April Seventeenth – Chapter 5 – Barbara

Barbara Gordon, the first Batgirl and the only Oracle, was drunk.

It wasn’t as rare an occurrence as some may think, and not just because of the Irish stereotype. Yes, Barbara despised the alcoholic her biological father had been, yet… Yet she understood. The need to run away, to numb things. She understood that better than most.

And today… Today she had plenty of things to numb.

The… the bimbo had gone for a booty call, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, no matter how dramatic her entrance, but it still had. And then she had gotten caught up in her game and…

It had felt… empowering. To have the chance to use Dick as an extension of her? To force him to bring the other woman to her knees, her body wracked in the pleasure she knew all too well the former circus kid could so easily inflict?

It had excited her.

More than she had expected, really. More than when she had let herself play at cybersex with Tedd Kord. More than… More than when a lonely woman allowed herself to reminisce about younger years and deserted rooftops with the one man whose body was extraordinary enough to one day become the world’s greatest acrobat.

She had thought of him. Too often.

And yet… And yet Kory also had.

Alien, and not just by origin. Impossibly beautiful, stunning, cheerful, bright. All the things Barbara Gordon no longer was, could never be.

And she had fallen in love with the one man Barbara had, somehow, still hoped would be there for her.

She didn’t blame her, not really. It was… hard to know Dick and not love him in some way. And the Tamaranean had known him for too long.

So Barbara had known, then, that she had lost.

She had allowed herself to feel futile, stupid hope after their attempted wedding ended up in flames. And more of that when Dick seemed to come back to her, when they became engaged.

An engagement she broke off.

And then… Then years of being a voice in his ear, of keeping him as safe as she could with extra eyes watching his ludicrous displays as the man trained by the most cautious and methodical hero on the planet made a spectacle of fights he should’ve taken far more seriously than he did.

Years of watching him.

Barbara Gordon closed her eyes and tried not to think about watching through the cameras on his mask as his naked body moved in and out of quivering, soft flesh, of the impossible body of Koriand’r, princess of Tamaran.

But when she opened her eyes, she was still slumped in her wheelchair, topless, her pants and panties shamefully by her knees, her thighs and hands sticky, and her desk littered with empty cans of beer.

She almost sobbed, then. At the reminder of her weakness, of her letting herself get carried away by unfulfilled yearning and hopeless—

She stopped herself, biting on the inside of her cheek. It was something she had read once: to inflict physical pain when her thoughts turned too negative, a sort of Pavlovian training so that she wouldn’t do it, so that her body would remind her not to scar herself emotionally.

It was stupid. The mind didn’t work like that.

She still did it, when things became too overwhelming.

And… And if there was someone in this world who could be said to be too overwhelming…

That was Grayson.

So she took a deep breath, holding it in during the slow countdown until she let it out to a different number. Not visualizing anything, just letting her mind rest on the breath, on the sensation of her body filling, then emptying.

And, just as she felt a measure of calm push back through the fog of alcohol and maudlin self-pity, an alarm beeped.

Her eyes shot open to see Dick’s masked face, sheepishly looking up at the camera installed on the northern corner of the clock tower she nestled in, waving his fingers in greeting.

And she facepalmed.

“Go away, bird boy,” she grumbled by way of greeting over one of the intercoms.

“You didn’t stay for pillow talk,” he answered, that bright smile of his trying to charm her yet again despite the brittle edge it carried.

“I left you resting on some very impressive pillows,” she shot back.

“I also like yours,” he said, rubbing the back of his head at the juvenile reply to her maybe equally juvenile quip.

And Barbara groaned.

“I’m not letting you in,” she said, the mouse’s cursor about to close the video window.

“That sounds weirdly metaphorical,” he answered.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I’d rather you helped with—”

She closed the window.

And blushed furiously.

That. That, right there, was why Dick Grayson counted as maybe the most infuriating man on Earth. He had just finished fucking the one woman most likely to feature in any lust-addled teen’s fantasies other than Power Girl—one he had just said he loved—and, rather than stay on top of the comfy-looking alien-goddess and take some well-deserved rest, he had decided to rush from Bludhaven to Gotham just to check up on his other ex.

Then, not content with that, he just decided to insinuate he was still attracted to her.

As if.

