Fic: Frostbite (Dick/Babs)
Jun. 19th, 2008 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Frostbite
Fandom: Batman
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs
Word Count: 3,730
Summary: Barbara has to be cold. Cold enough for it not to hurt when the people she loves disappoint her.
And to think, Barbara had been eager to see her mother again. Or… eager wasn’t the right word. Although intellectually she knew her father’s infidelity was as much to blame for their family’s break, she still took his side in the break-up. It was a situation she was happiest not thinking about. And on her birthday weekend, naïve little fool that she was, she’d hoped that they could put their differences aside and just be a family again. Which was why she was alone on the street that night.
And wasn’t that just typical? 128-bit encryption, no problem, but when it came to her personal life she was as willingly ignorant as a Flat Earther. Gone to bed with vision of sugar plums dancing in her head, happy to have all of them under the same roof again, when a loud boom had woken her. A door slamming. She’d gotten out of bed, throwing nothing more than her ratty pink bathing robe on over her nightie, and gone to the door.
Her parents were arguing. It was hard to get the gist of it; their argument shifted around furiously, dredging up the pollution of the past. Never mind how the fight had started, with both of them in different rooms and asleep, but now their raised voices were ringing through the suddenly very crammed apartment. Barbara was ready to block it out with her iPod and lots of happy, fluffy pop songs when she heard her father shout “Do you want to wake Barbara!? Is that what you want?”
Barbara was pretty sure they would’ve been shame-faced at her harsh words on emotional blackmail if she hadn’t sobbed them under her breath in her rush out the door. They were probably still arguing about whether to go after her by the time she was outside. All she wanted was to get out, get away, and while it used to be she could do that by rooftop, now she felt every crack in the sidewalk as she rolled over it.
She didn’t know how far she’d traveled by the time her panic attack cooled – maybe a half-mile, maybe two – but when her arms started burning she stopped and began her self-recrimination in earnest. It wasn’t fear, exactly. She had her escrima sticks and taser in her wheelchair. It was that going back would make her feel like an overemotional freak, have everyone tread on eggshells around her.
But at the same time she couldn’t just wheel her way to a motel. Even if it was in the nice part of town, the cold would get her before the muggers. Already she could feel it oozing into the muscles of her dead legs, a sensation that was a little like sinking into a dark underground lake.
This was a nice part of town, so the light cast by the streetlamps was a constant, gloomy illumination as yellow as jaundice. The smell of the city and the night gathered about her, a much diluted version of the old heady Batgirl scent. Occasionally a car would drive by, its lights blinding her before disappearing. Behind her, what passed for Gotham “suburbs” were patches of stretched brown grass fed by chattering sprinklers. Ahead of her, the skyscrapers of the inner city loomed like shadows cast across the night sky, blotting out stars and half of the moon. Somewhere, Two-Face was half-smiling.
Eureka. A pay-phone ahead. But who to call? Dinah was with Ollie, the Birds were in Metropolis, and she wouldn’t dream of troubling Bruce with this. That left her options very limited.
Hell with it, Babs. You know you’re not calling anyone else. And this is a much better excuse than ‘I’ve been missing you’.
She was alone, except for what might have been a passed-out bum or just a pile of old clothes by a backalley dumpster. The street was potholed, the opposite neighborhood was darkened brownstones, and her sidewalk bordered locked-down storefronts with dead neon in their windows. When she breathed, her exhale died in white vapor.
With a long blink to further calm her nerves, Barbara picked up the phone and dialed Dick’s number collect. He picked up on the second ring. Barbara’s heart climbed into her throat.
“Hello…? This is Dick Grayson, who am I talking to?”
Barbara remembered that it was her turn to talk. “Hi Dick. It’s me.”
She heard a groan of leather as he sat upright on his couch. “Barbara.” Just that word.
“I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No! No, no, nah… you know my sleep schedule. Just taking the night off, you know.”
She did. Bruce had started a mandatory downtime program after a hard look at Tim’s grades. Of course, he himself had completely ignored it, but the rest of them… of the Bats now had “time off” whether they liked it or not. By the rapid-fire cadence in the background, Dick was taking advantage of his free time to watch late-night infomercials.
“I hate to bother you, but I could use a ride. I’m at Third and Scarlett…”
A zipper told her he was already doing up his jacket. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she lied.
“Okay,” he said in the tone that meant he’d seen right through her, but he wasn’t going to make something of it. “I’m on my way. Sit tight.”
She hung up, missing the cradle, grabbed the handset back long enough to utter “Bye!” into the mouthpiece, and hung up again. Then she miserably rubbed her arms for warmth. Great. She’d probably just convinced him to drive to her at Mach 5. Or that she was a psycho. Barbara wasn’t even sure she wanted to see him. She should call him back and tell him not to come. Or would that only make him more determined to check on her?
