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The text had been sitting unread on Roy’s phone for two days. He saw it whenever he checked his notifications. It glowed on the lock screen like an accusation, not unkind but persistent, reminding him whenever he saw it that there was unfinished business to attend to.
[I feel like we haven’t seen each other in ages.]
It wasn’t an accusation. Dick wasn’t the sort of person to level accusations, it had always been difficult to make him really angry with someone he loved. Enemies, sure, he got pissed at them all the time, but never friends or family. Or…whatever Roy was to him. He never even got really angry at Batman, despite the fact that Batman was demonstrably one of the most infuriating people on the planet.
Had been. Had been one of the most infuriating people on the planet. It was hard to think that Batman was dead, even harder to think that Dick was the new Batman. He was Batman, and that awful Damian kid was Robin, and the world was a very different place and still changing all the time and Dick was texting him to say that they hadn’t seen each other in ages and Roy wasn’t entirely sure what to do about that.
So he didn’t do anything. He let the message sit on his phone. Didn’t open it, because maybe Dick had read receipts on and would get that little “read 10:47 PM” but no message back and that’d wound him more than any knife could, to think that Roy was ghosting him. Let Dick think that he was just too busy with work and work and Lian to check his messages.
Then, though, he was running errands and he’d handed his phone to Lian to keep her occupied while he tried to find decent fresh vegetables in the one goddamn grocery story in northeast Hub City and she said, “Daddy, you have a text.”
“Yeah, rocket socks?” He wasn’t thinking about it. Just getting groceries. Canned vegetables were mostly fine, but he wanted some fresh carrots for once. “Who’s it from? Can you spell it for me?”
Her first grade teacher loved him. Said she was thrilled to see a father so involved in his child’s education.
She scowled at the phone, looking unnervingly like Jade for a moment. “D…I…C…K…Diiiii…Dick! It’s from Dick! Who’s Dick?”
He went stiff. Just for a moment, though, because if he got too tense she’d notice. “He’s a friend of mine.” There were the carrots, the celery, and they had parsnips. Maybe he could make them soup tonight. “You’ve met him before, you were just too young to remember. What do you think, you want soup tonight?” The fingers he didn’t have any more twitched, although his prosthetic stayed under control.
“Ohhhhhh.” She nodded. “Soup sounds good! You should text him back!”
Roy grabbed carrots, celery, parsnips, trying to focus on what he’d do with this soup instead of what he was going to say to Dick, and said, “You know what, rocket socks, I think you’re right.”
Dick’s phone buzzed, and he reached for it thinking that maybe Kory wanted to hang out, or Tim had a question about something, and the contact name was Roy.
[heya big bird yeah been a longass time whats up w u?]
He almost dropped the phone in his fumble to unlock it and respond. [Jesus, Roy, it takes you three days to answer one text?]
[sure asshole be rude ive been busy w life shit]
[How’s Hub City?]
[dick u been here u kno its a shithole]
[So you love it there.]
[hell yeah lot for me to do]
[How’s Lian?]
[doing good hows the little nightmare]
Dick snorted. [Damian’s not a nightmare. He’s doing fine.]
No reply for a few minutes, long enough that Dick started to get worried, but then, [been thinking abt taking lian to gotham for a trip soon. got some cash saved maybe we can go to a musical.]
Dick’s heartrate sped up, and he had to take a moment to stare at that message before he could think of any reply. It seemed so casual. So relaxed. Slowly, precisely, worried about saying something wrong or even misspelling something, he typed out, [I can probably get you tickets to the Wonder Woman musical, the one she sponsored. If you think Lian would like that.] Send. Then, after another moment of thought, [Damian’s been wanting to see it. We could all go together. And you could stay here at the Manor.]
Another long pause. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen.
When it got to twenty minutes Dick started to lower his phone.
And it buzzed. [thatd be nice. when u wanna do this?]
Lian had a new dress just for the trip, but Roy’s jeans were wearing through at the knees, not artfully, just from use. He’d had nice clothes once upon a time, but he’d misplaced them, maybe, or they’d been lost in an explosion, or maybe he’d just worn them out too. And there was Dick, and focusing on his look of dismay at the sight of Roy’s tattered jeans helped to push down the gut-punch of seeing Dick again after two years.
(Maybe Dick also felt like he was being punched in the gut, maybe he was focusing on the knees of Roy’s jeans to suppress it.)
