Chapter Text

Title: Dick bites. It's a problem.

Summary: Thanks to batsandbirdbrains on Tumblr it is now a firm headcanon if mine that Dick did, in fact, bite as Robin.
This is a COLLECTION of oneshots, that are somewhat related around one thing: Dick bites.
Mostly Mature for the biting and violence, though the last chapter is PWP (DickJay).
I have no idea how to explain this otherwise :D

Rating: M

End pairing: Dick/Jason (only in the PWP though!)

Side pairing: Barbara/Dick (literally for one sequence)

Warnings: biting, blood, violence, gore, graphic descriptions of violence, explicit sexual content in the last chapter, mentions of glorifying violence, feral behaviour in Robin!Dick, explicit porn

Genre: Drama, Crack

Disclaimer: I do not Batman, Nightwing or anyone associated with them. God, I wish......

 

~x~x~ Dick bites. It's a problem. ~x~x~  

The Batcave at six in the morning exhaled a cold that could have preserved meat. The old river tunnel and its centuries of condensation bled into every stone, every batwing clench of air. Fluorescent strips ran in grids along the cave’s low ceiling, adding nothing in the way of comfort or mercy, only brightening the rough geometry of things: mat, mat, rack, bench, weights, heavy bag. Clean, surgical, cold. The training area was a womb and a prison and a cathedral at once.

Dick Grayson’s feet were bare on the shock-absorbent mat, goosebumps running up the length of his legs, hairless and blue. His gi was too big, not yet tailored, the sleeves swallowing his hands so he looked like a lost ghost-child. His arms and neck were bruised with the ink-stamp of a recent throw, and he kept pressing a thumb against a yellowed bruise, testing the memory of pain with scientific regularity. When Bruce entered, Dick fell into stance so fast that his knees clicked. 

Bruce never wore a gi. He wore Under Armour and, sometimes, the kind of sweatpants you could set on fire with a match. He was a man built from tectonic plates—every movement dense, frictionless, programmed. There were rumours of what Bruce Wayne did to stay in fighting shape; nobody would have guessed it was morning lessons with an eight-year-old in the world’s most extravagant basement. He circled Dick, not with a predator’s patience, but with the air of a football coach staring down a quarterback who’d botched a snap.

“Tell me the three principles of close-quarters combat,” Bruce said, voice sharp as the ozone in the Batcave’s air.

“Uh—leverage, misdirection, and—”

Dick hesitated. He looked up, eyes wider than any child’s had a right to be, cerulean and gullible and, for an instant, terrified.

“And?”

Dick licked his lips.

“Use everything you’ve got. No, wait, use everything he’s got, too. Or—everything around. No, wait—”

A microsecond’s pause from Bruce: not even a sigh, just the nanobot flick of irritation in his left eye.

“Use the environment. Use every resource. Every advantage. You have them. You have your training, you have the gear, and—” He tapped the yellow-fabric utility belt that, today, hung from the equipment wall in pride of place, like a sword in a legend. “—you have this.”

He let Dick look. Let him want it. Let him sweat and hope and want. Dick’s eyes locked on the belt, mouth parted. Bruce moved closer and, in a single clean motion, stripped the belt from its mooring and weighed it in one hand.

“You know the compartments,” Bruce said. “Recite them.”

Dick straightened. His voice, when it came, was pure recitation, the memory drilled and sanded until it was the only thing left.

“Grapple. Batarangs. Smoke. Flash. Bola. Line gun. Rappel. Flares. Darts. Taser. Med kit.” He counted off on his fingers, trying to tuck the thumb of his right hand under his palm, failing, repeating. “Thermite. Acid. Climbing claws. Marbles?”

“Not marbles.”

“But you said—”

“You said marbles. I agreed. That was a deceit you should have caught. There are no marbles.” Dick nodded, jaw clamped. He was not laughing, but the muscle under his left eye twitched like he wanted to. Bruce tossed the utility belt to him. “Try it on.”

It was a bad fit: the weight slung unevenly around Dick’s skinny waist, hanging almost at his knees. He cinched it as tight as it would go and looked, for a moment, like the world’s smallest handyman. He stood taller anyway. Maybe it made him feel taller. Maybe the heaviness was a relief, an anchor to keep him from floating off. Bruce carefully stepped closer, opening the belt again. Then he slung it around Dick's chest. It fit a bit better. Bruce folded his arms, voice neutral.

“Every piece has a purpose. If you’re not using them, they’re dead weight. What’s the point of training a weapon if you don’t use it?”

Dick looked up.

“They won’t let me carry a real weapon at school.”

“This is not school. Next one. What have we discussed about your triples and quadruples?”

Dick rolls his eyes.

“That they’re physically too hard to control because they can reach up to 70 and 90 mph. And that that will crack someone’s ribs and shatter their inner organs.” Bruce nodded, looking at him intensely. Dick rolled his eyes. “… And not to do them, because of that. Because we don’t want the risk of it going wrong.”

“Hm.” He could have said something about the darkness, the family legacy, the need for wariness and mistrust. He could have said something about the first time he, Bruce, wore the belt and the way it felt to know you were now responsible for everything you touched. Instead, Bruce pointed to the mats. “Good. We start with stand-up. Then groundwork. If you get past my guard, you win. If I pin you, you try again. If you get hurt, you say stop.”