Mannish arms, far more muscled than even when she had swung from rooftop to rooftop, legs thinner than they should be, even if she never skipped any therapy sessions unless the world was about to end (again), and… And years.

Years gone by, staring at computer screens, talking through headphones. She wasn’t young, she wasn’t what she had once been, she wasn’t…

She wasn’t Batgirl.

And Dick had fallen for her. Not for Oracle.

And Barbara had built herself back up as Oracle.

So she wouldn’t take his pity. She wouldn’t let him worm his way back into her heart just for him to end up disappointed, regretful of a mistake he would never allow himself to voice out. Because he was Dick Grayson, Nightwing, the first Robin, and he was too good of a person to ever do anything to hurt her on purpose.

And she wouldn’t let him do it unwittingly.

With a sigh, she pulled back on the wheels of her chair, rolling away from her desk. She didn’t have any cases that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, and—

And the alarm beeped.

The intruder alarm.

… Damn Grayson wasn’t used to being rejected.

With a quick look at her monitors, she saw him perched on the windowsill right below the camera he had been talking to her on, a set of wires smoking on his hands as he pulled open the pane of glass that should’ve been magnetically secured.

She almost sighed before the exhalation turned to anger.

He wanted so badly to see her? To check on her? To see how she was feeling?

Fine! She’d show him precisely why it was such a bad idea to tick off a drunk Irish woman!

Another sharp pull on her wheels propelled her back before she slowed the left one with her strong grip, the chair swiftly turning until it fit right in the doorframe that separated her open working area from her bedroom.

Then she put the brakes of the chair on and buckled herself in.

Distance, timing, and rhythm.

Those were the three pillars of fighting. Of any fighting art.

But she could no longer run back and forth, going in and out of an opponent’s range, taunting them into overextending. She couldn’t dodge a blow with a well-timed step back, and couldn’t capitalize on an opening with a swift jump.

She pulled a small lever, and the backrest of her chair swung back over the hinge at the height of her coccyx, the metallic clack echoing inside the empty clocktower.

Because what she could do was have a solid base from which to sway her body back and forth, to squeeze even the last millimeter of leeway her remaining flexibility gave her when leaning back, only her belt, the weight of her useless legs, and the chair making her not fall to the ground with the violent movements.

What she could also do… was to take out her escrima sticks.

“Heaven Six, Babs,” he had said with that easygoing smile of his as he readied his own weapons.

She had grinned back, both of her sticks held parallel by her sides, one at head’s height, the other by her waist, just over the edge of her wheel.

And then he had launched forward, almost a blur, faster than any non-meta had a right to be.

But into Heaven Six, the weaving combination of strikes and parries that melded into a seamless sinawali.

The same move she answered with.

Because that was how the technique was supposed to be trained, their sticks hitting one another in the air between them, the rhythmic clacking almost making a kind of music as their tempo rose and waned with their exertions.

When she had started her training in the Filipino art, each movement had been a distinct one. Her left arm would extend from the side of her head into a downward strike, then she would recover the weapon to the right side of her head as her other hand launched into its own attack, only to have the weapons switch places as the extended one came up to cover her right side while the left attacked.

But then? When she had practiced with Dick for the first time after he had ribbed her about choosing the same weapons he did? Then her arms didn’t stop at precise, demarcated points, each step of the combination a clear one, a way for her to learn the pattern of the technique.

No. By that point, her arms flowed. They circled, never stopping unless she meant to rest, her heart beating faster and faster as her lungs burned, and her grin grew when she saw a pearl of sweat run down Grayson’s brow.

It didn’t get in his eyes. Didn’t distract him at a critical point to let her win a friendly victory. It just had mirrored her own exertion.

So they both had slowed down the clacking of their weapons, the rhythm of their not-quite-a spar.

They had laughed, back then, cheerfully, Dick resting his hands on his knees, she raising back up the backrest of her chair so she could slump over it, the black fabric absorbing the sweat her purple sports bra hadn’t.

It had been a bright, innocent moment.

For Dick.

Because he never realized something she did.

Heaven Six. The name of the technique was self-explanatory: six strikes aiming at heaven. At the head.

And, when trained with a partner, the strikes were meant to turn into parries, each blow countered by the other.

And Dick had crouched.

Unknowingly, just following his trained instincts, just adapting to a foe lower than him.

And Barbara had met each of his blows with her own, her arms keeping up with his whole body.

