Big Sky Country

The hotel room is fancier than he would have expected M to pick. Or, not to sound totally like Brucie Wayne’s son, to be able to afford. He has no idea what full-time vigilante assassins earn. Presumably nothing, but maybe he’s been dipping into mob bosses’ offshore accounts for spending money, because while the room is nothing Bruce or Brucie would pick, it’s nice enough that Matches would think it was posh.

God, he needs to stop thinking about Bruce, and he definitely needs to stop thinking about Matches. No one should ever think about Matches if they can possibly avoid it. Preferably including Bruce, but Dick gave up any hope of that years ago. Like it or not (and that’s definitely a not) Matches may at this point be as integral a part of Bruce’s mental landscape as Brucie.

Tim doesn’t understand Dick’s aversion, but then Tim’s actually taken the time to develop the Matches-adjacent cover that Dick always resisted getting. Maybe the eye-gouging polyester suits and the pink fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror in Matches’s neon green muscle car are a little less brain-breaking when you’ve taken the time to turn a part of yourself into someone who’d appreciate them.

“You alright, ‘Wing?” M asks, and Dick nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Woolgathering,” he says, far too quickly. ‘Distracting myself from uncomfortable self knowledge.’ Nightwing whispers in the back of his mind. He ignores it. Some personality disorders are inevitable in his line of work, but he’s trying not to actively help them along. Anthropomorphising Nightwing’s street persona as anything more complicated than ‘himself pretending to be professional’ isn’t going to get him anywhere he wants to go.

The problem is that the Nightwing voice is correct. He is trying to distract himself, because if he thinks too hard about why he’s here, he’s going to start freaking out.

M is hot, in lots of normal, relatable ways. He’s got nice eyes, which Dick knows for certain because he’s seen him without the cowl a couple of times now, and even through armour it’s clear his body is amazing if you’re into the old-fashioned strongman look, which Dick absolutely is. He can be pretty funny when he wants to be, even if it’s that gallows humour you see in EMTs and soldiers. He’s an objectively attractive guy, and there’s nothing weird about Dick being attracted to him.

Except for the thing where, in costume, he’s a cape and a pair of pointy ears away from being Batman’s murderous twin.

Dick’s only freaking out about that a little bit, because he’s an adult who can own his kinks, even the fucked up ones. Also, freaking out too much would prevent him from riding M’s dick like the hazardously unsafe rollercoaster it undoubtedly is. “I’m fine.”

“You’re freaking out.”

“No. Yes. A little bit. It’s not… I’m not having second thoughts. I just can’t quite believe this is actually happening.”

M points to the bed. “Sit. Breathe.”

“Yes, Boss,” Dick says, which only has to be a Freudian slip if he lets it, and does as he’s told.

M pulls out a bottle of wine from the inside of his coat and fills the two glasses that are sitting next to the free tea and coffee. He passes one to Dick when he’s done and seats himself on the little pull out stool from under the desk.

The wine is pink, and fairly sweet. Not something he would ever have imagined the Midnighter drinking. “You drink pink wine?”

“Not usually. One of my lesbian friends recommended it as ‘pussy bait’. Seemed appropriate.”

Dick wants to protest, but it’s not as if he doesn’t like sweet pink wine, much to Alfred’s despair. Dick’s so glad all the time that Damian found them, but especially because Alfred finally has a palate that can do justice to his food and the wine cellar he has so carefully curated. Bruce doesn’t even notice what he’s eating most of the time. Dick would much rather be eating funnel cake and drinking root beer. Jason does at least appreciate the food, but he appreciates all food without much discrimination, and Tim and Cass between them make one serious eating disorder diagnosis. It wasn’t until Damian that Alfred had had the chance to cook for someone who actually appreciated haute cuisine and knew about things like wine pairings.

Apparently M has been thinking about wine pairings.

“This is the first time I’ve ever made plans to have sex,” Dick blurts out, without really meaning to. “That’s why… I mean… It’s kind of weird. Not bad,” he adds quickly, “just weird.”

That gets him a real smile. “Do people normally just hop on your cock without asking first?”

“No. Well, Kori. But I meant I haven’t done a lot of sex that wasn’t part of dating. Not since I stopped being a full time Titan, and Titans don’t count. It’s a big clubhouse full of horny teenagers, with hot and hot running hormones on tap. This is the first time I’ve done the whole… meeting up for casual sex thing.”

M shrugs. “I’m not normally big on it myself, to tell you the truth. But I’m not looking for something long term this soon after Apollo, and I don’t think you are either.”

“No,” Dick admits. “I’m not.” It feels oddly momentous to say it out loud. He’s just…. He always thought he was the settling down kind, and he still is, but after Kori, and Babs, and after Helena turning out to not be what either of them wanted, he’s starting to think maybe he needs to give himself time. To force his overeager emotions to allow him time. He’s pretty sure Kori and Roy and Jason aren’t leaving one another’s orbit any time soon, even if they’re not exactly official, and Wally’s literally getting married, and Garth is a dad. Everyone’s settling down. Figuring out who they are and what they want, and he’s starting to realise that just repeating the same mistakes over and over isn’t the best way to do that.

So here he is. Trying something new. Figuring out what he wants. And it turns out for right now, what he wants is to fuck the Midnighter and for them still to be friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, in the morning.

“You wanna lay down some ground rules before we start?” M asks. “In this line of work, we’ve all got baggage, and I’d rather not trip over yours by accident, you know?”

“Yeah, that… that sounds like a plan,” Dick says too quickly, and takes a gulp of his wine to cover up how flustered it’s making him to think about making actual plans for the sex they’re about to have. It makes it all seem more real than it had a moment ago.

“Alright.” M ticks off on his fingers as he goes, “no restraints, and be careful about anything that could be read as holding me down. I know you’re not a threat, but the fight computer isn’t exactly me, so telegraphing your moves a bit is a good idea. I don’t do insults during sex, none of that ‘dirty little whore’ stuff, and if you want me to call you a fag or anything like that, then this is over, okay?”

Dick tries his best to look as if he doesn’t think the idea of M calling him a whore is hot, and nods.

“Oh, and I don’t do ass to mouth. That shit is nasty.” He curls down his final finger. “Your turn.”

“Ah…” Now that he’s on the spot, Dick’s mind is unhelpfully blank. “Um, being restrained by hands and stuff is good, but unless you’ve got some meta class restraints hidden in here somewhere, there’s nothing you can use to tie me up that I won’t get out of. It’s not even a choice at this point, it’s just instinct.” He’s picked his way out of cuffs while riding out Ivy’s nastiest. He’s untied rope while hallucinating all his worst nightmares. One time Kori got him high on Tamaranean joysticks and tied him to the bed, and even though he was pretty into it, it was still less than three minutes before he’d unpicked all the knots.

