April Seventeenth – Chapter 4 – Dick

Dick Grayson was a man who had been defined, much like his mentor, by loss.

If somebody had asked him when he was ten years old if he would ever give up the excitement of being Robin, of regularly meeting Superman, traveling to the ends of the world, defeating evil time and again… for a single chance at a regular life with his parents? He would’ve accepted.

Without hesitation, without questions, and knowing that Bruce would understand.

Now? After so many years, after having grown out of the shadow of the Bat to become a hero in his own right? If somebody offered him an everyday life? Maybe. Dick could see himself giving up Nightwing, becoming a regular person, raising a couple of kids—adopted or otherwise.

He fought so that others wouldn’t have to, not because he enjoyed it—even if he did.

And that was something… something that he didn’t quite share with the rest of the family. Because they all had this crusade they had inherited from Bruce, this mission to make a world better than the one where tragedy had found them, but… But Dick did enjoy the life. Somewhere in his heart, he had never stopped being the circus kid pulling death-defying stunts, and that kid had grown up to become one of three humans to manage a quadruple backflip.

One didn’t perfect an almost impossible, deadly, meaningless acrobatic feat without some taste for adrenalin.

So. He liked it. He liked threading the needle, his pulse racing as he calculated aiming trajectories, visual cover, and ricocheting angles while in mid-leap through an ongoing battle. He never felt more alive than when he was toeing the line, taking that extra risk, that maybe unnecessary step to make something routine into a performance.

He still saw himself retiring.

He could live a peaceful life, away from it all, trusting the new generation to pick up the baton. He had been the new generation, and he’d made sure that the ones that came after him would have a place to grow and learn.

He had founded the Titans. And he’d stepped away from them for a reason

Tim? Stephanie? Cassandra?

They would never give up, never give in. And he was proud of them for that, proud as an older brother, or an uncle, or whatever weird amalgamation of family roles that would be thrust upon him the next time. He really was.

He was also sad.

Because Tim would never sit on a porch, peacefully staring at the sunset with an elderly dog lying at his feet. Not while his body could do what his mind demanded of it. And Dick knew that, if Gotham or Bludhaven didn’t kill the first Robin, someday, he would get a puppy to grow old with.

So, yes, if asked, Dick Grayson would think for a while and admit that he would someday give it all up. That he would fight no more, that he would stop threading the needle.

But if asked another question, the very same his younger self would’ve so easily agreed to…

Dick Grayson would never give up his father for his first parents.

One doesn’t trade family.

And that was the key difference between Dick and Bruce: they had both been defined by loss, yet, at some point, Dick chose to be defined by what he found along the way.

“‘Mom!’ You called Selina ‘Mom!’” the disembodied voice of a redhead he had found many years ago laughed in his ear like a Harley Quinn pet.

Sighing yet again, Dick pondered if maybe, sometimes, one couldtrade family. And whether or not Barbara Gordon counted as such.

In a way, he guessed she could be something close to a cousin, given how much of an uncle-figure Gordon had always been for him, but the thought left him feeling queasy and wanting to run as New York’s mayor.

“I was shocked, Babs. As I imagine you’d be if you saw your parents—”

“You, Dick Grayson, former Boy Wonder and current Best Ass in Spandex, called Selina Kyle, Catwoman, former thief extraordinaire and current Batbride-to-be, mom.”

With a gesture he would always swear he only used to ironically mock Bruce (when there were witnesses), Dick pinched the bridge of his nose through his mask and counted to ten.

He didn’t know why. It never worked.

“Can you… Can you focus? I’ve been patrolling the docks for the past twenty minutes, and you haven’t stopped ribbing me about this the entire time,” he complained, appealing to Oracle’s compassionate side—to her professionalism. That was far more likely to work.

“Not until you explain,” Babs singsonged as he heard the hiss of a can of something carbonated opening on the other side of the comms.

Dick tried not to roll his eyes. Partly because there was no one to see it, and partly because she was… Barbara.

They’d been engaged, once upon a time. It was hard not to give her special treatment.