But only because he had let her.

She angrily wiped out her eyes with the back of her fist at the intrusive memory, her fingers tightening on the weapons she had learned to use after fighting barehanded stopped being an option.

And she waited for the one man who had unintentionally hurt her to step through the damn door in front of her, the one that led out of her working area and into the hallway he had just snuck into.

“Are you going to shoot me?” his voice asked without his head peeking out from behind the doorframe.

“I don’t use guns,” she answered.

“… Huntress uses crossbows.”

“… I don’t use projectile weapons.”

“Ah,” he said. Then, after a short, pondering pause: “Are you going to throw a batarang at me?”

Barbara quickly and regretfully remembered the pouch of bat-themed shuriken she always kept on her right armrest, immediately realizing that she may have had a better shot at the former Boy Wonder with them rather than just going for the fighting sticks.

…

She blamed her Irish heritage. Then she briefly wondered if there would ever be a vigilante who unironically used a shillelagh.

“No,” she finally grumbled, deciding to stick to her metaphorical guns.

Then Dick, because he wasn’t a complete moron, came out in a guarded stance, holding his own weapons.

“Hey,” he said, the sheepish grin back on his lips.

She cocked an eyebrow at him, and he kept looking at her eyes with… maybe a bit too much intensity, now that she thought about it.

“What?” she finally asked as the silence stretched long enough.

He bit his lip in that way he had that always made her want to answer in kind, and he very pointedly kept looking straight into her eyes before answering.

“You’re… very naked,” he finally said.

And Barbara Gordon, certified genius, strategist behind the concerted, global actions of hundreds of heroes, stupidly blinked as she felt her cheeks heat up before slowly looking down.

At her bare breasts already showing the spreading blush (damn Irish heritage), at the matte shine of the dried sweat on her skin, and at the other shine on her bare thighs.

Then she very calmly and deliberately looked back up into Dick Grayson’s eyes.

“Out!” she screeched at the top of her lungs.

“Sorry! Sorry!” he yelled back, jumping to the safety of her hallway.

At that, Barbara very reluctantly set down her weapons in her holsters, picked up the sports bra hanging off her left armrest, and shrugged it on before unstrapping her chair’s belt so she could maneuver her body to slide her panties and jersey pants back up.

Then she cleaned her hands with a few Kleenex before grimacing as she wiped the handle of her weapons, because, contrary to what Dinah often suggested, the sticks had never been meant for use in… damper environments.

Making a mental note to slip yet another embarrassing story to Ollie, she cleared her throat before addressing the elephant not in the room.

“I’m now almost presentable,” she said.

And, this time, Dick peeked past the doorway before walking in.

She was still blushing. In embarrassment, anger, and a few other things she didn’t care to name, so her inviting grin may have been slightly… well, not actually inviting, going by the way he rigidly entered the room, weapons hanging loosely from the hands by his sides, each step he took perfectly flowing in balance and harmony.

He was frustrating to even look at.

“You’re unfairly beautiful,” she said without meaning to.

And he froze.

Mid step, in precisely the very same way that would’ve sent almost any other man on Earth tumbling to the ground, because he was thataware of his center of balance.

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“You should be,” she answered, deciding to pretend she was actually trying to get to a point. “You know what it’s like to keep looking at you, day after day, as you contort yourself in that tight suit of yours? Lest you could do is to come over and do some pole dancing for real, once in a while.”

…

She didn’t have a point. And her mouth didn’t seem to care.

“I mean… do you tip well?” he asked, yet again rubbing the back of his head with that disarming, lost smile of his.

Damn it.

“I don’t want you to say it,” she finally answered, her tone lowering.

And he bit his lip, resuming his walk until he was at precisely the right distance for her to lash out with her weapons. And not closer.

“Babs, I—”

“I don’t want you to say it.”

“It’s the truth, Babs—”

“I know it is! I know, Grayson, and that makes it so much worse—”

“I do love you—”

She struck.

He parried.

And, just like that, they were back to Heaven Six.

Seamless strikes and parries, never moving from their spot as they stuck to the pattern, as they fell into the rhythm of wood hitting high-tech polymer, as they created their own primitive music.

Barbara felt her heart race, her lungs burn.

She saw a bead of sweat fall down Dick’s brow.

And she screamed.

Falling out of the pattern, she threw her right stick at the inside of his thigh, Dick quickly sweeping it away with a downward parry.

