Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader
Summary: She’s spent years pretending she doesn’t need anyone. Dick’s spent just as long quietly proving her wrong. One undercover gala, one reopened injury, and one night in Dick Grayson’s apartment is all it takes for years of restraint to finally crack.
Warnings: 18+ mdni, injury, mutual pining, best friends to lovers, oral (fem receiving), vaginal fingering, p in v, unprotected sex, mentions of exhaustion/fatigue, brief angst, hurt/comfort, fem! reader
Tune: Carry You Home- Alex Warren
Notes: do you ever think about how dick grayson would absolutely memorise someone’s pain tells and then quietly lose his mind every time they pretended to be okay? yeah.. anyway. no use of y/n
The ballroom looked like it had been dipped in gold.
Warm light spilled from chandeliers high overhead, catching against crystal glasses and polished marble. Everywhere she looked there was something reflective; sequins stitched into expensive gowns, silver trays balanced on the hands of exhausted waiters, the sharp gleam of cufflinks and watches and carefully perfected smiles. The music sat low beneath the noise of conversation, smooth enough to blend into the background without ever really disappearing.
If she focused hard enough, she could almost let herself sink into it.
Instead, she stood near one of the massive pillars lining the edge of the ballroom, champagne untouched in her hand, trying not to think about the dull ache spreading through her ribs every time she breathed too deeply.
The dress wasn’t helping.
Objectively, it looked incredible. She knew that. Barbara had spent the better part of three hours aggressively reassuring her of that fact while simultaneously threatening to strangle her for reopening stitches on patrol two nights earlier. The fabric fit perfectly, dark and sleek, the kind of thing that blended into a gala full of Gotham’s elite while still turning heads when she moved.
Unfortunately, breathing in it felt a little like being slowly compressed to death.
She shifted her weight carefully, trying not to make it obvious.
Across the room, Dick noticed immediately.
His gaze flicked toward her halfway through a conversation with some pompous finance guy, expression changing just enough for her to catch it. Nobody else would have. To everyone else, Richard Grayson still looked politely interested, all charm and easy posture, nodding along like he hadn’t just clocked the exact second her body betrayed her.
Then he excused himself smoothly and crossed the room.
“You’re doing the thing again,” he said quietly when he reached her.
She frowned. “I do a lot of things, Grayson. You’re gonna need to narrow it down.”
“The thing where you pretend you’re fine while very visibly not being fine.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Mm.” His mouth twitched as he took the champagne flute from her hand before she could protest, setting it onto the tray of a passing waiter without looking. “Usually you’re better at hiding it.”
“You know,” she said lightly, “most people buy me dinner before confiscating my alcohol.”
Dick leaned one shoulder against the pillar beside her, close enough that the sleeve of his suit brushed her arm. “Most people aren’t trying to stop you from reopening a stab wound at a charity gala.”
She scoffed. “It’s barely a stab wound.”
“You had eight stitches.”
“You complained the entire time Alfred cleaned it.”
“That’s because Alfred uses antiseptic like he’s trying to cleanse Jason of his sins.”
That got a laugh out of him.
A real one, warm and bright under the noise of the ballroom, and something in her chest pulled tight before she could stop it.
That was the problem with Dick.
Not the flirting. Not the looks.
The way he stepped into her space like he’d been made a part of it years ago and nobody had bothered to tell either of them what that meant.
“You’re tired,” he said after a moment, softer this time.
She looked away, gaze drifting back toward the crowd. “Long week.”
Dick hummed, unconvinced.
Which, again, wasn’t exactly shocking.
Nobody knew her tells like he did. Not after years of patrols together, late nights bleeding onto the same bathroom counter while patching each other up, mornings spent half-asleep on his couch after cases dragged on too long. Somewhere along the way, he’d learnt every version of her silence. The one that meant pain. The one that meant irritation. The one that meant she was about three seconds away from making a stupid decision and calling it strategy.
The worst part was she’d learnt all of his too.
“You should sit down for a while,” he said eventually.
“And deprive Gotham’s richest people of my sparkling personality?”
“I think they’ll survive.”
His shoulder nudged hers lightly, careful of her ribs even in the movement. It was subtle enough that anyone watching would’ve missed the adjustment entirely, but she noticed.
“You don’t have to push through everything, you know,” he said.
The words landed somewhere awkward.
That was easy for Dick to say. Dick, who spent his entire life holding people together so well it almost looked natural. Dick, who carried everyone else’s weight without complaint and somehow still found time to look at hers like he wanted to take it too.
She swallowed against the sudden tightness in her chest and forced a smile instead. “Are you trying to say I’m stubborn?”
“I’m saying only a mad woman gets stabbed in the ribs and then willingly steps into a corset five days later.”
She thought for a moment. “That’s fair.”
She held onto that thought for roughly three seconds before Dick ruined it by looking at her again.
