Venus @velvourne - Tumblr Blog

Jul 25

the weight you let me carry - dick grayson

request anon can i request dick grayson x clingy (gn) reader ? this man always goes out of his way to please about anyone, but all i wanna do is take care of him :((

content dick grayson x clingy!reader, gn!reader, mild injury/bruising, references to vigilante violence, emotional exhaustion, brief crying, hurt/comfort, established relationship

word count 5.2k

dc masterlist | dick masterlist

Dick Grayson had never learned how to love people halfway.

He loved like a hand reaching through smoke, like a body thrown between danger and someone softer, like a smile held in place long after the muscles beneath it had begun to ache. He loved loudly when the room needed noise and quietly when someone needed silence. He remembered birthdays, coffee orders, old injuries, bad anniversaries, and the exact inflection in a person’s voice that meant they were lying when they said they were fine.

He would drive across state lines because Jason had sounded strange on the phone. He would abandon his bed at three in the morning because Tim had forgotten, once again, that human beings required sleep. He would spend six hours helping Damian coax an injured bird into accepting food and then act as though he had not noticed the boy’s eyes becoming suspiciously wet. He would answer Bruce’s calls even when they were not speaking properly. He would pick up groceries for Barbara, check in on Donna, send Wally photographs of particularly ugly trainers because he knew they would start an argument.

Dick went out of his way for everyone.

For you, too. Especially for you.

Which was why you had started making a point of getting in his way.

“You’re squishing me,” Dick murmured.

He sounded delighted by it.

You were lying almost entirely on top of him, your cheek pressed against the warm hollow beneath his collarbone and one leg tangled possessively between his. The sofa was wide enough for two people to sit comfortably, but you had decided that comfort was subjective and proximity was not. Dick’s left arm was trapped beneath your body. His right curved around your back, palm moving in slow, absent circles beneath the hem of your shirt.

“You’re a vigilante,” you said. “Survive.”

A laugh vibrated through his chest. “Brutal.”

“You’ve had buildings dropped on you.”

“Not recently.”

“Good. I’d be jealous.”

“Of the building?”

“It would have been closer to you than me.”

Dick tilted his head far enough to press his mouth to your hair. “You know, most people would consider that an unhealthy level of attachment.”

“Most people don’t have to compete with gargoyles for their boyfriend’s attention.”

“The gargoyles have seniority.”

You lifted your head and stared at him.

Dick managed to maintain a straight face for all of two seconds before his smile broke wide and brilliant across it. There were people who saw that smile and assumed it meant he had never been unhappy. You knew better. You knew how carefully he wielded joy, how often he used it to redirect a room away from his own pain. You knew the difference between the smile he gave frightened civilians, the one he used to irritate Bruce, and the smaller, uncertain thing that sometimes found him when you touched him gently.

This one was real, though. You could tell by the crease beside his eyes.

“Fine,” he said. “You outrank the gargoyles.”

“As I should.”

“But only because you’re cuter.”

“I’m also less likely to be covered in pigeon shit.”

“That is an excellent point.”

Satisfied, you tucked your face back beneath his chin. Dick shifted to make more room for you despite already being pinned, his body adjusting instinctively around yours. There was a bruise forming beneath his ribs. You could feel the stiffness in the way he inhaled, the slight hesitation before his chest expanded fully.

He had told you patrol had been quiet. Dick had a very creative definition of quiet.

You slid your hand beneath his shirt and rested your palm carefully over the uninjured side of his stomach. His fingers paused against your spine.

“You’re hurt,” you said.

“I’m always hurt.”

“That isn’t the defence you think it is.”

“It’s barely a defence at all.”

“Dick.”

He exhaled, long and theatrical. “A guy got in one lucky hit.”

“A guy.”

“Technically, a metahuman.”

You went still.

“A small metahuman.”

“Dick.”

“He was average-sized at most.”

