Domesticity


Reality sucked. Tim Drake was positive of that.

What else was there to say about the fact that Roy 'I'm Easy' Harper was practically avoiding him like the plague? Admittedly, he knew better than almost anyone (who hadn't been stalking Roy's every move) that Roy's reputation as a ladies man and laid-back guy was extremely exaggerated. At least, ever since Lian was born.

But he and Roy had been sharing his apartment for three months and Tim had taken note of certain things. They slept in the same bed – and did nothing more than that. Every single kiss that had happened between them, Tim had initiated. Roy freaked every time he touched him, tensing up before relaxing not quite as much. He was as skittish as a virgin, which was funny, considering that after what had gone on in Dinah's flower shop, neither of them were (anymore).

He liked living with Roy, even though at the moment his main role was homemaker. He didn't start at NYC until the fall, he still hadn't picked a major, and until he picked a new codename – eighteen was a bit old to be a Boy Wonder – he was going to keep filling in on monitor duty shifts at the Watchtower.

They were disturbingly domestic, for all that they weren't having sex.

And it wasn't like he brought Roy breakfast in bed; just coffee, because Roy was preverbal before his daily dose of caffeine. And Tim liked talking to Roy. He liked taking care of Lian in the afternoons after she got home from school, before Roy got home from work. He liked all three of them eating dinner together – even if it was takeout from Senora Wong's Chinese/Tex-Mex fusion place – before he had to leave for his monitor shift on the JLA Watchtower.

He liked falling asleep next to Roy at night, because that was the one time Roy seemed to be okay with touching him: in the dark.

This was never going to work if Roy wasn't going to try. They hadn't exactly planned this relationship – though Tim had planned on it if Roy was at all inclined, which he was, and Roy had mentioned having similar plans – but Tim had certain expectations for their future, considering they'd been living in pseudo-marital (un)bliss for the past three months.

Well, he had had. Before the 'unbliss' part of the situation had made itself apparent. It was like they'd fast-forwarded through the honeymoon period that night in the flower shop, skipped over the young-and-happy years when they moved in together, and went straight to 'staying together for the child(ren).'

To say Tim was becoming overwhelmingly sexually frustrated was like saying Batman was a bit maudlin. He'd basically been thrown into an ocean of carnal delights for one night, and then stranded in a desert for the past three months. If they were going to crash and burn, he damned well wanted to light some fireworks first.

But that was beside the point – for the moment.

With that thought in mind, Tim very carefully orchestrated Roy's next day off. Lian was at school, he'd switched monitor shifts with J'onn (who, as the best listening ear in the tri-galaxy area, always ended up playing Dear Abby, Ask Ann, Dr. Laura and Dr. Ruth for the JLA and all associated heroes, and had cheerfully decided to try to help everyone with relationship difficulties before they became actual problems) and was waiting in the living room for his lover's return.

They'd had sex once – well, several times in one night – in a drug-induced haze. Could they really call themselves lovers? Tim genuinely cared about Roy, but he was beginning to wonder if Roy felt the same.

The sound of keys turning in the three locks on their front door rang through the apartment, snapping Tim out of his thoughts. He was about to find out.

Roy walked through the door, took one look at Tim, and backed up a step. "Uh-oh. What happened?" he asked apprehensively, automatically fearing the worst.

"Nothing…yet," Tim tacked on in the event of honesty. Start as you mean to go, after all.

They'd started. He just wasn't sure where they were going, if anywhere.

"You don't have a 'nothing' face. You have a 'something' face," Roy argued, closing and locking the door behind him without ever taking his worried eyes off of Tim.

Tim tried his best to project 'all is well' vibes. From the pinched expression Roy still wore, it wasn't working. "There is something that I feel we need to…discuss," he allowed.

Groaning in not-quite theatrics, Roy slouched down on the couch across from Tim. "And in no-Battish English, what you just said was, 'We need to talk,'" he snarked.

Tim allowed himself a smirk. "Basically. But it's not as bad as all that." Yet, he added silently.