His attention had shifted back toward the room, posture loose and easy, the absolute picture of Richard Grayson behaving himself at a formal event for once in his life. But his hand had settled at the small of her back as they rejoined the flow of the gala, warm through the fabric of her dress, steady without pressing.
It was the sort of touch that could be excused as friendly. Guiding. Familiar.
The sort of touch they had used a thousand times before when weaving through crowds on their days off or pretending not to be two very armed people in very expensive clothes.
It should not have made her feel like this.
“You’re hovering,” she muttered, keeping her smile fixed as they passed a cluster of donors who looked vaguely familiar in the way every obscenely wealthy Gothamite did after enough champagne.
“I’m walking,” Dick replied, smile equally pleasant.
“You’re walking aggressively close.”
“I’ve never walked aggressively in my life.”
His thumb moved once against her back, almost absent, barely there. Probably meant to be reassuring. Absolutely not reassuring, because the simple act of his hand being there made her too aware of him all at once. The clean line of his suit. The faint scent of his cologne under champagne and perfume. The warmth of him beside her like something she had no business wanting so badly.
Dick had always been tactile. Quick with an arm around her shoulders, a hand at her waist, fingers brushing her wrist when he needed her attention. He touched people like it was easy.
Tonight, every point of contact felt turned up too high.
Maybe pain made everything sharper.
Or maybe she was tired enough to stop pretending she didn’t notice.
They passed beneath one of the chandeliers, gold light catching briefly in his hair, and she hated that she noticed that too. Hated that even after years of knowing him, after seeing him half-dead on rooftops and bloodied in alleyways and asleep face-down on a case file with a protein bar still in his hand, he could still look like this and make her forget how to function like a normal person.
Dick glanced down at her, one eyebrow lifting. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m admiring the décor.”
Her hand flew to her chest in mock offence. “I’m trying to grow as a person.”
“That’d be more believable if you weren’t glaring at a flower arrangement.”
She looked toward the arrangement in question, then back at him. “It’s ugly.”
“It really is,” he agreed immediately.
A laugh slipped out before she could stop it, small and quiet and cut short almost immediately by the ache that flared under her ribs.
She swallowed the wince before it fully reached her face.
His hand stilled at her back. Every bit of him went subtly still beside her, like a tripwire had been pulled somewhere under his skin.
She kept her eyes forward. “Don’t.”
“You breathe judgementally.”
“Oh trust me, it is when you do it.”
His mouth twitched, but the amusement didn’t settle. His gaze dragged over her face with the kind of careful focus that made lying to him almost impossible. She could feel him cataloguing it all; the short breath, the shift away from pain, the tiny delay before she forced herself upright again.
She hated how well he knew her.
She loved it too, which was significantly worse.
“Bathroom,” she said abruptly, before he could start interrogating her in the middle of the ballroom.
Dick’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, looking at her like he did not believe for one second that was all she was doing. “Do you want me to-”
“No,” she cut in, too quickly. Then, because that sounded suspicious even to her, she softened it with a look. “I’m fine. I just need two minutes without a billionaire mansplaining cryptocurrency to me.”
That, at least, got a real smile out of him.
“Fair,” he said, though his eyes stayed on her. “Two minutes.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Grayson.”
She rolled her eyes, which was a mistake because it made him smile wider, and then she turned before he could see how much the movement cost her.
The second she made it out of the main ballroom and into the quieter hallway beyond it, the mask slipped.
Her hand found her ribs before she could stop it, palm pressing lightly over the injured side as she exhaled through her teeth. The pain wasn’t unbearable, exactly. That was the annoying part. If it had been unbearable, she would have had a reason to stop. A clean excuse to fold.
Instead, it sat just under that line, persistent and mean, blooming sharper every time she breathed too deeply or moved too fast or forgot for half a second that her body had not actually forgiven her yet.
The hallway was quieter, the music muffled behind closed doors, voices softened into a distant blur. She leaned back against the wall beside a heavy velvet curtain and closed her eyes for one second.
Just enough time to breathe shallowly until the ache settled back into something manageable. Enough time to remind herself she was not useless, not fragile, not some liability Dick needed to escort out like a wounded civilian.
The thought made her feel immediately unfair.
Dick had never treated her like that.
If anything, he had spent years trusting her in ways most people didn’t. He trusted her at his back, trusted her in the field, trusted her with his name and his family and all the fragile pieces of himself he rarely let anyone see.
But there was a difference between being trusted and being watched with that soft, worried scrutiny.
The kind that made her feel peeled open in places she hadn’t meant to show him.
“Four minutes my ass,” she said, without opening her eyes.
Dick stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets, expression carefully neutral in a way that meant he was trying very hard not to look worried. “It was three and a half.”
She should have been annoyed. She was annoyed, technically. But he didn’t come closer right away. Didn’t crowd her, didn’t reach for her without asking.
That softened something in her.
His gaze dropped briefly to the hand still pressed against her side.