“Pain is okay, pain can be good, but I need prior warning. You can’t just drop that stuff on me and expect me to adjust. I hate being ignored. Which makes me sound like a complete diva, but I’m serious.” That’s the easy ones out of the way. He almost considers stopping there, but like M said, everyone’s got baggage and it won’t be any fun for either of them if M trips over his shit by accident.

He still drains his glass before he speaks again, though.

“Don’t… Don’t call me pretty, or beautiful. I know you might mean it but…” He trails off, not sure how to finish that sentence in a way that doesn’t sound like a boast. Like some stupid poor little rich boy problems.

M gets at least some of what he means. “You hear it too often for it to be meaningful.”

That still sounds a bit too much like a humble-brag for Dick to be able to resist correcting him. “I hear it too often from creeps.”

“Yeah, I get that. Anything else?”

Oh God, this is the bit he’s been dreading, where he has to warn M that he’s a pervert. He’s never had to actually say it out loud before. He’s never slept with anyone who looks like M before. “I might… I mean… I might call you…”

M gives him a smile that feels as though he’s looking right into Dick’s soul and says, “I can be your daddy.”

“Oh God, how did you know?!” He’s never told anyone before except Kori, not even Roy, and Kori only half counts. The culture around sex is one of those things that’s so totally different between Earth and Tameran, or at least America and Tameran, that even after nearly a decade it was still like they were speaking two different languages. Tamaranean doesn’t even have a word for shame, not the kind of shame Dick had felt the first time he thought about Bruce when he jerked off. The closest word they have is about lack of prowess in battle. Nothing like the nauseating humiliation he felt every time he couldn’t stop himself from returning to those old, well-worn fantasies.

M cups his cheek, runs his thumb over Dick’s mouth. “You think you’re the first boy to ask me for that? I’ll even keep the cowl on, if you want.”

Dick swears he can physically feel the blood rush to his cock, so suddenly it’s a miracle he has any left for his blush. “Oh God. I… fuck. Yes. I… I do want… that. I want that. I…”

M takes pity on him. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. Just shake or nod, okay?”

Nodding. Dick can do that. That’s… it feels like it might be all he can do right now, but it’s better than just staring at M with his mouth open. He nods.

“There’s a few ways we can do this, and I need to know before we go any further which one you want, okay?

“Do you want to be a bad boy getting punished?”

He’d had a fantasy, or maybe it was a nightmare, except nightmares aren’t supposed to make you hard, about Bruce finding out about what a pervert Dick is and punishing him for it. It’s been a long time since he’s used it. Not since Wally walked into his room at the Tower without knocking to find him crying with his dick still in his hand and forced him to talk to Kori about it. He doesn’t want to go back to that.

His distaste must show on his face, because M immediately follows up by asking, “or do you want me to tell you how good you are?”

He nods, too relieved to care that he’s blushing.

“Do you want to be my little boy?”

He’s had that fantasy as well, but never about Bruce. He’d wanted to prove himself to Bruce, to show he was mature enough to be his partner. It was Clark who’d let him be a kid. It was Clark who, just once, had taken him back to the Fortress to heal a cut on his face that even Alfred wouldn’t have been able to keep from scarring, and tucked him into a strange alien bed to sleep off the effects of the nanites and stroked his hair and never ever touched him in anything like an inappropriate way or even mentioned the arousal he could certainly smell on Dick.

It’s a fantasy he’s never entirely given up on, even as it becomes more and more ridiculous the older he gets. It’s a first thing in the morning fantasy, one for when he’s somewhere soft and warm and he’s not awake enough to remember that he’s supposed to be getting over his inappropriate childhood crushes instead of nursing them. A fantasy for the moments when he’s still drifting on the edge of sleep, halfway between fantasising and lucid dreaming, curled up under the soft fleece comforter that’s the closest thing he’s found to the blankets in the Fortress, sucking his thumb and imagining Uncle Clark telling him what a good boy he’s being.

The idea of M doing that is… Well, it’s kind of hot, but mostly it’s ridiculous. M is a lot nicer than most people ever realise, but he’s not the least bit soft. Even though he’s asking the question, Dick can’t imagine being like that with him. He shakes his head, and M sighs.

“Okay, good. Daddy I can do, but that whole little kid thing, really not my scene.” He must catch something in Dick’s expression, because he grins. “No judgement if it’s yours, but I was all prepared to let you down gentle if that’s what you wanted.

“Okay, next question. Does the idea of how illicit it is turn you on? Is this a ‘no one can know daddy touches you like this’ kind of deal?”

His dick is very clear on how it feels about that, how even just hearing M say the words makes it feel, but he’s almost a whole adult and he knows it rarely has anything useful to say, especially when it comes to his own mental health. “I don’t… I sort of like that, but not… I have too many secrets already.”

M grins, and it’s the kind of expression that makes it absolutely clear he’s thinking of fucking Dick blind. “So maybe you want everyone to know daddy touches you like this?”

Dick’s blush is getting terminal. When the Titans were first a team, Bruce would do this thing after their missions where he didn’t actually walk up to the other parental figures and boast about how his sidekick was clearly the best Titan, but everyone could see him thinking about it. Dick’s spent a lot of time thinking about those looks over the years. He nods.

“Well alright. If you want to stop or slow down, tell me. I don’t do that rape roleplay stuff. Okay?”

Dick nods again, mouth so dry with nerves and excitement that he doesn’t think he could make words even if he wanted to.

M gestures him to his feet and he does as he’s told, standing awkwardly while M downs the last of his wine and sits on the foot of bed. Dick’s doing his best not to shift about, but he’s never been good at stillness, and this is so much worse. This is trying to be good while M gets ready to fuck him.

When he’s comfortable, M grins at him, eyes full of predatory intent, and says, “Come help daddy with his boots.”

Dick’s on his knees before he’s even really thought about it, shuffling around until he can get his hands on M’s laces.

He hopes he doesn’t look as desperate as he feels, but thirty seconds ago he didn’t even know he had this kink, and now his hands are shaking with how much he wants.

M’s boots aren’t exactly the same as the ones he’s remembering right now, but like everything about his costume, they’re close enough to make Dick sweat.

There’s no zip or fastening for easy access, no way to get them off except to loosen the laces, one eyelet at a time, shuddering for the texture of skin-warm leather under his fingers, the smell of rubber and polish, the memory of having done this for Bruce after particularly bad nights. At the time, he’d just been overwhelmed and scared, but looking back…

He finishes the first boot, eases it off and sets it to one side before he begins on the other. The repetitive action is somehow soothing and arousing at the same time, giving him something to focus on that isn’t overthinking everything.

“You like this?”

Dick hunches in on himself a little, ashamed of how hard this is getting him even though he knows M can’t see it behind his cup, but he doesn’t stop what he’s doing. “I don’t… I can’t really work in heavy boots. Batman tried to teach me, but the extra weight didn’t work for me. So they’re kind of…” As much a symbol of him as the cowl.

“I can see that.”

There’s no judgement in M’s voice, and Dick starts to relax a little. Hell, given how well he’s been reading him all night, M’s probably known about this kink longer than Dick has, and he still chose to be here.