Then she launched herself at him with the full force of her arms.

He caught her, of course, but she was strong enough to unbalance him, to drive him to the ground, beneath her.

And so Dick Grayson found himself looking up into the furious eyes of his ex-fiancée.

“You condescending piece of shit—” she screamed at him, her hands on his chest longing to creep up and strangle him.

“Wha—condescending?! What the Hell are you talking about?!”

“You crouched! You always crouched when doing sinawalis with me!”

“Of course I do! I don’t want you to hit my nuts!”

“You can get up! You can get in and out! You can move away!”

“I never wanted to be away from you!”

She hesitated at that. At the stupidly corny line.

And he grabbed her head and pulled her down into a kiss as hungry and sweet as she remembered.

Her hands were now on his hair as his scent filled her, as that hint of the magnesium powder he used on his gloves mixed with the deeper, manly… petrichor?

What?

She leaned back, his hands still on her nape but no longer forcing her to him after what she realized had been a too-long kiss, even if she used the excuse of a moment of drunken weakness.

“It… hasn’t rained,” she said, confused.

Dick’s brow briefly furrowed, and then he smiled sheepishly.

“Ah, yes, you see…”

“That’s how I smell,” a soft, almost purring voice said from behind her.

And then Starfire knelt down and took them both in her arms.

“… What,” Barbara Gordon, PhD in Library Sciences, said with all the eloquence her well-read mind could conjure.

And Kory Anders smiled down at her.

“My own scent. Dick was also very surprised about it. You two have so much in common!”

Barbara blinked at the broadly smiling woman effortlessly holding the former couple in her toned arms, then twisted her neck to look back down at Grayson.

“She’s from the Vega System, Babs,” he said, shrugging almost sheepishly and making her breasts slide over his chest with the gesture. “Science is more like a suggestion in there.”

“I’m aware. I was more intrigued by the fact that you somehow opened my bedroom’s window and let your lover into my home to ambush me from behind without tripping any of my alarms.”

“Ah… Would you believe I left a backdoor for me in your system because I was planning on giving you a surprise for your birthday?”

Barbara closed her eyes and counted to ten.

She didn’t know why: it never worked.

“Yes. Yes, I would,” she honestly answered to his brightening eyes.

“That’s a relief,” he said.

“No, it isn’t,” she answered.

And bit down on his neck.

“Hey! What the Hell—”

“You left a backdoor in my home,” she said, still close to the patch of wet skin, still drawing in his scent, even if mixed with that of the alien.

Heart still hammering, lungs still, burning, cheeks still red, and hands desperate to bury themselves in his hair.

“It was protected! By my own code! It would’ve triggered your own alarms if somebody else tried to exploit it!”

“You can’t know that! It was a liability, and I would’ve left a vulnerability in if I tried to update my systems!”

“You always brag when you update your systems! I would’ve known the minute you were done! And been bombarded with shirtless Henry Cavill’s memes!”

“I always say you look better!”

“You always joke that I look better!”

Green, wide eyes looked down on blue, startled ones.

And then Starfire threw them down on Barbara’s bed.

“The Hell!” Barbara reasonably protested, seeing as the space between where they had been and the bed had passed by in an almost unnoticeable blur.

“You,” the alien princess said, rubbing the bridge of her nose in possibly not feigned exasperation, “kiss. Right now.”

“Huh, Kory…” Grayson tried to mediate, blue eyes still disoriented below her, hands rising up to gesticulate.

And Barbara kissed him.

Pulling herself up with her elbows digging on the mattress, her whole body rubbing against Nightwing’s before diving down, before taking his lips in something a bit slower but no less hungry than when he did it himself, Barbara first sucked his lip in between hers, nibbling on it with just enough pressure to feel the pliant flesh shift before dragging his mouth open to enter it with her tongue in search of his, in search of something that she had never found anywhere else.

In search of something that had always been waiting for her.

Dick answered, his arms wrapped around her, rising up her back to undo her hasty ponytail before unfairly agile fingers traced lines of liquid fire over her scalp that made her moan into his mouth before shifting above him and sliding her own hands beneath his fascinating back to look for the zipper on his costume to drag it down and explore the edges of his muscles with her own fingers until his back arched, lifting both of them off the bed, pressing their bodies together, her breasts flattening against his chest as she felt the heat building between her thighs.