She let it fall too late.
She looked away. “It’s fine.”
The words were soft, but they landed harder than if he’d snapped them and rammed them into the other side of her ribs.
He had moved closer without her really noticing, stopping just inside arm’s reach. The hallway light was warmer out here, catching against the side of his face and making the worry impossible to ignore. He wasn’t angry. Frustrated, maybe. Scared, definitely, though he was trying to bury that because this was Dick, and Dick would rather dismantle an entire crime syndicate with his bare hands than admit fear got its claws into him too.
“I’m not doing anything,” she said, weaker this time.
“You’re doing the thing.”
“I thought we’d established that I have a lot of things.”
“The one where pain only counts if it physically drops you.”
The callback should have been funny.
“You said you were cleared,” he said.
“For a light patrol, or for wearing a corset for six hours pretending you’re not hurt?”
She sighed. “Those are weirdly specific categories.”
She hated when he used that voice. Not because it was harsh, but because it wasn’t. Calm, patient, full of the kind of concern that made it impossible to keep joking without feeling cruel.
“I was cleared enough,” she said eventually.
Dick closed his eyes for half a second.
It would have been easier if he’d gotten angry. She could argue with angry. She could push back against it, turn it into something sharp enough to keep distance between them.
But he just looked tired.
Not physically. Emotionally.
Like the thought of her being in pain and hiding it from him had landed somewhere deep.
“That’s not an answer,” he said.
“I didn’t want to sit this out.”
“And I didn’t want you worrying about me all night.”
His face changed then, something small and painful moving across it before he managed to smooth it away.
The carpet beneath her heels was patterned in deep red and gold, ornate enough to give her a headache if she stared at it too long. She focused on it anyway because looking at him felt dangerous.
“I’m okay,” she said, quieter.
Dick didn’t answer right away.
When he did, his voice had dropped too. “You don’t have to be.”
The stupid soft voice. The stupid careful eyes. The way he could cut through every defence she had without even raising his hands. He said things like that as if they were simple, as if letting someone hold the weight for a second was as easy as breathing, as if she hadn’t spent years learning how not to need it.
She swallowed. “We’re on a job.”
Her eyes snapped back to his. “Dick, no-.”
“I do, actually.” He tilted his head, the faintest trace of humour returning. “Because while you were pretending not to be in pain, I got what we needed from a very boring man with a very expensive watch.”
She blinked. “You got the access key?”
“And his confession about tax fraud, but that was more of a bonus.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
Pain shot hot through her ribs, immediate and unforgiving. She flinched before she could hide it.
Fast, but not frantic. One hand came to her elbow, the other hovered near her waist without touching the injured side, his whole body shifting closer like he could block the rest of the world from getting to her by force of will alone.
“Okay,” he said, voice low. “We’re done here.”
“If you say fine, I’m carrying you out in front of everyone. God knows what The Gazette would say.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.”
She huffed, then immediately regretted it. Dick’s hand tightened around her elbow, not enough to hurt. Just enough to steady.
“Come on,” he said softly. “Let me take you home.”
Not get you home. Not call you a cab. Not arrange something efficient and distant.
Like it mattered that he was the one doing it.
“You’re very bossy tonight,” she muttered.
Dick’s mouth softened. “You’re very injured tonight.”
“I’m moderately injured.”
“Yeah,” he said, and the look he gave her was almost unbearable. “I do.”
The hallway went quiet around them.
Or maybe she just stopped hearing anything else.
For one stupid, aching second, she thought he might say something more. Something they had both spent years stepping around. Something that lived in the space between late-night patch-ups and shared takeout and the way his hand always found her in a crowd.
Then someone laughed loudly from the ballroom, the spell cracked, and Dick stepped back just enough to give her room to breathe.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
She gave him a look. “Yes…”
He offered his arm, old-fashioned and ridiculous in his tux, and she stared at it for half a second before taking it.
Not because she needed it.
The city looked softer from the passenger seat.
Maybe it was the rain starting to gather against the windows in thin streaks, blurring Gotham’s streetlights into smears of gold and white. Maybe it was the exhaustion finally catching up now that she’d stopped moving long enough for her body to realise it was allowed to rest. Either way, everything outside the car seemed quieter than usual, distant in a way Gotham almost never managed.
Dick drove with one hand loose on the wheel, the other resting near the centre console, close enough that she noticed the heat of it on her thigh. The radio played low, something soft and instrumental tucked beneath the muted sound of rain tapping against the windshield.
Neither of them spoke for the first few minutes.
The silence between them had never been awkward. Years of patrols and stakeouts had taught them how to exist quietly beside each other without needing to fill every second of it. Sometimes silence was easier. Safer.
She shifted slightly against the seat and immediately regretted it when pain pulled sharp through her ribs. The breath she sucked in was small, involuntary.
His grip tightened briefly on the steering wheel. “You need anything?”