You pushed yourself upright. Dick’s arm fell from around you, and for a split second, something like disappointment crossed his face. Then the pleasant mask settled back into place. He propped himself against the cushions as though nothing in his body objected to the movement.

You hated that mask. You hated how easily he could hide behind charm, how he made pain sound like a punchline so no one would feel obligated to worry. Dick had been raised among people who confused being needed with being loved. Somewhere along the way, he had decided his value lived in what he could provide: his hands on a wound, his voice over comms, his body between a weapon and somebody else.

Sometimes you thought he did not know what to do with love that asked nothing from him. Sometimes you thought that was why he had fallen for you.

You asked for so much. You asked him to sit beside you while you read, even if neither of you spoke. You asked him to call when patrol ended. You hooked your fingers through his belt loops in crowded rooms and stole his jackets because they smelled like him. You draped yourself over his shoulders while he cooked and tucked your cold feet beneath his thighs in bed. You sent him messages telling him you missed him when he had been gone for twenty minutes.

Dick teased you for being clingy. He also kept every note you had ever slipped into his bag. He charged his phone religiously now because you worried when it died. He slept closer to the edge of the bed because you liked curling around his back. He had learned to cook one-handed because half the time you were attached to the other arm.

You needed affection without shame, and Dick—who was so accustomed to people disguising tenderness as sarcasm—seemed almost relieved by the honesty of it.

The problem was that he still thought love flowed in one direction.

Out of him.

Never toward him.

“Shirt off,” you said.

His eyebrows climbed. “Wow. Buy me dinner first.”

“I did buy you dinner. It’s going cold because you were late.”

“I texted.”

“You sent me a blue heart and the word ‘crime.’”

“It was very informative.”

“Shirt.”

He studied you for a moment, measuring the line of your mouth. Whatever he found there made him surrender. He caught the back of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head, careful in a way he clearly hoped you would not notice.

The bruise along his side was ugly, purple bleeding outward beneath the skin. It stretched from the bottom of his ribs toward his hip.

Your stomach twisted.

Dick glanced down at it. “It looks worse than it is.”

“You always say that.”

“Because bruises are dramatic. They’re the theatre kids of injuries.”

You reached toward him, then stopped before touching the discoloured skin. “Can I?”

His expression softened.

Dick nodded.

You traced the edge of the bruise with two fingers, barely applying pressure. His stomach tightened beneath your hand. Not from pain, you thought, but from the strange vulnerability of being examined without the clinical distance of a cave medbay.

“No broken ribs?” you asked.

“No.”

“You checked?”

“Barbara checked.”

“Barbara told you to take it easy, didn’t she?”

His silence was an entire confession.

You looked up.

Dick smiled weakly. “Define easy.”

“No patrol tonight.”

“Babe—”

“No.”

“There’s a situation near the docks.”

“There is always a situation near the docks. Blüdhaven was built on situations near the docks.”

“It could get worse.”

“There are other heroes.”

“Not here.”

“Barbara’s here.”

“She’s coordinating.”

“And you trained half the vigilantes on the East Coast. Call one of them.”

Dick’s jaw tightened. It was subtle. Most people would not have noticed. Most people had not spent enough nights lying with their ear over his heart to recognise the change in its rhythm when he felt cornered.

“I’m fine,” he said.

You drew your hand away.

The absence of your touch seemed to affect him more than the argument. His gaze dropped toward your empty palm.

“I know you can do it,” you said softly. “That’s never been the issue.”

His mouth opened, then closed.

“You can patrol hurt,” you continued. “You can fight exhausted. You can tape your ribs, make three bad jokes, and throw yourself off a roof. I know you can. You’ve spent your whole life proving you can survive things that should have broken you.”

Dick’s eyes flicked toward the window.

Blüdhaven glittered beyond the glass, all neon and rust, its skyline carved into sharp pieces by the night. Somewhere below, sirens sang through streets still wet from the evening rain. The city was always reaching for him. It knew how to call his name in a language made from emergency lights.

You moved closer until your knee touched his.