“This… mistake…” she managed to gasp out, his eyes far too close to hers.

“Never. Never a mistake with you,” he answered as his arms tightened, almost crushing her in an embrace too strong to flee from even before his burning lips took the side of her neck and branded her with kisses that went up to that spot behind her jaw and just below her ear that had at one point made her toes curl.

“Dick… I… I’m not good for you. I can’t be,” she tried to reason, to argue.

With Dick Grayson, the love-addled fool that he was.

“You too?” Kory asked as she sat beside them, her warm hand patting her hair even as Dick kept up his assault, kept making her spine sway with the pleasure racing up and along it.

“What?” she answered, not even knowing what the alien was talking about.

And she, the woman with the impossible body, the cheerful bundle of inexhaustible energy… sadly smiled at her.

“You two are smart. Not… Not smart like a regular person, not smart in a way I can relate to. I always felt Dick mind was… I was attracted to it. A lot. But I also felt it was an obstacle. Something I couldn’t really connect with.”

“That’s not true,” he immediately answered, his hot breath blowing over her wet skin.

And Koriand’r, somehow, managed to roll those glowing, solid green eyes of hers.

“Shut up, Dick. This is a conversation between the two loves of your life.”

Dick stopped breathing.

Barbara, instead, tried not to hyperventilate.

“I… He’s…”

“Tell me if I’m wrong,” Star continued, “he feels like home, like the place you always want to return to. And… And sometimes, you feel you don’t deserve it. That you aren’t good enough. That, as much as you want that feeling, you also don’t want to take away from it, to make him less bright, less complete than he could be with another person. With someone other than you.”

Barbara looked at the person other than her, and nodded.

And she smiled back down, her hand on Barbara’s hair soothingly caressing her.

“I feel the same, Barbara. I feel the same about you.”

“Stop lying to me,” Barbara shot back, anger and something else warring in her chest.

“I never have. Who do you think Dick talks about whenever I feel his mind farther from mine? Who do you think he brings up when talking about happy memories I haven’t shared with him? Who do you think he leaves everything behind for when he feels he’s—”

“Who do you think he learned to be a man with? Who do you think he always is happy to fight beside? Who do you think he’s never stopped wanting to marry—”

“Both of you,” he said, his voice cold and sharp as he intruded.

And he was Batman, at that moment.

He had never wanted to be. Had always hoped Bruce would peacefully retire, unneeded after turning the world into something better, something even the obsessed crusader could happily live with.

But, in the end… a part of him had always been ready to be.

So his cold eyes digested the shocked looks of the women above him, the women he had never once considered anything other than better than him in any way that mattered.

And tried not to sigh.

“Do you think I love you for a set of characteristics? Do you think I want to be with you—both of you—because you’re beautiful, or sharp, or good fighters? Yes, of course I do, because I’m human and imperfect as any other. But that isn’t enough. That is enough for lust, for a crush, for something flitting. That is never enough for years and years of longing and regret. For not going through a day without remembering two rings I’ll never wear and I can’t throw away. I love you, and—”

And, whatever else the former Boy Wonder meant to say, was lost in Kory’s lips.

“She’s… He’ll love you, Star. He always has; you don’t need to be afraid,” Barbara said, sliding away to the right of Nightwing’s body and onto her overcrowded mattress, encouraging the crying alien as her hand rose from her side to brush away a single tear with her thumb, breaking her own heart all the way.

Because Barbara Gordon was a heroine, and fighting for the happiness of others had long since become second nature, even if she often forgot about her own.

Luckily enough, she was also surrounded by heroes.

And so, soft orange skin glided beneath her fingertips as Starfire leaned away from Dick, and then the princess looked down at her, green eyes meeting glowing green in a way they never had before.

And she leaned down, and took her lips.

Barbara panicked, nestled between two soft, warm, firm bodies on a bed that was too often empty, and then Dick resumed kissing the side of her neck, and her eyes fluttered right before two hands caressed her exposed belly, deft fingers barely denting her skin from her left, and a warm palm tracing circles below her navel from her right.

So, while Barbara Gordon experienced her first kiss with another woman and what she was quickly growing to realize would be her first threesome, a thought raced through her mind with inescapable clarity:

‘Dinah must never know.’