So he gave up on catching any of the smuggling traffic he’d had caught a hint of when he was feeding Bruce false leads about Selina’s panther supplies what seemed like years ago (and may as well have been, given how the two vigilantes had decided to finally make up for lost time), and he slumped on the gravel roof of the warehouse he had settled on to keep watch of his surroundings.

With a sigh, he briefly contemplated the batwing-styled binoculars he’d been holding before folding them away into his belt and lying on the roof, his arms folded beneath his head, the night sky above him. So close to the sea, it was easy to forget about Bludhaven’s worse idiosyncrasies as the sound of the calm waves covered the traffic behind him, and the breeze blowing in toward the land kept the sky above free of smog, or, at least, free enough to let him see a few stars.

Orion and Mars, mostly. There was a reason observatories weren’t built on beaches.

So, only the pervading smell of ship fuel spoiled the mood when Dick Grayson finally settled on telling Barbara Gordon yet another embarrassing childhood story. It wasn’t like she lacked for ammunition at this point.

“You know they’ve always been… kind of together, right?” he said, his tone more even than the former teasing and exasperation warranted.

“Dick… I’m the greatest detective alive. Of course I know.”

“… You really want to say that to Bruce?”

“I don’t buy into his Mycroft/Sherlock thing. Sherlock wasn’t a better detective than Mycroft because he could punch harder—that’s notwhat a detective is.”

Quirking an eyebrow, Dick replied with the only thing that came to mind when comparing Sherlock Holmes’ lethargic older brother to Barbara Gordon, former Batgirl.

“You’re not fat,” he said.

There was a moment of silence from the other end of the line, and then what sounded suspiciously like a college student chugging an entire can of beer in seconds.

“I don’t even know if I want to be mad at that remark,” Barbara grumbled out.

“See? The real Mycroft would’ve decided that getting angry sounded like too much work.”

“Holy literary references, Boy Wonder.”

“That got old as soon as I did.”

“Yet you keep bringing it back.”

Lazily, allowing himself the fancy, Dick raised his right hand to point at the sky above, looking at Orion’s stars through the gaps of his outstretched fingers, his eyes momentarily following the blue line that went from his middle finger down the outside of his arm.

He had been a cop once. It didn’t take.

“Babs… I want you to picture this, okay? A lonely orphan, one used to having an extended family to kid around with, wandering the halls of Wayne Manor. There’s a British butler doing the best he can to maintain his poise while offering mental support he’s desperately unprepared for, and another man. One who’s muscled like a trained athlete, that moves far better than he has any right to, and that pretends to be a regular, vapid, rich man.

“Except when he doesn’t.

“Because the orphan is not stupid, and he’s spent his whole life going from town to town, meeting new friends that would last at most a few weeks. He knows people, that orphan. And he knows the rich man isn’t normal. That he’s hiding something. And he’s a circus kid, so he’s a bit wary of rich men who hide things.

“So he investigates, both the man and his parents’ killer. And, when one day he’s taken in by Batman after getting too close to something the boy wasn’t ready for? When Batman pulls off his cowl, and the boy sees the lonely, hurt man beneath? He isn’t surprised.”

He paused then, arm still stretched toward faraway stars, fingers waggling, clenching, and relaxing.

“And the years pass. And he knows the man, both because of the something they share and because of the time they spend together. He learns from him; aspires to be him.

“Loves him.

“He’s often distant, unavailable, even when he doesn’t want to be. And he doesn’t, Babs, not really. He isn’t lonely because he chooses to.

“And the boy knows.

“He understands, as well, and never… well, almostnever resents him. The boy’s glad for what they have, the home they share, the grandfather he’s been given through his bond with the man. He learns to be happy again, to joke, and quip, and think past the pain and the hurt.

“But, sometimes… He catches hints of something else.

“The man is a bit brighter when a certain woman is around, no matter if they are fighting against or beside one another. He’s happier, in a way different than how he is with the boy and the butler. And… And the boy knows this happiness. It’s one he remembers, one he saw a long time ago, when his parents were alive.

“So the boy understands that the man and the woman are in love.

“And he wonders.

“He comes up with all these little stories, about how they could end up together, about how the man and the woman could finally live beneath the same roof, how the man in love may smile more often, brighter. How it would be to have a whole family yet again.