It wasn’t like she could tell him to leave her alone without letting out even more crazy. Maybe she could call someone else. Like Tim or Jason Bard. Then tell Dick that someone else had picked her up. Only he would call them and find out the truth and wonder why he didn’t want to see him. As if it shouldn’t be totally obvious by now.
Screw it. Call him off now, think up different plan later. She grabbed up the phone and called Dick’s cell.
“Hey beautiful. I’m almost there.”
“Uh, yeah, that won’t be necessary. I’ve found… alternate means of transportation.”
“Are you sure you’re alright? For real now.”
“I’m fine,” Barbara stressed, but her teeth were chattering.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Really sure?”
“Yes!”
”Really, really sure?” His voice hadn’t come from the phone, it had come from the sedan that had pulled up behind her. As soon as she turned around, the self-satisfied smirk disappeared from his face. “Jesus Christ, Babs! How long have you been out here?”
Even as he spoke, he was in motion out the car to wrap his jacket around her legs. “What is this Jane Austen crap? You gonna die from consumption next?” Over her protests, he lifted her into his car and turned the heater on full blast. Barbara got a glimpse of her face in the side-view mirror… colorless cheeks and lips nearly blue. “What’s wrong with your room? Did your dad kick you out? Are you carrying a child out of wedlock? Is it a black baby? A Thanagarian baby? Stop me if I’m getting warm…”
Barbara closed her eyes in utter mortification. “You’ll think it’s stupid.”
Dick threw her wheelchair into the backseat. “If I do, just remind yourself that once I thought short-shorts were fashionable.” He grabbed a fire blanket from the trunk and threw it over her. “Okay, my apartment is five minutes away. There’s hot coffee and a warm bed there.”
“No, no, I just need to get to a motel.”
“A motel. In the dead of night. Dressed in your unmentionables.”
“Shut up,” she advised him.
“Make you a deal. Spend the night. In the morning, I’ll pick up your things from your dad’s and drop you off at a reputable hotel with central heating”
She weakly touched his shoulder, yawning. Without her anxiety, she felt deathly tired. “Anything to get my pants off, huh?”
“Believe it or not, I’d be much happier if you had pants on.” He buckled her seatbelt for her. “Damnit, Babs, couldn’t you have just said you missed me?”
***
By the time they reached his parking garage, Barbara had heated up enough to be embarrassed at her little fainting spell. Especially when Dick volunteered to carry her to his room. She politely deferred.
“Right,” Dick said, and pulled her robe tighter for her.
“Honestly, Dick. I’m not that much of a cripple.”
His face was too set to even register her self-deprecation. He took her hands in his. “Cold as ice.”
“Goes with my heart.”
Dick’s thumbs rubbed her wrists. “You putting words in my mouth?”
“Be a doll and get my chair.”
He was more patient than he’d ever been in costume, in any costume, strolling beside her while her numb, clumsy fingers tried to turn the wheels. She knew it must be killing him not to help her. That’s when being an ice queen came in handy.
“I don’t think you’re an ice queen,” he said suddenly, his voice echoing through the deserted parking garage. “Totally the opposite. I think you feel so much that it’s easer for you not to feel anything at all. I could never do that, though, so I get why you had to do it for me. For us.”
She reached the elevator, but kept a white-knuckle grip on her wheelchair. “I think I preferred being the ice queen.”
He pressed his floor. “If only it were that simple, huh?”
“Yeah. Huh.”
***
Dick’s apartment would’ve been a conventional bachelor pad if his extracurricular activities didn’t shine through. Books of all caliber lying around, from treatises on theology to pulpy adventure novels. A high-powered computer with the black dimensions of a 2001 monolith. Faint bloodstains and the smell of disinfectant on the carpet where he’d trailed in blood. A small gym that included all manner of martial arts exercises. And his smell was all over the place, a homely mix of sweat coddled by Kevlar, motor oil, blood, and gunsmoke.
“Home sweet home,” Dick said, turning on the lights.
“Dick, when you said spend the night…”
“Relax, there’s a guest bedroom for egg-sactly this occasion.” He kicked a mostly empty pizza box out of her way. “Although I’d be game if you wanted to throw in a… no, no, not going there.”
Tact? From Dick Grayson? What’s next, apes evolving from man? “What? Handjob? Sensual massage?”
“A kiss, actually. God, you’re making me sound like Roy.”
Barbara paused in the middle of her wry smile. It was times like these she was acutely aware of not being an ice queen. With a hunger she couldn’t suppress, she grabbed him by his loosened necktie and pulled him down into a kiss that burned like thermite until it had reached the core of her.
