donna gritted.
“I know what’ll loosen you up.” Kory smiled and practically skipped to her bag. She unzipped a side compartment and took out a DVD in a jewel case.
“What’s that?”
Kory held it up in front of her mouth. “What do you think it is?”
“Porn?”
“My smart, smart Donna…” Kory put it into the DVD player and sat down beside Donna, her hand instantly winding around her girlfriend’s waist.
The DVD auto-played. Static took over, gave way to a top-down view on a bed. Empty. A man entered, pulled the covers back.
“Is that Dick?” Donna asked.
“Shh,” Kory said. Her hand was braced on the back of Donna’s neck, the thumb rubbing up and down her spine. “The beginning is the best part.”
Dick went off-screen and the view shifted to a shot from the side. Dick picked Barbara up from her wheelchair and set her down in the bed. Barbara casually began to undress, in a way meant to leave lots for Dick to do when he finished disrobing. Kory kissed Donna’s shoulder as Dick’s shirt came off.
“This is just too weird,” Donna said.
Dick finished undressing, his cock dangling half-hard between his legs. At the sight of it, Kory’s hand clenched in Donna’s hair, which she’d been fitfully stroking. Bending down, he began to take off Barbara’s clothes like he was unveiling a work of art.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Kory ran her lips along the shell of Donna’s ear. “Almost as beautiful as you.”
“I don’t really feel comfortable… I really don’t feel comfortable.”
Kory picked up the remote and pressed pause. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong!? We’re watching your ex-boyfriend’s sex tape and you’re asking me what’s wrong?”
“Aren’t they attractive?” Kory asked, confused.
“That’s not the point! Every time I look at your body I’m reminded of your past, now we have to relive it?”
“Fine.” Kory shut the TV off. “We can just cuddle, okay baby?” She kissed Donna’s neck. “We won’t even mention their names. It’ll be like they don’t exist.”
“Stop kissing me.” Donna put a hand to Kory’s stomach. “And that? How am I going to forget that exists?”
“Mar’i. Her name is going to be Mar’i.”
“What’s going to happen to her? What does that mean for us? Where is she even going to live?”
“In the Clocktower, of course,” Kory said blithely. “Same as always.”
“You’re just going to raise a kid with your boyfriend and his wife?”
“No, not like that…”
“Then you’re going to give her up for adoption?” Donna said at last.
“To strangers?” Kory responded, horrified.
“No. To Dick and Barbara.”
“I… she… Mar’i is a third-Tamaranian. She will not understand her nature if raised by humans.”
“So, what? You’re going to be their nanny?”
Kory got up, away from Donna. “I know what you are attempting to do, and it will not work. I… do you believe me suited to motherhood?”
“Kory, you’re the most supportive, caring person I know.”
Kory smiled, just a tad of bitterness shining through. “If I were to raise a child on Tamaran, I believe I would perform satisfactorily. But on Earth… how would I teach my daughter to fight? To love? There are so many… ways, here, and my daughter would need a human to raise her if she were to fit in. And I do so want her to fit. I lost Dick because I couldn’t embrace his ways. I will not have Mar’i face the same heartache.”
Donna got up and put her chin on Kory’s shoulder. “Losing Dick wasn’t such a bad thing, though. Was it? It led you to me.”
Kory looked down.
Donna took Kory’s face in her hands and slowly turned her so they were facing each other. A single tear moistened Kory’s eye. Donna kissed her, hoping against hope that Kory wasn’t comparing her to Dick. And if Kory was, that she was coming up favorably, although she knew that was practically impossible.
“I will help you raise your baby,” Donna said, moving her hands down to Kory’s stomach like a promise. “If you’ll let me. If you want me to.”
Kory pushed her hands into her hair, slowly pulled her fingers through the crimson locks. Donna felt the baby kick.
“Tell me truly, Donna. Do you believe my relationship with Dick can be saved?”
Donna swallowed, but it did nothing to stem the bile that seemed to be rising up her throat. She took back her hands from Kory’s belly and folded them in her lap, belted in on themselves into tiny balls of useless anger.
“I don’t believe that Dick can ever be a father to your child.”
“Because Barbara won’t let him or because it’s not in his nature?”
”Kory,” Donna said, with as much compassion as she could muster.
“Because one can change their nature, if one wants to. I did. For him, I changed.”
“Kory…”
“Do you think I haven’t changed for you?”
“You’ve changed?” Donna laughed, high and airy. She was breathless. She couldn’t get enough air. “You haven’t changed a bit. You’re still in love with Dick.”
“Not in the way you mean!” Kory said, at long last defensive.
“And what way do I mean? You want to bear his children, Kory! You want to have his fucking babies and you want him to be their father! Does it get much more serious than that? What way, what way, what way do you love him?”
“Not like that!” Kory insisted, crying a little. “You make it sound dirty and… and wrong! What I feel is pure!”
“You need to let him go, Kor. He doesn’t feel for you. He hasn’t for a long time.”
Kory burst into tears. “You must hate me,” she said, her head in her hands. “After all this, you hate me.”
“Two husbands that you didn’t love as much as Dick and now I’m part of the proud tradition. The people who keep your bed warm while you pine away for your childhood sweetheart.”
“I love you so much more than any of them. They kept my bed warm while I thought of you. I thought of you and Dick and us being a team again, you remember? We all knew what was going on, but neither you or Dick rose a word in protest if I were to slip from your bed to the other’s. Didn’t you like the sound of Dick making love to me, carried on the wind to you? Didn’t I find you warm when I came back to bed, the proof of his love still running through me and out of me?”
“Fuck, can you not talk about him for one minute? Just one? I have…” Donna stood. “Why don’t you go back to him? Get down on your knees and suck his cock, because it’s obvious you’d rather be doing that than anything with me.”
“Because he won’t have me!”
Donna paused on her way out the door. Kory was standing behind her, looking smaller and lighter than she’d ever been. She held her pregnancy like it was her only friend in the world.
“Christmas night, when he walked in on us and I… I did those things you said. Barbara didn’t know. She still doesn’t.”
“He cheated on her? Dick?”
Kory nodded.
“No. I don’t believe you. Dick would never…”
“He bought the tickets for this trip. Because he didn’t want to look at me. Him.” Kory listed to her knees. “The man I love.”
Involuntarily, Donna felt herself pulled closer and closer to Kory until she was on the floor in front of her. “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” Kory said, reaching out a hand for support and finding it clasped in both of Donna’s.
“As much as Dick?”
Kory’s silence was answer enough.
“But… then how?”
“Like the shadow loves what it falls across. Like the rain loves the clouds. Like the river loves its banks.”
Donna embraced her then, feeling the full weight of the pregnancy between them, weeping like she would never stop.
“But the shadow is cast by the light, and the rain must fall upon the ground, and the river must go out to sea.”
”I… I love you. Goddamnit, I still love you. Even though I know you don’t feel the same way. The way you feel about Dick.”
“On Tamaran…” Kory’s breath hitched. “On Tamaran, there is understanding. People understand that passions ebb and flow. There is no shame in being second in another’s heart, because you can always be first in another’s. But here… you only have me. Oh, Donna, my love, can you ever forgive me for not loving you more?”
