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pluvialpoet · 18 days

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bergamot

Summary: moments of quiet reflection reaffirm what you both already know to be true- he’s always going to come back, and you’re always going to be waiting with open arms

Pairing: dick grayson x fem!reader

Requested: no

Warning: idiots in love, friends to lovers, mutual pining, scarecrow's fear toxin, mentions of death and grief, slight angst, fluffy ending, loosely based off of batman: hush (2019)- but no major spoilers

Word Count: 3,930

masterlist

a/n: I know that dick has a tolerance against/is immune to scarecrow's fear toxin, but let's pretend he isn't...for the plot

Sleep is cruel in the way it continues to evade you when you crave it most. Mocking and teasing, exhaustion morphs into desperation. Even with your eyes shut dreams fail you, and nightmares taunt.

A siren wails, bellowing out into the night and echoing caution even after the initial cry has faded. Could be a police car, or an ambulance. Maybe even a fire truck. You try not to consider all of the possibilities, knowing it’ll only starve your slumber, further. With a huff, you adjust the heavy comforter, pulling it up until it bunches just under your chin.

In a few weeks, branches will be stripped of their leaves. Snow will fall, and the city will suffocate under a blanket of white. July was only yesterday, sticky and never-ending- infinite until finite. Now, January lurks around the corner- weeks away, but daunting, nevertheless.

The pillow tucked behind your back is a poor imitation of the brawn you wish feathers and fill could replicate, just as the one pressed to your chest acts as an imposter mimicking the body meant to be sleeping peacefully beside you. It’s impossible to tell feelings of loneliness apart from being alone, and deep down you know that reminiscence is merciless. Memory is wicked. But you can’t help remembering. It’s the only way you won’t forget- and even then, so much time has passed that you’ve begun to fade, and he’s begun to blur. Spiraling further and further away from reality and control, you drift towards hope, feeding each dangerous possibility until you have nothing left to give, but delusion takes and takes and takes…

Answers elude like comfort- and sleep. When, how, and why is lost upon you. He’s been gone for so long. Even so, your life has continued, evolving to accommodate the gaps he used to fill. Though, it’s about as effective as papier-mâchéing an open wound shut. Everywhere you look, everything you do, every time you shut your eyes, he finds a way to bleed into you, one way or another, and you welcome it every single time. All you really have are memories and a space in your bed which has always been his to come home to.

Outside, the wind howls. Angry and violent, the sound rattles the windowpane and you burrow deeper into the covers trying to block it out. Shadows dance across the ceiling, but none of them belong to the ghost you’ve been waiting for. Another frustrated huff fails to quell burning exhaustion, and you rub your eyes with the back of your hand before checking the clock next to you. Neon green flashes, all too pleased to report that it’s well past midnight and you haven’t gotten a wink of sleep. Already tomorrow, and you’re still mourning today.

Pushing the covers off, you shiver. There’s a chill in the air and little comfort to be found in the fact that the entire apartment feels cold and empty without him in it. At least it’s not just the bed. It’s the entire room, the hallway, and the kitchen, too. You reach for the light above the stove and begin to search the cupboards for a mug. If nothing else, at least a cup of tea will warm you up. Thanks to muscle memory, you act on autopilot, filling the ceramic with water and placing it in the microwave before picking a teabag and waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting, always waiting. Three monotone beeps call your attention back before it has another chance to wander away from you, and you retrieve the cup and place the teabag inside. Steeping time be damned.

You can’t wait any longer.

One leg curls under the other as you take a seat and bring the mug to your mouth. It burns the tip of your tongue, a small price to pay for your greed, and you swallow the too-hot liquid regardless of the consequences. The pain barely registers, anyway. With both palms pressed to the vessel, warmth finally finds you, and a barely contented huff passes your lips to blow the steam from the cup. It’s not always like this. It’s not supposed to be, but for so long, it has been. Never months, always weeks. You don’t know how to do this or how much longer you can put yourself through this torture when every sunrise twists the knots in your stomach tighter and tighter. How much longer until you snap?