“I’m an idiot,” Dick said when it was over, face still so close to her that Barbara could count the veins in his eyes.
“Only on occasion.”
“No, not us… I mean, that too, a little… (mostly you, though)… it’s the guest room. I got it specifically so that things wouldn’t be awkward if you had to stay over, and I just realized I didn’t install any rings.”
One of the worst parts of being paraplegic was the sheer amount of concessions Barbara had to make to enjoy day-to-day living. Bathroom visits, bathing, getting out of bed, all much more complicated. Getting in and out of bed was accomplished using hanging rings, the kind a gymnast might perform on, to hoist herself in and out of bed. Without them… “It’ll be awkward, but I can manage.”
Dick folded his hands, like he could tell she wouldn’t like what he had to say. “Need any help?”
Barbara wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Maybe just a little.” She yawned. “Well, c’mon. If I lose any more beauty sleep I’ll turn into Joan Rivers.”
“She should be so lucky,” Dick grinned as he led her to her room.
The chair, desk, and bed were all of the IKEA brand of careless masculinity, but a Bat-teddy bear on the easy chair gave the room some personality. She wondered if he’d bought it while thinking of her.
Barbara took off her bathing robe and instantly regretted it. The robe was safe – a gift from her father, old and comfy and androgynous. But her nightie had been bought after No Man’s Land, during that interminable mirage when she and Dick had believed love could conquer all. It was silky and sassy and let her physique out to play. Dick was slightly too cool to look, but his body sagged and slumped with old wistfulness. “You ready?”
She nodded carefully. Dick too her in his arms, as carefully as he would a piece of evidence, and almost as dispassionately. That’s what she would’ve thought if she couldn’t feel his heart through their chests. She hated nurses, hated the way it felt to be lifted like an invalid with her legs swinging beneath her like sandbags. But there was something about the way Dick’s arms curled around her back, protective and yet not… sheltering, that made it… tolerable.
Dick’s breath, hitting the side of her neck faster than normal, like the wind picking up enough to make a windchime play music. Straightening, he lost his balance and fell heavily on his back. The bed absorbed their fall with a curse of bedsprings. Dick exhaled explosively, Barbara clung to him and he chuckled.
“Make a fat joke and I’ll smother you.”
He patted her back, laughter still clinging to the back of his throat. “I think you just made one for me.”
She pushed herself just far enough to drop back down on him, driving a pained grunt out of Dick.
“Oof! Uncle, uncle! Come on, it’s just more of you to love.”
She pressed her forehead against his. “I follow a very rigorous exercise regiment.”
“I know.”
The tips of their noses were touching. “And a very strict diet.”
“You look great.”
“Except for my legs.” She looked back at them, trailing behind her like freakish mutations.
He gently turned her head back toward him. “Even your legs.” He rubbed his hand up and down her cheek. “As long as you’re crushing me, mind spilling what soured you on family togetherness?”
She laid her head down on his chest, listening to his heart do double-time. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
”Okay.”
“I think I’m turning into my mother.”
Dick squinted. “Your biological mother or Gordon’s wife?”
“Dad’s wife.”
“Oh, okay.”
“And my family is using me to guilt-trip each other.”
His arms wrapped around her like branches growing. “That sucks.”
“And you’re the only person I have to call in the middle of the night when I need a ride.”
His shrug traveled through both their bodies. “You’re the only one I can call in the middle of the night when I need Swamp Thing’s reading list.”
She laughed, then started crying. Dick’s chest rose and fell, then she heard the clodding of his kicked-off shoes landing. The loose fists stilled on her back relaxed into open hands, palm down above the base of her spine and on one of her shoulder blades. Her nightie was sheer enough for her to feel his enamel when his fingers steepled. His heartbeat was still rapid, but slowing steadily. The sea calming after a storm. Barbara struggled to remember the train of their conversation.
“It’s just I had no reason why my mother would let go of my father and here I’m acting like a… like an unforgiving bitch. Just like her.”
His fingers steepled, scratched her back. She snuggled deeper into his chest, the hollow of his belly, the warmth of his arms. “You’re being too hard. On both of the Gordon women.” His voice was soft as a golf announcer, as Dinah would say, too quiet to wake anyone watching.
“It’s been a year, Dick.” Her voice was soggy with drowsiness. “You must have a girl. You probably have five. And they’re all gonna be pissed when they find out I was here.”
“No,” Dick whispered as she fell asleep. “There’s only you.”
***
She rose to consciousness in fits and gasps, like the rise and fall of her pillow. Wait… what?