“But you don’t have to prove it to me,” you said. “You don’t have to earn being taken care of.”

A muscle jumped in his cheek.

“I’m not trying to earn anything.”

“You made dinner for me after you got stabbed.”

“That was barely a stab wound.”

“You passed out while chopping an onion.”

“The onion was very emotional.”

“Dick.”

He flinched.

Not physically. Dick Grayson had too much training to startle at his own name. It was something behind his eyes instead, some inward recoil from sincerity.

You lowered your voice. “I love that you take care of me. I do. You make me feel safe in ways I didn’t know I could feel safe. But sometimes it feels like you think that’s the only reason I keep you.”

His face changed.

The smile vanished.

There he was.

Not Nightwing. Not the first Robin, not the eldest son, not the hero who could talk a gunman down from a ledge and make a terrified child laugh before the ambulance arrived.

Just Dick. Tired, bruised Dick, sitting shirtless on your sofa with his hair still damp from the rain.

“I don’t think that,” he said.

“You do a little.”

“I don’t.”

“Then let me do this.”

He swallowed. “Do what?”

“Take care of you.”

Something fragile moved through his expression. It was almost frustration. Almost fear.

Dick looked away again. “I don’t need—”

“I know.”

The words stopped him.

You shifted forward and took his face between your hands, careful but firm enough that he could not escape into the city beyond the glass.

“I know you don’t need me to,” you said. “You could patch yourself up. You could go out tonight and save ten people and come home pretending your ribs don’t hurt. You could heat up dinner, wash the dishes, and ask about my day before you said a single thing about yours.”

His eyes shone beneath the low light.

“But I want to,” you whispered. “I want to take care of you because I love you. Not because you’re weak. Not because you can’t do it alone. Because you shouldn’t always have to.”

For once, Dick had no clever answer.

He sat very still between your hands.

You felt the first tremor of his exhale against your wrist.

Then he leaned forward.

Dick folded into you with none of his usual grace. One moment, he was holding himself upright, shoulders pulled back from years of discipline, and the next, his forehead struck your shoulder and his arms wrapped hard around your waist.

The force of it nearly knocked you backwards. You caught yourself against the cushions and immediately curled around him. One hand slid into his hair. The other spread over the broad plane of his back.

Dick’s embrace was tight enough to ache.

You had held him after nightmares before. You had held him when missions went wrong and when old grief came creeping through the cracks of an otherwise ordinary day. This felt different.

There was no single catastrophe to blame.

Just exhaustion. The kind that accumulated slowly, each act of love becoming another stone in his pockets until even Dick Grayson could not keep swimming.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against your neck.

Your fingers stilled in his hair. “For what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then don’t apologise.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know.”

He laughed once, but it broke strangely in his throat.

You tightened your arms around him.

Dick had always been tactile. He leaned against people when he spoke, threw his arms around his siblings without warning, rested his chin on shoulders and squeezed hands beneath tables. Everyone assumed touch came easily to him.

Giving it did.

Receiving it was harder. Receiving meant being still. It meant allowing himself to be held without immediately turning the moment into a joke or returning comfort twice over. It meant trusting that he could be heavy in someone else’s arms and they would not resent the weight.

You were clingy because you loved closeness. Dick was clingy because some part of him still feared everyone would disappear the moment he loosened his grip.

Neither of you said that aloud.

You simply held him until his breathing evened.

After a while, his mouth brushed the side of your throat. “You really don’t mind?”

“Mind what?”

“This.” His arms tightened briefly around your middle. “Me being a mess.”

“You’re not a mess.”

“I’m definitely a mess.”

“You’re a person.”

“Debatable.”

You tugged lightly at his hair. He made an offended noise.

“I don’t mind,” you said. “I like when you let me close.”

“You’re always close.”

“Physically, yes. Emotionally, you’re slippery.”

Dick lifted his head. His eyes were a little red, though he had not cried. You did not point it out. He would tell you if he wanted it named.