“No,” she admitted after a second, staring out at the rain-streaked window. “Just annoying.”
Dick hummed, unconvinced.
The red glow of a traffic light washed across the inside of the car as they stopped at an intersection. She could feel his attention flick toward her without fully turning his head, restrained only by the fact that he was driving and trying very hard not to hover.
“You know,” she said lightly, still looking out the window, “you’re doing the thing again.”
“The Dick Grayson trademarked worried silence.”
“You’re one step away from putting me on bedrest.”
“That’s because you should probably be on bedrest.”
She glanced over then, catching the tired edge beneath his expression now that the ballroom lights weren’t there to soften it. Dick looked good in formalwear, offensively so, but somewhere between leaving the gala and getting into the car, the polished charm had started to wear off. His bowtie had been loosened, the top button of his shirt undone, dark hair slightly mussed from repeatedly dragging his hands through it.
Not casually. Not in the way people worried when someone said they had a headache.
“You know I’m okay, right?” she reassured, quietly.
Dick let out a breath through his nose, eyes fixed on the road. “You keep saying that like it changes the fact you’re hurting.”
The car rolled forward as the light changed, the city shifting around them in wet reflections and blurred neon. She watched him for another second before looking away, something uncomfortable and warm twisting together beneath her ribs that had nothing to do with the injury.
It would be easier if Dick cared less.
That was the terrible, selfish truth of it.
If he was less attentive, less gentle, less capable of noticing every tiny shift in her mood or posture or breathing, maybe she wouldn’t feel like she was constantly standing on the edge of something dangerous whenever he looked at her too long.
“You’re mad at me,” she said eventually.
Dick’s eyebrows lifted. “Mad?”
“You’ve got your whole emotionally constipated disappointed dad thing going on. It’s very Bruce.”
That got the faintest flicker of amusement out of him. “First of all, rude.”
She looked at him pointedly.
Dick sighed, one hand lifting briefly from the wheel before settling again. “I’m frustrated.”
“Not because you got hurt,” he added quickly, glancing toward her for half a second. “I know you can handle yourself.”
“Wow. Thank you for your faith in me.”
They knew each other too well. Enough that whole conversations happened underneath the actual one.
Dick’s jaw shifted slightly before he spoke again. “I just hate that you think you have to deal with it alone.”
The words settled between them.
Rain continued tapping against the windows, soft and steady, filling the silence she suddenly didn’t know how to answer.
Because it wasn’t just about the injury.
He meant all of it. The way she carried things by herself until they became unbearable. The way she disappeared into herself when something hurt too badly to explain. The way she chose isolation and called it independence because it sounded less pathetic.
And maybe the worst part was that Dick had spent years trying to meet her halfway anyway.
She swallowed and leaned her head back against the seat. “I didn’t want to ruin the night.”
Dick looked genuinely baffled. “You think you could ruin a night for me?”
“No,” he said immediately. “I really don’t.”
She glanced over at him again.
His hands tightened slightly around the wheel, shoulders tense beneath the dark fabric of his suit jacket like he was keeping something contained.
“You getting hurt isn’t inconvenient to me,” he said. “You being in pain and pretending I can’t handle knowing about it is.”
That hit harder than she expected.
Her gaze dropped to the centre console, to the veined hand he’d left resting there, fingers flexing slightly every few seconds like he was resisting the urge to reach for her and arguing with himself about it.
The ache in her chest got worse.
“You make it really hard not to rely on you,” she admitted before she could stop herself.
The words came out. Too honest.
Dick went still beside her.
Not dramatically. Just enough that she noticed.
Outside, rainwater shimmered across the streets beneath passing headlights. Inside the car, everything felt too close. Too warm.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
She laughed quietly, but there wasn’t much humour in it. “Dick.”
“No, seriously.” His voice stayed gentle, but something sat underneath it now. Something tight.
At the exhaustion pulling faintly at the corners of his eyes, at the concern he’d stopped trying to hide, at the way he kept glancing toward her like he needed to check she was still there.
Suddenly the car felt too small for everything sitting between them.
“Don’t be,” Dick’s expression softened immediately.
The light ahead turned red again.
This time, when the car stopped, his hand finally moved.
Not quickly. Not uncertainly either. He reached across the console slowly enough that she could’ve pulled away if she wanted to, his fingers brushing hers before settling there, warm and steady.
The contact wasn’t dramatic.
Like something they’d been doing forever.
Her breath caught anyway.
Dick glanced down briefly, then back toward the windshield. His thumb moved once against the side of her hand.
“You falling asleep on me over there?” he asked after a moment.
She blinked slowly. “Maybe.”
The corner of his mouth twitched as her eyes slipped half-shut. The warmth of the car and the steady rain pulled the exhaustion heavier through her body.
The last thing she really registered before drifting was Dick’s thumb brushing over her knuckles again.
And the fact that he didn’t let go for the rest of the drive home.