Barbara opened her eyes. The fabric of Dick’s undershirt filled her vision. Then there was a voice mumbling softly, so softly she almost thought it was part of a dying dream. She looked up to see Dick talking on his cell-phone. His voice was muted, as if from far away. Babs touched her ears and found headphones covering them like earplugs. She pulled them off.
“—course I slept on the couch, Commissioner. Your daughter insisted on it… she’s still asleep.”
Barbara slapped Dick’s chest, only playfully, and gestured for the phone.
“Hang on, she just came in.” Dick cupped the phone to his chest. “Babs, it’s your dad!” He spoke into the receiver again. “Here she comes.”
He handed the phone over to Barbara. She rolled off him, onto her back, and heard the pop of his bones as he got up. “Hi daddy.”
Her father’s voice was the grace-under-pressure calm that he’d cultivated over a career of crisis situations. “Barbara, I’m glad you’re okay. We were worried, all of us.”
Great, a guilt-trip. Worse yet, one I totally deserve. “I’m sorry. That was selfish of me.”
“It’s not important. Are you okay?”
In the other room, Dick started a shower. The sound sapped a yawn out of Barbara. “I’m fine. A good night’s sleep and I’m right as rain.”
“Thank God. I’m sorry you had to hear the… disagreement last night. Your mother and I have always had a complicated relationship. I can’t apologize enough if I gave you even the slightest impression that it was your fault.”
“Is Mom there?”
“She took James Jr. out for pancakes. I told them you could take care of yourself.”
Barbara heard a faint, gurgled a capella. Dick, singing in the shower. She smiled, the perfect smile for a bright new day. “Right. Well, I’m sure you have work, so I’ll just… sign off. Be back home soon.”
“You need a ride?”
“Dick can drive me.”
“So…” her father paused, her voice transitioning out of worry and into what might’ve been a grin. “You and Dick?”
“What’s that, Dad? I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up.” She hung up and rubbed at her eyes. Her glasses were… she spotted them glinting in the morning light. They were folded on the nightstand. She picked them up and put them on. Dick came out of the shower, dripping wet and wearing a towel the way Greek heroes wore capes – very well. Though it painted her to see the drubbing his rugs and hardwood were getting.
As he rubbed his hair dry with a second… oh God… with a dish towel, he offered her bathing robe to her. She held it in her arms.
“So, I take you home now?” Dick hadn’t been this awkward since their first morning together. And that was a boy whose idea of a morning after was, thanks to Kory, more sex. “We could get you a breakfast burrito on the way there. Or something.”
Barbara set the bathing robe aside. “Dick, if I ask you a… a loaded question, would you feel comfortable not answering it?”
Dick shrugged his way to the bed beside her. “I don’t know. Ask me about Helena.”
“Is she—“
“No comment,” he smiled.
She laughed. It was always easier to do that when he was around. “Umm, here goes... are you seeing anyone? Flirting with someone or staring or… is there anyone who’s toes I’m stepping on?”
Dick pulled his towel a little higher. When he spoke, his voice was low and serious. “No. I haven’t been looking.”
“Looking? In my experience, women tend to find you… fall right out of the sky, in fact.”
“I’ve been not looking really hard.” He grinned, but then turned suspicious. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t want to feel guilty about doing this…”
The kiss was just as good as last night’s, but this time she admitted how good it was. He pulled up against her and she felt the wisp of terrycloth where his bath towel tickled her belly. He smelled of tangy shampoo and soapy inoffensiveness and he was so close to her that his smell was perfume-cloud thick in her nostrils.
Barbara looked down, between the first and second kiss, and saw his hand hovering over her. He was unsure where to put it. Their bodily contact was transferring his wetness to her, plastering her nightie to her body. A little unsure herself, Barbara took his hand and wrapped it around her shoulder strap. Open invitation, accept or decline. He slipped it down her arm as they kissed and then rested his chin on her shoulder.
“Pop quiz,” Dick muttered.
“What was that?”
“Ever since we broke things off because we… I wasn’t ready, I’ve been imagining you giving me a test. You know, ‘you must be this tall to ride the ride’. Something like that.” He rolled off her and onto his side. “So, do I pass the test?”
“It’s not about that anymore. I could wait forever before letting you in, but it wouldn’t make our relationship any stronger. It would just punish you for not living up to an arbitrary standard I had no right to set for you in the first place. That’s not how a good relationship’s supposed to work. If we’re going to do this, it should be together, not when one of us gives the say-so. As partners. I don’t want to change you, I just want you. And if we’re not ready, it’s just a risk we have to take. But I am not letting you go because some stupid crap happened in the past.”
He smiled and cradled her face in both his hands before he kissed her. “You’re ready.”