“And… And I guess the boy never did quite outgrow those little stories, Babs. Because I’ve always thought about Selina not… not as my mother, not really, but… but as my father’s wife.

“And that’s close enough, isn’t it?”

There was another silence, then. One that stretched like his suit over the taut muscles of his forearm as his fingers kept moving with the lazy, masterful grace Dick was no longer able to stop instilling into his every motion.

“You just shot me full of feelings just so I would stop mocking you, didn’t you?” Babs finally answered, not quite mumbling.

And Dick laughed.

“Yup. That’s me, Babs: I lay my heart bare just to avoid casual ribbing. You should’ve been at Titan’s Tower the night we played Never Have I Ever.”

“That’s… about the most dangerous game for a group of superheroes to play.”

“You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Raven drunk.”

“I suspect what you mean to say is: ‘Plenty of people have stopped living after seeing Raven drunk.’”

“Only Beast Boy. But he got better.”

She snorts, and he feels his lips stretching, a wide smile pulling at the corners. Making her laugh always did that to him.

But of course, he was Nightwing, she was Oracle, and this was night, so things couldn’t go unperturbed for long.

He hadn’t gotten that puppy yet, after all.

“Hey, Babs?”

“Yeah?”

“Is there a reason for Mars to be double the size it was a few moments ago?” Dick asked in studied calm as he looked at the reddish dot on the night sky between his thumb and forefinger.

“… Mars shouldn’t be visible tonight,” the also apparently calm voice on the other side of the comms answered, betrayed only by frantic clicking over an abused keyboard.

“Ah,” he said without further comment.

He didn’t get up, didn’t take a ready stance. He was Nightwing. Either he would be fast enough to react in time when whatever it was came close enough for him to identify it, or anything he did now would be wasted effort.

He still caught Wally by surprise, from time to time, much as that should be literally impossible.

So Dick Grayson remained lazily lying down on shifting gravel, his arm extended in soothing, wondering motion, as, he guessed, Barbara Gordon committed a few more federal offenses by hacking into any spy satellites not already under her control.

Then the reddish dot grew closer, and he recognized that it was, in fact, not actually red.

So he smiled.

“Never mind, Babs. Nothing to worry at all.”

“What are you even—there’s an unknown, likely meta rushing straight to your position, Dick! Get out of there—”

“Hi, Kory,” he said, not getting up, still looking through his fingers.

And, above him, clad in her metallic suit that always left him unable to look away from her orange skin, her flaming hair trailing behind her, Starfire floated, glowing green eyes looking down at him with a smile that was mostly calm, but only when one took into account that the one smiling was the princess of Tamaran, and that restraining her emotions had never been something she particularly cared for.

“Hi, Dick,” she answered before shifting the angle of her flight and slowly floating down until she came to rest over his chest, her back shifting to cuddle against his still outstretched arm in a gesture so feline it would have made Selina coo.

Then, without asking, because Kory never did, she shifted her head up and kissed his lips while Barbara made gagging noises on the comms.

“Oh, great, it’s the bimbo coming for a booty call. Of course you’d get interstellar booty calls, you manwhore.”

“Be nice, Babs,” he said, his hand draped over Starfire’s back without him realizing when he had come to look so much forward to having her warmth yet again close to him.

“Babs?” Kory asked, nuzzling his chest.

“Oracle. I’ve told you about her… a lot,” he said, not quite admitting anything too embarrassing to both women.

Hopefully.

“Oh! She’s in your comms, is she? Hi, friend Babs! Dick loves you a lot!”

… Damn it.

“I’m switching to speakers,” the less effusive redhead muttered before continuing at a louder volume and with a cheeriness so fake it made Dick wince despite the gentle buzzing of his mask over his skin. “Hi, Starfire! It’s lovely to meet you; I don’t know how it is that we never have before!”

“Wasn’t there that one time when you came to visit Dick—”

“Never. Before.”

“Ah… Of course!” Starfire said with a brittle smile as she refused to meet his eyes. “Lovely to meet you! For the first time! Ever!”