(Every time seeing Dick was like a punch in the gut, really, because it had always been him. He’d always been the one. It just…hadn’t happened, they’d been dancing around each other since they were sixteen, one of them falling into a relationship just before the other fell out of one. There’d been a few times…but those never lasted, one of them would go on a mission or die or get stuck in another dimension and it just.)
(It never worked out.)
So every time seeing Dick, with or without mask, was like the first time. Roy could feel his heart beating in his entire body as their eyes met, and he was briefly glad that Alfred had ghosted off after letting them in, because the fewer people who saw him like this, the better.
And then Dick just hugged him, like they’d seen each other only yesterday. “Hey, Roy. You look good.”
“So do you, Big Bird. So do you.” Lian tugged on his metal hand, and he was actually able to grin. “I oughtta introduce you guys, she doesn’t remember you and she gets real shy around strangers. Lian, this is my friend Dick. Dick, this is Lian.”
Dick immediately dropped to one knee and held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Lian.”
Lian stared at his outstretched hand, puzzled, and then grabbed it with both of hers for a bare second before hiding behind Roy’s legs. “Hi.”
There was a rustling sound above them. Dick looked up at the mezzanine in the front hall and frowned. “Damian, get down here, we have guests.”
Damian slid down on the banister, scowling. “You have guests, Grayson, I didn’t invite them.” He nodded shortly to Roy. “Harper.”
Roy waved. “What’s up, terror?”
Dick sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Damian, this is Roy’s daughter, Lian Harper. Lian, this is my little brother, Damian.”
For Damian Lian stopped hiding, because she looked fascinated. Damian was only about a head taller than her and wearing a pressed suit which had somehow remained unwrinkled despite his trip down the banister, and she stared at him for a moment and then said, solemnly, “You talk funny.”
Damian went stiff. “Well, you’re…short.”
Dick sighed again. “Thank you for not swearing at the small child, Damian.”
“You should thank me, it’s taking an effort.”
“Why do you talk funny?”
Roy had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing. “Lian, sweetheart, that’s not polite.”
“Ok.” She pondered for a moment, still watching Damian with interest, and then stuck out her hand. “Hi. I’m Lian. I’m six.”
Damian didn’t do anything until Dick elbowed him, at which point he let out a quiet groan and shook Lian’s hand. “I’m Damian. I’m eleven. This is my house.”
“It’s really big. Where’s your dad?”
Roy winced as Damian’s expression changed, but before he could step in, Damian said, “He’s…he’s dead,” voice sounding tight in his throat.
Lian nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry. My mom might be dead, only Daddy doesn’t know because they don’t talk and he says she pretends a lot.”
Dick cleared his throat loudly. “Uh. Well. It looks like you two are getting along. Here, Roy, I should show you guys what room you’ll be in, Alfred’s going to be making dinner soon.”
They weren’t just staying in a room, it was a whole set of rooms, with a big bedroom for Roy and a little one for Lian and a private bathroom and its own goddamn living room. Dick kept calling it “the Kane Suite,” and it was bigger than Roy’s apartment. He was actually a little worried that Lian would get scared being so far away from him in the night, since they shared a room at the apartment and she frequently climbed in with him when she had bad dreams. She was thrilled, though—the bed in Roy’s room was as big as the whole bedroom at home and had curtains, and she immediately climbed into the middle of it and started to jump up and down.
Roy didn’t even stop her. Every kid deserved to jump on a bed once in their life. He almost said something when Damian climbed onto the bed too, but then Damian started jumping, and he looked more like an actual child than Roy had even seen him before. He was laughing. Lian was laughing.
“Here, let’s give them a minute.” Dick reached for Roy’s hand and pulled him into the walk-in closet.
Roy glanced back. “Isn’t he a little old for jumping on the bed?”
“Not really. Talia never let him act like a kid. He’s got a lot of catching up to do.” Dick turned the light on, pulled the door mostly shut, and pressed Roy against the wall.
When their mouths met it was like coming home, like sweetness, like night air and victory, a warmth so powerful that it almost drowned out the lingering ache of heroin-want that lived permanently in the pit of his stomach.
He flattened his metal hand on Dick’s chest and pushed back a bit. “Dick…”
Dick shot him a wounded-puppy look. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too, asshole.” He wrapped his other arm around Dick’s waist, holding him close and pushing him away at the same time. “Just…not now, ok? I actually want to talk to you too, and we can’t really do that in a closet.”