Fandom: Batman
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs
Word Count: 3,730
Summary: Barbara has to be cold. Cold enough for it not to hurt when the people she loves disappoint her.
And to think, Barbara had been eager to see her mother again. Or… eager wasn’t the right word. Although intellectually she knew her father’s infidelity was as much to blame for their family’s break, she still took his side in the break-up. It was a situation she was happiest not thinking about. And on her birthday weekend, naïve little fool that she was, she’d hoped that they could put their differences aside and just be a family again. Which was why she was alone on the street that night.
And wasn’t that just typical? 128-bit encryption, no problem, but when it came to her personal life she was as willingly ignorant as a Flat Earther. Gone to bed with vision of sugar plums dancing in her head, happy to have all of them under the same roof again, when a loud boom had woken her. A door slamming. She’d gotten out of bed, throwing nothing more than her ratty pink bathing robe on over her nightie, and gone to the door.
Her parents were arguing. It was hard to get the gist of it; their argument shifted around furiously, dredging up the pollution of the past. Never mind how the fight had started, with both of them in different rooms and asleep, but now their raised voices were ringing through the suddenly very crammed apartment. Barbara was ready to block it out with her iPod and lots of happy, fluffy pop songs when she heard her father shout “Do you want to wake Barbara!? Is that what you want?”
Barbara was pretty sure they would’ve been shame-faced at her harsh words on emotional blackmail if she hadn’t sobbed them under her breath in her rush out the door. They were probably still arguing about whether to go after her by the time she was outside. All she wanted was to get out, get away, and while it used to be she could do that by rooftop, now she felt every crack in the sidewalk as she rolled over it.
She didn’t know how far she’d traveled by the time her panic attack cooled – maybe a half-mile, maybe two – but when her arms started burning she stopped and began her self-recrimination in earnest. It wasn’t fear, exactly. She had her escrima sticks and taser in her wheelchair. It was that going back would make her feel like an overemotional freak, have everyone tread on eggshells around her.
But at the same time she couldn’t just wheel her way to a motel. Even if it was in the nice part of town, the cold would get her before the muggers. Already she could feel it oozing into the muscles of her dead legs, a sensation that was a little like sinking into a dark underground lake.
This was a nice part of town, so the light cast by the streetlamps was a constant, gloomy illumination as yellow as jaundice. The smell of the city and the night gathered about her, a much diluted version of the old heady Batgirl scent. Occasionally a car would drive by, its lights blinding her before disappearing. Behind her, what passed for Gotham “suburbs” were patches of stretched brown grass fed by chattering sprinklers. Ahead of her, the skyscrapers of the inner city loomed like shadows cast across the night sky, blotting out stars and half of the moon. Somewhere, Two-Face was half-smiling.
Eureka. A pay-phone ahead. But who to call? Dinah was with Ollie, the Birds were in Metropolis, and she wouldn’t dream of troubling Bruce with this. That left her options very limited.
Hell with it, Babs. You know you’re not calling anyone else. And this is a much better excuse than ‘I’ve been missing you’.
She was alone, except for what might have been a passed-out bum or just a pile of old clothes by a backalley dumpster. The street was potholed, the opposite neighborhood was darkened brownstones, and her sidewalk bordered locked-down storefronts with dead neon in their windows. When she breathed, her exhale died in white vapor.
With a long blink to further calm her nerves, Barbara picked up the phone and dialed Dick’s number collect. He picked up on the second ring. Barbara’s heart climbed into her throat.
“Hello…? This is Dick Grayson, who am I talking to?”
Barbara remembered that it was her turn to talk. “Hi Dick. It’s me.”
She heard a groan of leather as he sat upright on his couch. “Barbara.” Just that word.
“I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No! No, no, nah… you know my sleep schedule. Just taking the night off, you know.”
She did. Bruce had started a mandatory downtime program after a hard look at Tim’s grades. Of course, he himself had completely ignored it, but the rest of them… of the Bats now had “time off” whether they liked it or not. By the rapid-fire cadence in the background, Dick was taking advantage of his free time to watch late-night infomercials.
“I hate to bother you, but I could use a ride. I’m at Third and Scarlett…”
A zipper told her he was already doing up his jacket. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she lied.
“Okay,” he said in the tone that meant he’d seen right through her, but he wasn’t going to make something of it. “I’m on my way. Sit tight.”
She hung up, missing the cradle, grabbed the handset back long enough to utter “Bye!” into the mouthpiece, and hung up again. Then she miserably rubbed her arms for warmth. Great. She’d probably just convinced him to drive to her at Mach 5. Or that she was a psycho. Barbara wasn’t even sure she wanted to see him. She should call him back and tell him not to come. Or would that only make him more determined to check on her?