You’re so tangled up in your suffering that you miss it the first time, until the hair on the back of your neck bristles. Did you imagine it? Silently, you wait, setting the steaming mug down to listen, and this time, you hear it. Faintly, but there. Real.

Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap.

I’m here. I’m safe. Can I come in?

Your feet move before the rest of your body does, and the chair scrapes loudly across the hardwood as you jump from it in shock. A cocktail of excitement, worry, disbelief, and fear bubbles and swirls through you when you spot a familiar glimpse of black and blue through the window near the fire escape.

“Dick?”

Crossing the room without any memory of doing so, you fiddle with the latch that keeps you from him, and him from you, until finally it clicks. With only one foot through the window, you reach for him, desperate to savor the illusion until mass, warmth and a heartbeat prove it to be real. Upon realizing, your breath hitches. He’s real. He’s real, and he’s here. No longer a dream. No longer a nightmare. No longer a vision only sleep can grant or mold, he stands before you. He takes a moment to properly slide the window shut behind him, returning the lock to its rightful position- keeping the rest of the world and the winter, out- before turning to face you once more. He can’t even get a word out before you’re pressed against him, wrapping your arms around him and holding yourself back from crushing him with the intensity of your longing. Overly cautious of injuries you can’t physically see- mindful of bruises, tears of flesh, and wounds that remain eclipsed by kevlar and moonlight- you embrace him with a hesitancy that severely undermines your fervor. Holding him gently- delicately, tenderly- the way you’ve dreamt about entwining with him on nights when sleep has been generous instead of cruel, you finally look up at him.

A sigh of relief dispels the hoarded tension in your neck, shoulders, and chest when you rest your head against his chest and inhale. Sweat and copper muddle his natural scent, but even when he’s covered in his victories, even when he’s drenched in his defeats, he still smells like home- warm, safe, familiar, and comforting.

He hesitates to envelop you with the same thinly veiled desperation, holding himself back.

Every muscle in his body carries the strain of battles fought and won. His head throbs with the force of his thoughts, and the inescapable dizziness that always accompanies crashing down from a high. Then again, he’s never been one to ease into things gracefully. Tiny cuts and scrapes, angry blacks and blues, and even gaping gashes that are still seeping and tender to the touch hardly register as anything other than a stinging, burning sensation. Everything is dull. Ferocity and intensity both subdued. Through the haze of everything that competes for his attention, you’re the one thing that’s clear. As always, the hold you have on him, both physical and metaphorical, brings him back to his senses, but doubt keeps him withdrawn.

Warily wrapping his arms around you, Dick returns the gesture as best as he can. Cages built of muscle, meant to keep you close, refuse to lock you in place, and he finds it increasingly difficult to resist surrendering to you entirely. Just as his nerves begin to settle they spike once more when the gravity of the past few months finally begins to sink in. As you continue to tremble in his arms, he swallows a lump in his throat and fights the urge to hold you impossibly closer. If he weren’t so afraid, he’d never let go again. But he’s not the same man he was the last time you saw him. Having seen too much, he knows that he can’t let this become something more. Fear is rotten. He’s seen the future, and if he keeps leaning on you then he’s only going to drag you down with him. Regardless of what he really wants, he won’t let this become something more, but then he looks down at you in his shirt and realizes it’s always been something more- and it terrifies him more than anything.

When pink swirls around the drain- a muted severity of soapy lather and remnants of crusted, oozing red- he rests his forehead against the cold tiles and lets out a deep sigh. He can’t remember the last time he’d had a proper shower. Under the trickling scorch, he allows his shoulders to slump forward, letting the too-hot water soothe his muscles like a balm, and it stings in a way he welcomes- a reminder that he’s done it again, he’s survived the worst and now he just has to survive the recovery.