He finishes unlacing the second boot and tucks them both safely under the edge of the bed where they won’t be in the way.

M moves back on the bed, arranging himself against the headboard in a loose-limbed sprawl, one arm tucked behind his head. “Strip for me, baby boy,” he says, and Dick knows his blush is turning into a full body flush of embarrassed arousal.

At least this is something he knows how to do. He likes to dance, and he likes to show off, so of course he’d taught himself how to strip. He used to do it for Babs sometimes, because the way she watched him, obviously aroused but never actually touching, made him crazy.

There’s no music, and he’s definitely not going to sing, but he’s done this often enough that his body knows the rhythms of the music which isn’t playing.

Dick’s rarely glad that he usually works alone - he misses being part of a team - but it does at least mean that his costume’s designed to come off easily, since he needs to be able to strip out of it alone, even if he’s injured..

This version of the suit zips up along the back, with a long zipper tab like a wetsuit to allow Dick to undo it himself.

He unzips it halfway, then pauses to deal with the gloves.

He licks along the blue stripe between his fingers, because he’s never slept with anyone who hadn’t at least considered doing that to him, and then pulls the glove off with his teeth, grinning for the way it makes M’s eyes narrow. No one can ever resist the finger stripes.

He does the same for the other hand, and drops both gloves to the floor before he begins easing down the top of the suit, baring first one shoulder and then the other, and then turning his back so M can watch the way his muscles move as he peels the fabric off his arms.

He’s not going to give it the full bump and grind, not without music, but he can’t resist shimmying his hips and striking a pose, hip cocked and one arm above his head, like he’s vogueing, and grins for the amused little hum he gets from M for the effort.

Getting the suit off his legs without standing on one leg and hopping is harder, but the senior Titans have given him plenty of practise over the years, and sometimes if he did it well enough he could make Babs smile that shark-like grin she only gets when she’s thinking of something very mean or extremely dirty.

He rolls the suit down his swaying hips, enjoying the feeling of eyes on him, until they reach his knees and he has to bend over to roll them the last couple of inches so he can step out of them and the boots together, but he makes sure M gets the best possible view of his ass when he does it.

He’s wearing boxers underneath, the extra tight Nightwing blue ones he only ever wears under the suit, and the feeling of wearing nothing but them and his domino is… It feels elicit, but in a sexy way, like agreeing to go home with a murderer who wants to be called Daddy.

It’s possible he should talk to someone about the whole Bruce thing. Or the Clark thing. Or even just the Slade thing, although he’s not entirely certain they’re not all the same thing.

He turns around, aware that his cock has left a visible damp spot on the front of his boxers, aware that there’s no deniability left, aware that the obviousness of his own arousal is only getting him harder, to find M grinning at him.

“Well, aren’t you sweet,” M says, his tone caught somewhere between mean and admiring. “Now the rest of it.”

Dick bites his bottom lip, unsure why taking that last step feels so huge, his face hot with embarrassed arousal.

“I said strip, boy. Don’t be getting shy on me now.”

Stripped down like this, there’s nothing Dick can do to hide his shiver at M’s tone. God, he wants this so bad, and he’s pretty sure it’s going to kill him.

Face flaming, he slides off his boxers and steps out of them, baring himself completely to M’s assessing gaze.

“I’m not going to say anything, because you asked me not to, but I’m going to enjoy this,” M says, giving him a slow once over, and then pats his legs. “Come sit in Daddy’s lap.”

At this point, the blush feels like it might be terminal, but Dick does as he’s told, clambering onto the bed to straddle M’s hips. M’s hands come up to rest on his hips, huge and hard but not gripping, not yet, just resting there, reminding Dick of all the things he wants this man to do to him.

“Good boy,” M says, grinning when Dick’s dick twitches for it, and then leans in to kiss him, running his hands up Dick’s sides and pulling him in close.

The kiss is slow and sweet and deep and drugging, and Dick wants it to go on forever.

When M finally pulls away, Dick chases his mouth, whining for the loss and pressing quick featherlight kisses to M’s lips and jaw, making him chuckle, low and pleased.

“You like that, baby boy? You like being good for your daddy?”

Dick can’t meet his eyes, but he still manages to a whisper a soft, “yes.”

“Yes, what?”

Oh God, he’s going to make him actually say it. Dick lips his lips. “Yes, Daddy.” Saying it aloud feels exactly as dirty and hot and shameful and hot as he’d imagined it would.

“There’s my good boy. Tell me what you want.”

At least that’s an easy question. “Want you to fuck me, Daddy.”

M smirks like he’s just thought of something really mean. “Language. Only dirty boys use language like that. You don’t want to be my dirty boy, do you?”

Dick can’t keep from glancing up in surprise and their eyes meet. The position they’re in puts him higher than M, but in that moment he feels very small, like M could just… God, could just pick him up and move him wherever he wants, use him however he wants. “Maybe. Maybe I do.”

M lets go of his hip to cup his cheek, running a thumb over Dick’s blush. “I don’t think you do. I think you want to be my good boy. Isn’t that right?”

“Which one gets me fucked?” Dick asks.

“Neither.” M tightens his grip just slightly, so instead of cupping Dick’s cheek, he’s holding his head still, forcing him to maintain eye contact. “I told you not to use that word, and you did it anyway, so now you get punished.”

Dick feels a thrill go down his spine, and he doesn’t know if it’s arousal, or fear, or both. “Are you going to hit me?”

“Of course not. What kind of daddy hits his baby boy? Punishment means I take away something you want, so I’m taking away my cock. If you want it back, you’re going to have to earn it.”

“Tell me how. Please, Daddy, I want it so bad, tell me how I can earn it.”

M runs his thumb over Dick’s bottom lip, and Dick can’t resist catching it gently between his teeth, tugging it into his mouth to suck on. God, it feels so good, comforting and childish and dirty all at once, everything he wants being M’s baby boy to feel like.

M’s other hand tightens on his hip, and he uses the grip to push Dick’s bare erection against his clothed one. “You’re going to show me how much you want it, baby. You’re going to come all over yourself without touching yourself anywhere good boys shouldn’t touch. And maybe, if you do a good job, and show me how much you want it, I’ll let you have a reward.”

Dick’s doing his best to keep all of this separate from his feelings about Bruce in his head, but it’s not like he doesn’t know why his brain zeroes in on ‘if you do a good job’ like an owl spotting a mouse. Not like he doesn’t know why the idea of M grading him on this is getting him hot.

The fabric of M’s pants is coarse, not quite enough to actually hurt but enough that he already knows his dick is going to be raw and sensitized for days after this, but that just makes him want it even more. M’s making him work for it, he’s testing him, that’s… “I want it so much, Daddy.”

M smooths his hands down Dick’s sides to grip his hips, urges him to rub again M’s clothed dick. “Show me.”