It wasn’t like she could tell him to leave her alone without letting out even more crazy. Maybe she could call someone else. Like Tim or Jason Bard. Then tell Dick that someone else had picked her up. Only he would call them and find out the truth and wonder why he didn’t want to see him. As if it shouldn’t be totally obvious by now.
Screw it. Call him off now, think up different plan later. She grabbed up the phone and called Dick’s cell.
“Hey beautiful. I’m almost there.”
“Uh, yeah, that won’t be necessary. I’ve found… alternate means of transportation.”
“Are you sure you’re alright? For real now.”
“I’m fine,” Barbara stressed, but her teeth were chattering.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Really sure?”
“Yes!”
”Really, really sure?” His voice hadn’t come from the phone, it had come from the sedan that had pulled up behind her. As soon as she turned around, the self-satisfied smirk disappeared from his face. “Jesus Christ, Babs! How long have you been out here?”
Even as he spoke, he was in motion out the car to wrap his jacket around her legs. “What is this Jane Austen crap? You gonna die from consumption next?” Over her protests, he lifted her into his car and turned the heater on full blast. Barbara got a glimpse of her face in the side-view mirror… colorless cheeks and lips nearly blue. “What’s wrong with your room? Did your dad kick you out? Are you carrying a child out of wedlock? Is it a black baby? A Thanagarian baby? Stop me if I’m getting warm…”
Barbara closed her eyes in utter mortification. “You’ll think it’s stupid.”
Dick threw her wheelchair into the backseat. “If I do, just remind yourself that once I thought short-shorts were fashionable.” He grabbed a fire blanket from the trunk and threw it over her. “Okay, my apartment is five minutes away. There’s hot coffee and a warm bed there.”
“No, no, I just need to get to a motel.”
“A motel. In the dead of night. Dressed in your unmentionables.”
“Shut up,” she advised him.
“Make you a deal. Spend the night. In the morning, I’ll pick up your things from your dad’s and drop you off at a reputable hotel with central heating”
She weakly touched his shoulder, yawning. Without her anxiety, she felt deathly tired. “Anything to get my pants off, huh?”
“Believe it or not, I’d be much happier if you had pants on.” He buckled her seatbelt for her. “Damnit, Babs, couldn’t you have just said you missed me?”
***
By the time they reached his parking garage, Barbara had heated up enough to be embarrassed at her little fainting spell. Especially when Dick volunteered to carry her to his room. She politely deferred.
“Right,” Dick said, and pulled her robe tighter for her.
“Honestly, Dick. I’m not that much of a cripple.”
His face was too set to even register her self-deprecation. He took her hands in his. “Cold as ice.”
“Goes with my heart.”
Dick’s thumbs rubbed her wrists. “You putting words in my mouth?”
“Be a doll and get my chair.”
He was more patient than he’d ever been in costume, in any costume, strolling beside her while her numb, clumsy fingers tried to turn the wheels. She knew it must be killing him not to help her. That’s when being an ice queen came in handy.
“I don’t think you’re an ice queen,” he said suddenly, his voice echoing through the deserted parking garage. “Totally the opposite. I think you feel so much that it’s easer for you not to feel anything at all. I could never do that, though, so I get why you had to do it for me. For us.”
She reached the elevator, but kept a white-knuckle grip on her wheelchair. “I think I preferred being the ice queen.”
He pressed his floor. “If only it were that simple, huh?”
“Yeah. Huh.”
***
Dick’s apartment would’ve been a conventional bachelor pad if his extracurricular activities didn’t shine through. Books of all caliber lying around, from treatises on theology to pulpy adventure novels. A high-powered computer with the black dimensions of a 2001 monolith. Faint bloodstains and the smell of disinfectant on the carpet where he’d trailed in blood. A small gym that included all manner of martial arts exercises. And his smell was all over the place, a homely mix of sweat coddled by Kevlar, motor oil, blood, and gunsmoke.
“Home sweet home,” Dick said, turning on the lights.
“Dick, when you said spend the night…”
“Relax, there’s a guest bedroom for egg-sactly this occasion.” He kicked a mostly empty pizza box out of her way. “Although I’d be game if you wanted to throw in a… no, no, not going there.”
Tact? From Dick Grayson? What’s next, apes evolving from man? “What? Handjob? Sensual massage?”
“A kiss, actually. God, you’re making me sound like Roy.”
Barbara paused in the middle of her wry smile. It was times like these she was acutely aware of not being an ice queen. With a hunger she couldn’t suppress, she grabbed him by his loosened necktie and pulled him down into a kiss that burned like thermite until it had reached the core of her.
“I’m an idiot,” Dick said when it was over, face still so close to her that Barbara could count the veins in his eyes.