By the time they pulled into the garage beneath Dick’s building, she was barely awake.
Not fully asleep, not gone enough that she didn’t feel the car slow or the soft hum of the engine turning off, but heavy in that dangerous way exhaustion settled after adrenaline finally wore off. Every part of her ached now that she’d stopped forcing herself upright through it. The pain in her ribs was duller but wider somehow, spreading through her body in slow waves every time she moved too quickly.
Rain hammered steadily against the windshield overhead.
For a second, neither of them moved.
And softened immediately.
She hated when he looked at her like that.
Not because it felt bad, but because it felt too good. Too safe. Like she could hand him every sharp, ugly part of herself and he’d just quietly make room for it without asking for anything back.
“You’re half asleep,” he murmured.
“I’m literally talking to you.”
She frowned at him weakly. “Now who’s being rude.”
Dick smiled, small and fond and devastatingly familiar. “C’mon.”
He slipped out of the car before she could open her mouth, rain and cold air rushing briefly through the garage as he rounded the front. By the time he opened her door, she’d managed to sit up properly, though the movement pulled a quiet wince out of her before she could stop it.
His hand came to the top of the doorframe above her head, the other hovering near her elbow like he was resisting the urge to help before she asked.
“I didn’t even say anything.”
That got the faintest huff of laughter out of him, though the concern stayed. He waited while she carefully swung her legs out of the car, heels hitting concrete with a muted click before she pushed herself upright.
And immediately regretted it.
The pain bloomed, fast enough to steal the breath from her lungs. Her hand pressed instinctively against her side as she caught herself on the edge of the door.
Dick moved before she could recover.
One hand steadied her waist carefully, avoiding the injury automatically, the other catching her wrist just long enough to ground her before she lost balance completely.
“Okay,” he said quietly, all traces of teasing gone. “That’s enough.”
“You almost folded in half.”
“You’re actively swaying.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then stopped when she realised he was, unfortunately, right.
Dick’s expression softened at her silence, concern easing into something gentler as he looked down at her. They were standing too close now, close enough that she could feel the warmth rolling off him despite the cold garage air, close enough to catch the familiar clean scent of his cologne mixed with rain and Gotham streets.
“You wanna know the really annoying part?” he murmured.
She blinked up at him tiredly. “What?”
“I can never tell if you’re actually this stubborn or if you just like arguing with me specifically.”
A breath of laughter slipped out, quiet and exhausted. “Both.”
“Yeah,” Dick sighed. “That tracks.”
Then, before she could fully process the look that crossed his face, he bent and slid one arm beneath her knees.
Her eyes widened. “Dick-”
The other arm settled around her back, careful of her ribs even in the movement, and suddenly her feet weren’t touching the ground anymore.
She stared at him while he adjusted her more securely against his chest like this was the most natural thing in the world.
Which, honestly, for Dick, maybe it was.
“That’s subjective, would you tell a three legged dog that it was walking badly or would you say it was trying its best.” She looked at him pointedly.
He rolled his eyes dramatically and started toward the elevator before she could keep arguing, one hand warm against her back as the steady rhythm of his heartbeat pressed through the fabric of his shirt beneath her cheek.
Extremely unhelpful, actually.
Especially because Dick didn’t seem remotely affected by this. He carried her easily, expression calm and unfairly pretty beneath the harsh garage lighting while she tried very hard not to think about how many times they’d ended up together like this over the years.
After patrols gone wrong. Falling asleep during movie nights. Long drives back from missions where exhaustion blurred every boundary they’d ever pretended to keep.
The difference was those moments had always come with excuses.
The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime and Dick stepped inside without putting her down, one hand shifting against her side to keep her balanced when the doors closed behind them.
“You know,” she muttered eventually, mostly because the silence felt dangerous now, “this is kidnapping.”
Dick glanced down at her. “You got in my car voluntarily.”
“You’re literally wearing my jacket.”
At some point between leaving the gala and getting into the building, Dick had draped his suit jacket over her shoulders without her fully registering it. The dark fabric hung warm and heavy around her, smelling faintly like his cologne and rainwater.
“That feels manipulative,” she decided weakly.
Dick laughed quietly, low and warm enough that her pulse jumped.
“You’re exhausted,” he said.
“You keep saying that like it’s a character flaw.”
“No,” he replied, eyes catching hers briefly before the elevator dinged. “Just means you should probably let someone take care of you for once.”
Before she could answer, the elevator doors opened onto his floor.
Dick carried her down the hallway like it was nothing. One hand tightened slightly beneath her knees when she curled closer against him at another sharp ache through her side.
Neither of them acknowledged it.
Which somehow made it worse.
She honestly couldn’t tell anymore.
By the time Dick unlocked his apartment door and stepped inside, the warmth hit her immediately, soft lights spilling across dark wooden floors and familiar furniture she’d spent enough time around to know almost as well as her own.