“Tonight, maybe?”
“Not tonight either. Lian needs a night to get the hang of having her own room so she doesn’t come in and wanna get in with us while we’re…while we’re talking.” And he lowered the other arm, the metal arm, that went around Dick too and their foreheads were pressed together and it was so nice to just be with him. “Tomorrow night. After the show.”
“Tomorrow after the show.” Dick grinned, so close to Roy’s mouth that Roy could feel it. “That better be a promise, Speedy.”
“I promise, Big Bird. I promise.”
The closet door opened, and from somewhere around stomach height Roy heard a faint, “Tt,” followed by Lian saying, “What’s this room for?”
“It’s a closet,” Roy said, leaning down to scoop her up with one arm. “Dick was just showing me where I could put our suitcases.”
“…Dick, I can’t just let you get everything.”
Dick took the check folder away from him before he could see the price of anything. “I don’t see why not, you’re my guest.”
A passing waiter stopped at Dick’s wave, and Roy bit down on a surge of jealousy at the ease with which Dick’s little black credit card changed hands. Dick hadn’t even tried to look at the total. It just…didn’t matter to him. “I can cover it.” Everything felt off; he wasn’t even wearing his own clothes, he had on a pair of Jason’s old pants, and Dick kept trying to pay for things.
Lian and Damian were squabbling quietly over the last slice of what was probably the most expensive pizza Roy had ever eaten in his life, and Dick took it from them and started to cut it in half without meeting Roy’s eyes. “Would you accept it if I said that I’m paying you back for multiple sandwiches you’ve bought me over the years?”
Roy snorted. “Yeah, ok.”
They went shopping, and Lian found a doll that looked exactly like her, and when Roy winced at the sight of the price tag Dick took it out of his hands and brought it up to the counter with the video game that Damian was pretending not to be interested in.
“Dick…”
“It’s a late birthday present.”
“Dick, seriously.”
“Roy. Seriously. If Kory goes and has a surprise baby with Slade Wilson or someone I’ll buy that kid a birthday present too.”
Damian looked up, startled. “Who’s having a baby with Slade Wilson?”
Lian’s forehead wrinkled. “Who’s Slade Wilson?”
Roy sighed and patted her head. “He’s a bad person, rocket socks. Nobody you need to worry about.”
It was after the exorbitantly expensive dinner, when they got to the theater and Roy saw that Dick had gotten them first-row seats in a packed house, that he pulled Dick aside and said, “Look, what’s this about? Why are you doing this?”
Dick frowned. “What’s…what about?”
“Do you think I’m mad at you or something? Are you trying to bribe me? You’ve spent more money on me and Lian today than I’ve made in the last three months.”
Dick just stared at him for a moment, looking unbearably, bafflingly sad, and then said, “I’m doing it because I haven’t seen you in two years, and it might be another two before I see you again. You’re always fucking off to the middle of nowhere and not answering your texts.”
“I’m not that bad at answering my texts,” Roy muttered, even though he definitely was. “And I’m always in the way everywhere else.”
The sad look got worse and then turned into a hug, with Dick’s face pressed to the side of his neck and Dick’s heart beating in time with his. “You’re never in my way. I love you, you jackass.” And, after a moment, “Also these tickets were free, don’t get on me about the front row seats.”
Roy stood frozen. He couldn’t even hug back. I love you, you jackass.
It echoed in his head and his stomach and along the tendons of his missing arm. I love you.
Finally he managed to say, “How the fuck did you get free first-row tickets to this? It’s the most popular show this season.”
“I’ll tell you later, when we’re getting dessert.” Dick’s voice was muffled by the collar of Roy’s shirt. “It’s actually really funny.”
“What, did Oracle hack the ticketing system?”
“No, way funnier. We should go sit down, the kids are looking antsy.”
Lian and Damian stumbled out of the theater roaring, pretending to sword-fight with their rolled-up programs. Damian was pink-cheeked from trying to suppress his clear delight; Lian’s off hand was locked in a death grip on a poster for the show, signed in great looping handwriting by the main cast. They’d gotten to go backstage to meet the actors via some other trick of Dick’s. There was a picture on Roy’s phone now of Lian grinning manically in the arms of Cece Sunbeam.