“Only on occasion.”
“No, not us… I mean, that too, a little… (mostly you, though)… it’s the guest room. I got it specifically so that things wouldn’t be awkward if you had to stay over, and I just realized I didn’t install any rings.”
One of the worst parts of being paraplegic was the sheer amount of concessions Barbara had to make to enjoy day-to-day living. Bathroom visits, bathing, getting out of bed, all much more complicated. Getting in and out of bed was accomplished using hanging rings, the kind a gymnast might perform on, to hoist herself in and out of bed. Without them… “It’ll be awkward, but I can manage.”
Dick folded his hands, like he could tell she wouldn’t like what he had to say. “Need any help?”
Barbara wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Maybe just a little.” She yawned. “Well, c’mon. If I lose any more beauty sleep I’ll turn into Joan Rivers.”
“She should be so lucky,” Dick grinned as he led her to her room.
The chair, desk, and bed were all of the IKEA brand of careless masculinity, but a Bat-teddy bear on the easy chair gave the room some personality. She wondered if he’d bought it while thinking of her.
Barbara took off her bathing robe and instantly regretted it. The robe was safe – a gift from her father, old and comfy and androgynous. But her nightie had been bought after No Man’s Land, during that interminable mirage when she and Dick had believed love could conquer all. It was silky and sassy and let her physique out to play. Dick was slightly too cool to look, but his body sagged and slumped with old wistfulness. “You ready?”
She nodded carefully. Dick too her in his arms, as carefully as he would a piece of evidence, and almost as dispassionately. That’s what she would’ve thought if she couldn’t feel his heart through their chests. She hated nurses, hated the way it felt to be lifted like an invalid with her legs swinging beneath her like sandbags. But there was something about the way Dick’s arms curled around her back, protective and yet not… sheltering, that made it… tolerable.
Dick’s breath, hitting the side of her neck faster than normal, like the wind picking up enough to make a windchime play music. Straightening, he lost his balance and fell heavily on his back. The bed absorbed their fall with a curse of bedsprings. Dick exhaled explosively, Barbara clung to him and he chuckled.
“Make a fat joke and I’ll smother you.”
He patted her back, laughter still clinging to the back of his throat. “I think you just made one for me.”
She pushed herself just far enough to drop back down on him, driving a pained grunt out of Dick.
“Oof! Uncle, uncle! Come on, it’s just more of you to love.”
She pressed her forehead against his. “I follow a very rigorous exercise regiment.”
“I know.”
The tips of their noses were touching. “And a very strict diet.”
“You look great.”
“Except for my legs.” She looked back at them, trailing behind her like freakish mutations.
He gently turned her head back toward him. “Even your legs.” He rubbed his hand up and down her cheek. “As long as you’re crushing me, mind spilling what soured you on family togetherness?”
She laid her head down on his chest, listening to his heart do double-time. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
”Okay.”
“I think I’m turning into my mother.”
Dick squinted. “Your biological mother or Gordon’s wife?”
“Dad’s wife.”
“Oh, okay.”
“And my family is using me to guilt-trip each other.”
His arms wrapped around her like branches growing. “That sucks.”
“And you’re the only person I have to call in the middle of the night when I need a ride.”
His shrug traveled through both their bodies. “You’re the only one I can call in the middle of the night when I need Swamp Thing’s reading list.”
She laughed, then started crying. Dick’s chest rose and fell, then she heard the clodding of his kicked-off shoes landing. The loose fists stilled on her back relaxed into open hands, palm down above the base of her spine and on one of her shoulder blades. Her nightie was sheer enough for her to feel his enamel when his fingers steepled. His heartbeat was still rapid, but slowing steadily. The sea calming after a storm. Barbara struggled to remember the train of their conversation.
“It’s just I had no reason why my mother would let go of my father and here I’m acting like a… like an unforgiving bitch. Just like her.”
His fingers steepled, scratched her back. She snuggled deeper into his chest, the hollow of his belly, the warmth of his arms. “You’re being too hard. On both of the Gordon women.” His voice was soft as a golf announcer, as Dinah would say, too quiet to wake anyone watching.
“It’s been a year, Dick.” Her voice was soggy with drowsiness. “You must have a girl. You probably have five. And they’re all gonna be pissed when they find out I was here.”
“No,” Dick whispered as she fell asleep. “There’s only you.”
***
She rose to consciousness in fits and gasps, like the rise and fall of her pillow. Wait… what?
Barbara opened her eyes. The fabric of Dick’s undershirt filled her vision. Then there was a voice mumbling softly, so softly she almost thought it was part of a dying dream. She looked up to see Dick talking on his cell-phone. His voice was muted, as if from far away. Babs touched her ears and found headphones covering them like earplugs. She pulled them off.