It’s been a long time since Dick did this, or did it with intent, frottage as an end unto itself rather than the prelude to something more intense, but that’s just making it all better. He’d been a kid the first time he did this with Wally, with Roy, with Kori, God, rubbing off against Joey’s thigh, Donna tying his arms to the bedposts and pressing the heel of her hand painfully hard against his dick and telling him he could get off like that or not at all, and Jesus he’d come embarrassingly quickly for that, but then he’d been a teenager, barely more than a child.

Rubbing off against M, feeling the rough fabric of his cargo pants, the bite of his zipper when Dick aims a thrust wrong, the swell of his hard cock pressing against the fabric, it’s making him feel like he’s fifteen again. He feels like he should be wearing red and green, not blue and black, and he’d said no ageplay, but it isn’t, not really. Not when M really is older and more experienced and a whole lot stronger than him. He doesn’t need to be a kid to really feel that power imbalance, just like he doesn’t need to be a kid in his fantasies about Slade (even if he is anyway in a lot of them).

M smoothes away the hair from Dick’s face, smiles at him slow and hot and sweet. “You’re doing good, baby.” He uses his other hand, still holding Dick’s hip, to urge him a little faster. “That’s it, that’s my good boy. Come on.”

Dick feels like everything in him is winding tight, straining towards M, towards his daddy, turning towards the praise like a sunflower. “Daddy…”

“I’m here, baby boy. I’ve got you. What do you want?”

He can’t say, “Your dick inside me, any way you want it”, not if he wants to be good for Daddy, but he wants something inside him, something real and solid to hold him together.

He opens his mouth, holds it open even while the friction against his cock makes him moan. The sound comes out hot and breathy and garbled, all vowels and no consonants because he refuses to close his mouth until his daddy does it for him.

“Yeah, I see what you need,” Daddy says, and slides his figures over Dick’s tongue. Dick whines for how good it feels, knows his dick is soaking Daddy’s pants with precome, and the wet is making the fabric feel rougher, scratchier, just the right side of painful. His legs and his abs want him to know that they’re not used to being used like this, or maybe just not used enough, but he doesn’t care because finally he’s got something in his mouth.

He closes his lips around Daddy’s fingers, sucks in pulses, drawing them into his mouth a little at a time, and it’s not the same as being fucked but it still feels so good, and it feels even better when Daddy takes over, thrusting gently into his mouth so all Dick has to do is keep moving, keep grinding, keep driving himself crazy, making himself open for anything Daddy wants from him.

“Goddamn,” Daddy says, his voice low and reverent, like Dick’s doing something right, “goddamn.”

He opens his mouth around the fingers, intending to say something, but all that comes out is “Daddy”, and just saying it feels like it’s getting him close, so he says it again, grinds down hard enough to make his cock ache over and over, chants “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” his voice breathy and high with need.

Daddy slides his fingers out of Dick’s mouth, urges him to thrust faster and pets his face with spit-slick fingers that Dick wants inside him. “You’re doing so good, baby, being so good for me, come on. I can smell how close you are. All you have to do is come for me.” He slides his fingers down the line of Dick’s throat to his chest, pinches first one nipple and then the other, hard enough to ache and make Dick’s dick twitch for it. “Come on baby, be a good boy for me, yeah? Be good for your daddy.”

That’s… oh fuck that’s what Dick needs, what he wants, all he ever wanted was to be a good boy, to be good enough, and he can be, he is, he just has to come and that’s so easy, so easy when it’s for his daddy, his…

He shudders through his orgasm, only Daddy’s hands holding him up, mouth open and his whole body trembling and his over-sensitised cock soaking daddy’s pants with come.

“Good boy, there’s my good boy,” Daddy says, stroking his back, “God the way you look like this…”

He cups the back of Dick’s head, pulls him gently forward until his forehead is resting on Daddy’s shoulder, strokes his back and pets his hair and tells him how good he is, what a good boy he’s being. Dick shivers and nuzzles closer and basks in the praise and the touch, God, so much touch and he never knows how starved he is for it until he finally gets it, always forgets just how crazy-making it is to go without until moments like these.

Eventually he comes down enough that he can sit up by himself, return some of the affection he’s been given, run his hands over Daddy’s - M’s - broad shoulders and down his chest. 

He’s not super hairy, but he’s hairier than any of the Titans (except Gar, but his body hair has the softness of fur), and Dick spends a few minutes running his fingers through his chest hair, rubbing it against the grain and then stroking it back into place. He already knows the feeling is going to make its way into his fantasies. Slade isn’t much for physical modesty, and Dick’s been sharing the cave’s showers with Bruce since he was ten and couldn’t be trusted not to fall asleep under the spray, so he knows what they both look like, but until tonight, he hadn’t known what they would feel like.

“You alright, baby?” M asks eventually, running a hand down his back to cup his hip, not quite grabbing his ass but close enough to make Dick want it.

“I’m good. That was… intense.”

“You looked like you needed it.”

“God, yeah, I really did. How about you, you doing okay?”

M snorts. “Yeah, it was a real hardship to watch you come all over yourself.”

Dick can’t hold back his grin. “You poor thing. Must have been tough.” He grinds down against M, still hard in his pants, winces for the rough scratch of damp fabric against his own over-sensitised dick. “You should get naked now.”

“I dunno. You seemed pretty into being the only naked one a minute ago.”

Dick hadn’t really expected there to be banter when he agreed to this, but now he’s not really sure why not. He’s worked with M enough times now that they have a rhythm, and part of that rhythm is absolutely needling at one another just for the hell of it. (The other part is Dick losing all coherence over how fucking hot M is, and M being smug about it, and then pretending like he doesn’t get competence-horny every time Dick does something impressive).

He hovering on the edge of that post sex drop where he looks back at all the things he said under the influence of hormones and regrets ever learning to speak, but he’s not letting himself go there yet, not when they’re only one orgasm into this party and he still hasn’t even touched M’s dick.

He puts on his best innocent face, the one that makes Wally blush and Donna start looking for a paddle, and says, “I was promised a reward, if I was a good boy.”

“Yeah. You think you’ve earned it yet, baby?”

God, he is never getting over how M sounds when he calls him baby. He’s going to be hearing that in his dreams for the rest of forever. “I think you’re too much of a bastard to have come here tonight just to get me off with no thought for your own dick.”

M grins at him, smug and amused. “Slut. You’re just desperate to get your hot little hands on a real cock.”

Dick bites his lips, gives it the full puppy-dog eyes, the ones even Bruce can’t resist for long. “You promised, Daddy.”

“Not sure I did,” M says, and leans in to kiss him, long and slow.

Dick sees the flip coming - even if M wasn’t deliberately slowing himself down, Dick’s used to fooling around with Wally - but he lets it happen, ends up on his back with M looming over him.

He’s got his back to the light, and the way he’s leaning forward has put his face in shadow, and between the dark and the looming and the cowl, it’s easy to imagine he’s…

“Take the cowl off as well,” Dick says, reaching out to run his fingers along M’s jawline, finds stubble instead of freshly shaved skin, scars he knows Bruce doesn’t have. “I want to be able to see you properly.”