Honestly, he was feeling pretty buoyant himself, so when Dick suggested they go get late-night ice cream, he didn’t even argue.
Over an offensively large sundae, though, he said, “So has Jason seen that? Because it seems like exactly his jam.”
Dick grinned, opened his program, and slid it across the table, tapping on one line.
Roy squinted down at it, trying not to think I need glasses. “Lighting design and operation, G. Conway…no.”
“He’s a solid light tech, right? He always liked mechanical stuff.”
“He’s not running lights for them.”
“He totally is, he loves it. He gets to hang out in the light booth like a gargoyle and watch every night.”
Lian slurped up the last of her milkshake and yawned. Roy grinned at her. “Hey, Lian, you starting to get sleepy?”
“No,” she said, grumpily, and then drooped onto the table.
“Hah. You’re sleepy because you’re a baby.” Damian yawned massively. “I, on the other hand, can go without sleep for a week. Grayson, stop looking at me like that. I’m not tired.”
They both fell asleep in the car on the way back, Lian’s arms wrapped tightly around her new doll, Damian listing against her with his mouth open and his program in his lap. He, at least, muttered a vague protest as Dick got him unbuckled and picked him up; Lian just sort of squeaked.
Alfred let them in and said, softly, “Shall I take young Master Damian up to his room?”
“No, Alfred, I’ll do it.” Dick glanced at Roy with a smile. “We’re all going in the same direction anyway.”
Roy changed Lian into one of his old t-shirts, a massive dress on her, and she settled into her bed in the suite with a quiet little sigh, only barely waking for a, “Good night, Daddy,” before she passed out again. Her arms stayed tightly wrapped around her new doll, and Roy took a moment to marvel that they’d found one that looked at all similar, let alone this precise likeness. It had a green dress, trimmed with black and gold. Jade would have approved. (He generally tried not to think too much about what Jade would and would not like, but this just seemed like…something that’d make her happy.)
“G’night, Lian.” He kissed her on the forehead, but she didn’t notice. She was already asleep.
He went out into the suite’s little living room to wait.
And there was a knock at the door almost immediately.
He jumped. Opened it. “…Alfred?”
“I thought you and Master Dick might appreciate some refreshments.” Alfred had a tray—cream, sugar, two cups, and a steaming carafe of coffee. And cookies. There were cookies. “For while you’re talking. He does tend to talk a great deal.”
Roy took the tray, put it down on the end table, and threw his arms around Alfred, burying his face in the shoulder of Alfred’s immaculate suit. “I missed people giving a shit about me. Thank you. Fuck.”
Alfred patted him on the back, very gently. “You could say that it’s my primary duty, Mr. Harper. And in any case, even the stiffest upper lip will only carry you so far.”
“You’re the fucking best.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Harper.” Alfred patted his back again and then carefully stepped away. “However, I think Master Dick will be here soon, and I imagine you’ll want some privacy to catch up.”
“Yeah, yeah. Right. You’ve probably got stuff you’ve gotta do.” Roy grinned at him, feeling a shuddering sense of home settle into his chest. “Thanks for the coffee, Alfred. You have a good night.”
For a fleeting moment, Alfred smiled. “You as well, Mr. Harper.”
It was the best coffee Roy had ever tasted, and the cream was almost sweet. And he waited for Dick to show up and worried that he wasn’t actually going to.
Five minutes. Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
He doesn’t actually want to talk. Figures.
There was a soft knock, and Dick’s voice. “Can I come in?”
“Get your ass in here, Big Bird. I’ve forgotten how you like your coffee, what am I doing with this?”
Dick closed the door behind him and blinked. “There’s coffee? How is there coffee?”
“Alfred decided that we’d probably need coffee. He might be psychic. Also I hugged him, which I don’t think he was expecting.”
“Alfred is a gift from the gods. No cream, four sugars.”
“Christ, Dick. You’re gonna rot your teeth out.”
Dick grinned like all the sunshine in the world lived inside him. “That’s the way you’re supposed to drink it. Black as midnight, sweet as sin. Keeps your soul healthy.”
“Whatever you say, man, they’re your teeth. What took you so long?” Roy dropped four sugar cubes into the second cup and poured coffee over them, stirring for a moment before passing it up to Dick and refilling his own. “Is it that hard to get Damian to go to bed?”