“—course I slept on the couch, Commissioner. Your daughter insisted on it… she’s still asleep.”
Barbara slapped Dick’s chest, only playfully, and gestured for the phone.
“Hang on, she just came in.” Dick cupped the phone to his chest. “Babs, it’s your dad!” He spoke into the receiver again. “Here she comes.”
He handed the phone over to Barbara. She rolled off him, onto her back, and heard the pop of his bones as he got up. “Hi daddy.”
Her father’s voice was the grace-under-pressure calm that he’d cultivated over a career of crisis situations. “Barbara, I’m glad you’re okay. We were worried, all of us.”
Great, a guilt-trip. Worse yet, one I totally deserve. “I’m sorry. That was selfish of me.”
“It’s not important. Are you okay?”
In the other room, Dick started a shower. The sound sapped a yawn out of Barbara. “I’m fine. A good night’s sleep and I’m right as rain.”
“Thank God. I’m sorry you had to hear the… disagreement last night. Your mother and I have always had a complicated relationship. I can’t apologize enough if I gave you even the slightest impression that it was your fault.”
“Is Mom there?”
“She took James Jr. out for pancakes. I told them you could take care of yourself.”
Barbara heard a faint, gurgled a capella. Dick, singing in the shower. She smiled, the perfect smile for a bright new day. “Right. Well, I’m sure you have work, so I’ll just… sign off. Be back home soon.”
“You need a ride?”
“Dick can drive me.”
“So…” her father paused, her voice transitioning out of worry and into what might’ve been a grin. “You and Dick?”
“What’s that, Dad? I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up.” She hung up and rubbed at her eyes. Her glasses were… she spotted them glinting in the morning light. They were folded on the nightstand. She picked them up and put them on. Dick came out of the shower, dripping wet and wearing a towel the way Greek heroes wore capes – very well. Though it painted her to see the drubbing his rugs and hardwood were getting.
As he rubbed his hair dry with a second… oh God… with a dish towel, he offered her bathing robe to her. She held it in her arms.
“So, I take you home now?” Dick hadn’t been this awkward since their first morning together. And that was a boy whose idea of a morning after was, thanks to Kory, more sex. “We could get you a breakfast burrito on the way there. Or something.”
Barbara set the bathing robe aside. “Dick, if I ask you a… a loaded question, would you feel comfortable not answering it?”
Dick shrugged his way to the bed beside her. “I don’t know. Ask me about Helena.”
“Is she—“
“No comment,” he smiled.
She laughed. It was always easier to do that when he was around. “Umm, here goes... are you seeing anyone? Flirting with someone or staring or… is there anyone who’s toes I’m stepping on?”
Dick pulled his towel a little higher. When he spoke, his voice was low and serious. “No. I haven’t been looking.”
“Looking? In my experience, women tend to find you… fall right out of the sky, in fact.”
“I’ve been not looking really hard.” He grinned, but then turned suspicious. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t want to feel guilty about doing this…”
The kiss was just as good as last night’s, but this time she admitted how good it was. He pulled up against her and she felt the wisp of terrycloth where his bath towel tickled her belly. He smelled of tangy shampoo and soapy inoffensiveness and he was so close to her that his smell was perfume-cloud thick in her nostrils.
Barbara looked down, between the first and second kiss, and saw his hand hovering over her. He was unsure where to put it. Their bodily contact was transferring his wetness to her, plastering her nightie to her body. A little unsure herself, Barbara took his hand and wrapped it around her shoulder strap. Open invitation, accept or decline. He slipped it down her arm as they kissed and then rested his chin on her shoulder.
“Pop quiz,” Dick muttered.
“What was that?”
“Ever since we broke things off because we… I wasn’t ready, I’ve been imagining you giving me a test. You know, ‘you must be this tall to ride the ride’. Something like that.” He rolled off her and onto his side. “So, do I pass the test?”
“It’s not about that anymore. I could wait forever before letting you in, but it wouldn’t make our relationship any stronger. It would just punish you for not living up to an arbitrary standard I had no right to set for you in the first place. That’s not how a good relationship’s supposed to work. If we’re going to do this, it should be together, not when one of us gives the say-so. As partners. I don’t want to change you, I just want you. And if we’re not ready, it’s just a risk we have to take. But I am not letting you go because some stupid crap happened in the past.”
He smiled and cradled her face in both his hands before he kissed her. “You’re ready.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 10:37 pm (UTC)I really like yours, btw. Very nice!!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 02:41 am (UTC)That's a very smart bit of writing, and it goes well with Dick Grayson.
I liked this story.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-15 07:47 pm (UTC)