Still, she was Barbara Gordon, Oracle, certified genius. And so, a second thought immediately followed that one:

‘Or Ollie will soon get a video titled Birds of Prey Go Wild.’

The day had yet to dawn when Barbara would let the fishnet-wearing, walking fetish be smug.

Speaking of smug…

Starfire was looking down at her, something in her smile unmistakably feline, and Barbara remembered that Tamaraneans were, after all, not primates.

Which left her with only one viable course of action.

“Dick… Did you just hook up with a Batgirl and a literal Catwoman?”

Dick Grayson, scion of the Batman, founder of the Titans, and hero most likely to win Best Ass in Spandex that year, blinked between the two women looking at him before a look of horror crossed his face.

“I swear this isn’t some Freudian stuff,” he said, his face paling beneath his mask.

A mask styled like a bat.

A mask she finally took off.

And, without the lenses getting in the way, she looked at the bare face of her teen crush, the one she had thought she was too old for until the damn brat managed to get under her skin with a persistence that would never flag in the years to come.

The same persistence that had brought him to her that night.

And… Barbara Gordon was stubborn. Proud. Sometimes petty.

But not enough to resist the man she loved for a second longer.

So she threw away the mask into a corner of her bedroom and grabbed Dick’s neck before dragging him to her with those mannish arms she was often embarrassed by, her grip on him strong enough that she felt, for once, that he wasn’t out of her grasp, that he really would stay.

Then she thrust her tongue inside his mouth, yet again tasting him, and only pushed herself back when she felt Kory slide Dick’s costume down before the lithe fingers of the other woman pulled her sports bra up, and she slid behind Barbara, embracing her from behind, bare breasts pushing against her back as those same fingers teased around her nipples while leaving enough of her flesh uncovered that she felt Dick’s chest press against her as his arms slid around the two of them and pulled the two women toward him.

He pushed a naked thigh between hers, her right leg lifting with Star’s cooperative grasp as she felt rock-hard muscle push against her sex, the one she had been abusing to the sight of them not even an hour ago.

And Barbara was wet.

Wet, and warm, and aching in a void that longed to be filled, her hands demanding her lover be closer to her, close enough to sate her with his own warmth, his scent, and the maddening petrichor encroaching from behind as Star’s fingers kept pulling at now hard nipples, her caresses dexterous enough that, when Barbara moaned into Dick’s mouth, she couldn’t have said whether it was due to the man pressing against her sex, or to the woman teaching her new things about her breasts.

Barbara had never enjoyed pain. She had shied away from it as much as her training had allowed her to.

And Star’s pinching… it didn’t hurt. Not really. But it was close enough that the intensity caught her unaware, that the warning of something about to cross a line kept running on the back of her mind, distracting her just enough that she became open to the sensations they were giving her as her guard dropped, as she let herself be played with by strong hands sinking into her flesh, taking her pants and panties away, spreading her open—

Wait, what?

With a hint of trepidation, Barbara looked down between the breasts Dick was playing with to see Star on all fours, breathing over her wet sex, looking up at her with a lip-biting grin as her impossible ass swayed side to side.

And Dick was behind her, holding her up, grabbing her breasts, his cock lined up with her spine in a way that made her want to moan.

“Babs…” his masculine voice whispered in her ear, low enough it felt like he was growling as his fingers tightened on sensitive flesh. “Tell her you want it. She won’t move until you do.”

Star looked like she was about to argue, her eyes narrowing at the man nibbling on Barbara’s shoulder, but then she closed her glowing eyes for a moment and looked back at her.

She had a choice.

She could say no, and all of this would stop. She would wake up in her empty bed tomorrow morning and invest herself in a project that would justify avoiding Dick for a few weeks until they all had calmed down. And things would be back to normal.

Or she could say yes. She could say yes, and see if Dinah had been right that night a few years back when she insisted all women were, at least, a little bisexual (which Barbara knew wasn’t the case, but she would take the excuse at this point). She could say yes and see if the kind of chemistry she had witnessed through Nightwing’s mask was something she could belong in. She could say yes and throw any sense of normalcy away.

And Barbara Gordon was drunk, lonely, and horny, which might have accounted for what she said next.

But, more than anything, she hated what her normal life had become.

“Sta—Kory. Kory, I want you to eat me out,” she said.

“I’ll be sure to make it a spectacle for our boy,” she answered with a wink.