“Not normally, but he couldn’t find his earbuds, and then he couldn’t find his mp3 player, and he started to panic. Not that he said he was panicking, but you know. And they were in a weird place, when we finally found them. Plus he wanted a bedtime story.”
“That kid wanted a bedtime story?”
Dick settled onto the couch next to Roy, coffee in hand, and leaned against him. “Well, he doesn’t put it like that. But yeah. I tell him about Bruce. He didn’t actually get to know Bruce very long before…he’s a little insecure. Don’t tell him I said that, he’d kill me.”
“I won’t. I think we’re all a little insecure in a world without Bruce Wayne.”
“You’re telling me, Speedy.”
For a bit they just…didn’t talk. It had been so long anyway, since they’d had a proper conversation—what were ten more minutes of silence in each other’s company, when you put them up against two years of distance and the occasional text? Dick’s head was resting on Roy’s shoulder, his hair smelled like fancy shampoo, and he was warm. He’d always been warm, a furnace against the chill that was always threatening to overtake him, a smile when everyone else looked grim.
Finally Dick finished a second cup of heavily-sugared coffee and said, apropos of nothing, “Why did Ollie start calling you Speedy? You’ve never told me how that happened.”
“Eh.” Roy shrugged. “Wasn’t actually him. It was before him. There were four other guys named Roy on the rez, and I was always running around and getting myself into shit. So Granny Deshcheenie started calling me Speedy because it made it easier to tell who she was talking to if she was hollering at me to get my ass down out of a tree, and it was nicer than just calling me ‘white boy.’ Where’d Bruce get Robin from?”
Dick laughed. “Way shorter answer. I was obsessed with Robin Hood.”
“Christ, you should have ended up with Ollie. Errol Flynn, right?”
“Nope. Kevin Costner. Don’t give me that look, I was eight.”
Roy looked down at him, eyebrows raised, biting down hard on the laugh he could feel building in the back of his throat, and realized that he hadn’t felt this happy for…he honestly couldn’t think of a single time that he’d ever been so happy. Dick was laughing. He looked so beautiful that it hurt, the lamplight making him glow.
“If you don’t stop me right now,” Roy said, “I’m going to kiss you.”
Another little peel of laughter. “What do you think I’ve been waiting for this whole time, jackass?”
“Oh my god, cut it out with calling me a jackass.”
“I’ll stop calling you that when you stop acting like one.” Dick climbed into Roy’s lap. His lips tasted like over-sugared coffee and the faint remains of ice cream.
As soon as he could get some air, Roy said, “Look, fair warning, I’m going to stand up now, whether you’re coming up with me is your decision.”
Dick’s eyebrows wiggled. “What, we can’t make out on the couch like horny teenagers?”
“Hell no, Lian’s asleep and I’m not getting into anything heavy with you while I’m wearing your brother’s pants.”
“Fair point.”
He carried Dick into the bedroom. He’d never gotten to do that before, they’d never been together in the right place or the right time for any romantic bullshit, but that night he got to carry Dick bridal-style into the fancy bedroom in his fancy suite and drop him on the bed. He got to close the door knowing that the night was theirs and nobody could take it from them.
Dick just watched him, not saying anything until the door was shut and he’d turned around. “So if you’re not going to make out with me while you’re wearing Jason’s pants, does that mean I get to see you strip?”
“You say that like you think I don’t know how.” Roy pulled off his shirt with a flourish and a grin. “Gotta get money for back to school shopping somehow, right?”
Dick choked. “I thought you were a short-order cook!”
“I am.” Shoes off and in the corner, borrowed pants over the chair, and it was only then that he regretted the morning’s choice of mostly-worn-out novelty boxers with “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL CHRISTMAS” printed across the front. “Um, ignore those. Anyway, look, it’s not my regular job, but sometimes I need extra money. You know, for Christmas shopping.”
“Oh my god, get over here.” Dick pulled him down by the waistband of his boxers and kissed him with the focus of someone who really wanted to get what he was doing right. “That is terrible underwear.” His shirt and pants just…left, he shimmied out of them like they were nothing and tossed them off the bed before taking Roy’s boxers off. “I love it. You’re the hottest man on the planet.”
“Shut up, we’ve both seen Aquaman.” Because making a joke was easier than dealing, really, with the fact that Dick Grayson was naked under him and looking at him like someone worth loving.