Dick’s prodigiously trained brain made a few guesses with the available information and came up with a conclusion that would’ve made Batman himself proud:

He wasn’t going to dig into that.

“So… what brings you here, Kory?” he said, desperately trying to derail the conversation and hoping his former teammate would cooperate.

Which she did. Magnificently. She shot past all of his expectations.

“Ah! Yes, of course: I am horny,” she said with green and (literally) bright eyes beaming down at him.

Dick blinked. On the other side of the comms, another can of beer was presumably consumed. These two events took place at more or less the same time.

“Is… Is that some Lost in Translation thing? Does she not realize what she just said?” a shaky voice asked over the speakers hidden in his mask, making his cheekbones tingle the way they always did when she used that feature.

A feature that she had designed herself, so he very carefully never asked just how intentional the tingles were.

“Huh? Why would I have any problems with translation? I already took all of Dick’s languages,” the somewhat psychic alien asked with a hint of confusion, her hands splayed over his chest and her chin on them

“Among other things…” the other woman grumbled.

“I… Tamaraneans are freer with their emotions, Babs. Hiding them is not second nature as it is for humans,” Dick said.

And then realized what a landmine he had just stepped into, but, well, there was so much even a Batman-trained detective could achieve in a single conversation. He may have already covered his quota for the night with his earlier realization.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” a voice cold enough it would perk Victor Fries up demanded.

“Oh! I’m sorry, friend Barbara, I sometimes forget myself when I’m with people I trust. I assure you I wouldn’t proclaim my burning need for Dick’s cock if we were in a social gathering!”

…

With suspicion honed through years of deathtraps, Dick glared into the perfectly innocent eyes of his other former fiancée.

He could’ve sworn he saw something twinkle in them, but the literal glow always made it hard for him to be sure.

“Burning. Need,” Barbara stated, clearly implying something about STDs.

All right. Two ex-fiancées who were both redheaded superheroines and liked to mess with him, what were the odds? He was starting to think he had a type.

At least he hadn’t inherited Bruce’s type. He wouldn’t much like his chances to get alive out of something like a Selina-Talia confrontation.

The upcoming wedding may become slightly awkward were it not for Alfred managing the whole event.

And the armed security.

And superheroes.

And Clark.

… How did Clark take the news? A part of him had always suspected there was something about that friendship of theirs that was maybe a bit less Platonic than it would look at first blush. Clark had almost been a second father while he grew up. Heck, Dick had taken Nightwing’s mantle due to his attachment to the Kryptonian.

“You aren’t paying attention to us,” Kory pouted.

Which was such a dangerous thing for him to witness that he immediately contemplated going deeper into his speculations about what Bruce and Clark may or not have done to one another on one of their many trips around the world.

“Gee, it’s almost like he gets girls with a burning need for his cock throwing themselves at him every day…”

Yup. Come to think of it, didn’t Bruce have permanent access to the Fortress of Solitude? That wasn’t something one did with regular friends. He had only left his keys with Wally once, and he’d forever regretted it after coming back to an empty fridge, a desolate freezer, and a thoroughly plundered internet browser history.

Joke was on Wally, though: it was a fake history, and all the carefully curated links had been forwarded to Linda West. She had not been amused (until Dick clued her in, then she became very much amused, even if it took Wally a while to catch on—or precisely because of that).

There was an unzipping sound. Why was there an unzipping sound?

“Why is there an unzipping sound?” Babs, always in perfect synch with him, asked the urgent question.

He didn’t answer.

Mostly, because his mouth felt a bit dry after seeing Kory shrug off her suit, leaving only her engraved collar to adorn her very naked body.

Then he saw the flickering of the lenses in his mask that indicated the built-in cameras had been activated, and he heard a small gasp.

“You… what… What the Hell are you doing?!”

“Well, I guessed that if Dick gets girls with a burning need for his cock throwing themselves at him every day, maybe I should do something to stand out among the crowd?” Starfire said with perfect innocence, a stretched forefinger pushing against her cheek while she furrowed her brow in apparent concentration at Oracle’s question.

Which meant she was laughing her ass off somewhere deep in that feline mind of hers.

Yes, Selina would coo.