Haley lifted her head from the couch first.
Then immediately lost her mind.
“Oh, thank God,” she murmured as the dog scrambled toward them, tail wagging violently enough to shake her whole body. “Someone living in this apartment is excited that i’m here.”
Dick snorted as he nudged the door shut. “Traitor.”
Haley ignored him completely in favour of trying to climb into her lap while she was still being carried.
“This feels unsafe,” she informed the dog seriously.
Haley sneezed directly in her face.
Dick laughed outright at that, fuller now, easier, and she looked up just in time to catch the way he was already looking at her.
Dick cleared his throat after a second, like he’d realised what he was doing, then adjusted his hold. “Alright. Couch or bed?”
Her brain stalled for one deeply humiliating second.
Dick noticed immediately.
“Oh my God,” she muttered.
“You know exactly how that sounded.”
His grin widened, exhaustion cracking around the edges enough for something boyish and familiar to slip through. “I actually didn’t until right now, so thanks for that.”
“You’re the worst and you’re an awful liar.”
“I’m injured. Be respectful.”
Dick laughed again, quieter this time, and something about hearing that sound in the warmth of his apartment while he held her carefully against his chest made the ache beneath her ribs feel suddenly insignificant compared to the one blooming somewhere deeper.
“Bedroom,” she said eventually, before her brain could fully catch up to the implication of it.
Just a brief flicker of surprise before his expression softened again. “Yeah?”
She regretted the wording immediately.
“I need to get changed,” she said quickly, heat rising into her face despite the exhaustion weighing her down. “This dress is actively trying to kill me.”
That got the faintest smile out of him, small and tired and fond around the edges. “Tragic way for it to end. You looked stunning tonight.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
She looked away first. “You say that like you’re surprised.” She said with a scoff.
Dick adjusted his hold as he started down the hallway, Haley trotting after him with the determined energy of someone who believed she was deeply involved in the situation. “Please. You always look good. Tonight was just…distracting.”
“Dick Grayson flirting while carrying an injured woman,” she muttered. “Very ethical.”
“You literally just called me distracting.”
“That’s not flirting. That’s an observation.”
She glanced up at him. “You are impossible.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, nudging his bedroom door open with his shoulder. “I’ve been told.”
The room was warm, softer than the rest of the apartment somehow, lit only by the low lamp beside his bed. It smelled faintly like detergent and cedar and something distinctly Dick beneath it all. Familiar enough that the scent alone made her relax.
He set her down carefully on the edge of the mattress, hands lingering at her waist for half a second to make sure she was steady before pulling away.
The absence of him was immediate.
She nodded once, though the movement pulled exhaustion heavier through her body. The mattress dipped slightly beneath her as she shifted, and Dick crouched in front of her before she could even think about taking off the heels herself.
“Oh, you absolutely do not have to-”
His fingers wrapped around her ankle before she could finish, careful even there, thumbs brushing lightly against the straps of her heels as he loosened them with practised ease.
And that… that did something dangerous to her.
Because Dick had always been good with his hands.
Not in the way her exhausted brain immediately tried to interpret it. In every small, quiet way that actually mattered. Efficient while patching wounds, steady while fixing broken clasps and tangled necklaces and god knows how many stupid little inconveniences over the years.
He touched people thoughtfully.
Like he knew gentleness mattered and never made a performance out of it.
The first heel slipped free, and the relief made her exhale before she could stop herself.
Dick glanced up immediately.
His hands paused against her ankle, blue eyes catching hers for one tiny, unbearable second before he looked back down again.
“Told you those things were evil,” he murmured.
“You say that every time I wear heels.”
“Because every time you wear heels you complain for six straight hours.”
“That’s called consistency.”
“No, that’s called refusing to learn.”
A small smile tugged at her mouth as he reached for the second shoe, fingers warm against her skin.
The position suddenly felt intimate.
More intimate than it had any right to be.
Maybe because Dick was kneeling between her knees, shirt sleeves rolled messily toward his elbows, undone bow tie hanging crooked around his neck while his attention stayed fixed on her like nothing else existed.
Maybe because exhaustion had stripped something raw between them tonight.
Or maybe it was just him.
“Dick,” she said softly before she could stop herself.
Dick’s hands stilled against the strap of her heel.
Not dramatically. Nothing shifted. The lamp still cast warm gold across the walls. Rain still tapped against the window. Haley snored faintly from her spot by the bedroom door like she hadn’t just become an accidental witness to whatever the hell this was.
But the air felt closer. Thicker.
Dick was still kneeling in front of her, one hand loosely wrapped around her ankle, the other braced against the mattress beside her thigh like he’d forgotten what he was doing halfway through doing it.
He looked at her for one second too long.
Then seemed to realise he was in trouble.
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
The second heel slipped from her foot unnoticed.
