Disclaimers: Not even close to mine, dammit.

Spoilers: None, really. Assume a vague sense of current
Nightwing canon.

Summary: Dick already knows what he needs to.

Ratings Note: NC-17.

Author's Note: Written for yuletide. I'm pinch-hitting,
Asael -- I hope this works for you.

Acknowledgments: To Jack and Weirdness Magnet for
timely, *timely* beta. All remaining mistakes,
ambiguities, and just plain weirdnesses are entirely my
own fault.

Feedback: Yes, please. teland793@sbcglobal.net

*

You can get used to anything.

Dick has known this for years, and hadn't needed Bruce to tell him -- not
that he ever would have. Spoken the words.

Batman seemed to take it as a lesson given by the universe itself, which
was perfectly in character, and fine, besides.

Because...

There's something about it, about falling into the rhythms of whatever
fucked-up behavior has become habit *lately*, whatever fucked-up notion
has become truth. It's the sort of thing that could make a man smug.

Dick thinks he'll settle for 'comfortable.'

He smirks, (mostly) to himself, and strips.

There's a rhythm to this, and rules, too.

Last week at this point of the routine, he'd kept most of the Nightwing suit
on; tonight he strips it off entirely. Tucks it away and does his post-patrol
stretches naked.

This isn't new, or even all that unusual -- Dick really *likes* living alone --
but tonight is... special.

He laughs to himself.

Used to anything, right.

There are *some* differences to it, like a more careful placement of his
own body within the room's space. Places he can and can't look.

There are adjustments necessary, because this thing is never the same
twice. It couldn't be.

Eventually, he's got it. The line of his back is not quite parallel to *that*
window; not exactly turned away, more presenting a three-quarter
view.

The lights are on -- including the ones he doesn't tend to use even when
he *is* here at night.

The space between his shoulder blades...

It's not an itch, quite.

It's a tightening of muscle, and heat that doesn't have anything to do
with light, or even warmth.

He flattens himself to the floor between his own outstretched thighs,
and exhales. The stretch is basic, but useful. He has too many scars to
get arrogant about the kid stuff -- there's a *reason* why everyone
knows this one.

And it ups the ante.

Exposure.

Nights like these, he has to *work* for flexibility, for calm. Work
against his reactions, innate and trained alike, to being watched.

The circus had been different.

A Grayson is *not* the same as Dick, and the ring has nothing to do
with his apartment. This is, he thinks, as it should be.

The skin of his lower back tries to crawl when he curls his calves under
and rises up onto his knees. He doesn't let it -- yet.

I can feel you, he wants to say.

He knows it's heard, anyway.

He shifts down on his haunches as slowly as he can manage, and isn't
entirely sure whether or not to be grateful for the fact that this is just
as easy as it always was. On the one hand, he doesn't *want* any
more scar tissue pulling against his muscles and range than he already
has  -- he's just not that screwed up.

On the other hand, eventually he'll have it *anyway*, and he'd like to
be used to that idea, or at least already have the body-knowledge he
needs to compensate.

He goes into the prayer stretch, palms flat to the floor again, and...
yeah.

Difficult in an entirely different way.

*That* window has a direct line of sight to his ass, and he's breathing
harder now. Because, yeah, actually, he *is* asking.

Demanding, teasing, begging. All of the above.

It isn't that he's remotely unfamiliar with the use and abuse of body
language.

It's just...

He's never going to get *him*. And he *isn't* used to that, yet. He
never will be, and a part of him likes it that way.

It's not that he *likes* being bitter and frustrated -- the day he does is
the day he signs himself over for the long-overdue voluntary
commitment, because, really, there is such a thing as going too far.

It's that the bitterness and frustration help to *define* the line. Shape
and inform and solidify it.

Dick will go *exactly* this far. And it isn't his problem that Bruce won't
come near to meeting him halfway.

It doesn't stop the hunger, or even ease it.

That's the way it should be, too.

He stands, feeling the burn in his calves and quads, and gives serious
thought to his shoulders. They need work -- he hasn't been one
hundred percent since Slade's bullet -- but the question is what *kind*.
The things that swimmers tend to do to their bodies as a matter of
course...

Dick's in good shape. He's in *excellent* shape -- this is just another
fact. But some of the showier stretches and rolls are just plain risky.

Nightwing can't afford to get knocked out of commission because
Dick fucked up while *stretching*.

Besides, he doesn't really want to consider the kink aspects of rolling
his shoulders out of joint.

Not even for his audience.