“No, I don’t suppose I can…” Donna sniffled as Kory’s hands moved over her back, as if rubbing warmth into someone dying of frostbite. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.”
Month 7
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Donna/Kory
Word Count: 9,938
Series: The Other Wife
Summary: Dick tries a trial separation.
Month 5
Month 6 – January - New Year’s Resolution
Dick and Barbara weren’t speaking. That was by unspoken (natch) consent, although Dick’s silence toward Kory was self-imposed. About the only one in the Clocktower that he could talk to was Donna. He found her in the couch, watching Looney Tunes with Kory.
“That is definitely too violent for the baby to watch,” Donna said through her giggles.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought it was sexuality that all you Americans were hung up on.”
“Bugs does cross-dress.”
“Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played girl bunny?” Dick asked.
“Donna, love, do me a favor.” Kory rested her head on Donna’s shoulder imploringly. “Dick still thinks his schtick of quoting from movies and then me not getting it because I’m an alien is funny. So could you humor him?”
Donna rolled her eyes over to Dick. “The things I do for her. No, I did not find Bugs Bunny attractive when he cross-dressed. I was a Red Hot Riding Hood girl.”
“Then d’ya mind taking a basket to Grandmother’s house? I need to talk to Kory in private.”
Donna checked her watch. “Fine. I need to get going anyway. Meeting with the Chinese delegate to see if I can move the Great Ten off the Taiwanese border.”
Kory kissed her, long and loving. “For luck.”
Donna was grinning all the way out the door.
Dick waited for the door to shut behind her. Carefully aware of each step, Dick walked between two chairs and switched off the television. Kory sensed his mood. She sat up a bit straight and set her legs together. Dick walked over to her as if he were going to sit down beside her, but thought better of it and stood instead. She looked up at him, folding her hands in her lap.
“Can I go first?” she said.
“I didn’t know you wanted to say anything.”
“I do.” Her nostrils flared as she took a rapturous breath, clearly excited by the very thought. “I think you should fuck Donna.”
Dick choked on saliva and, coughing, he nearly bent in double before recovering. “Why would I do that?”
“Because she doesn’t get enough man-love. I suppose I could seek out Roy or Kyle, but I’d rather share her with you. And I know you can show her a much better time than those two… well, maybe not those two, but either of them separately, for certain.”
Dick covered his eyes with his hand, rubbing at his face. “And Barbara?”
“If I’m not jealous, I don’t see why she should be. You’d like fucking Donna. She screams.” Kory leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “She screams loud.”
“I’m not going to fu… to do that with Donna. I’m not going to do that with anyone but Barbara.”
“Except me, right?”
Dick bowed his head. “Can I talk now?”
“Of course.”
“I know Gotham isn’t your favorite city… in fact, me and Babs were thinking of moving to Metropolis once the baby arrives, but that’s neither here nor there.” Dick circled his hand before realizing what he was doing and stuffing it in his back pocket. “And I know what it’s like to lose a home… the circus was my life, you know…”
“Any time you start to approach your point, let me know.”
“Sorry.” Dick took a plane ticket from his pocket. “I was thinking you might want to take a break from all this, so I bought you tickets to the Caribbean.” He thumbed the ticket so that it split, revealing there was another one behind the first. ”Tropical paradise, so long as you watch out for the pirates. You and Donna can go, soak in the sun… I hear Intergang has a new chapter there if you want to fight crime.”
Fingers pressed into the armrest, Kory lifted herself up. Dick met her eye to eye. “And what if Donna doesn’t want to go?”
Dick was too quick to answer. “You can stay here, or in stately Wayne Manor, while me and Babs take a vacation. If I can pull her away from the keyboard for two minutes, that is. You know she made me solve a crime on our honeymoon? I was all ‘no, baby, let’s have more sex, let the police handle it,’ but she insisted…”
“How much did those tickets cost?” Kory interrupted.
Dick smiled proudly, charmingly. “Eight hundred dollars, plus expenses. I got a hotel all lined up…”
Kory hung her head. “Is it really worth that much to you to get away from me?”
Dick didn’t say anything. His jaw twitched and he sputtered a little, but finally he looked away for a long moment before refocusing on her. This time his gaze was frighteningly clear.
“I think it’s best for both of us to spend some time apart… neither of us meant for that to happen…” He blew out air between his lips. “At least, I hope we didn’t…”
“Don’t blame me,” Kory said furiously. “I was just… living in the moment.” She prodded him in the chest with the heel of her hand. “You wanted it as much as I!”
Dick’s teeth gritted. He wanted to deny that, he so wanted to deny that, but he never had managed to get the hang of lying to her. Smarting, he took a step backwards. Then, more soothingly, but still heated:
“I’m not blaming you for what happened, it’s your nature.”
“My nature?” Kory repeated flatly.
“If you did it, it’s obviously your nature.”
Kory crossed her arms. Her baby kicked. “What does that make your nature?”
“You seduced me!” Dick shouted.
“Because you invited me!”
Dick grabbed her hand roughly and slapped the tickets into her palm. “Take the fucking tickets!”
Kory wasn’t so much there with him as she was back just before he’d proposed to her, when all they could do was yell at each other. Maybe because they thought that was the only way the other would listen. They would both be wrong on that account.
Quiet wasn’t much better. “You made a mistake marrying Barbara and not me. We all know it, and putting me out of sight won’t change that.”
“The only mistake I made was…”
Barbara knocked on the door, giving them ample warning before coming in. Dick exhaled all the air in his lungs, deliberately draining himself of all his rage and tension. It nearly worked, too. He turned to look at Barbara.
“Something the matter?” she asked.
Kory wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“No. Kory was just leaving. She and Donna are taking a vacation.”
“Oh.” Barbara couldn’t say that she wasn’t happy to see Kory go… but strangely, she wasn’t. “Well, have fun.”
***
Kory showed up at Donna’s doorstep in a state of Tamaranian agitation. Titanic sobs were wracking her body and entire boxes of tissues were sniffled away before her melancholy subsumed. Donna came home to find her sitting on the embassy’s stope, anguishing over a pair of Wayne-Air tickets.
“Kor? Something wrong, baby?”
Kory tried to stand, stopping halfway up with an “oof!” of stress. Slower now, the dizziness gone, she stood to greet Donna with a hug and a quick kiss. “Nothing troubles me when I am with you.”
Donna grinned, but wasn’t fooled for a second. Both hands on Kory’s left arm, she led her girlfriend into the Themysciran embassy. She’d been staying there on and off since her resurrection, unable to find time to lock down an apartment. Inside, Man’s World staffers (mostly female) and Amazons (many security, and so in armor) were busy as bees. All eyes focused on the two newcomers. Donna was an old favorite among the Amazons and Kory had her admirers as well.
Life, especially new life, was revered among the Amazons and soon Kory was crowded with fawning Amazons, eager to feel the baby kick. Kory titillated them with tales of the conception, carefully leaving out any names. Dick became “he,” Barbara became “she,” and they were both referred to as “my lover.” It was all rather archetypal, even Jungian, Donna thought.