That gets him kissed again, sweet and gentle but tasting like repressed desire.

M stays looming over him as he removes his shirt. Dick reaches for the cowl, but stops himself before he actually touches. “Booby traps?”

M looks at him like he’s insane. “It’s just a mask, ‘Wing. Why would… Jesus, really? You know that’s fucked the hell up, right?”

“A lot of people want to know what we look like.”

 M reaches for his face, and Dick does his best to hide the flinch of surprise when M taps on his cheekbone and the sound comes out hollow and plastic. Because he’s still wearing his domino, right, shit. “You’d forgotten you were even wearing it, hadn’t you?”

“I’m just used to it.” He hadn’t meant that to sound so defensive.

“I’m used to it. Doesn’t mean I forget I’m wearing it. Are your family all this bad as well?”

“It’s not…” Jason has turned that stupid helmet into something like a security blanket, but he’d never liked wearing a domino, even as a kid. Damian doesn’t complain, because he never does about that sort of thing, but Dick’s seen the way he picks at the drying adhesive when he’s suiting up. When Cass had been starting out, her cowl had been a protection, a defence against people taking advantage of lack of speech. He’s pretty sure that these days, she views the masks as just another tool, like any other in her arsenal.

Tim would probably quite like it if he could wear his mask all the time, though he knows enough about abnormal psychology that he’d never say that out loud. He’s pretty good at hiding the worst of his damage, but Dick knows him well enough to be reasonably sure that mentally he hasn’t taken the domino off for more than a few minutes at a time since he was thirteen, regardless of whether it’s physically on his face. Including the period when his dad had forced him to retire.

Bruce… Well, Bruce is mostly the words ‘identity disorder’ and a lot of big question marks, but he does at least take the cowl off sometimes, because Bruce likes things to be clearly labelled, including his own mental states. Personality states? More question marks there. But that isn’t actually what M was asking about.

“We know how to remove them. And how to remove each other’s.”

“Right. And outside the family?”

Roy knows at least two of them. Clark has been told two, and is only pretending he wasn’t listening in on the instructions for the others. Babs has the schematics for all their costumes memorised, but he’s not sure if she counts as family or not these days. He still thinks of her that way, but he’s not sure she thinks of herself as one of them anymore. Kori refuses to learn, but she always prefers it when her lovers strip themselves, anyway. She says it helps them to be present in the moment with her. Vic knows the patterns Dick uses, and Tim is too practical minded not to have shared his own with someone on the Titans.

Laid out like that, it’s not a very long list. “Some.”

M shakes his head, like that’s the saddest thing he ever heard, and peels off his cowl.

Underneath it, his eyes are warm, like Dick’s doing something good just by being here. It occurs to Dick that he doesn’t know that many people with brown eyes apart from Alfred. That’s a fucked up reason to associate them with care and affection, but so far M’s been doing a pretty bang-up job of caring for him, so he’ll roll with it.

“No pressure or anything, but it would be nice to see your face,” M says.

Dick shakes his head. “I can’t. We can’t. If it was just me… We’re a family. You find one of us and the dominos topple. I’m not going to do that without their permission.”

“That’s fair. Well, you’re plenty cute with it on, anyway.”

Dick wrinkles his nose, and M chuckles. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.” He leans down to steal a kiss. “A daddy should get to compliment his baby boy, but not if you’re not comfortable with it.”

He’s been called cute, but not… There’s cute like you’d call a kid and cute like you’d call a guy you want to fuck, and he gets the latter plenty but not so much the former since he switched to long trousers. Some of the older working girls still call him that, the ones who he’s known for years. Sally, who’s run a few girls who need the protection ever since Jason put her pimp in traction when he was fourteen. LaShonda, who’d helped him figure out who was trafficking girls into Bludhaven when he was first starting out as Nightwing. 

Plus Dinah occasionally, when she’s feeling superior about those all-important couple of years she’s got on Dick and Roy. Clark, once, when he visited the Tower for something and found Dick passed out after a hard mission. No one else.

“Cute’s okay. As long as you mean it…”

“Like you’re my baby boy, and I’m going to take care of you?”

He’s pretty sure he could hear that every day for the rest of his life and he’d never stop blushing for it. “Yeah. That.”

“Still not up for ageplay, but I think I can manage it.” He kisses him again, slow and deep and almost drugging in its intensity. “Gonna take such good care of you, baby.”

Dick’s heart skips a beat at how sincere he sounds. “Does that mean I earned my reward after all?”

“God, so hungry for it. Yeah baby, you were so good for me. Stay there, okay?”

M rolls off him to stand beside the bed while he pulls off his ruined cargo pants and the black boxers he was wearing underneath. Dick does his best not to be that guy, but he can’t help the way his eyes zero in on M’s dick the minute he straightens up.

“That for me?”

M grins at him. “Well, that depends, baby. Have you been a good boy?”

“Oh, I’ve been the best fucking boy.”

“That didn’t sound like the language a good boy uses to me. I think maybe I need to give you something else to do with that filthy mouth, huh?”

“Yes, please.”

M grins and bends over. It takes Dick an embarrassingly long minute to realise that he’s reaching for a condom, and then even longer to say, “I’ve got some flavoured ones, if you like?”

“Why?”

“Speedsters and sugar, mostly.” He doesn’t like that Wally hasn’t told Linda about them, and he doesn’t know if the fact that he’s certain Linda knows and doesn’t care makes it better or worse. But apart from the sex being great, there’s something comfortingly nostalgic about screwing around with Wally. Every time he promises himself this time is going to be the last one, at least until he knows for sure Wally’s bitten the bullet. But then he’ll drop by the Watch Tower for something and Wally will give him that grin that all the original Titans know and fear and next thing they’re in the med bay, or an empty conference room, or once, an actual broom closet, and for a few minutes he feels like a teenager again, the one whose biggest problem was figuring out how to fuck Garth without him dehydrating. “They’re not usually allowed it, so anything that tastes sweet is basically catnip for them.”

M gives him a slow smile that’s equal parts predatory and amused, and Dick remembers abruptly that M’s a speedster in all but name. “You don’t need to bribe me, baby boy. You just need to show me how good you can be.”

God, Dick wants him so bad, wants him enough to push through the embarrassment and makes himself say, “I’ll be so good for you, Daddy.”

“I know you will, baby. Go on then, get your condoms.”

There aren’t exactly a lot of pockets in his suit, but the boots have hidden compartments, just big enough for the essentials - zip ties, gum, a couple of condoms and a packet of lube. All the things no growing boy should never leave home without. At least any time there’s a chance of a team-up with someone he’s not related to.

He already knows exactly the expression Roy would pull for that, and it’s not like he doesn’t get it, Connor’s beautiful, and it had taken Roy time to build that bond with him, but he’s just going to file that under ‘Arrows do things differently’ and not think too hard about how Tim would react.