Dick’s thumb brushed once against the inside of her ankle before he seemed to realise what he was doing. His expression tightened like the contact had shocked him too.
Then, very quietly, “You have no idea what you do to me sometimes.”
The words hit all at once.
Not smooth. Not flirtatious.
Her throat tightened, pulse stumbling hard beneath her ribs as Dick looked up at her like he regretted saying it and meant it completely at the same time.
But he shook his head slightly, almost like he couldn’t stop now that it had started.
“You sit there acting like this,” he said, voice rougher than she’d heard it in a long time, “like letting me take care of you is this huge inconvenience, and I’m sitting here trying really hard not to act like an idiot because you looked at me for half a second.”
Her chest physically ached.
Dick let out a quiet laugh, more disbelieving than amused, gaze dropping briefly before finding hers again.
“I mean, seriously,” he muttered. “You’re hurt, you’re exhausted, and I should be focused on helping you out of this dress without making your ribs worse.”
His eyes flicked over her face.
“And instead I’m thinking about how beautiful you are.”
The room went very still.
For the first time in years, neither of them seemed capable of pretending this was accidental.
She stared at him, a little breathless, a little horrified by how badly she wanted to close the space between them.
Dick laughed softly under his breath, the sound ruined immediately by the way she was looking at him.
“That is not helping me,” he said, voice wavering.
Because she wasn’t looking at him like a friend trying to let him down gently. She wasn’t avoiding it, wasn’t pretending not to notice, wasn’t stepping carefully around the thing that had been sitting between them for years.
She was looking at him like she wanted him too.
Dick made the smallest, roughest sound low in his throat. His hand slid up more firmly against her waist, fingers flexing there like he needed to touch her properly now that he knew he could.
Still careful, still mindful of the injury beneath the fabric of her dress, but not cautious in the way he’d been seconds ago. His mouth met hers like he’d been thinking about it for too long and finally ran out of reasons not to.
She kissed him back immediately.
Hard enough that Dick exhaled sharply against her mouth, one hand bracing into the mattress beside her while the other slid up her spine, pulling her closer in careful, greedy inches.
“Fuck,” he breathed against her lips, forehead knocking briefly against hers before he kissed her again, like even that much space was annoying.
Not just physically. Emotionally.
Every kiss landed deeper than the last. Every touch felt like it had been waiting patiently for years. The carefulness was still there, of course, but something underneath it kept breaking through every time she kissed him harder or made a sound against his mouth.
His composure disappeared in real time.
And God, that did something to her.
Because Dick Grayson was usually so good at holding himself together. Steady hands. Warm smile. First person to check on everyone else. But here, kneeling between her legs with his bow tie undone and his hands not quite steady, he looked overwhelmed by her.
Like this was the one thing he couldn’t fold neatly away.
“You’re killing me,” he muttered against her mouth.
Dick laughed breathlessly, though it dissolved the second she kissed him again.
His hand slid into her hair, careful not to pull but needing more of her anyway, and suddenly the kiss deepened properly. Heat. Relief. Years of almosts snapping together all at once.
The warmth of him between her thighs. The rough edge of his breathing. The way he kept touching her like he still couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to. His thumb stroked against the side of her neck while he kissed her like he’d missed her for years without ever leaving.
She understood exactly how he felt.
Because kissing Dick felt terrifyingly natural.
Like they should’ve done it ages ago.
Like everyone else probably knew before they did.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, breathing uneven now, eyes dark and unfairly bright under the low bedroom light.
“You’re thinking it too,” he said softly.
Her brain stalled. “What?”
His forehead rested briefly against hers, a disbelieving laugh escaping him. “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
Heat rushed straight to her face.
Dick looked far too pleased by that.
“Oh my God,” she muttered.
“You were absolutely thinking it.”
The certainty in his voice hit harder than it should have.
Before she could answer, Dick kissed her again, slower this time but somehow needier. Like he was trying to make up for every second they’d wasted pretending they were normal about each other.
His hands slid carefully to the zipper of her dress, fingertips brushing the exposed skin at the top of her spine. He paused just long enough to look at her again.
She nodded before she could think about it, before she could second-guess the exhaustion still pulling at her bones or the ache in her ribs. Because none of that mattered. Not when Dick was looking at her like that. Like she was something he'd been starving for without realizing it.
The zip slid down with a soft metallic sound. Slow and deliberate.
She watched his jaw tighten as more skin was exposed. The dress fell loose around her shoulders, and he helped her guide it down, his knuckles brushing against her arms, her waist, over the bandage plastered to her side.
His palm flattened against her stomach, warm and grounding, careful to avoid the wound. He leaned in, pressing his lips to the space just below her collarbone. A soft kiss. Then another, trailing slowly toward her shoulder.
"I've got you," he breathed against her skin. "Just tell me if anything hurts. Anything at all."
His hands found her thighs, sliding up slowly. He looked at her, "Lay back for me."