In Cantonese.

A Chinese dialect Barbara spoke, and Dick didn’t.

… It looked like Star and her may get along better than she had expected.

“You two are conspiring against me,” he growled in his ear as his fingers tightened on her breasts.

“Why would you ever think something like that?” she answered with a breathy whisper, as her right hand curled behind her to tangle yet again between Dick’s thick locks, and the left hand briefly caressed Kory’s cheek before running between her silky hair.

Dick’s was coarser, tickling her palm when brushing past it. Star’s was more like a sensual caress.

And Barbara had never known how much she would enjoy comparing them.

Then Kory leaned forward, her tongue peeking out to lick between the barely there line on her inner thigh that separated the muscles she only exercised when her therapist hooked her up to the electrostimulation machine, the one that forced her to stay there for hours, feeling her flesh contract out of her control as she caught up on her reading.

All so she would retain a portion of the body she had trained all her young life for. All so her legs wouldn’t atrophy.

And Kory was kissing those legs, delicately tracing rehabilitated muscle, caressing her with a tenderness only Dick had ever shown her, kissing up and down, from her sex to her knee and back again.

Almost… worshipful.

There was something stuck in Barbara’s throat. Thankfully, it melted at Dick’s kisses and Star’s attentive caresses.

Then, the hot breath of the woman who breathed the Sun washed over Barbara’s lower lips, and their eyes met once again.

She nodded, and Starfire licked.

The bolt of pleasure caught her unaware even as the other woman meticulously cleaned up all traces of her earlier masturbation with short, almost ticklish licks. She caught Dick’s breathing getting rougher as he stopped moving his hands over her, and that, too, sent a thrill through her, knowing how much it took to distract him from something he had set himself to do.

His cock was still pushing against her spine, his breath over her shoulder.

His hands on her breasts.

“Do you like the show?” she asked, an impish note on her voice that was almost strangled as Kory’s lips finally met her lower, open, wet ones.

He grunted.

… Like father, like son.

“Tell me you like it, Dick,” she said, her voice wavering in something she didn’t understand.

And then she had to take a quick, gasping breath as his hands tightened on her breasts, and he pulled her closer to him, to his warm body holding her upright.

“I do. I love seeing you be pleasured. I love seeing Kory be free. I love—”

“If you say ‘I love you both,’ I’m going to have to bite you.”

“Threaten me with a good time, why don’t you,” he quipped back, the smile obvious in his tone.

And she turned back and, right as Star’s tongue entered her, she kissed Dick.

Above and below, showered with affection, with tender, deliberate touches so much better than what she had inflicted on herself when only lust drove her, Barbara twisted her body so her left side rested on Dick’s chest, so she could look at the both of them.

So she could compare.

Two perfect, impossible bodies surrounded her. Two reminders of what she no longer was.

It didn’t matter.

Because she wasn’t Batgirl. She wasn’t a young girl jumping between Gotham’s rooftops with an unnatural grace, running to danger instead of away from it. She wasn’t the one who had dared Batman to try and take away the identity she had chosen for herself. She wasn’t a young heroine hiding her activities from her father and facing things cops shouldn’t have to handle.

She wasn’t. She would never again be.

But she was Oracle.

She was a woman, not a girl. She was the brilliant mind Batman came to when he needed help.

She was Mycroft Holmes.

And she wasn’t fat.

She had to suppress a giggle at the thought, and then had to kiss away Dick’s confusion even as she worked to contain the shivers Star kept sending up her body in warm waves that kept crashing in the middle of her pristine, vast mind that was in no danger at all of being overwhelmed by the moment, the pleasure and the emotions.

And the lingering beer.

“You’re about to—” Dick said.

“Don’t. Don’t… tease me,” she answered, lips closed and eyes tightly shut as Kory finally took her erect clitoris between warm, soft lips that made the world spin even before her very active tongue got involved.

“Star, stop,” he ordered.

And the princess… did.

Her clitoris still between warm lips but deprived of the maddening motion, Barbara’s eyes shoot wide open.

“What did I just say—” she started to berate the Boy Wonder.

“I’m not going to tease you, Babs,” he growled at her. “I’m going to fuck you.”

“Oh,” she answered, blinking stupidly. “I guess that’s all right then.”