He selects the strawberry flavour, because it matches the mood better than mint, and brings it back to the bed, knee-walking across the mattress to hold it out to M.

“I think you should put it on me, don’t you?” M asks, cupping a hand around his dick. He’s not stroking it, not doing anything except standing there being stupidly hot, but for some reason the image of it hits Dick right in the bit of the brain that’s been fixating all evening on how much bigger and stronger than him M is, how M could do anything he wanted to Dick and all he could do would be to take it.

He doesn’t have rape fantasies, not really, but maybe Slade isn’t exactly gentle when he guest stars in Dick’s dreams.

He nods, mouth too dry to answer properly, and tears the packet open with his teeth, almost dropping the condom itself in his haste.

M slides his hand down out of the way, fingers lingering at the base, holding his dick like he’s presenting it, and Dick is building so many individual fantasies right now he doesn’t even know where to start.

Condom, right. Start with the condom.

He rolls it on, gives M’s dick a quick stroke under the guise of making sure it’s rolled all the way down, and only grins a little bit at the sight. Coloured condoms always look at least a slightly ridiculous, even on someone as gorgeous and imposing as M, but sometimes a bit of ridiculousness is what you need.

It’s not so hard to let go of some of his own self-consciousness when he’s viewing M’s dick through rose-coloured latex.

It’s even easier when M hooks a finger under his chin, urging him to kneel up so M can kiss him, slow and thorough and still a little brain-breaking even so soon after coming.

He’s not ready to go again, but maybe M could insist…

“Pillow,” M says, when he pulls back, so nonsensical that Dick just stares at him. “Get a pillow, baby, for your knees.”

“Oh, right. Yes, daddy.”

He scrambles to obey, throwing one of the pillows onto the carpet a little harder than he meant to, and then sliding off the bed onto his knees as M sits down, legs spread so Dick’s trapped between those ridiculous thighs.

“You going to be good for me?” M asks, running one hand through Dick’s hair, the other wrapping around his own dick, stroking himself agonisingly slow. “Are you going to be good for Daddy?”

Dick knows his eyes are too wide, knows the expression on his face is the one Kori had affectionately nicknamed ‘dick-struck’, but he can’t bring himself to care. “Yes, Daddy.”

“That’s my good boy. Come on, then.” His hand tightens in Dick’s hair, just a little, not hurting but enough that he can guide Dick’s head closer. “Show me what a good boy you can be.”

Dick wants to drive right in, wants to swallow it down until he’s choking on it, but that’s not being a good boy. Instead he licks it, little kitten licks that drive him nearly as out of his head as they must be M. The artificial strawberry flavour, sweetly familiar, and the action are hitting the bit of this kink he doesn’t usually think about, the bit that he touches when he’s half asleep, brain skipping through fantasies he doesn’t let himself have when he’s awake, the good-bad-wrong ones that always make him come so fast…

M looks so big like this, taking up the whole world, eclipsing everything that isn’t this moment, isn’t this feeling. Eclipsing the real world and all the reasons Dick’s supposed to be ashamed for wanting this.

“Tease,” M - Daddy - says, voice fond. “You can do better than that, baby.”

He can, he will, he’d do anything for that voice, anything for the feeling of his Daddy over him and around him, taking him over in the best way.

He opens his mouth, lets the tip of his daddy’s dick slide into his mouth and feels his eyes flutter shut when it makes Daddy groan, low and hot and turned on, as good as any praise, the confirmation he needs that he’s doing this right. That he’s being good.

“That’s it baby, come on.” Gentle pressure on the top of his head, not pushing, not hurting, but as inescapable as if he was, urging him to take more, sliding down until he feels the tip of M’s cock nudging at his throat, as deep as he can go without it being too much.

Daddy knows, of course, Daddy knows exactly what Dick needs, lets him hold himself still until the storm of emotions inside him has calmed into something he can cope with, until the desire to move gets too much and he lets Daddy’s dick slide almost all the way out of his mouth before he bobs his head, setting up a steady rhythm. 

His hands come up, one wrapping around Daddy’s dick, covering the part he can’t swallow, the other bracing against one of Daddy’s solidly muscled thighs, not so much supporting him as grounding him.

“That’s it,” Daddy says, his voice gone husky with want. “That’s it baby, you’re being so good for me, such a good boy,” and it feels so good to be praised that Dick pushes himself a little harder, bobs his head a little faster, resisting the urge to move his hand and see how much he could really take.

Daddy wouldn’t hurt him like that, not even if Dick wanted him too, so Dick shouldn’t hurt himself, either. No matter how good it would feel.

He’s getting hard again, and he grips Daddy’s thigh a little tighter, a reminder to himself not to touch. He kind of hates being denied, but it also gets him off like crazy, and the idea of it, of getting himself so high on arousal and lust and the need to come that all he can think about is how to please his Daddy is the kind of hot he doesn’t normally allow himself. The kind of hot he only trusts Titans with.

He can’t go there with M, not on their first date, but he can skirt the edge. Let the feeling of not touching drive him crazy. Tell himself that he only gets to come if he does a good enough job sucking Daddy’s dick until he’s drooling and whimpering around his mouthful and Daddy’s swearing and fisting a hand in Dick’s hair, rougher than he’s been all night.

“Oh fuck, baby, you’re so hungry for it, aren’t you? So fucking desperate to please your daddy, such a good boy for me.”

Dick moans his agreement and presses his thighs together like it’ll give him any relief. He digs his fingers into Daddy’s leg tight enough that it’d bruise anyone less super, and gives himself permission to live the fantasy of it, at least while his mouth’s too full to say anything out loud. To let himself live in the space where this is more than a game, where this isn’t just a hook-up. To live in the place where this is real and Dick’s whole life revolves around pleasing M, where he spends his days alternately too desperate or too fucked out to think about anything except how best to please his Daddy, how best to earn the right to come.

He forces himself to open his eyes and see the way Daddy is looming over him, to watch his expression change as Dick gets him close. The way his mouth opens on a gasp of pleasure feels better than all the praise in the world.

He wants to tell him, wants to make sure he knows that even if he doesn’t let Dick come, this still feels better than anything, but that would mean stopping, and that’s not an option. He has to make Daddy feel so good that he wants to keep Dick forever; he has to…

Daddy gasps out, “Oh fuck, baby,” and that’s all the warning Dick gets before Daddy is coming, holding him close as he shudders through his climax.

He lets go eventually, but Dick stays put, holding Daddy’s softening cock in his mouth until Daddy pushes him off.

“Oh fuck, I needed that. Come here baby, come on.” Dick lets himself be pulled into Daddy’s - M’s - lap, his arms warm and strong and comforting. Dick buries his head in M’s shoulder, and tries to appreciate all the skin-on-skin contact he’s getting, and ignore how hard he is, and how much he wants M to make him come, and how much he wants M to go on ignoring it.

It’s probably totally fine and normal that he’s having two entirely contradictory fantasies at the same time, but when M asks, “What do you want, baby boy? You have to ask me for it,” he just presses even closer in the hope that somehow M will intuit the conflict in him without him ever having to actually voice it.