He’s never been good with the after, always losing himself in possibilities of what comes next without taking a minute to catch his breath, but he’s trying to be better. He owes it to you. Not only you but himself, too- but mostly you. So, he tries to forget. He pushes memories too fresh to be forgotten somewhere else, banishing them to the far corners of his mind and locking them away until he’s ready to face his demons at his own pace, on his own terms, but his wicked creations fight back. Even when they’re crafted from delusions, mirroring real-life counterparts with a precision too exact to be a figmented replication, he finds himself engaged in an internal match that never crowns a victor. It’s a conflict that never ceases, even after his own surrender. Still, he’s found that the intrusions are less when copper is overpowered by citrus, and when red, inevitably swirls into pink.

Steam amplifies the smell of sweat and body odor, so pungent that the only word to describe it is bad, and he holds his breath while he reaches for your soap once more. He can’t believe you let him anywhere near you. It’s even more unfathomable that you sought an embrace, despite the remnants of battle that’ve woven themselves into his being- lingering, even long after. He’s repulsed by that which exposes him, a stench so strong that it serves as a testament to the fact that he reclaimed you as soon as he could, coming right back to this haven of sorts without any prior stops, and his stomach churns uncomfortably, the once soothing mist tainting each attempt at air, and a weight teases the aching muscles of his chest which breath does not alleviate.

Through the haze, he sees the truth- when reality remains undistorted by the tricks of his own want and longing, he recognizes fact without his own warped perceptions of fantasy- and he realizes just how careless he’s been. By allowing desire to suade better judgment, he’s put you at risk. Guilt punishes with an onslaught of emotions ranging from frustration to anger, sadness to grief, and even regret to sorrow. His own reluctance to accept how dangerous it was, and always has been, to lean on your affections as a crutch has finally caught up to him. After all that he’s seen, after everything he’s been forced to bear witness to over the past few months, coupled with a lifetime of loss, he’s no longer able to ignore the thought that’s broken free from the shackles of elsewhere. What was once dull, always there but never really forgotten, has become intense and persistent.

Every time he finds his way back to you, he invites peril into your life. He’s hazardous. Even if he’s not, being attached to him- in any way- puts you at an even greater risk of endangerment. Trying to justify something even as tame as a friendship is absurd. You’re so much more than that. Whether he meant for it to happen or not, you’ve found a place within his heart. Every beat echoes your name and carries secrets of his devotion. All that remains of the walls meant to protect both of you is rubble, and Dick stands alone in the epicenter of the aftermath, unsure and torn between chaos and order. Selfishly, he wants. Greedily, he craves. Morally, he knows that he should just walk away- but he can’t.

The scene shifts, ceramic tile falling away to reveal an eerie, yet familiar boneyard, and he shakes his head. It’s not real. It was never real- but it was so vivid. Cold fog obscures his vision, and he closes his eyes. This is a trick. This isn’t truth. He knows what comes next. Forced to indulge in his worst nightmares, the shrill, piercing sound of your terror renders him numb. He can’t move. Paralyzed, he fights limbs of lead, but he can’t act. It surrounds him, your agony, and he can’t do anything to save you. He can’t protect you. With each cry of his name, you plead, but there’s nothing he can do. When silence follows his ragged breaths, he refuses to look down. He hates this part the most, but he doesn’t have a choice. Crimson stains the black and blue weave, and he can taste metallic. He doesn’t have any control over this hallucination, born and bred from his greatest fear, and all he can do is witness the fallout of your shared torture- your blood on his hands, his body slumped against your tombstone, and the triumphant laughter of a clown, a scarecrow, a ventriloquist, and a hundred more that delight in your demise.

He can’t catch his breath. Drifting further and further away from reality, he struggles to claw his way back towards the light. When his vision begins to fade, he reaches for more soap. In for three counts, out for four. In for three counts, and out for four, again, Dick feels lightheaded. There’s no limit to how far he’d go to keep you safe, not a single rule or code he wouldn’t break to protect you from anything and everything- and that’s an entirely different threat, in and of itself. His loyalty has the potential to become his ruin, and he’d let it- for your sake- but would that be enough? Could his devotion be enough to keep you safe from the otherwise brutal fate that awaits you with, and without, his intervention?