And, somehow, Dick now understood why Bruce had always thought Dick and Babs made a better couple: The Bat didn’t want to be outnumbered.

“You… You think you need to stand out?”Barbara asked with utter incredulity.

Which was a fair reaction if she was seeing what Dick was (and she did, even if only through a screen). Because Kory was still lying on him, her palms on his chest, her back arched to present to him her bare breasts, peaked with erect nipples, and with a smile so bright it managed to get him to look at her plush lips even though the aforementioned bare, round, hanging breasts were pushed together by her arms and close enough he could have buried his face between them just by bending his neck forward.

And he was, still, looking at her bright smile, at the joy and enthusiasm she always brought to their lovemaking.

Because he had understated things before. It wasn’t just that Kory was uninhibited or that all Tamaraneans were. It wasn’t that she had no filter.

It was that Kory was her emotions.

When she raged? All her being trembled with her fury, her need to annihilate the threat to what she had deemed worth protecting.

When she grieved? It had been like watching a sun die, the way her vibrant life dimmed as she sought refuge in his arms.

And when she loved? That’s what Kory became: love. Passion. Unbridled.

She gave all of herself to him, in those moments, because that was what love was supposed to be. And he’d always felt… Lucky, yes. Definitely. He’d been one of the luckiest men in the world.

But he’d also been scared.

Of the naked trust. The unconditional acceptance. The need to live up to the impossible expectations he could see in her eyes.

Dick Grayson was an extraordinary man. The best acrobat in the world, and one of the best warriors and detectives in history. But he still doubted he could ever be the man he knew Kory saw him as.

And yet, he kept trying to be.

“I… I should get back to Huntress; she’s been a bit weird lately,” Barbara said, desperately trying to come up with an excuse to (at least nominally) leave them to the privacy of their exposed rooftop.

“What? I hoped you would stay and play a game,” Kory answered, pouting yet again as she shifted above him, her breasts pushed out from between her arms and below her collar.

“A… game?” he asked, deciding that maybe his continued silence wasn’t doing him as many favors as he had hoped.

“Yes! Like Vic and Gar do! We each control a character and then try to defeat the other!”

Dick blinked. And then had a terrible insight into what was about to happen.

“A character?” Barbara asked, never having joined the Titans and thus being maybe a tad too slow to catch up.

“Yes! I control myself, because there aren’t that many characters here, and Oracle controls Nightwing!”

Yeah. He had guessed as much.

The sound of yet another can being downed told him Barbara also had.

“So… if I were to, for instance, say, ‘Nightwing, use slap that ass!’ he would have to…”

Kory looked straight into his eyes, bit her lip, and blushed.

“Well… he’s never done that to me before. I guess the attack would catch me off guard,” she said, shifting and rubbing her hips over the increasingly tight protective cup over Bruce’s future grandchildren.

“Nightwing…” Oracle, the voice in the ear of heroes around the world and sometimes out of it, hesitatingly said. “Use slap that ass.”

Not quite believing himself, Nightwing did.

His palm smarted as he laid what he guessed would be a hard enough strike on Kory’s round, superhuman behind for the former model to feel it.

Starfire moaned.

The slap resounded over the empty rooftop, his fingers digging into her flesh as his hand refused to part from her perfect ass, and she squirmed over him, her body almost slithering from side to side as she looked at him with lidded eyes. But the one thing that stood out was that Starfire moaned.

He knew that moan. Intimately. He had heard it time and again when their lovemaking reached the point of no return. He had never, not once, heard it without some part of him being inside her.

So, Kory was horny.

And Barbara was panting.

“My turn,” the alien purred. And then Dick was naked, his back against the roof’s tower, his feet floating above the ground.

He was fast. Fast enough to surprise the former Kid Flash.

Apparently, he wasn’t fast enough to keep up with a horny alien princess.

“Look down,” Barbara gasped. And Dick realized she was seeing through the lenses on his mask, and that what she was really asking was for him to…

He looked down.

His gaze lingered for a moment on Kory’s breasts almost touching his bare chest, but he wasn’t that selfish, not with Babs, and so he allowed himself a hint of Narcissism as he looked aside, to the defined muscle on his arms as he followed them back to his own chest, the striations of pectoral muscles standing out with heaving breaths as he tightened his hold on Kory’s body.