“You’re hotter than Aquaman.” Dick grabbed his right hand, his flesh-and-bone hand, and pressed a kiss to the center of his palm, then to each finger, the back of the hand, his mouth traveling up and along the muscles of Roy’s arm with worshipful intentness. “Even Aquaman doesn’t have arms like these.”
Arms. “Shit, I need to—” He sat up and started fumbling at the top of his prosthetic, fingers clumsy with arousal and the exhaustion of a long day.
“You don’t have to. I don’t mind it.” Dick’s hands joined his, carefully undoing each tiny catch.
“It’s not a question of you minding, I could hurt you. It’s stronger than the rest of me, and it has all kinds of little joins. And I have to take it off to sleep anyway.” Roy got the prosthetic off and set it aside, hating that he had to do it. He felt imperfect in the face of Dick’s perfection.
But when he turned back around, Dick tackled him onto his back, covering the stump of his left arm with kisses. “You’re beautiful.” Dick’s mouth on his neck, Dick’s hands on his chest. “I’ve missed you so much, never go away for so long again.”
“No promises,” Roy said between kisses. “I might get stuck in another dimension.”
“That’s not allowed.”
They stopped talking for a while, because it had been so long since they’d gotten to touch at all, and the chance for sustained privacy was so unusual. Dick seemed determined to make a map of Roy’s body, relearning everything that he’d once known, tracing the edge of every muscle and tasting every inch of skin. There were miniscule scars on Roy’s cock—he’d had a Jacob’s ladder once, had gotten it while he was high, but he’d taken the jewelry out years ago—and Dick counted them with his tongue, making Roy gasp and arch into the pillows. And in exchange, Roy made a map of his own, working off ages of touch starvation against the planes of Dick’s body.
There was lube in the bedside table, and a package of condoms, and that was what brought Roy up short. “Please tell me Alfred didn’t leave those there.”
Dick smothered his laughter in a pillow. “Oh my god, no. I did. Just…just in case.”
“Thank fucking god.” Roy pushed Dick down onto his back. “I sort of want you all to myself.” He rolled the condom down over Dick’s cock, spilled lube over it awkward and one-handed, and then crawled on top of Dick and sank down. Fuck prep, he’d missed sex, he’d missed contact, he’d missed Dick.
Dick gasped. “Holy shit, Roy.” The few times they’d gotten to be together before, he’d never gotten this, Roy had been too head-shy from his other encounters to let Dick get anywhere near his ass, whereas Dick was pretty much always down to get fucked. “This is, you’ve never…”
Roy bent down to kiss him and murmured, “I love you, you jackass.”
And a startled laugh, Dick’s hands gripping his waist, and Dick said, “I love you too, Roy.”
When they’d finished they lay together, sweat-soaked and breathless, and the sensible part of Roy’s mind was relieved that they hadn’t pulled back the comforter, so the sheets were still clean. It all felt a little unreal, lying in an actual bed with Dick’s arms wrapped around him. Like he was going to wake up any minute now.
Dick said, softly, “Roy, do you think…would you like it if Lian went to Gotham Academy?”
Roy stiffened. “You know I don’t have the kind of money for that. Like, yeah, obviously I want her at a good school, but that place is for rich kids. And she’d freak out if I told her she was going to boarding school halfway across the country from me.”
“It doesn’t have to be that far away. It could be a day school for her.” A pause. “You could stay. I’d like it if you stayed.”
A knot pulled tight in Roy’s stomach. I’m dreaming. “I don’t want your charity.”
“I’m not offering charity.” Dick sighed, wrapping his arms tighter around Roy’s chest. “This house is too big for me without Bruce in it. Everything echoes. I’m lonely. And I love you.” Another pause. “And honestly Damian could stand to socialize more, he gets lonely too. It’d be nice to have Lian around.”
The knot pulled tighter and tighter…and then loosened, just a little. “I’d like it if she had more friends.” It was easier to think about doing something for Lian than for himself, even though deep in his soul all he could think was, He wants me to stay. He loves me. “We can talk about it in the morning, I’m exhausted.”
“That’s fair. Get up for a second, I’ll get the covers.” And when they were actually under the covers, Dick curled up against Roy’s chest, head tucked under Roy’s chin. “See you in the morning, Speedy.”
Roy yawned. “Unless I get sucked into another dimension, Big Bird.”
“That’s not allowed.” Dick yawned vastly. “That’s not allowed at all.”