The bite of a washrag leaves his skin raw. Lost to his thoughts, he’s been mindlessly scrubbing away at his flesh, dousing himself with bubbled distraction. Another breath fails to alleviate his unease. All he can think about is that which is out of his control, and he can’t help but wonder, is there even a chance for the two of you?

Every thought is a contradiction.

He could wax poetic to Bruce about love- how precious and fragile and conscious it is- but he can’t even bring himself to act upon his own advice. Even worse than following in a denialist’s footsteps is being a hypocrite, but there are just too many variables for him to take into account- too many what-ifs and maybe’s that enable him to cower behind words left unspoken.

In spite of this, he dares to dream of a future where you’re his and he’s yours, and nothing else matters. Lost to his delusions, a smile threatens to work muscles that’ve remained dormant for months of disuse. It hurts. Stretching, pulling, and manipulating his face to actually convey what he’s feeling instead of trying to veil it, hurts. However, the worst pain follows. As he reaches for the illusion, it slips through his fingers- so close he can almost hold it, yet just out of reach, simultaneously- and just like that, reality distorts the mirage. Pried from him, ripped away and sporting his claw marks, what could’ve been remains what could’ve been- and it’s all his fault.

Fear suppresses his love.

He’s already lost so much, he can’t lose this, too. He won’t. However glutinous, he craves more- even when he knows he can’t have it, he wants with a desire that’s almost too strong to ignore. Almost. Locking his feelings away, he throws away the key, but his ribs begin to expand with the intensity of his longing, and his chest feels tight. This isn’t like before. It seems as if his secrets have outgrown their cages, and he finds himself at a crossroads. His mind begins to drift and he wonders if this agony is why Bruce kept Selina at arm’s length…

A sigh, and a revelation- he’s not Bruce, and you’re not Selina.

Dick’s been going about this all wrong. Despite everything he’s been taught about love and loss, he’s allowed a life outside of a domino mask and kevlar. He deserves to cherish someone, to protect and devote himself to something other than his work- someone to fight for, someone to come home to- and he deserves to be beloved, too. Even if only for tonight. Even if tomorrow isn’t promised and all you have is right now, you’re here. On the other side of the frosted glass screen and plaster, you’re waiting for him. Another smile, less forced and genuine, feels like a relief instead of a burden. His skin pebbles under the frigid stream left in the wake of molten steam. With a shiver, he seeks your warmth, reaching for the faucet and stepping out of the enclosure.

A worn shirt rests atop the counter, the fabric faded from years of wear and wash, folded neatly beneath a pair of fresh boxers and socks likely left behind from the last time, or the time before that, or even the time before…truth be told, he thought he’d lost it, misplaced it, or given it away. Of course, you’ve had it in your care, all along. The corner of his mouth threatens to twitch into a smile. Slipping the towel from around his waist, he begins to dress, wondering when you managed to sneak in without him hearing you. The door used to creak, and he realizes that you must have fixed it while he was gone. It’s hard not to think about what else might’ve changed since the last time he saw you. Would you have stayed with him, if he asked you to? You always have. Six years and counting, he muses if you always will…

His hair is getting long, again. Droplets fall from the overgrown strands at the base of his neck down his back, making him shiver and reach for his towel once more. He pats his hair down, ruffling it with the towel a few times before wiping away at the mirror. Making eye contact with his reflection he’s the first to look away. He’s looked worse and supposes that's a small win in and of itself, though he can’t stand the sight of himself any longer than he has to. A deep exhale and a shake of his head diverts his attention to the countertop where a spare toothbrush has been left out for him to use. Of course, he already knows where the toothpaste is. He helps himself with a growing smile and places it in the holder right next to yours when he’s done. His chest expands with something he can’t quite name when he finds himself surrounded by gentle reminders of your care. A small cup of water and painkillers act as physical embodiments of your thoughtfulness and he revels in the knowledge that you’re letting him know you’re there for him while giving him space to come down from whatever adrenaline rush the past few months have spiked. It’s in those silent gestures of love that he hears it the loudest, echoing and amplifying all around him.