Finally, the afterglow of the story trailed off, the ending heralded by a chorus of sympathetic sighs from the Amazons. Donna practically had to drag her lover away from the outpouring of adoration.
Donna’s room was decorated in the Doric order favored by the embassy, with lacy, embossed curtains detailing her struggles. She hadn’t had time to decorate much, so most of the furnishings were either provided by the embassy or inherited from her past life. Kory sat down heavily on a couch that Kyle had returned to Donna upon her resurrection.
“Can I get you anything?” Donna offered, running her hand over the plane of Kory’s shoulders.
“Some warm rr’lxeth juice would be heavenly, but in lieu of that, anything with mangoes in it.”
“Mango juice, coming right up.”
Kory tried to get comfortable on the couch despite the fetus tap-dancing in her uterus. She managed to calm the child by floating just a little, and lighting her starbolts enough to infuse her body with warmth. Donna returned to find an extremely welcoming sight waiting for her. Kory was hovering above the couch in repose, jacket and shoes off, hair trailing off her like a comet’s frozen tail. Despite the well-deserved adoration her mentor received, Donna’s conception of beauty was built around Kory.
“You’re bringing my old photography instincts back to life,” Donna told Kory, presenting her with both the juice and a plate of crackers topped with tangy Amazon cheese. Kory popped two crackers into her mouth, delightfully “oooom”ed as she chewed, then washed it down with half a cup of mango juice. Her eyes lit up at the taste.
“Speaking of photography…” Kory licked crumbs from her lips, making Donna’s heart race. “What is it you do these days?”
“Day job? Mainly I help out around the embassy. I guess you could say I’m Diana’s aide de camp, although I’m afraid I’m not half as helpful as that would imply.”
Kory finished off her drink, wiping at her lips with the back of her hand. “So they won’t mind if I steal you away for a couple days… weeks…”
”Months… who knows?” Donna finished, mock-glumly.
“No, just days or weeks. So, can I kidnap you without fear of reprisal?”
“Did you see them back there? As long as you kiss and tell, they’ll let you keep me forever.”
Kory pinched Donna’s arm. “Not a bad idea.”
“As long as we’re making plans, how about dinner at Octavia? Unless you’d like to fill up on cheese and crackers.”
Kory swallowed the last of a cracker, licking the cheese off the top before eating it. “Octavia sounds wonderful… pardon the pun.”
“Pardoned. Pick you up at eight.”
Donna got up to find a pen and paper to write down Octavia’s address… after all, it’d been a while since she and Donna had gone there, back when it was just an Italian restaurant… but Kory grabbed Donna’s hands. Donna was surprised to find herself being held back, but then she felt Kory’s thumb petting her knuckles.
“Who said I was going anywhere?”
And under Donna’s devilish grin, Kory began to pleasurably undo her friend.
***
Afterward, they took an elongated catnap. Their traditional spooning was hampered by the baby kicking Donna in the back like it was going out of style. Which, as far as Donna was concerned, it had after the first dozen hits. Donna wondered idly how Kory had become impregnated with the second coming of Bruce Lee. Shame, too. She really liked being in the shelter and warmth of Kory’s powerful arms. The Tamaranian had enough body heat for both of them.
As soon as Donna massaged Kory awake, the two women showered and dressed in silken Amazon finery. Robes that would be nearly translucent if Donna didn’t insist on piling on and wrapping them up until they were suitable protection against the night chill, along with boots with metal filigree… self-defense. Kory nearly put on a one-woman fashion show in the mirror before Donna tugged her off to join a band of off-duty Amazon guards headed for Octavia.
As usual, it was jumping with robed women, both Amazons and posers. Guests to the subculture milled around in fashionable street clothes; leather and fur were frowned upon. As a concession to modernity, the music merely sampled the lyre and other traditional Amazon instruments into the driving, de rigueur techno. Donna led Kory to the comparatively quiet cella, where the bartender floated them a cup of mango juice, straight up, and a Michelob.
Their waitress showed up soon in a toga and sandals. Donna was grateful to see both her breasts were intact. Not only were they nice breasts, but far too many extremist adherents to Athena’s principles took to self-mutilation out of misguided fervor. It just made the moderate Amazons look bad in the eyes of the media.
Donna ordered a salad and Kory asked that a steak be made as raw and as large as possible. Donna gave it the okay. After all, Kory was eating for two now. They shared the appetizer, a thick loaf of bread with chunks to be broken off and dipped in dressing.
“So what was that talk earlier about taking me away, Kor-gon?” Donna asked.
“You remember that far back? X’Hal, must be losing my touch.” Kory put a piece of bread in her mouth and chewed it slowly, belatedly swallowing. “I bought us two tickets to the Caribbean. I thought we could go, get away from it all.”
“And Dick’s okay with this?”
Kory waved her hand about. “If he doesn’t like it… if he misses me… tough.”
“Good on ya, Kor.” Donna mock-punched Kory on the chin. “Show him it’s the princess that calls the shots, not the pauper.”
“Yeah.”
Kory waited for the food to arrive and wondered when it was that she’d last felt like a Princess of Tamaran.
***
Barbara had packed her bags and moved to a state of disbelief. On the satellite feed, she watched as a red and blue blur effortlessly routed the hostage situation in the Sudan, ending the tense stand-off she’d been agonizing over for days. Bootheels clicked on the ground behind her. She took off her glasses. She didn’t need them to know Superman was running through his powers, disabling every revolutionary without a lick of harm.
“I spent two days assembling a team to handle that situation. Do you know what I had to do to get Rose and Thorn on the team?”
Dick felt out her neck, unerringly locating a crick that had been bothering her and zapping it out of existence. “And now Clark’s handled it in two minutes. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”
Much as it pained her to do so, Barbara took Dick’s hands off where they were massaging. “I thought I told you never to interfere in an op I was running. Barging in like that could’ve…”
“I told him all about the meta hostage and the rich kid playing terrorists. We ironed out a fix.” She could feel his smiling breath on the lobe of her ear. “What, you thought I listened to all your shoptalk because I was interested?”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “Keep massaging, man wonder. Sidekicks should be seen and not heard.”
“Oh?” His lips drew closer to her ear. “Not even if I want to tell you that…”
Barbara’s eyes widened with the next few words.
“Alright, then. You can say whatever you like.”
“I love you.”
“Say it again.”
***
The plane trip was long and difficult. Kory didn’t like flights that weren’t under her own power, especially when there was little to occupy her. Then their flight passed through a storm, so they had to stay in their seats for the duration. Donna petted Kory’s hand and read to her from a beach novel she’d bought. She had the feeling that mother and daughter more enjoyed the soothing sound of her voice than Lee Child’s prose. Kory’s baby, judging by Kory’s nauseous look, hated air travel more with every bit of turbulence they encountered.
The flight was eight hours, and they had actually started on the next adventure of Jack Reacher when they landed. By then, Kory was reading to a tired Donna, petting her back with the hand that wasn’t holding the paperback. There was something glorious in just being able to hear Kory’s voice, Donna thought. Kory’s voice rumbled with emotion: it grew frightened at the tense sections, triumphant at the heroes’ victories, and sultry at the love scenes. Donna liked sultry.