She obeyed, sinking into the soft mattress as he shifted over her, caging her in with his arms. The smell of him, his bed, making her dizzy. The position was careful, he kept his weight off her ribs, supporting himself on his forearms as he dipped his head to kiss her again.
This time it wasn't tentative.
This time his tongue found hers immediately, deep and searching, and she moaned against his mouth. He swallowed the sound like he needed it to survive.
"Fuck," he rasped, breaking the kiss just long enough to breathe. "You have no idea how long I've-”
He cut himself off, pressing his forehead to hers.
"Dick, please." she whispered, fingers gliding through his loose curls.
His eyes were dark when he pulled back.
"I don’t want to pretend anymore."
He kissed her again, harder, and his hand slid between her thighs.
She gasped into his mouth when his fingers found her through the thin fabric of her underwear. He was already circling, teasing, applying just enough pressure to make her hips buck up into his touch.
"Easy," he murmured, pulling back to watch her face. "Let me take care of you first."
"You do take care of me."
A coy smile tugged at his lips. "Not the way I want to."
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her underwear and pulled them down, tantalisingly slow, his eyes never leaving hers. The fabric slid past her knees, her ankles, and then she was bare beneath him, completely exposed, and he was looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
Then his mouth was between her thighs.
She cried out the moment his tongue touched her, her fingers flying to his hair, gripping tight.
Dick hummed against her like he'd been waiting his whole life for this exact moment. His tongue was flat and warm, dragging from her entrance up to her clit in one long, slow stroke that made her entire body shudder.
"That's it," he murmured against her, the vibration sending sparks through her nerves. “Let me make you feel good."
He took his time, spreading her open with his thumbs, licking into her like he was savoring every second. His tongue circled her clit in lazy patterns, building a rhythm that had her gasping and arching off the bed.
"I know." His voice was wrecked, desperate, muffled against her. "I know, baby. I've got you."
His fingers found her entrance, sliding in slowly one at first, then two. He crooked them just right, pressing up against that spot inside her that made her see stars, all while his tongue kept working her clit in relentless, perfect circles.
"Shit," she gasped. "Dick, I'm so close-"
His fingers curled deeper, his tongue pressed harder, and he moaned against her like he was the one being pleasured. Like her pleasure was his only goal. Like there was nothing else in the world that mattered more than watching her fall apart on his tongue.
She came with a broken cry, her thighs clamping around his head, her fingers twisted in his hair.
He worked her through it, gentler now, lapping at her with careful strokes until the last tremor faded from her body. Then he kissed his way up her stomach, her chest, her neck, until he was hovering above her again, lips swollen and chin glistening.
"Good?" he asked, voice rough.
She laughed breathlessly. "Are you serious?"
He grinned, that stupid, beautiful grin, and kissed her forehead.
He stroked himself once, twice, then positioned himself at her entrance.
"I will." She grabbed his wrist, pulled him down to her. "Just fuck me, Dick. Please."
He let out a low breathy moan and pushed in, watching the way her face contorted. Her eyes fluttered shut, her mouth falling open as he filled her inch by inch.
"Look at me." He said, bringing one of his hands up to cup her chin.
She forced her eyes open, and the sight of him above her; black waves falling into his face, jaw tight with restraint, pupils blown black with want made her clench around him.
"Fuck," he hissed. "You feel-"
The pace started deep and measured, each thrust pressing against that perfect spot inside her, but desperation bled through quickly. His rhythm faltered, becoming harder, faster, his forehead dropping to hers as he fucked into her with growing urgency.
His hand slipped between their bodies, fingers finding her clit and circling in time with his thrusts.
The sensation sent her spiraling, her nails raking down his toned back, her moans turning into sobs of pleasure.
"Come for me," he breathed against her mouth. "I've got you. Let go."
Her orgasm ripped through her, and Dick followed moments later, his hips stuttering as he buried himself, a low groan torn from his throat as he spilled inside her.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then Dick shifted, pulling out slowly, and she winced at the loss.
"Hey," he said softly, his voice still rough."You okay?"
She laughed weakly, reaching up to push his hair out of his face. "I should be asking you that. I think I scratched your back raw."
He eased her onto her side, then climbed off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. She heard water running, and when he came back, he had a damp cloth and a glass of water.
She complied, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at her ribs.
He cleaned her gently, the warm cloth soothing against her oversensitive skin. He redressed the injury on her ribs with careful hands, checking the wound with practiced efficiency before smoothing fresh gauze over it. Finally he handed her the water. She drank, and he watched, his thumb tracing absent circles on her knee.
"You're staring," she murmured.
When she finished the water, he took the glass, set it aside, and slid into bed beside her. His arm wrapped around her waist, careful to avoid the bandage, as he pulled her against his chest.
"Please don’t go," he said. It wasn't a question.
She turned in his arms, pressing her face into the curve of his neck, breathing him in.
"Wasn't planning on leaving."