“Slippery?” he repeated.

“Like an eel.”

“That’s devastating. I thought I was mysterious.”

“You once hid a dislocated shoulder from me by doing jazz hands.”

“It distracted you.”

“It made me think you were having some kind of episode.”

“I was.”

You frowned.

“A jazz episode.”

“Please never say that again.”

“There’s my loving partner.”

You kissed the corner of his mouth before he could smile too widely.

Dick chased you when you pulled back, turning his head to catch your lips properly. The kiss was soft, a little clumsy from the angle. He held your waist as though you were the only fixed object in a moving world.

You kissed him until the tension eased from his shoulders.

Then you kissed his cheek, his temple, the small scar near his eyebrow. You pressed your mouth to every place you could reach with the solemn determination of someone sealing cracks in glass.

Dick’s eyes drifted closed.

“You know,” he murmured, “this is technically still you being clingy.”

“Yes.”

“Just making sure you’re aware.”

“I’m going to become clingier every time you mention it.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“It is. I’ll follow you into the bathroom.”

“You already do that.”

“I’ll sit on the counter.”

“You already do that too.”

“I’ll hold your hand while you pee.”

His eyes opened. “Okay, there are limits.”

“Coward.”

Dick’s laughter came easier this time.

You smiled and brushed his hair away from his forehead. “Stay home tonight.”

His amusement faded, but he did not pull away. “I should go.”

“You should rest.”

“People could get hurt.”

“And you’re hurt now.”

“I can still help.”

“You can always still help. That’s the problem.”

He looked at you with an expression so young it hurt.

Not childish. Dick had never been allowed much of that. Young in the way grief could strip years from a face, returning someone to every earlier version of themselves who had learned the same painful lesson: if you were useful enough, fast enough, good enough, maybe no one else would fall.

You touched your thumb beneath his eye.

“You are not the only person holding up the sky,” you said.

His lips parted.

“And even if you were,” you added, “you’d be allowed to put it down sometimes.”

The room went quiet. Rain whispered against the windows. Somewhere in the kitchen, the old refrigerator rattled and settled. The city continued beyond the glass without permission, alive and wounded and impossible to save all at once.

Dick stared at you.

Then, slowly, he reached for his phone.

You watched him unlock it and open a group chat that contained far too many people with bird-themed aliases. His thumbs hovered over the screen.

“What do I say?” he asked.

It was such a small question. It broke your heart more thoroughly than any confession could have.

You covered one of his hands with yours. “Tell them you’re injured and need the night off.”

His nose wrinkled.

“Fine. Tell them you’re taking the night off.”

“Better.”

“And ask if anyone can cover the docks.”

“That sounds bossy.”

“You are their boss.”

“I’m more of a charming consultant.”

“You’re a nightmare with a spreadsheet.”

“That’s Tim.”

“You’re a nightmare with colour-coded patrol routes.”

“That’s leadership.”

He typed the message.

You did not read over his shoulder, though you desperately wanted to. You felt him tense before he pressed send.

Replies arrived almost immediately.

Dick blinked at the screen.

You raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

“Barbara says she already called in reinforcements.”

“Smart woman.”

“Jason says, and I quote, ‘Finally, the golden boy develops one survival instinct.’”

“Also smart.”

“Tim sent a thumbs-up.”

“That’s basically a sonnet from him.”

“Damian said he does not require assistance.”

A second message appeared.

Dick’s mouth softened.

“What?” you asked.

“He said I should rest.”

“Aw.”

“He also said if I tell anyone he said that, he’ll deny it.”

“Obviously.”

Another notification chimed.

“Wally’s offering to come over.”

You reached for the phone. “Tell him no.”

Dick held it out of reach, grin returning. “Why?”

“Because I’m taking care of you.”

“Possessive.”

“Yes.”

“Clingy.”

“Say it again, and I’m changing the locks with you inside.”

“That doesn’t sound like a punishment.”