Then he looked down, past his abdomen, and to his cock almost quivering in hardness, reaching out to the naked woman in front of him.

Babs didn’t swallow a can all at once. This time, he clearly heard her wetting her lips and taking a slow, long gulp of something.

“Kiss her neck,” she whispered.

So he did.

He let Kory hold him aloft, her arms below his, as he pulled her closer, close enough that her breasts flattened against his chest, the softness of them making his pulse race as her metallic collar cooled his feverish skin, and he was hit with the fullness of her scent.

Petrichor.

An impossible scent for a living being to have—because it was the smell of the earth after rain. It was made of ozone, geosmin, plant oils… Nothing that a human had in their body.

But Koriand’r was a princess from the Vega system, and Vega didn’t play by the rules of a rational cosmos. And so, for the woman whose smile was a radiant sun? Whose joy was light poured over a dark land? The smell of the forest after rain stopped falling was the one she should have.

And so she did.

He knew. Had known since he had barely become a man and had been kissed by a captive slave about to turn his life upside down.

It still captivated him, each and every time.

So he buried his face in her long, curly hair and allowed himself a moment of pure, uncomplicated bliss before his lips found her velvety skin, and he opened them to suck and lick as Starfire’s nails almost broke his own skin when she dug them on his back.

“Suck. Mark her,” Barbara darkly whispered as he heard a rustling of clothes being shed over his speakers.

He did.

And Kory moaned.

He bit down on her, trying to make sure, to be certain that even her impossible skin would be momentarily marred by his mortal self, and she writhed against him, his cock sliding between plush thighs he had admired time and again, sometimes even at mortal, stupid, hormonal, unavoidable peril.

“Her breasts. Grab them,” Babs continued, her voice rough as she almost never was. Not when clothed.

His right hand was buried in her hair, and he pulled down, Kory baring her throat at the gesture so he could reach even more of her slender neck, so he could trace the grooves between toned muscle and beating veins.

But her arms were still around him, still holding him up, so he could use his left hand to reach up to her right breast, to delicately trace it with almost worshipful fingers, feeling yet again the texture of her skin over his, the way they seemed to almost stick together when he slowed down, the way they glided when he accelerated in his tightening circles.

Then he cupped it, feeling the weight of her, the way her firm flesh almost spilled between his fingers, and he squeezed.

Again, Kory moaned.

So did Barbara.

And Dick was very, very close to losing control.

“Dick…” Kory whispered as she slowly leaned back until she was parallel to the roof below them, her soft, yielding body something for him to rest on as her arms stopped holding him and started wandering, trailing liquid fire down his back, slowing down when she reached the scar Slade’s blade had left on him all those years ago.

“Tell me how he feels to you,” Barbara said, forgetting the rules of the game. Or uncaring of them.

He felt Kory’s throat move below his lips as she swallowed.

“He feels… Like home. Like the place I want to return to, even if it may not be there when I look for it. He feels like… like a promise of something better. Something more,” she said, making his heart clench.

There was a pause as Kory just hugged him tighter to her, unwilling to ever let him go.

“He does, doesn’t he?” Barbara asked.

And Dick blinked in surprise.

“Fuck her,” she added. And Kory shivered.

He let go of her neck and leaned back to look into wide, solid green eyes.

Smiling, warm, eager eyes.

So he kissed over the top of her breasts, just below her collar, her hands resuming their journey down to squeeze at his own ass as he pulled his hips back, dragging his cock along warm, wet lips and tender thighs.

“Do it, Dick. Shove your hard cock deep inside her. Give her what she needs.”

Kory moaned, her thighs squeezing over his cock.

And, using all of his acrobatic skill, his shins holding him above Star’s unyielding legs, he maneuvered so the angle changed, so that, the next time he slid forward, it wouldn’t be along her sex, but into it.

He looked down at her yet again, and she was smiling, licking her lips in almost shy invitation.

So he did.

His body wasn’t the only one that felt like home.

She was warm, soft despite all the supernatural muscle, the petrichor soothing even as her touch maddened him.