His body is warm, his muscles as loose as they'll get tonight.

He doesn't look over his shoulder.

And, in a way...

It's almost the same as being Robin had been; as being Nightwing still
can be, those times when he has a partner for a night, here or back
in Gotham. He doesn't *have* to look over his shoulder, because if
something happens back there, he will, at the very least, have warning.

The analogy only fails when he considers intent.

Those eyes out there, in the dark, are on him.

And waiting.

He closes his eyes against the rush of it, against the shadow that slams
up against the wall of (un)necessary distance and never gives him
enough to make him more than just hungry.

Angry and wild and fucking *hard*.

He's not making it to the bed.

He braces one hand against the wall and wraps the other around his
cock. At this angle, no one outside that window can see more than
the lines of his back. He pushes it, putting more weight on his hand and
leaning *in* until he can feel that his shoulder blades are shifting more
obviously.

Spreads his legs and goes for it, all of it -- not just his body on display.
*Here I am*. These are the nights when every fantasy is available,
even if every motion is not.

Batman breathing down his neck, gauntlet cold and too-slick around
his cock.

Batman bracing him, bracketing him, surrounding him -- body and
personality.

Bruce's bare hands on his chest, his abdomen, touching him exactly
the way he watches, and he *is* watching, no matter how tightly
that cowl is on.

Bruce wants this, wants *him*. Every muscle, every scar, every inch
of skin he's never touched.

Dick forces himself to close his eyes and pivots, falling back against the
wall and touching himself everywhere he can reach with his free hand.
This doesn't do a damned thing for him -- he's just as cock-oriented as
anyone else. Or.

It *wouldn't* do anything for him without the assumption of an
audience, the *fact* of one.

And the way he doesn't have to say:

This is how I want you to touch me, right now.

This is exactly what you could do to me, if you had the balls to even
let me open my *eyes*.

He twists his own nipple too hard, hard enough to make himself gasp.
There are rules for this, too -- he's not going to show anything fake,
no matter how hot it is to imagine Bruce getting off on his expressions.

He squeezes his eyes more tightly shut and rakes short-trimmed nails
down the center of his chest. *That's* something -- it makes him jerk,
makes goose-flesh rise on his arms and his thighs.

He pumps faster and bites his lip, because it's *hard* to keep his eyes
shut. Bruce knows that -- he *has* to know that. He fucking *trained*
Dick to watch, to *need* to watch, and just because Bruce is still the
master and fucking champion at it doesn't mean this isn't... unnatural.

It's a question he won't ask -- how much do you need this to be
wrong for me? Do you think that makes it hotter?

Hotter is not knowing the answer, any of them. Hotter is the endless
speculation, incoherent and image-intensive on nights like these.

Bruce pushing too hard, too fast. Bruce spreading Dick's thighs before
he can do it himself. A bite instead of a kiss.

A growl instead of a moan.

"Oh, fuck, I *want* you," he whispers to the air and lets himself drop
into a crouch, throwing his head back and opening his eyes. The
ceiling is blank and harmless -- nothing he *wants* to see, but.

Just... so long as he can keep his eyes open.

He swallows and squeezes his cock in his fist, does it again because it
makes him breathe harder.

Grabs for his balls and -- the angle is *wrong*. He's too close to the
wall for anyone to be behind him, and he needs this, needs hard hands,
big hands -- *fuck*. Forces his eyes shut again and rolls his head
forward, staring at the window through closed eyelids.

"Bruce."

It won't get him anything, it never will, but --

"*Bruce*."

Faster. Harder.

"*Take* this," he says, and comes all over his fist, rocking a little on his
heels until he can breathe. Think.

*Feel* something other than his own cock and the not-enough settled
low in his belly.

Feel -- He's still out there.

Right.

"You're pushing it, Bruce," he says, standing. Eyes closed, body
moving. The insulation around that window isn't the best. Dick can feel
the cold before he's really close.

He can't smell anything but his own sweat and come.

He presses one palm -- the clean one -- to the glass. "I'm gonna break
the rules one day. You know this."

He licks and sucks the fingers of the other hand clean. Waiting.

Feeling for what he isn't going to get.

He nods to himself. For himself.

"Leave." Nightwing is as much in the muscles of his face as the tone of his
voice.

It's colder when he does, when Bruce goes from unseen beyond the
glass to just -- gone. The different quality of cold that's always meant
Dick's alone.

Nothing to shiver at, though.

There are better things to be uncomfortable about.

end.