“It isn’t.”

Dick looked at the phone once more before turning it face down on the coffee table.

The movement seemed to cost him something. It also seemed to give something back.

His shoulders dropped.

You kissed his forehead. “Good.”

“Don’t praise me like I’m a dog.”

“I’d never insult Haley like that.”

He gasped. “Cruel.”

“You love me.”

“Tragically.”

“Hopelessly.”

“Embarrassingly.”

You shifted off his lap before he could pull you back. Dick’s hand caught around your wrist.

“Where are you going?”

You stared pointedly at his fingers.

He loosened them, but did not let go. “You were comfortable.”

“You need ice.”

“I need you to keep squishing me.”

“I can do both.”

His expression brightened.

It was ridiculous how quickly affection could undo him.

You went to the kitchen with Dick trailing behind you, one hand still wrapped around your wrist. You did not comment on the hypocrisy. If anything, warmth spread through your chest at the sight of him following so closely that his bare chest brushed your shoulder blades when you stopped.

“Who’s clingy now?” you asked.

“You started it.”

“You crossed an entire room to stay attached to me.”

“It’s a dangerous room.”

“It’s our kitchen.”

Dick looked around gravely. “Exactly. Knives. Open flame. Unwashed mugs.”

“The horrors.”

“You need supervision.”

“You need an ice pack.”

You opened the freezer. Dick rested his chin on your shoulder and wound both arms around your middle, making the task significantly more difficult.

“You’re obstructing medical care,” you said.

“Sorry.”

He did not move.

“You aren’t sorry.”

“Not even slightly.”

You found the ice pack beneath three bags of frozen vegetables and turned carefully in his arms. Dick swayed with you, refusing to surrender his hold.

“You’re very needy tonight,” you observed.

His smile faltered.

The joke had landed too close to something tender.

You softened instantly and touched his cheek. “I like it.”

Dick searched your face.

“You can need me,” you said.

His throat worked.

“Even when there isn’t a crisis,” you continued. “Even when you’re only tired. Even when you just want attention.”

“Is that why you’re clingy?”

You considered it. “Sometimes.”

He waited.

You placed the ice pack against his bruised side. Dick hissed and tightened his arms around you.

“Sometimes I need the reassurance,” you admitted. “You leave through windows in the middle of the night. You jump off buildings for fun. Half your family considers attempted murder a communication style. I like knowing you’re here.”

“I’ll always come back.”

“I know you’ll try.”

The distinction settled between you.

Dick’s gaze dropped.

You slid your free hand into his hair. “And sometimes I just love you so much that being across the room feels unnecessary.”

A slow smile curved his mouth. “Unnecessary?”

“An inefficient use of space.”

“That might be the least romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I can make it worse.”

“Please do.”

“You’re warm, and heating is expensive.”

Dick laughed and pressed his face into the side of your neck. “There it is. True love.”

You stood together in the kitchen, arms wrapped around each other while the ice pack slowly numbed his skin. The abandoned dinner waited on the counter. One of the overhead lights flickered faintly, a repair you had both been ignoring for weeks. Dick’s hair tickled your jaw.

It was not glamorous. There were no chandeliers, no acrobatics beneath circus lights, no moonlit rooftops with the city spread beneath you.

Just Dick’s breath warming your neck. Just his body gradually relaxing against yours. Just love, stripped of spectacle.

You reheated dinner while he remained attached to your back. He only released you when you threatened to pour pasta directly into his hands. Even then, he sat close enough at the small table that your knees pressed together beneath it.

Dick tried to ask about your day. You refused to answer until he told you about his. He attempted to summarise patrol in three sentences. You made him go back and explain each grimace, each bruise, each moment his voice became suspiciously casual. By the time the plates were empty, you knew about the metahuman at the docks, the frightened security guard Dick had talked through an asthma attack, and the teenager he had walked home after finding them hiding near the train tracks.

“You gave them your jacket,” you said.