And she, yet again, moaned.

“Start moving,” Barbara’s rough voice demanded.

“Babs…” he started, finally feeling like he had to reply, to add something besides a body for her to control with words he could never ignore. Not when they came from her.

“No, Grayson. Not ‘Babs,’ not tonight. Tonight you’re just here for me to tell you how you’re going to fuck your princess into a puddle. You’re just there for me to explain how that perfect body of yours can be a tool, something for me to use.

“You’re there to shove your cock as deep inside her as it can go. Because that’s what I’m telling you.”

Kory’s hands went from his ass to his hair as she flashed a smile at him before leaning up, her lips brushing over his ear.

“I want it. I want your cock, Dick. I want you to fuck me as she tells you to,” she whispered.

He bit his lip. Knowing Oracle was listening in, he guessed he wasn’t the only one to do so.

So he grabbed her ass, the flesh yet again impossibly spilling out from between his fingers as he bit down on her neck, and he thrust forward until their flesh met as Kory’s flight spun them around, as loose gravel came to be under his feet, giving him support and leverage while Kory willingly leaned back against the wall of the roof’s tower, her legs around his waist, her arms back, a straight line along the gray stucco behind her, her palms over it as she grinned back at him.

“Her nipple. Bite it,” a breathless Barbara said over speakers that had never been used for something like that as her voice kept tingling over his face, caressing him in that way he suspected was solely for him and him alone, that way she had for her touch to still reach him even when he was fighting, no longer by her side even if she still stood by him.

Never breaking eye contact with one of the two women he’d loved with all his being, Dick leaned forward, his pelvis grinding down on Star’s until his lips reached her left nipple, the dark orange skin blessedly pushing against his lips as she arched her back forward, her whole body rippling to offer him a better angle.

He kissed around it, as tenderly as he always thought she deserved. And then he bit down, as hard as he thought she wanted.

Kory didn’t moan. She was too busy biting down on her right wrist, her eyelids quivering as the green light dimmed and returned in an almost stroboscopic, mesmerizing pattern.

“Fuck her, Dick. Make her scream,” Barbara said.

And he knew the wet sounds that accompanied the words. He would’ve never been able to forget them after the first time they did something only slightly tamer than this, his hands guiltily acting as hers while she touched herself on another rooftop, halfway across Gotham.

His teenage years had been… interesting.

But he was a man now, and, somehow, he was determined to satisfy the demands of the two women.

So he pursed his lips over the elastic flesh of her nipple, sucking her in as his teeth pressed down on it, the act making her shiver in a way that he felt down to his hips. And then he pulled back, almost entirely out of Kory’s warm, accepting body.

And he drove forward.

Her hands were yet again on his hair, pulling his face against her breast, almost smothering him as her voice chanted a quivering litany, her thighs squeezing against him.

He almost gritted his teeth at the assault on his senses, at the demand of Kory’s body as she seemed to suck him in, to demand his early release with warmth, softness, and rhythmic clenching.

So he let go of her nipple and, as she mewled in lonely protest, pulled away before driving forward, his pelvis yet again grinding over hers.

And he kissed her.

Soft, dark lips caressing his own before their tongues tangled, before her long, impossibly agile one twisted around his, the lonely whine turning into enthusiastic trilling moans as Kory sung into his mouth, her delight at being full of him, at his tenderness and loving care yet again impossible not to see.

Over caressing speakers set in his mask, Barbara gasped.

So he swallowed the words that always felt so natural, so impossible not to utter, and he just let his body speak them for him as his hands wandered, caressed, and squeezed. As he traced her sides, her neck, her hair, and then her breasts, her belly, her thighs.

It was as if he was studying her, learning her. Except it wasn’t, because he had done that years ago, and he could never forget.

“Fuck her, Dick. Harder,” the other voice he’d never forget whispered in that way that suggested trailing fingers over bare breasts, her head thrown back to offer him a slender, white neck to kiss and suck on.

His eyes opened mid-kiss to meet wide green, and Kory’s hands went from his hair to his ass, squeezing before pulling him to her in silent acceptance of the other woman’s demands.

Silent, that is, until he grabbed her hips and did exactly as they demanded of him.