Roy raised one russet brow into the bangs of his once-more floppy hair. "Oh, it isn't, is it?"

"Not yet," Tim said. "But if we don't talk about it, it's going to get worse." He didn't want things between them to get worse. If things got worse, they'd probably break up, and Tim didn't want that.

Looking wary, Roy asked, "What will?"

"Our relationship – or, rather, lack thereof," Tim stated baldly.

Roy blinked. "Huh?" He appeared completely clueless, but lurking in those guileless green eyes was a hint of knowledge…and guilt. "What do you mean?"

Tim sighed, shifted in his seat, and decided to just dive straight in. "You haven't kissed me once in the past three months, Roy. I'd call that a problem."

"We've kissed," Roy objected.

"No, I've kissed you while you stood there like a statue. But you've never taken the initiative, and you've never kissed me back," Tim said, voice resonating with the hurt he was trying not to express. He wasn't sure that wasn't a tactical error on his part, but they needed to talk things through without blaming each other…right? "I mean, if you don't want this…want me…you could just say so."

Roy gaped, opening and closing his mouth several times. His eyes, ironically, were so wide they resembled a supervillain's once they caught sight of one Arsenal's arrows aimed at their jugular. Finally Roy slumped down in his seat, running a hand back through his hair in agitation. "I just…I didn't want to push you," he said. "I want you, I do, just…"

Roy looked so frazzled that Tim couldn't help but soften. He shifted over from the easy chair to sit next to Roy on the couch. "Roy, you've never pushed me." He laid a reassuring hand on the archer's arm. "But right now, you aren't even meeting me halfway."

Roy eyed Tim's hand on his arm, eyes wild. "I…I know. I just – I didn't know what to do."

Tim eyed Roy skeptically. He got the feeling he was missing something. "You…didn't know what to do?" Admittedly, aside from Donna, Roy hadn't had many long-lasting, serious relationships, but that didn't mean he hadn't had lots of sex.

"Yeah, I…" Roy closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Opening his eyes once more, he said in a babbling rush, "That night, I should've stopped myself– I shouldn't have–"

"You were messed up by that pollen the same as I was, Roy." Saying 'high' in this context would get only Roy to clam up faster than Batman when Jason's name was mentioned, Tim knew well. And he still wasn't sure what Roy was getting at. "And I distinctly recall you being the only one who did try to stop us." Maybe Tim should have listened, but he'd been blindsided by the sheer raw need, and pretty much unable to think, and he wasn't sure he could have. His inexperience had apparently worked against him.

"But I shouldn't have–" Roy repeated.

"Why? Because you're older? More responsible?" Actually, no matter that Roy was more responsible than the average person (who didn't know him well) gave him credit for, Tim had always been obsessively anal to a degree which had occasionally frightened even Alfred, never mind Bruce. "I hate to break it to you, Roy, but we were neither of us having a very meaningful relationship with reality when we…got together." And he thought he remembered saying something to the effect that neither of them should be blaming themselves. That didn't mean Roy had agreed with him, however. "I can't believe you're still beating yourself up about it."

"I can't believe you aren't!" Roy shouted, jerking back out of Tim's half-embrace.

Stifling the instinctive flash of hurt at yet another rejection from his lov– from Roy, Tim shrugged with fake nonchalance. "Why should I?" he asked practically. "We're both of age, we weren't with anyone else at the time, and it wasn't like we were the only superheroes in the vicinity who could track down Poison Ivy." Tim had found out the morning after the night before that Batgirl had caught Ivy and delivered her to Arkham not an hour after her flower shop romp. A few of Dinah's plants hadn't survived Ivy's assault, but Oracle had already ordered replacements and had everything set to rights by the next evening, so the only loose end from their fabled night of passion, was…well…Roy's seeming phobia about becoming intimate with him.

"You…" Roy shook his head, and let out an explosive breath. "You didn't have to do all this, you know. Move in and, and help me with Lian, and try to be a fam– Just because…it happened, it doesn't mean that you had to– You could have just gone on your own way; we could have still been friends." It was almost like Roy was reassuring Tim that he could leave at any time, which was…not what Tim wanted.