Unfortunately, not even M works like that.

Does Martian Manhunter fuck male humans? Having a sexual partner who can just straight up read his mind sounds amazing and terrifying in equal measure.

“Come on, baby, you’ve gotta use your words. Are we done here? Or is there something you want to ask me for?”

The idea that if he says nothing, M will just leave him to fall asleep still hard is what finally gets him horny enough to speak. Let it never be said that his dick isn’t a contrarian. “Whatever you want, Daddy.”

“Oh yeah? And if I want to have a nap and make you suck me off again before I let you come?”

“Wait, can you read minds? You have to tell me if you can read minds, that’s, I don’t know, in the bro-code or something.”

“Bro-code.”

“Or something.”

“You call a lot of your bros daddy? Actually, no, don’t answer that.”

“Only you,” Dick admits, and just copes with the fact that he can feel the blush rising inexorably up his face.

“Yeah?” M pushes a strand of hair back from his face, and kisses him, sweet and gentle and way more tender than he would have expected the Midnighter to be capable of. “I’m flattered.”

“Like I’m the first.”

M grins at him. “You definitely aren’t. Doesn’t make it less flattering. Now I was joking about the nap, but I can play that way, if that’s what you want.”

“No… I mean, it’s hot, and creepily close to the fantasy I was having right at that moment, but I’m way too horny for it to actually work.”

“Another time, maybe.”

Dick bites his lip and resists saying the first three things that pop into his head at the implication that this might happen again. He did the best out of his entire family when it comes to abandonment issues, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any. “I could be up for that.”

“And what about right now?”

“Now I want to touch you.” He runs his hands over M’s shoulders in demonstration, does his best to look like the contact isn’t lighting up his brain better than anything Ivy ever cooked up, and gets a low hum in response. “I don’t really care what else. I want to come, and I want to touch you.”

“You need a boyfriend.”

Don’t ask if he’s offering, you already know he isn’t. “Tell me about it. Heroing isn’t exactly kind on your social life.”

“Tell me about it,” M mimics, with a grin. “What about another hero? You know everyone in the community.”

“That’s the problem. Either they’ve known me since I was a kid, or I’ve known them since they were a kid. The only heroes my age are Oracle, who dumped me, and the older Titans, who are either in relationships or not interested. Or dead. We hook-up sometimes. And I’m fairly sure Red Robin has Arsenal on some kind of alert system, because he’s getting amazingly good at climbing through my window right when I’m about to go crazy from not having cuddled anyone for too long, and I know it’s not Batman who’s telling him.”

Babs still has his place wired up like the Pentagon, of course, but thinking about her sending other people to comfort him is a little too crazy-making. Whereas Tim has nearly as many cameras in the apartment now as Bruce and Babs do, and hugging someone by proxy is absolutely the sort of thing he’d do.

Maybe if they both manage to remember that they’re Titans as well as Bats at the same time, they’ll even have a conversation about it one day.

M gives him that reading his mind look again, and then shifts back on the bed, pulling Dick with him and arranging them so that they’re on their sides, M spooned up against his back, one huge arm thrown over Dick’s waist, his fingers brushing maddeningly against the base of Dick’s dick. “This alright, baby?”

It’s not as much skin contact as Dick wants, but since that would involve M just lying on top of him, pressing him down into the mattress and incidentally making a hand-job logistically impossible, he nods.

“That’s good.” He wraps a hand around Dick’s dick, and Dick shivers for the unexpected softness of his hands, free of scars and calluses, the way only a meta’s can be. “Are you staying the night or going home?”

The question takes Dick by surprise. It’s one he’s so rarely been asked, and he didn’t have an answer prepared. “Staying?” he hazards, hoping it’s the right answer.

M makes a soft noise, that might be agreement or might just be a noise, and begins to stroke him, slow and gentle. “Then you’ve got nothing to do except come for me again. Can you do that for me, baby?”

Dick turns his face into the pillow to hide his blush and nods. This is so much, so close to fantasies he’s been nurturing for more than a decade. Everything feels dreamlike and hazy, too perfect to be real, but he trusts M to have his back, so he lets himself drift.

The pleasure builds in slow waves, making his toes curl and the tips of his fingers tingle, every nerve in his body awake and focussed on the feel of M holding him, M pressing soft kisses to the back of his neck, M stroking him.

He closes his eyes, focuses on the pleasure, and he doesn’t mean to whine, “daddy,” soft and raw and needy, but M only kisses him again.

“That’s my good boy,” he says, his voice a low rumble that lights up Dick’s nerves almost as deliciously as the hand on his dick. “Such a good boy for me, baby. Does that feel good?”

Dick nods, and then says, “can you… tighter?” and Daddy rubs his face against the back of Dick’s head like a big affectionate cat and tightens his grip a little, just enough to make Dick need to arch his back and push into Daddy’s hand.

“Shh, shh, you’re thinking too much, baby. Just feel, okay? Just let me make you feel good.”

If this is a dream, it’s a beautiful one. Dick lets himself drift on the gentle waves of pleasure, but there’s something… He puts his thumb into his mouth and sucks it in pulses, in time with the movement of Daddy’s hand on his dick. It doesn’t fill his mouth as perfectly as Daddy had, but feels right. It goes with this perfect moment.

When Daddy says, “you’re going to come for me, baby boy,” it doesn’t feel like an order, it feels like an inevitability, a statement of how the world is going to be, and Dick can no more resist than he could gravity.

The orgasm is slow, a whole body crest of pleasure, and he moans low and heartfelt around the thumb in his mouth, desperately grateful for Daddy’s arms holding him together, keeping him from dissolving into nothingness.

He makes a vague noise of discontent when Daddy moves, but he’s only gone for a moment, wrapping himself back around Dick and telling him that he’s good, that he’s not alone, until Dick drifts into sleep.

Dick wakes up warm and half-hard, with that settled feeling he only gets after at least 6 hours of prolonged skin contact.

He knows his own mind well enough to know when there’s a thought waiting to ambush him, but choosing to sleep was a trick he mastered before he ever even met Bruce, so he stays drifting in comforting darkness until the warm body that had been draped over his back begins shifting like they’re thinking of getting up.

Opening his eyes isn’t as bad as he’d been subconsciously bracing for, but the embarrassment still hits him like a strike from Selina’s whip, shocking and painful and just a little bit arousing.

M must see he’s awake, because he presses his lips to the sensitive spot behind Dick’s ear and asks, “you know anywhere good for breakfast?”

Dick pushes back against him, and M shifts to let Dick roll over. It’s not the first time Dick’s ever seen his face in daylight, but there haven’t been enough that Dick can resist cataloguing all the little details usually hidden by the cowl. The unevenness of his nose from an old break, the unexpectedly manicured eyebrows, the divot of a healed-over piercing in his right ear.

