Batfic: Bring Me To My Knees (Bruce/Dick)

[lady_bug_kay]

Title: Bring Me to My Knees (Five Ways Bruce and Dick Have Their First Kiss)

Author: ladybugkay                                          

Pairing: Bruce/Dick

Rating: PG

Spoilers/Timeline: Comics; it helps if you’ve read War Games.

Disclaimer: Say it with me now: I don’t own them; DC does.

A/N: It’s funny, but after the first three, I realized I had inadvertently and unconsciously connected first kisses with kneeling, so I decided to continue in that vein. These can be read as five separate realities or one continuing story.

 

 

Bring Me to My Knees (Five Ways Bruce and Dick Have Their First Kiss)

 

ONE

 

When the dust settles, Robin is pinned under a large pile of debris, and Batman is quietly frantic. As he works to remove the rubble, he keeps talking, but Robin says nothing. For the first time, Batman believes this boy he let into his life might die—because of him.

 

There is still no response from Robin, but as Batman frees him from the last of the debris, he hears a faint cough. Robin is alive, and Batman drops to his knees and presses a fervent kiss against an unbloodied patch of skin on his forehead.

 

 

 

TWO

 

The night after Joker shoots Robin, Bruce stays awake all night by Dick’s bedside, holding his hand. This has to stop. Dick is too important to be allowed to continue to risk his life as Robin. And he’s become a distraction for Batman, in his suddenly too revealing and provocative costume. Dick will balk at the news, but he’ll be alive and safe and here. Bruce knows this is for the best.

 

Maybe, in time, it will even be Bruce who has the partner, not Batman.

 

As the faint light of dawn seeps into the room, Bruce rises from his vigil and kisses Dick lightly on the lips before he goes.

 

 

 

THREE

 

Poison Ivy vanishes in a familiar cloud, and Nightwing looks first at Batman and then at the locked door. Back-up won’t be coming, and Bruce is both the best and the worst person for Dick to be trapped with in this situation.

 

“So.”

 

Bruce’s eyes flicker behind the cowl, darkening perceptibly, and Dick struggles futilely to resist the escalating effects of the pollen.

 

“Oh, to hell with it.” Dick takes the step forward he’s been waiting to take for years and kisses Bruce with everything he’s got while he knows it’s still voluntary. Bruce’s response is just as heated and reveals no hesitation, and Dick wonders briefly if the pollen has hit Bruce harder and faster or if maybe some of his reaction is voluntary, too. And then the toxin takes over.

 

In the morning, Dick wakes up to see Bruce already pulling on Batman, and the awkward tension of an unremembered night together is heavy in the air. As he rises to his knees, Dick recalls a desperate, passionate kiss, but the recollection is indistinct and bleeds off at the edges into the hazy yellow lacuna of pollen memory loss.

 

Bruce says nothing, and Dick doesn’t ask if he remembers anything.

 

 

 

FOUR

 

After Stephanie’s funeral, Dick returns to the Manor with Bruce. The silence between them quivers with the intensity of unvoiced confessions and suffocating self-loathing. Dick is restless with indecision and inchoate grief. He wishes it weren’t such an inappropriate time for him to indulge in pointless and random acrobatics; his skin itches and his limbs tingle with the desire to move.

 

Bruce perches like a gargoyle on the couch while Dick forces himself not to attempt a tumbling pass in the hallway. He can’t stop moving, and before he can talk himself out of it, he kneels in front of Bruce and pulls him into an embrace. His skin stops itching, and when Bruce abruptly clutches at him with enough strength to leave finger-shaped bruises, Dick exhales soundlessly in relief.

 

Despite the tightening of Bruce’s arms, Dick pulls back a little to look him in the eyes for the briefest of moments before quickly kissing Bruce on the mouth and then pulling him back into the hug. He feels Bruce shuddering and pulls him closer as Bruce slides off the couch onto his knees in front of Dick.

 

Two hours later when Alfred walks in, he finds them still holding each other, stretched out together on the couch. Dick is asleep on Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce is running his fingers through Dick’s black hair, over and over.

 

 

 

FIVE

 

Bruce learns Nightwing didn’t actually die, and the cold sense of lack that has been expanding in his chest disappears. Amidst the flurry of relieved embraces, Batman hangs back, clichéd in the shadows. And when they are finally alone together, Bruce simply looks at Dick for a long moment. Looks at his black hair and his blue eyes and his familiar grin.

 

Then Bruce reaches out with greedy hands and holds Dick’s face and kisses him long and deep until Dick is gasping for breath.

 

Dick pulls away, and Bruce can’t stop smiling as he watches Dick run to lock the door and move right back in, tearing at clothing while keeping at least one hand and both lips on Bruce’s body at all times. Naked, they fall to their knees and don’t let go.