He chuckled at that, at having caught her so thoroughly unaware before strong fingers sank on her hips and lifted her off the mattress, her whole body now resting on his even as he poked her entrance right below where Kory’s lips stubbornly refused to let her go.

Barbara’s eyes fluttered, and then Dick filled her up.

Well… Dick’s dick. But she had sworn she would never again voice that pun after losing a particular bet she didn’t care to remember, and that involved Penguin’s activities with the latest Iceberg Lounge’s waitress.

…

Eidetic memory often was a curse.

“You’re trying to hold back,” he whispered as he nibbled along her ear. “Don’t.”

And that, Dick Grayson daring to order her to do anything at all… Was hot.

So, when he pulled down with his hands as his hips thrust up, when not just his head but at least half of his shaft spread her open, and when Kory decided that was as good a signal as any to stop holding back and resume her licking…

Barbara Gordon, each hand buried in a different lover’s hair, threw her head back and screamed herself hoarse as the sudden orgasm caught her completely by surprise.

Dick stopped moving, letting her catch her breath, but Kory kept accompanying her, seemingly perceiving each traveling wave of pleasure and timing the gentle kisses on top of her sex with the crashing peaks.

It was almost torture, with how perfect it was. With how Dick stretched her open and Star attentively kissed her.

And she could have fallen back right then and there, let the last dredges of her drunkenness take her to sleep as she felt more alive and fulfilled than she had in years.

She, instead, dropped forward.

Her hands on Star’s shoulders, she whispered something only for the other woman’s ears.

“You’re… You’re really strong, aren’t you, Kory? Strong enough not to tire with just my weight?”

She hummed around her clitoris, the vibration making her clench her teeth.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Hold still.”

And then Barbara Gordon, using those mannish arms she was so often ashamed of, pushed herself up using Kory as support, her fingers digging into the warm skin below as she arched her back in precisely the way she knew Dick Grayson had always lost his mind at.

And then he really fucked her.

She had to close her eyes when he violently thrust up right as she let herself go down, her hands on Star almost losing all strength at the way he hit her deep inside while the other woman redoubled her former efforts, frantically licking and sucking.

“I want you to… Come… Inside me…” she managed to get out before she clenched her teeth, her eyes almost crossed as she was made to bounce atop two maddeningly perfect bodies.

Dick didn’t answer. Not with words.

But his fingers tightened yet again, maybe to the point of bruising, and his cock went faster and faster inside her, each thrust a spark of maddening pleasure that only compounded with the constant stream coming from Star’s lips.

At that moment, Barbara Gordon felt many things.

The traces of her previous orgasm and the approach of the new one were chief among them, of course. But she also felt affection, acceptance. Things that she knew Dick had always felt for her.

But, also, and to some small amount of wonder and surprise… she felt… wanted.

And all the joy of sex, all the ecstasy of being with two of the most desired people on the planet, couldn’t compete with that ember of her old self rekindling.

Of course, that was when Dick finally pulled her all the way down his cock with all his strength, his body quivering beneath hers as he let loose inside her, and Barbara’s mind came undone as Star’s frantic licking pushed her over the edge.

***

She was on top of Dick, his chest as comfortable as she remembered.

Because eidetic memory was often a bitch, particularly on lonely nights, but it was also quite accurate.

His cock was deflated between her legs. That was also just as she remembered.

Star still licking her in a not quite sexual way as she tried to devour all traces of Grayson’s seed left inside her?

She couldn’t say she remembered that, no, but it would make a good addition to her personal album.

“You aren’t allowed to push us away,” he said, kissing her hair in that way that always made her mumble incoherently.

So she did. It was also a good way not to answer him.

“Tell him you agree,” Star said in Cantonese, mixing the lilting syllables with the sucking kisses.

“You are not the boss of me,” she answered, playfully, in the same dialect.

“You are both going to make me regret introducing you, aren’t you?” Dick interjected.

In English. Like a peasant.

And the two women laughed even as Barbara twisted around to kiss his jaw and play with his hair, feeling something light in her chest that she didn’t want to analyze.

Until, as geniuses are wont to do, she made an unexpected connection.

“Wait a second… Kory’s a flying alien with superstrength, powered by the Sun and descended from felines… Did you hook up with a mix of your father’s two greatest crushes?”

Dick paled, Kory tilted her head in curiosity, and Barbara laughed.

It wouldn’t be the last time that night.