They landed. After the usual airport rigmarole, they retrieved their luggage and got to a rental car. Kory was changed into a swimsuit before they’d even left the airport. A wide straw hat and sunglasses completed the ensemble. Donna giggled at the look; her friend in swimwear in the middle of the city. Kory retaliated with a calculated undressing, rolling up Donna’s jeans to above the calf and unbuttoning her blouse. As Donna was driving their rented jeep, there wasn’t much she could do to protest.
Finally, Kory ran out of things she could take off without getting them pulled over. She consulted the map, charting their route to the Isle de Frijoles (“The Island of Beans?” “Apparently, the guy who discovered it really wanted to raise some.”). On the way there, they passed an old JLI embassy, converted into a community center after long years of inactivity. A group of Rastas were having a reasoning in the courtyard. Kory waved to them as they drove by.
After a forty-minute drive through the jungle, they reached a long, lonely stretch of beach. Dick’s claim of hotel reservations was duplicitous; their “apartment” was a cabin. Passing an outhouse, they walked down a wooden pier-bridge to a sandbar the size of an apartment block. There was a cabin on stilts in the middle of it, big enough to be comfy without being cramped. Kory’s feet had barely tossed sand before she was undressing. Donna considerately picked up her clothes and sandals and took them inside with the luggage.
The cabin was decorated in Early Pirate Movie, with lots of seashells and paintings of boats on the walls. The furniture was made of wicker with plush cushions covering it. It had most modern conveniences, although Donna’s cell-phone reception was spotty.
“Donna, come out here, you must see this!” Kory yelled from outside.
Grabbing her one-piece (although they had Isle de Frijoles all to themselves, Donna couldn’t bring herself to turn it into a nude beach), Donna quickly changed out of her bulky clothes and into the fashionable, skintight bikini. She gave herself a few tucks in the mirror, just to make sure Kory’s eyes would pop out of her head. Then she picked up a bottle of sunscreen and went outside.
Kory was sitting in the sand, naked, just where the tide started. The ends of her hair fell down to her butt, where the coming tide wetted it. Kory giggled when the white froth covered up her toes and sucked the sand out from under her body, burying her a little ways. The sun was hanging on by its fingernails, ready to go under the horizon in another hour or so.
“Sunscreen, Kor. You’ll burn up.”
Kory looked over her shoulder at Donna as she squeezed a massive blob of cream out onto her palm. Raising one opportunistic eyebrow, Donna rubbed her hands together.
“How ironic. I call you outside to view the natural beauty of the world, while the greater beauty by far is inside our little house.”
Donna fell to her knees and began rubbing the sunscreen into Kory’s stomach with circular motions. Kory moaned, knowing that Donna had picked there because it was between her sensitive breasts and her still more sensitive sex… and those hands could go either way.
“I like your bathing suit,” Kory continued, picking at Donna’s shoulder straps. “But I like your bare skin even better.”
“With the way you touch it, so do I.” Donna held up her arms as Kory tugged the suit down, sat back on her haunches as Kory pulled it past her ass, then kicked her legs enthusiastically as Kory pulled it all the way up.
Kory caught one of Donna’s bicycling feet and licked her pedicure. Which became a lot less suave and sexy when she had to spit out some sand, but Donna blamed that lapse on jet lag.
“Kory, could you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Don’t go for a swim while I’m not around.”
“Donna, I can fly.”
“Even so…” Donna watched Kory pout. “I just want you to be safe.”
“Very well. I do not wish to swim without you anyway.” Kory dipped her hand into the surf as it came up. “Shall we swim now?”
Donna gently moved Kory onto her back, then carefully straddled her. With hands to either side of Kory’s head, pressing into the sand, she bent close to Kory’s lips.
“Not yet. Let the tide come in a little. I want to have a little From Here To Eternity moment.”
A thin blanket of foam crept up the beach, wetting Kory’s back.
“That could take a while.”
Donna sat up and grabbed the sunscreen. “Whatever shall we do to pass the time…?”
The sunscreen was mango-flavored. Kory loved mango.
***
The smell of motor oil assaulted Barbara’s nostrils. She waved her hand about her nose as Dick led her into the underground garage, one level below the garage open to the general public. This one was much smaller and more sophisticated, with passageways leading into Gotham’s subway and sewer systems. A stained workman’s jumpsuit, Dick’s, hung on the hook of a wince. Barbara tsked as she passed the partially disassembled fuselage of the old Whirly-Bat.
“Dick, you know you never fly that thing.”
Dick gave one of the rotors a loving rub as he passed. It wobbled up and down. “I always wanted to, though. Maybe on the weekends.”
Barbara steered herself around a toolbox Dick had left lying on the floor. She was waiting for him to unlock the side-door of the van when Dick walked right by it. Patiently waiting with her elbows propped up on her armrests, Barbara watched him walk up to a tarp. He grabbed it and looked at her expectantly.
“What, no drum roll?”
She tapped her wristwatch. “That do?”
With a shrug, Dick pulled the tarp off.
“No way.”
“Way.”
Dick idly twisted the sidebars, listening to the crackle of the front tire shifting on the floor. The motorcycle was a thing of beauty, but what impressed Barbara the most was the sidecar attached to it. If impressed was the word.
“Dick, I’m… stunned, I guess. Yeah, definitely stunned.”
Dick sat down across the seat. “Would it be insensitive to ask for you to hop in? I already packed the folding wheelchair.”
“I was, uh, wondering where that got to.” Barbara wheeled closer. Reluctantly, she ran a hand over the thick forks. “Been a while.”
“I know it’s not the same,” Dick said as he crouched to eye level with her. “But it is better than nothing. Right?”
Barbara took hold of his arms and gestured for him to swing her into the sidecar. “Right.”
***
The hammock was only big enough for one, so Kory slept there. Donna slept under and alongside her, beach towels serving as both blanket and pillow. Kory’s hand and hair hung off the netting. Donna touched both as wakefulness left her.
Her dreams were the usual kaleidoscopic mix of Greek mythology and her own past. Kory had center stage tonight. She sang a song in a language only stars could understand and grew a baby Robin inside herself, which flew out to peck at the ground at Donna’s feet. Donna backed up, into Kory’s arms, and felt Kory’s hair. Like a net.
When she woke up, the hammock was empty. Kory was vomiting outside. Morning sickness. Donna prepared ambrosia tea and a breakfast high in proteins and carbohydrates. One of the lessons she’d picked up from Terry’s endless pregnancy prep. By the end, he’d probably known more about pregnancy then she did from being pregnant. Donna wiped away the tear that had come to her right eye, watching as another from her left eye fell and hit the rim of the teacup. It rolled down to the center and Donna drowned it with the tea she’d brewed.
She fixed them some eggs and stole one of the frozen yogurts they’d packed for Kory. Out the window, she saw Kory wash her mouth out with seawater and spit that out onto the pad as she walked back, her belly rolling with each step.
“Breakfast is served,” Donna announced, and Kory instantly brightened. Her breath tasted of sea salt when they kissed on the cheek. Donna was going to wait for that ambrosia tea to go down before she gave any tongue.
“I had a wonderful dream,” Kory said over breakfast.