Both Kory and Bab’s moaned at that first, eager thrust, the one hard enough he saw her flesh ripple, her breasts jump against her collar, her lips open right after he parted from them.

He did it again, her hooked feet behind him helping him, adding her strength to his, his movement rougher than he would be with almost anybody else.

Then he lost himself in the sound of flesh slapping against one another, on the bouncing sight of her heaving breasts, on the sight of her eyes glowing brighter and brighter with every thrust of their hips, on Barbara’s sighs and moans.

He kept fucking Kory, his cock going in and out of her in familiar angles, stroking at tender spots that always felt marvelously human, for all that she was a goddess in his eyes.

She smiled before she bit her lip, her eyes closing in delight as she held back a moan stronger than the ones that came before.

“Tell her,” Barbara demanded.

“Wha—”

“I know you, Grayson. Tell her. You always do.”

He felt something in his chest squeeze as Kory’s eyes opened in surprise and then eagerness. He didn’t want to say it, even as he needed to.

“Please,” Barbara whispered in an almost lost tone.

And he could never deny her anything.

“I love you,” he said to the naked, gorgeous woman in front of him as Kory’s smile became that much brighter, that much more eager.

He also said it to the woman listening in, the voice always in his ear.

But she wasn’t in front of him, so he didn’t see if she listened.

“Now, fill her up,” the rough voice asked.

So he accelerated yet again, forceful thrusts making Kory yelp in pleasure and surprise yet again as he did his best to push her through the wall behind her, sweat dripping down his chest as he really gave it his all, as his muscles screamed at him in a way they never did when he swung from one rooftop to the next.

Her eyes clenched, their light hidden from him even as he knew it was growing steadily with every new emotion and sensation rushing through her impossible body before she curled forward, her breasts pressed against his chest, her arms around him, her head cradled in the nook of his neck, her collar on his bare skin.

“Thank you. Thank you, Barbara,” she said as she swung her hips down, swallowing him down to the root of his cock.

Then her flight broke down, and he had to hold her up, his hands yet again on her ass as she quivered in the first notes of her orgasm.

“Inside her,” Barbara breathed out.

And he thrust up, white light flashing behind his eyelids as, yet again, Kory and Barbara made him lose all his carefully cultivated self-control.

Except they had never done so together.

So he roared, letting himself loose, trusting them to still be there when he came back to his senses as waves of pure sensation drowned all but one of his thoughts.

‘I love you.’

***

Kory’s body was soft and warm beneath his own.

It always was.

“I…” he started to say before she silenced him with a kiss.

He let her.

It wasn’t full of passion, but of tenderness, and the tingling touch of her lips lingered on his after she finally let him go to stare up at him in marvel and loving warmth.

Like she always had.

He wanted to tell her, again, like he always did, but…

“Babs?” he asked.

And there was no answer.

He checked his AR display, not having thought to do so, and Oracle’s icon wasn’t on it. Starfire and Nightwing were now alone on that roof.

“Why?” he asked, still holding back what he really wanted to say.

She looked briefly confused, her brow furrowed in thin lines he always wanted to kiss until they smoothed, and then her eyes widened.

“She… isn’t listening?” she asked, and, when he shook his head, she answered. “Because you love her, Dick. And I wanted to see if I could love her as well.”

And that was it. The impossibly simple answer only the alien princess would think straightforward enough.

Because when Kory loved… she was love.

He leaned down to return her former kiss, to tell her without words that Barbara wasn’t the only woman he loved, even if she already knew. Because he was the one who needed to say it, to reassure her.

Even if she’d always known.

So many wasted nights. So much time apart.

And yet, Star still knew him.

Enough that, when he leaned back to stare into green, glowing eyes, they smiled up at him as she caressed his cheek with trailing fingers.

“I’ll carry you there,” she said. Unnecessarily.

And Nightwing struggled to get up from warm arms to get dressed in his haphazardly strewn uniform, knowing that Oracle needed him and that Starfire would fly him to her.

And the part of Dick Grayson that had always wanted to have a whole family again, that wanted to retire, raise two kids, and get a puppy to grow old with… wondered.