But maybe it was what Roy wanted?

Frowning slightly, Tim said, "But I wanted to be more than friends." That was the whole point of him moving in with Roy, after all. To see if they could make a relationship work in the long-term. Aside from the physical and romantic aspect, it seemed to be working out pretty well. Roy was a considerate roommate, though he was rather messy for Tim's tastes. He also tended to rotate between several different takeout places when it was his turn to cook. But then Tim was slightly anal about everything, neatness included, and Tim could only cook three different versions of spaghetti, plus a half dozen other dishes. "And I thought you did, too." Although maybe he'd been mistaken about that? Maybe Roy had been feeling guilty, and that's why he'd agreed?

Tim felt his stomach sink through the floor.

Roy stared at him, slack-jawed. Only his intermittently blinking green eyes gave away the fact that he wasn't a particularly odd piece of statuary: The Gobsmacked Man. "You…" Roy swallowed. "You mean you…you really meant it?"

Tim frowned in confusion. Meant what? He'd said…a lot of things over the past three months. A lot of it good, some of bad, most of it in between.

"That night," Roy clarified. "When you said you…" Roy bit his lip and looked away, eyes flicking back to Tim every so often. "That you wanted me?"

"For a while," Tim confirmed, flushing at the heartfelt honesty in his own voice. He'd never been very good at voicing his wants; he'd gotten through most of the relationship stuff with Roy by channeling everything he'd done and said through Robin's determined mindset. It scared him how well that seemed to work, but as long as it was his words simply bolstered by Robin's confidence, he wouldn't worry overmuch.

It could be worse. He could be acting like Bruce.

"I, uh…thought maybe it was the pollen," Roy admitted in apology. "You know, that you were…seeing things in hindsight through lust-colored glasses or…something."

It suddenly dawned on Tim that despite his resolve to actually talk to Roy when there were problems between them – instead of ignoring them, as most of the Batclan tended to do – he'd never actually gotten around to telling Roy a few important, key things. "This isn't me making the best of a bad situation, Roy," Tim stated, catching and holding Roy's gaze with his own. "This is me taking advantage of a rather serendipitous…accident, to finally tell you how I feel. How I've felt for months – months before we got doused with Ivy's pollen."

Roy swallowed hard. His eyes did their best to pop out of his head, and his eyebrows ran for cover in his hair. He looked, if such things were possible, even more startled than he had moments before; The Flabbergasted Man, perhaps. "Oh," he said weakly. "I…didn't know."

"I didn't tell you," Tim said practically. "I probably should have." No 'probably' about it, if Roy's reactions of late were anything to go by. The archer had apparently been under the impression that Tim was in this relationship because he felt it was his 'duty' or whatever, sort of like those guys who married their girlfriends simply because they got them pregnant.

Responsibility did not always entail martyrdom (though you'd never know it, to look at Bruce).

Tim wasn't Bruce, no matter how many people thought he was. "I may be a Bat, but I own my interpersonal issues, Roy," Tim joked.

Roy snorted, seemingly despite himself. "Yeah, I…I was kinda getting that impression. What with the relationship talk and…everything else you've been doing around here." He waved a hand to illustrate…something.

Tim flushed. "I haven't been doing anything special." At least, he didn't think so. Granted, he was taking his model of a regular relationship from the Kents, but one could hardly do better.

"Maybe not," Roy allowed, tugging Tim closer by virtue of a hand on the younger man's wrist. "But you're special." And then he leaned across and took Tim's mouth in one of those soul-searing kisses that he remembered from that night.

Tim moaned, and gave himself up wholeheartedly to the kiss he'd been wanting, yearning for.

This didn't solve everything. Roy had a tendency to avoid his problems until they went away, and Tim had a tendency to be oblivious to his problems until they walloped him over the head. But if they could talk to each other, they could work most things out. It wasn't perfect; but it was close. It was real, moreover, and in this business, that meant a lot.

Hopefully, they could stay there for(ever) a while.