“Oh really?”
“I was watching you and a redhead making love. At first I thought it was us, but then you rolled over… you were in a bed, a really big bed… and I saw that it was you and Barbara. Barbara was really enjoying how gentle you were. I think she expected all lesbians to play rough, like me.”
“And what were you doing?”
“I was watching. Just watching. Dick was sitting next to me, with his head on my shoulder, and we were masturbating. Ourselves and each other, it made no difference. And after a while, the four of us climbed into bed together. But we didn’t all sleep with our heads on the pillows. Barbara slept at the foot of the bed, with her head on my thigh, and you slept across the middle of the bed, covering us all like a second blanket, and Dick slept with his arms around me and an arm on you and a leg intertwined with Barbara. And it was the best sleep I ever had. Then I woke up in the dream and I woke up in real life too.”
“And why would I want Barbara Gordon when I could have you?” Donna asked, smirking.
“Variety is the spice of life. Otherwise, why would I want to eat you out when I could just finger you?”
“Because I taste like the blood of your enemies and the purest water you ever tasted all rolled into one.”
Kory kissed her. “I take it back. You taste better.”
After breakfast, they swam together. Donna wore her swimsuit, but that didn’t last long. Kory could swim circles around her. With guerrilla attacks, she undressed Donna at sea. They left the bikini floating on the surface as Kory pulled Donna down, making love until even their superhuman air reserve ran out. Reluctantly, their heads popped back up to the surface. All Kory wore was her wet hair, which she slickened over her front as she walked out onto the beach. Only her belly emerged from that curtain of dripping red locks. It covered more than most bathing suits.
After gathering up her bathing suit, a task which required a nude fly-over, Donna came back ashore. Kory was sunbathing again, her body already gleaming with suntan lotion. Nonetheless, she made room on her beach chair for Donna to sprawl beside her and together they read aloud another beach novel. Donna found it unbearably cute that after all these years, Kory still had trouble pronouncing a few words. They came to a stopping point and Kory pointed out that Donna had dripped dry… which meant she probably needed some suntan lotion.
“You’ll burn up,” Kory teased as she lathered her hands up.
***
The air of Gotham City was so cold it bit. Barbara felt it break across her face like she was the prow of a ship. The cool air tightened her nipples, but couldn’t chill her heart. With both hands around Dick’s leg, she urged him to go faster, faster. They took the corners at the unsafest of speeds, Barbara burying her face in his thigh and digging her nails into his flesh. It just made him burn the rubber all the hotter.
Far too soon, the first leg of their journey was over. They’d stopped at a red light. Barbara giggled ecstatically before kissing his knee. She felt his touch right through her helmet and his glove, then moving lower to pet her chin. She bit at his leather-clad finger. The whole thing had her out for blood.
“I knew you like… what’d you call it… flying on wheels? So, uh, I know it’s not the same as being in control, but if you trust me… I’ll be your wings.”
Barbara contentedly rubbed her cheek against his silk-smooth pantleg. “Oh, baby… you know I’m going to be able to get you to do anything by threatening to tell someone you said that, right?”
Dick shrugged. “It’s how I feel,” he said nonchalantly.
“Stop digging the hole and go back to being the emotionally semi-retarded man I married.”
“You don’t like the sensitive chick-lit thing?”
She bit his thigh, leaving a brief indentation in the leg of his tuxedo.
“You’re feeling frisky,” he said as the light shifted.
“No. I’m feeling alive.”
They drove the rest of the way, Barbara finding Dick surprisingly reluctant to reciprocate her affections. At one point, he told her to lay off, he was driving. True, she was unzipping his fly, and it was dangerous, but wasn’t that the point?
She wondered if he’d let Kory get away with it before burying that thought in the Earth.
Dick found them a handicapped parking spot. He set out the wheelchair, gentlemanly, and Barbara situated herself in it. Together, they walked up to the box office. Dick bestowed their reservations on the usher like a prince bearing gifts. Together, they took the elevator up to the balcony, and then to their seats. There, they settled in for three hours of opera.
“I suppose a make-out session would be frowned upon?” Dick suggested, an impressive twenty minutes in.
Barbara had even timed it. “That is looked down on.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anyone who would look down on me telling the most beautiful woman in Gotham that she is, in fact, the most beautiful woman in Gotham?”
Unbidden, the fact that Kory wasn’t currently in Gotham leapt to the forefront of Barbara’s mind. It resisted all attempts to dislodge. Damnit, what was wrong with her? She couldn’t enjoy a simple evening out with her husband without turning it into an exercise in paranoia?
“Maybe you’d do better talking to the second most beautiful woman in Gotham. The most beautiful is trying to watch the show.”
“C’mon, it’s in Latin!”
“Italian.”
“You can understand it?”
“How do you think people enjoy the opera?”
Dick waved the playbill.
“That’s for the posers.”
Dick closed his eyes and tried very hard to meditate until the fat lady sung.
***
As the day wore on, Kory’s one complaint was twofold. Although she loved having Donna all to herself, she also had the Tamaranian need to proclaim her love, to shout it from the rooftops… to have a little company, in other words. Besides, she wanted to wear a few of the swimsuits they had bought.
Dressed for the first time since noon, Kory and Donna flew out to the nearest public beach. Donna wore a conservative one-piece, Kory wore a long-skirted two-piece. They landed… or submerged… just past the breakers. No one took any notice of them, except perhaps a lifeguard. They swam in and from afternoon to evening splished and splashed with the other beach-goers. Donna, worn out by Kory’s indomitable energy (and multiple pleasurings), stayed on the beach to build a sandcastle with Themysciran architecture.
As night fell, Kory finally came in, dripping wet. Unerringly precise, she found Donna. Lifted her to her feet and led her to a pier. As they walked there, a skateboarder flew down the pier and dropped off the end, diving into the water. Kory and Donna gave him five points a piece. Watched as he swam out to join the rest of the beach-goers.
“What are we doing here, Kor?”
Kory cornered Donna against a wooden pillar. “What do you think, Donna? I get a little cranky when I don’t have sex for four hours. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Donna dodged Kory merrily as the alien moved in for the clinch. “You are insatiable, you know that?”
“Mmmm… you love it.” Kory dropped her bikini top. “Don’t make me start without you…”
“Maybe I’m a voyeur,” Donna said, hiding behind a pillar. “Maybe I like to watch.”
“Then watch.”
Kory’s hands played over her breasts, squeezing and kneading the abundant flesh. Her entire body shuddered in symphony with the groping. Soon, she had to lean against the pillar for support. Donna came out from behind her own pillar, knowing from long familiarity with Kory’s body that her love was demanding to be touched down below… and was saving that privilege for Donna. Her pelvis jerked in that direction, bikini bottom riding low on Kory’s hip, her musk already overriding the salty smell of the sea.
“Kory, someone could see!”
“I don’t care. I don’t care if the whole world sees. I want them to know what love looks like.”
With each step Donna took, the sand spread out under her feet and Kory grew closer. Kory’s closing hands were using more force, leaving red marks on her tits, the fingernails pressing in deep enough to draw blood. Kory’s breath sounded in Donna’s ears like war drums, going faster and faster and louder and louder. With a hand that was steady as the earth, Donna reached out and caressed Kory’s hair.