There’s something… something he’s never quite been able to put into words about looking into the faces of heroes who don’t have secret identities. Something almost illicit. He thinks maybe it’s how people who’ve ever worked with Dinah or Kori feel when they see billboards of women in their underwear. Not sexual, exactly, but not not sexual at the same time.

This is why Bruce is the poet in the family rather than him. He’s never been good at turning feelings into words. Cass told him - danced at him - once that it was because his first language was his body, like hers.

“You alright, ‘Wing?”

Hearing his code-name, hearing M talk to him so normally, settles something inside him he hadn’t known was out of place. “Yeah, I think so.”

M smiles at him, and there’s another detail the cowl usually hides, the crow’s feet just beginning to turn into wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. “Last night was intense,” he offers.

“Yeah, it was. But we’re…” Okay isn’t quite what he means, he doesn’t think M would have cuddled him all night if he had some kind of problem with Dick now, but he needs to know that it hasn’t changed anything, hasn’t upset their familiar rhythms. “We’re still us?”

“Who else would we be? No, wait, I just remember you were a spy. Don’t answer that.”

“I wasn’t a very good spy, to be fair. Too much hero in me.” M’s lip twitches like he’s trying to bite back a laugh, so Dick finishes the joke before he has a chance to. “And yes, I absolutely want some more, but I want breakfast first. What time is it?”

M chuckles and checks the time on his phone. “Nearly 2. I guess it’s lunch, then.”

“First meal is always breakfast when you’re with a Bat,” Dick tells him. “There’s a place not far that does pretty good 24 hour waffles.” He stretches and yawns and realises when he goes to rub sleep from his eyes that he’s slept in his domino. “When do we have to be out of here? I could use a shower.”

“No idea,” M says. “I got the key off a dead guy.”

“Wow. I feel significantly less special now.”

“I bought you pink wine and fucked your face. What more do you want?” M says, though his put-upon tone is somewhat spoiled by the smile catching at the corners of his mouth. “Spoiled little princess.”

“I only play that game with one person, and you’re not her,” Dick tells him, mostly just to make him laugh. “Want to share a shower? In the interests of time, obviously.”

“Obviously,” M agrees. “Wash my hair for me and I’ll let you buy me pancakes.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

“It is when you’re the rich one. I’ve seen the toys Batman gives you, Wing. Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not a trust fund baby.”

“I’m not! Technically. B never bothered with trust funds. He just gives us all credit cards when we’re like 13 and trusts in our deep-seated terror of Penny 1 to keep us from buying anything too stupid.”

“Does that work?”

“Depends on your definition of stupid. I’m pretty sure Robin is spending the GDP of a small country on those sponsor an animal schemes at this point, and I made the mistake of looking up how much the space-ship models Red likes cost and honestly nothing you have to assemble yourself should be that expensive.”

“And Batman doesn’t object?”

“Doesn’t notice, more like. Pretty sure he’s never checked a bank statement that wasn’t part of a criminal investigation in his life. But he wouldn’t care if he did. Neither of them had… well, childhoods, really. It’s always nice to see them get excited about something that doesn’t involve violence.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, I had the kind of childhood you thought only existed in children’s adventure stories from the 1950s. There’s a reason people run away to join the circus and not the other way around.” That’s half a lie. The runaways rarely find the life to be what they wanted and his childhood hadn’t ended when he left Zuko’s, but he doesn’t want to think about sad things right now. “And the animatronic dinosaur doesn’t count as me buying stupid shit because technically B is the one who paid for it.”

“Where the hell does he live, a castle?”

Not far off, really. “Everyone knows Bats live in caves.”

“Well, that explains a lot. I’m going to find you a bad guy who lives on a beach to hunt. You need the vitamin D.”

“Need your vitamin D,” Dick says, because he can never resist a dick joke. “Come on, I want a proper shower before we get kicked out. Or before the dead guy’s friends come looking for him.”

“Pretty sure his friends are also dead,” M says, like that’s totally normal. For him, it probably is. “Hey, Wing? You’re okay, right?”

He sounds serious, more serious than Dick’s ever heard him outside of a firefight, so Dick actually considers it before answering. Is he okay?

Thinking about the night before is terrifying, but it’s mostly terrifying in the adrenaline way he likes. He can’t believe he did that, can’t believe he said any of the things he said, but not because they were bad. He actually did the stuff he’s been fantasising about since he was a teenager, and it was incredibly hot and kind of embarrassing and messy the way sex always is, and most importantly, it didn’t change him. He’s still the same guy he was before he let M be his daddy.

It hasn’t changed him, and M’s still talking to him the same way he always does, snarky and amused and just a little bit protective, no sign that he thinks any differently of Dick. No sign that he thinks less of him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I guess I was expecting to feel… different, maybe? Or different about you? But it was just sex. Really really hot sex, don’t get me wrong, but I’m still just me, you’re still you, and we’re still friends. We are still friends, right?”

“I don’t buy pink wine for just anyone,” M says, grinning lopsided and fond, his head tilted in that birdlike way that always looks so out of place on someone so big. “The key word in fuck-buddies is buddies.”

“God, you sap.” Dick can’t resist leaning in to kiss him, slow and sweet, and feels M’s smile against his lips. “Do you think we’ve got time for-”

His words are interrupted by banging on the door, and yelling in a language Dick’s almost certain isn’t native to this solar system.

M sighs, and picks up his cowl from the bedside table. “How fast can you get dressed? Because that door’s not going to hold if they decide they’re coming in.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Dick asks indignantly, rolling out of bed and pulling the suit up his legs. Fighting with no cup is going to suck, but experience has taught him that fighting naked is worse. “Just give me one minute.”

The door lasts less than 30 seconds, if his time-sense is accurate, but by then he’s got the suit up to his waist and one of his boots on, which is good enough for government work.

M fights like a dream, every movement perfectly placed, not a breath of wasted energy. Dick doesn’t have to try to anticipate him because M always knows exactly where he is, and if Dick’s visibly hard in his suit by the time the last guy is a heap on the floor, well, some kinks come free with your first domino whether you want them or not.

“Do you think we’ve got time for a shower before more of them turn up?”

There’s a shout from the hallway outside the room, and M sighs. “I think we’ll be lucky if we’ve got time for you to get both your boots on.”

Dick weighs up the relative merits of boots vs how hot M is when he’s fighting, and says, “how about one for the road? I promise I can kiss you and suit up at the same time.”

“The fuck does Batman teach you kids?” M asks no one in particular, and pulls Dick in with an arm around his waist, like they’re on the cover of a romance novel. “You’re cute when you fight.”

“Not exactly the effect I was going for.”

“Not exactly the word I was going to use, but you don’t like the other.”

God, that’s so… He kisses him again, because he has to, and he keeps kissing as he hears the angry shouting getting closer, and he keeps kissing him as M dips him so that the first shot goes clear over their heads, and then M says “I’m gonna throw you now,” and he's in the air, twisting so that his boot lands on the lead guy’s knee with a satisfying crunch, and it’s on.