Dick glanced toward the chair where his outer layer was conspicuously absent. “They were cold.”

“You were cold.”

“I had body armour.”

“You’re impossible.”

“You like me.”

“I love you. Different condition. Much more serious.”

He looked pleased by that.

After dinner, you made him sit while you cleaned up. Dick protested until you pointed a soapy spoon at him and threatened violence. He lasted forty seconds before appearing behind you with a towel.

“You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I am resting.”

“You’re drying dishes.”

“Restfully.”

You turned.

Dick raised both hands, tea towel dangling from one. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

The confession was quiet enough that it might have slipped past someone who did not know him.

You set the plate down. “Come here.”

He came immediately.

You took his hand and led him back to the sofa. This time, you sat first and opened your arms.

Dick stared at you.

“What?” you asked.

“You want me to—”

“Yes.”

He looked almost shy.

Then he lowered himself carefully, stretching his body along the sofa and resting his head in your lap. The position looked unfamiliar on him. Dick was usually the pillow, the shelter, the person whose chest everyone else collapsed against.

You adjusted until he was comfortable and draped a blanket over him. His eyes followed every movement.

“Too much?” you asked.

“No.”

“Too little?”

His lips twitched. “Maybe.”

You tucked the blanket around his shoulders. “Better?”

“Much.”

You began combing your fingers through his hair.

Dick’s eyes closed.

The transformation was gradual. His brow smoothed first. Then his jaw loosened, lips parting slightly with each deepening breath. One of his hands rested around your ankle, not gripping, only maintaining contact.

You watched the city’s reflected lights move across his face.

He was beautiful in repose. Not the polished beauty magazines tried to capture at galas, nor the impossible grace of Nightwing suspended in midair. This was softer. The faint shadow beneath his eyes, the small line between his brows that remained even in sleep, the scar at his temple hidden beneath dark curls.

“You’re staring,” he murmured.

“You’re pretty.”

“I’m injured.”

“Multitalented.”

His thumb stroked your ankle. “You really like taking care of me?”

The question was drowsy but sincere.

“I really do.”

“Why?”

You thought about all the possible answers.

Because he made everyone feel like the centre of the world and seemed startled whenever anyone returned the favour.

Because he had spent his life catching people and deserved to know what it felt like to fall without fear.

Because love was not only admiration. It was maintenance. It was reheated pasta and ice packs and knowing when a joke was hiding an old wound.

“Because you’re you,” you said at last. “And you deserve tenderness that isn’t payment for anything.”

Dick opened his eyes.

You continued running your fingers through his hair. “You don’t have to save me first. You don’t have to make me laugh. You don’t have to be useful or charming or okay.”

His gaze glistened.

“You can come home bruised and grumpy. You can need things. You can have bad days that aren’t secretly about teaching someone else a lesson. You can lie here and let me love you.”

Dick turned his face into your stomach.

For a moment, you thought he was hiding.

Then his shoulders shook once.

You bent over him, the movement protective, your palm cupping the back of his head.

“I’ve got you,” you whispered.

His fingers tightened around your ankle.

“I know,” he said.

His voice was rough.

You stayed like that until the tension passed. There were no grand tears, no dramatic collapse. Dick had learned too young how to cry without sound, and unlearning silence was a slow, uneven process.

When he finally looked up, his eyes were wet.

You wiped beneath one with your thumb.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

“I’m putting it in the group chat.”

“Betrayal.”

“I’ll include a picture.”

“You wouldn’t.”

You reached toward your phone.

Dick caught your waist and dragged you down with him.

You squeaked as the room tipped. He turned carefully despite his bruised ribs until you were trapped between his body and the back of the sofa. His face hovered over yours, hair falling into his eyes.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” you said.

“I’m defending my reputation.”

“What reputation? Everyone knows you cry.”

“I cry handsomely.”

“You do everything handsomely. It’s exhausting.”

“Now you understand my burden.”

You touched his face.

The humour softened between you.