“No, not there!” Kory whined as Donna twisted a loop of hair around her fingers. “Down low… please… I need it there!”
“For a warrior, you beg quickly.” Donna yanked on Kory’s hair. “An Amazon would never give up so quickly.”
“Their loss,” Kory said before she kissed Donna, her touch aggressively ripping the straps from her shoulders.
Donna trembled. “Do that again.”
“Lie down.”
Donna promptly did.
“Now who’s giving up quickly?” Kory said, as Donna opened up her bikini at the sides. She spread herself out on the sand for Kory, feeling clothed by the darkness.
“It’s a mutual surrender. That you did first.”
Kory kneeled at her feet like a supplicant and worked her way up with maddening slowness. She didn’t rush a single instant; instead she oozed up Donna’s legs, not pausing at her sex, but running her hands against the swimsuit fabric like she could rip through it at any time. Her nails nipped at its folds like a cat at a scratching post. Donna sighed as those bedeviling hands finally found their way to her face. Every finger seemed to find a pressure point as they meshed on Donna’s face.
“That you did first,” Kory corrected gently.
Donna’s hips were jerking up involuntarily. At a loss, she just wrapped her legs around Kory.
“Do it.”
“Surrender.”
“I have been,” Donna said. “From the moment I saw you, from the moment you embraced me, I’ve been yours.”
Kory was touched and couldn’t help but show it. “And what’s mine… is always valued.”
Like a match being struck, their bodies touched. Donna’s one-piece was stripped away, shoved down around squirming thighs, Donna’s face a mask of pleasure as Kory’s hands caressed her. With a war cry, she rolled them over and awkwardly maneuvered into a 69. Kory nipped at her limbs with impatience. Finally, they clung to each other, rising in ecstasy. Their skin caught fire. Kory made a sound so deep in her throat that it could only be pleasure. Donna’s mouth was too occupied to give voice to what she felt, but the way her body kicked and writhed and throbbed was proof enough of her orgasm.
Kory rolled off of her and laid back, her body awash in sweat, saltwater, come, and sand. She wore it like a runway model. “Donna, could you ever be satisfied with one person in your life?”
“If that person was you, sure.”
“But if you could have more than one…” Kory rolled onto her side. “Wouldn’t you want someone who could touch you differently, kiss you differently, love you differently?” She brushed her fingers through Donna’s pubic hair. “Someone like Dick?”
Donna frowned. “Haven’t thought about him that way in a long time.”
Kory grinned, lasciviously and happily. “But you have thought about him.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, he runs around in that skintight suit…”
“And sometimes he walks around with only a towel on?”
“You know what I think?” Donna reached down to grab Kory’s hand and force it between her legs. “I think he likes the attention. He knows that he could have any woman in the room and he likes being reminded of it.”
“Any woman in the room?” Kory raised an eyebrow. “What if you were in the room with him?”
“Oh, he’d never make a pass at me. Not when he has Barbara.”
“He’s not that in love with her. He’s been with her before, hasn’t stopped him from sniffing around elsewhere. Even me,” she giggled. “He would come to me, moaning about how Barbara had dumped him and been ever so misunderstanding, because he knew I understood him. I made him so happy. And he made me happy.”
“And do I?”
“Donna, you make me ecstatic.” Kory ground her hand against Donna’s sex as she lowered her voice to a falsetto of Dick’s. “’Donna, would you like to come by my place later and see some of my etchings?”
“Dick would never say that.”
“That is a genuine Dick Grayson line. Come up here.”
Kory laid down on her back and Donna laid down beside her. Slowly, Donna began to heap sand from the beach onto Kory’s stomach.
“You can’t tell me you don’t miss cock.”
“I could ask you to wear a strap-on.”
“It’s not the same. The weight of it, the heat of it, the smell and taste and throb of it.” Kory swiped a finger up Donna’s mons. “And Dick’s is the best in the business.”
“Ahhh.”
“His fingers are different too. They aren’t dainty, like ours. When he fingers you, his hand is like a machine. He doesn’t caress, he fucks.” To demonstrate, Kory began fingering her lover. “I can’t do it, but it’s kinda like this.” She turned her head to whisper huskily in Donna’s ear. “Only better.”
“Mmmm. Looking to make your dream come true?”
“I wanna watch him fuck you. I wanna see how you come when you’ve got a cock inside you. I wanna see how you look covered in his come. But right now, I’ll settle for you screaming my name.”
Donna did. Kory added another finger.
“Now scream Dick’s name.”
Donna’s eyes bulged. Kory twisted her fingers inside Donna and the Amazon obeyed.
“Now scream Barbara’s.”
Donna did, for the third and final time. Exhausted, she collapsed and didn’t resist as Kory rolled her over, covering her damp body in sand. They played in it, coated their bodies with it, picked up damp sand from the beach and slathered it on themselves. Finally, Donna couldn’t take anymore and just held Kory tightly, loving that it was her that those golden arms were holding.
“Wash off in the ocean? We can swim back.”
“You’re on.” Donna got up, brushed some sand off her body, then clutched her discarded swimwear in one hand and ran for the ocean. “Last one back’s an Athenian boy-lover!”
Kory flew after her, laughing happily. Donna was hers and she was Donna’s and for the moment, that was more than enough.
***
The drive home was just as enthusing to Barbara as the drive out. Dick pushed the bike to its limits, not ignorant of the way Barbara’s fingers curled up his inner thigh, nails scratching lightly at the flesh underneath. By the time they got back, she was in fine form.
Barbara had a secret little hum as they went up in the elevator, her eyes hooded and casting numerous appreciative glances at him as they rode up. Dick smiled. It was the tuxedo. Chicks dug the tuxedo.
“So, any other plans I should know about?” Barbara asked when the doors parted. “Or will I finally be able to catch up on Ugly Betty?”
Dick’s hand roamed over the skin exposed by the back of her scoop-necked dress. She arched back into the touch, favoring him with an utterly gratuitous, even pornographic moan. He quirked an eyebrow.
“I might have plans,” he confessed.
“I figured.”
“Wait in the bedroom while I get out of the monkey suit?”
“You could always get out of the monkey suit in the bedroom.”
“Promise to close your eyes?”
Barbara crossed her fingers. “Promise.”
In the bedroom, Barbara took off her earrings and necklace. Dick undid his cufflinks at a very deliberate pace. Barbara hugged herself, hands splayed over her bare shoulders. Dick took off his jacket and bow-tie. Carefully folded them and put them next to the hamper. Through the folds of his dress shirt she could see his musculature rippling with each motion. Subtly, not a flexing, preening effort like a bodybuilder on TV. More like a predator on the hunt. And approaching her, slowly.
“Thought I told you to close your eyes.”
“So I’m supposed to do this by touch?” She reached up and undid the button at the top of his shirt. “And this?” She undid the button below.
“Eyes closed,” he ordered, his voice authoritative. A growl.