It must be killing you to act so selflessly, and he tries not to be selfish with your affections, but it’s difficult not to feel like a burden when you’ve rearranged more than just a spot on the counter, or a place for him to keep his toothbrush next to yours, for him- giving him a home without expecting anything else in return.

Down the hall, the mattress protests against his arrival, angry springs squeaking from months of disuse before welcoming his weight and warmth on the side opposite of yours- his side, from the very moment, years ago, when he found his way back to you after a night that left him bloody and beaten but not broken. Never broken- not when he’s always had you. Though most memory of the first evening spent beside you remains a blur, the ability to recall details and specifics stolen from him as his wounds wept crimson tears that stained your hands and upholstery, fondness prevails. Despite robbed recollections, tender warmth, and affection remain. Even then, he knew. Without really knowing, without certainty, he was certain- he loved you, and you loved him, and every gentle, devoted gesture has always reaffirmed the one thing he could never doubt. Every silent offering, every selfless sacrifice, and piece of yourself that you’ve surrendered to him further insists that your heart acts in favor of three words never spoken.

His arm finds your waist easily, and he’s grateful that he doesn’t have to tiptoe around his reluctance to accept what this is, anymore. Not when you’re here. Not when you’re waiting so patiently for him, and snuggle back into his hold the moment he reaches out for you. Some limbs tangle, but not yours- the two of you fit perfectly together, like you were truly meant to be, and the moment that you’re allowed to converge, you press your palm flat against his arm, holding him close to you.

Reacquainting yourself with him after is always your favorite part. Though, your heart cleaves when your fingertips ghost over a new scar- the skin still raised and angry, even if the wound has closed. With something akin to sympathy, an apology for the pain he’s suffered that you can’t take away, you gently trace the new mark in acknowledgment.

Tomorrow, or later today, when the sunlight illuminates the sky, you’ll ask him about it. Or, maybe you won’t. When the first glimpses of warm light threaten to spill over the horizon, you might get answers to the questions you’ve spent the last few months pondering. Or, perhaps everything unasked will remain unresolved. Either way, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the fact that tonight, you’ll sleep- safe and protected, at ease and engulfed by all things him- and even if it only lasts for the night, you’ll cherish whatever small moments of intimacy the moon grants before the sun, inevitably, rips them away- a fate you’ve grown to expect, time and time again.

Still, you let your eyes flutter shut, basking in the silence for only a moment before it’s interrupted.

“I love you,” Dick confesses softly, words warm and whispered against your shoulder encouraged by a fleeting moment of courage- and the tender caress of your touch- that prompt the secret to spill from his chest, an accident he fears he may have to render excuses for to salvage whatever broken pieces are left of this unspoken relationship.

“I know,” With your back towards him he misses the stretch of a smile ghosting your lips, and finds himself tensing behind you. Could you have really known? All this time? Is that why he always comes back? Is that why you let him? “I love you, too,”

“No, I mean, I really lo-“

“Tell me in the morning, yeah?” You suggest before he can get too far ahead of himself. Torn between wanting to clarify his confession and realizing that maybe he doesn’t have to, Dick relents. He can’t really argue, anyway- having kept this to himself for so many years, another few hours won’t hurt. With a breath- of acceptance, not defeat or surrender- he closes his eyes and finally relaxes into your embrace.

It’s over.

For now, Dick can rest easy knowing that when the smell of bergamot fades, this tacit love will always remain, and he finds enough comfort in the realization to let it lull him into a peaceful sleep.

a/n: I love him so much!!! this has been rotting in my brain for nearly a year and I just found it in my drafts last night lol! anyway, this started as a challenge to myself where I wanted to see if I could write something with only five lines of dialogue, and I'm curious to hear how you all think it turned out! as always, requests are open! check out my request guidelines before submitting! and if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading!

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