Dick leaned into your palm.

“I’m not good at this,” he admitted.

“At lying down? I’ve seen you do it before.”

“At letting people help.”

“I know.”

“What if I get annoying?”

“You are annoying.”

He narrowed his eyes.

You smiled. “But you’re also allowed to be.”

“What if I’m too much?”

The question came so quietly it barely seemed to belong to him.

There it was. The fear underneath the motion, underneath the constant reaching and helping and smiling. Dick loved with his whole body because he was terrified that anything less could be taken from him. He carried everyone else’s weight because he feared his own would make him impossible to hold.

You drew him down until your foreheads touched.

“Then be too much,” you said. “Take up space. Ask for things. Call me because you miss me after twenty minutes.”

“That’s your move.”

“We can share.”

His breath caught on a laugh.

“You’ve never made me feel like too much,” you continued. “Not when you’re loud. Not when you’re sad. Not when you’re trying so hard to make everybody happy that I want to shake you.”

“You’ve threatened that before.”

“And one day I’ll do it.”

“Hot.”

“Dick.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be easy to love.”

His expression crumpled for half a second before he caught it.

You kissed him before he could rebuild the walls.

Dick melted against you. He kissed like he loved: entirely. Even bruised and tired, he poured himself into it, one hand cradling the back of your head and the other braced beside your shoulder. You let him for a moment, then slowed him with gentle pressure against his chest.

“No performing,” you murmured against his mouth.

“I’m kissing you.”

“You’re trying to win.”

“I usually do.”

“Let me.”

His eyes darkened, but not with heat alone. Something more vulnerable lived there.

Dick lowered himself carefully beside you and allowed you to guide him. You kissed his forehead first, then each eyelid. His nose. His cheeks. The corner of his mouth.

You took your time.

You asked nothing from him except stillness.

By the time you reached his lips again, he was trembling faintly.

The kiss was soft. Almost unbearably so. Dick’s hand curled in the fabric at your waist, holding on without pulling you closer. He let you set the pace. He let affection happen to him.

When you drew back, his eyes remained closed.

“I love you,” you said.

“I love you too.”

“No, I mean I love you when you aren’t doing anything.”

One eye opened. “That feels targeted.”

“It is.”

“I’m breathing.”

“Show-off.”

“I can stop.”

“Don’t you dare.”

He smiled.

You tucked his head beneath your chin and wrapped both arms around him.

Dick settled against you slowly, as though testing whether the position would hold. His body was larger than yours, all long limbs and dense muscle, and the sofa was not built for the arrangement. One of his legs hung halfway off the edge. His elbow was probably going numb.

Neither of you moved.

“You’re squishing me,” you whispered.

Dick’s face pressed into your chest. “Survive.”

You laughed into his hair.

Outside, Blüdhaven continued turning. There would be more calls tomorrow, more people who needed him, more rooftops waiting beneath his feet. Dick would still give too much. He would still throw himself into other people’s lives with reckless devotion because that was who he was, and you had never wanted to love him into becoming smaller.

You only wanted him to understand that he did not have to disappear inside his giving.

Tonight, he stayed.

He let the phone remain facedown. He let the city belong to someone else for a few hours. He let you hold him without bargaining, without trying to become the comforter instead of the comforted.

Much later, when his breathing had deepened and his weight had gone loose with sleep, you tried to shift your cramped leg.

Dick made a quiet sound and tightened his arms.

“Don’t go,” he mumbled.

Your heart ached with tenderness. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He was barely awake, but his grip loosened.

Trust, you thought, did not always look like letting go. Sometimes it looked like believing someone would remain when you did.

You adjusted the blanket over his shoulder and kissed the crown of his head.

Dick sighed, warm and heavy in your arms.

For once, there was nothing he needed to do.

No one he needed to please. No smile he needed to wear.

There was only the soft room, the rain-dimmed city, and your hands holding him as though he were something worth protecting.

As though he had always been. As though he always would be.