She closed her eyes. Felt herself being lifted out of her chair and gently deposited on the bed, face down. Hands ghosted over her back, prickling the soft hair there. The shoulders of her dress were tugged down, leaving her exposed down to her shoulder blades. The same hands pressed down on her shoulders. She let out a very unladylike grunt at the actual touch finally happening.
The hands slithered downward, fingers just trickling a ways down her sides, pushing her dress down to expose the soft black of her bra strap. The hands pulled back and Barbara almost protested, but she could barely breath, let alone speak. It was times like this she knew he was hers, not Kory’s, not anyone else’s, hers. Their bodies hummed on the same wavelength. He could put all his love for her into a touch and she could receive that message time and time again.
A finger, a single finger, went under her bra strap and slid down there, freeing her skin from where the strap had laid, until it reached the hook. That was deftly undone. Barbara squeezed her eyes shut tighter as the bra was slowly drawn out from underneath her. If she didn’t expend conscious effort, she would have to look. She would have to assure herself that he was still there instead of trusting him, and she did trust him. With her life, with everything.
His touch was no more than a pressure drawing her zipper down. Slowly, she felt cool air rushed in to tease her skin. A draft that could’ve been his breath warmed her along her spine. Two fingers, no more, touched the back of her neck and ran down her spine. She breathed out slowly.
“Dick,” she said, a request.
“Shh.”
The tips of all five fingers moved down her, parting the open dress. For a moment, she was disappointed, thinking that her undressing, or unwrapping, was over. She could picture the scene in her mind. Him, standing over her… how much was he still wearing? There was no way to be sure. Her dress undone down to mid-back, her panties underneath it… she’d changed into the sexy ones, just for tonight. Just for him.
With the slow inevitability of the tide, Dick pulled the dress down her legs. She could’ve wept for the sensations she was missing. As if sensing her disappointment, Dick hurried it along as fast as the mood would allow. Finally, her dress was unspooled out on the floor. She didn’t know where his clothes were. She didn’t want to know. Not yet. He could’ve been wearing a costume. He could even have company.
The thought of Kory, watching them in this most intimate of moments, pierced her a thousand times, arousing her as much as it irritated her. Irrationally, Barbara flashed on what Kory had taken from her… Dick’s monogamy, even if she had consented to the threesome. Then Dick’s heir… they could’ve investigated in vitro fertilization, they could’ve worked around the problem… but Kory was gone now, safely away with Donna where she couldn’t take anymore. Still, Barbara had to know.
“Now?”
“Now.”
She opened her eyes. They were alone. In the vanity, she could see Dick. He hadn’t undressed, but his entire body was sexually erect. His muscles were tense with desire and sweat beaded his face. His hands curled into fists when he wasn’t using them. And his eyes… his eyes were on fire. She couldn’t look away. She watched, paralyzed, as he poured a glass bottle of massage oil out into one cupped hand. It smelled like sex. Not bodily fluids, but like kisses trailing down bodies and hands fumbling for catches and fingers digging into flesh.
Dick didn’t tell her it was Tamaranian.
She should’ve been cold. Atop her bed in just her panties. But she wasn’t. She was burning up. Then he touched her and she discovered what heat really was.
A hand, warmer than before, slicker, touched a shoulder blade. She tensed at the touch, so sudden and so much more than she had expected, but relaxed into it. The warmth oozed into her flesh, relaxing her more than she had ever remembered. There went the concerns about her body, about how he could ever love half-a-woman. How could she doubt that when his hands were on her, doing what they were doing? How could he touch anyone other than the woman he loved like that? One by one, her fears laughed themselves to death. She was safe. Her tensions dissolved. She could’ve died and found the peace of the grave without ever knowing it. She could’ve woken up from a bad dream and been the Barbara Gordon who’d run before this nightmare had ever started. Or she could’ve been in Dick Grayson’s arms.
Everywhere he touched left the memory of his hands in oil, permeating into her pores, actually seeming to grow hotter under her skin. Her breathing went from deep to swift to labored. Dick’s hands went harder. Her body quaked. Wanted more. She wanted more too.
She let out a long, deep, song of a purr. Dick would remember it for the rest of his life. The woman he loved, perfectly content. Because of him. Slowly, trying his hardest not to dislodge the equilibrium of the moment, Dick brought his knee up onto the bed. The mattress shifted under Barbara, but her fingers just squeezed deeper into the bedsheets. His other knee came up and Dick was kneeling on the bed.
He took a hand off her back. The other was at her neck, thumb and forefinger squeezing like he was wringing it. This slightest of touches was making her press bonelessly down into the bed, burying herself in it. Dick planted his hand on the mattress, supporting himself there. The oil on his fingers stained the sheets. He lowered himself down on top of Barbara until they were spooning, their faces side by side.
She reached behind herself and grabbed both his hands, forcing them to her sides. He knew what she wanted. His hands tickled up the sides of her body, reaching her breasts and cupping them. She rolled them over with her arms, pushing herself into Dick’s arms. His legs wrapped around her, thighs squeezing her waist. His hands, sticky with oil, moved up to her face and turned it until he could kiss her.
With nothing left to do, Barbara began undressing him.
“I know what this is about,” she said as he painted her body with what was left of the massage oil.
The hands stopped touching her. “You do?”
“You’re trying to make up for your little Superman-can’t-see-through-it lead balloon of a suggestion. Relax.” She tickled the back of his neck. “I overreacted.”
“Oh. Okay.” Dick’s hands still weren’t moving.
Barbara pulled Dick’s hands up to her chest and placed them on her breasts. She’d always been sensitive there, and after the shooting it was the most erogenous place on her body. There were bras she couldn’t wear because they made her nipples erect just by the way they chafed.
Fingers mixed with his, she encouraged him to grope and tug. He followed her lead. “It’s not like you cheated on me or anything. As far as it comes to open relationships, even though I don’t want to pass you around like a dry fruitcake, I do want you to feel free to say whatever’s on your mind. If you want to fuck other people, I’d much rather hear it from the robin’s mouth then catch you in bed with some skank.”
“Yeah, of course. Love you.”
“Damn right.”
He lowered her back to the bed and the next time she felt his slick hand, it was at her hip, hooking into her panties and tugging relentlessly…
***
Back at the cabin, Donna and Kory ate dinner, talking animatedly about nothing in particular. Donna had much to tell, of space and the things she had seen of the multiverse. Kory’s concerns, ironically, were more down to earth. She had big dreams for her child. They all seemed to revolve around a father figure. After Kory’s disappointment with King Myand’r, that only made sense. Still, Donna could only let her jaw twitch with a sort of listless anger as she heard Kory list all the things the man in her life would teach her daughter. The afterglow of their sex on the beach, once reality had set in, had been contaminated somehow. Dick and Barbara’s names were hoarse on her throat, and being thought of as just one of Kory’s lovers was taunting her.
Afterward they cuddled on the couch, Kory’s fingers relentlessly soaking into Donna’s back. “You’re so tense. Your back feels like it’s been welded together!”
“Can’t imagine why…” Donna gritted.
“I know what’ll loosen you up.” Kory smiled and practically skipped to her bag. She unzipped a side compartment and took out a DVD in a jewel case.
“What’s that?”
Kory held it up in front of her mouth. “What do you think it is?”
“Porn?”
“My smart, smart Donna…” Kory put it into the DVD player and sat down beside Donna, her hand instantly winding around her girlfriend’s waist.
The DVD auto-played. Static took over, gave way to a top-down view on a bed. Empty. A man entered, pulled the covers back.
“Is that Dick?” Donna asked.
“Shh,” Kory said. Her hand was braced on the back of Donna’s neck, the thumb rubbing up and down her spine. “The beginning is the best part.”
Dick went off-screen and the view shifted to a shot from the side. Dick picked Barbara up from her wheelchair and set her down in the bed. Barbara casually began to undress, in a way meant to leave lots for Dick to do when he finished disrobing. Kory kissed Donna’s shoulder as Dick’s shirt came off.
“This is just too weird,” Donna said.
Dick finished undressing, his cock dangling half-hard between his legs. At the sight of it, Kory’s hand clenched in Donna’s hair, which she’d been fitfully stroking. Bending down, he began to take off Barbara’s clothes like he was unveiling a work of art.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Kory ran her lips along the shell of Donna’s ear. “Almost as beautiful as you.”
“I don’t really feel comfortable… I really don’t feel comfortable.”
Kory picked up the remote and pressed pause. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong!? We’re watching your ex-boyfriend’s sex tape and you’re asking me what’s wrong?”
“Aren’t they attractive?” Kory asked, confused.
“That’s not the point! Every time I look at your body I’m reminded of your past, now we have to relive it?”
“Fine.” Kory shut the TV off. “We can just cuddle, okay baby?” She kissed Donna’s neck. “We won’t even mention their names. It’ll be like they don’t exist.”
“Stop kissing me.” Donna put a hand to Kory’s stomach. “And that? How am I going to forget that exists?”
“Mar’i. Her name is going to be Mar’i.”
“What’s going to happen to her? What does that mean for us? Where is she even going to live?”
“In the Clocktower, of course,” Kory said blithely. “Same as always.”
“You’re just going to raise a kid with your boyfriend and his wife?”
“No, not like that…”
“Then you’re going to give her up for adoption?” Donna said at last.
“To strangers?” Kory responded, horrified.
“No. To Dick and Barbara.”
“I… she… Mar’i is a third-Tamaranian. She will not understand her nature if raised by humans.”
“So, what? You’re going to be their nanny?”
Kory got up, away from Donna. “I know what you are attempting to do, and it will not work. I… do you believe me suited to motherhood?”
“Kory, you’re the most supportive, caring person I know.”
Kory smiled, just a tad of bitterness shining through. “If I were to raise a child on Tamaran, I believe I would perform satisfactorily. But on Earth… how would I teach my daughter to fight? To love? There are so many… ways, here, and my daughter would need a human to raise her if she were to fit in. And I do so want her to fit. I lost Dick because I couldn’t embrace his ways. I will not have Mar’i face the same heartache.”
Donna got up and put her chin on Kory’s shoulder. “Losing Dick wasn’t such a bad thing, though. Was it? It led you to me.”
Kory looked down.
Donna took Kory’s face in her hands and slowly turned her so they were facing each other. A single tear moistened Kory’s eye. Donna kissed her, hoping against hope that Kory wasn’t comparing her to Dick. And if Kory was, that she was coming up favorably, although she knew that was practically impossible.
“I will help you raise your baby,” Donna said, moving her hands down to Kory’s stomach like a promise. “If you’ll let me. If you want me to.”
Kory pushed her hands into her hair, slowly pulled her fingers through the crimson locks. Donna felt the baby kick.
“Tell me truly, Donna. Do you believe my relationship with Dick can be saved?”
Donna swallowed, but it did nothing to stem the bile that seemed to be rising up her throat. She took back her hands from Kory’s belly and folded them in her lap, belted in on themselves into tiny balls of useless anger.
“I don’t believe that Dick can ever be a father to your child.”
“Because Barbara won’t let him or because it’s not in his nature?”
”Kory,” Donna said, with as much compassion as she could muster.
“Because one can change their nature, if one wants to. I did. For him, I changed.”
“Kory…”
“Do you think I haven’t changed for you?”
“You’ve changed?” Donna laughed, high and airy. She was breathless. She couldn’t get enough air. “You haven’t changed a bit. You’re still in love with Dick.”
“Not in the way you mean!” Kory said, at long last defensive.
“And what way do I mean? You want to bear his children, Kory! You want to have his fucking babies and you want him to be their father! Does it get much more serious than that? What way, what way, what way do you love him?”
“Not like that!” Kory insisted, crying a little. “You make it sound dirty and… and wrong! What I feel is pure!”
“You need to let him go, Kor. He doesn’t feel for you. He hasn’t for a long time.”
Kory burst into tears. “You must hate me,” she said, her head in her hands. “After all this, you hate me.”
“Two husbands that you didn’t love as much as Dick and now I’m part of the proud tradition. The people who keep your bed warm while you pine away for your childhood sweetheart.”
“I love you so much more than any of them. They kept my bed warm while I thought of you. I thought of you and Dick and us being a team again, you remember? We all knew what was going on, but neither you or Dick rose a word in protest if I were to slip from your bed to the other’s. Didn’t you like the sound of Dick making love to me, carried on the wind to you? Didn’t I find you warm when I came back to bed, the proof of his love still running through me and out of me?”
“Fuck, can you not talk about him for one minute? Just one? I have…” Donna stood. “Why don’t you go back to him? Get down on your knees and suck his cock, because it’s obvious you’d rather be doing that than anything with me.”
“Because he won’t have me!”
Donna paused on her way out the door. Kory was standing behind her, looking smaller and lighter than she’d ever been. She held her pregnancy like it was her only friend in the world.
“Christmas night, when he walked in on us and I… I did those things you said. Barbara didn’t know. She still doesn’t.”
“He cheated on her? Dick?”
Kory nodded.
“No. I don’t believe you. Dick would never…”
“He bought the tickets for this trip. Because he didn’t want to look at me. Him.” Kory listed to her knees. “The man I love.”
Involuntarily, Donna felt herself pulled closer and closer to Kory until she was on the floor in front of her. “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” Kory said, reaching out a hand for support and finding it clasped in both of Donna’s.
“As much as Dick?”
Kory’s silence was answer enough.
“But… then how?”
“Like the shadow loves what it falls across. Like the rain loves the clouds. Like the river loves its banks.”
Donna embraced her then, feeling the full weight of the pregnancy between them, weeping like she would never stop.
“But the shadow is cast by the light, and the rain must fall upon the ground, and the river must go out to sea.”
”I… I love you. Goddamnit, I still love you. Even though I know you don’t feel the same way. The way you feel about Dick.”
“On Tamaran…” Kory’s breath hitched. “On Tamaran, there is understanding. People understand that passions ebb and flow. There is no shame in being second in another’s heart, because you can always be first in another’s. But here… you only have me. Oh, Donna, my love, can you ever forgive me for not loving you more?”
“No, I don’t suppose I can…” Donna sniffled as Kory’s hands moved over her back, as if rubbing warmth into someone dying of frostbite. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.”
Month 7
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Date: 2008-04-13 04:41 pm (UTC)