He stepped onto the mat, a blue ocean bordered by the black cliffs of crash pads and vinyl. Dick followed, planting both feet, breath steady. He did not fidget, did not look at his bruises or the way the belt chafed the top of his hipbone. He looked at Bruce, jaw set. 

“Ready?”

Dick nodded.

“Good,” Bruce said, and moved. His feet were silent on the mats, but his arms arced with the memory of old violence. Dick had seen enough; he twisted, tried to sidestep, but Bruce was on him in a blink, a grip on the gi at the shoulder, a lever at the wrist. Dick tucked and rolled, tried to slip under, but Bruce’s weight was everywhere at once—pinning, smothering, instructing. “Use what you have. I’m not stopping you.”

Dick squirmed, hand groping for the holster on his new belt, but Bruce had anticipated it—his left hand flattened Dick’s right, pressing it to the mat.

“Too slow,” Bruce murmured.

“Unfair,” Dick muttered.

Bruce only raised an eyebrow.

“Is it?”

He let up just enough for Dick to scramble upright, the motion fluid and balletic and then—immediately—awkward, as Dick overcompensated and nearly tripped on the trailing end of the belt. He righted himself with a sheepish glance, then attacked: a feint high, a duck low, the speed blurring. Bruce caught him again, a softer grip this time, guiding rather than restraining, steering Dick’s movement toward balance, toward precision.

For the next several minutes, the world reduced itself to Bruce’s correction and Dick’s persistence. When Dick’s technique failed, Bruce stopped him, reset, pointed at the mechanics of the error. When Dick improvised, Bruce didn’t reprimand; he watched, waiting to see if it worked, cataloguing every attempt. When Bruce finally released him for a water break, Dick sat cross-legged on the edge of the mat, panting, sweat streaked down the inside of his sleeve, all the way to the wrist. He took the canteen and sipped with little gulps, head tipped back, Adam’s apple bobbing in miniature.

Bruce watched him with that same inscrutable look, the one Dick had already learned to hate.

“You’re improving,” he said.

Dick shrugged.

“Doesn't feel like it. You’re holding back.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Bruce didn’t answer. He stepped back onto the mat and waited. When they resumed, the lessons came faster, the errors sharper. The Batcave’s cold faded into the background, replaced by the furnace of repetition and the snap of impact. Dick’s skin flushed red at every point of contact; his hair stuck to his forehead in spikes; when he laughed, it was soundless and tight and full of electricity.

During a clinch, Bruce whispered: “Don’t let anyone get inside your guard, not even me.”

Dick, trapped in a bear hug, wriggled furiously.

“You’re—cheating—you’re like three times my size—”

“Excuses,” Bruce said, but something in his voice cracked, the faintest slip of humour or pride. He let go. Dick staggered but stayed upright. “Now,” Bruce said, picking up the utility belt. “Let’s talk about gadgets.” He held up the batarang, the flash pellet, the bola—one by one, as if Dick were a customer at a deli counter and not a recruit in an army of two. “Never hesitate to use what you have,” Bruce repeated, “but always remember what you don’t. Tools are not a substitute for skill. But you have both, if you work for it.”

Dick nodded, face a study in effortful composure. He accepted the batarang, turned it over in his hands, the sharp edges glinting in the harsh Batcave light.

“Why do you call them ‘batarangs’ and not ‘batboomerangs’?” Dick asked, voice small.

Bruce looked at him.

“Because they don’t come back.”

“Oh,” Dick said. He thumbed the edge of the weapon, careful, admiring. “That’s sad.”

Bruce almost smiled. He didn’t, but he almost did.

“Is it?”

Dick grinned, that glint in his eye more visible now, and for a heartbeat, the cold in the cave didn’t matter at all.

“Ready to get back to it?” Bruce asked, and when Dick nodded, Bruce demonstrated the correct grip, the correct throw, the correct pivot—each step a ritual, an act of devotion. Dick followed, missing the mark twice, then three times, before finally sending the batarang in a perfect arc to stick, quivering, in the rubberised target at the far end of the mat. 

“Oh. So it’s like throwing a knife?”

Bruce blinked.

“Where did you learn to throw a knife, Dick?”

The kid looked up at him, then threw another one, near centre of the target.

“The knife-thrower at the circus taught me.”

Bruce nodded, with a deep sigh, no more a crisp single tilt of the head. 

“Okay. Again. Show me.”

And so it went, until Dick’s fingers ached and his eyes blurred and the only sound in the Batcave was the echo of his name, repeated like a secret, or a prayer, or a warning for what came next. Somewhere between the twentieth and thirtieth repetition, Bruce changed the cadence. He stalked the circumference of the mat, said nothing, just watched Dick’s stance from a new angle, as if checking for a fracture line that would split the boy down the middle. When he finally spoke, his voice dropped into a register that made Dick’s skin prickle.

“Now we spar again.”

Dick’s eyes lit. He straightened, wiped his hands on his pants, and squared up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. There was no bravado in it—just the animal excitement of a kid whose entire life had been defined by being airborne, a kid who, until recently, measured time by the number of flips between dinner and bed. Bruce beckoned him forward with a curl of his hand, palm up.

“Initiate.”

Dick lunged, but it wasn’t the reckless kind of lunge; he fainted left, darted right, tucked into a roll, and came up spinning. The move was textbook, but Bruce caught the telegraph of it half a second early. Dick barely had time to exhale before Bruce’s hand shot out, not in a punch, but a flat-palmed stop, catching him at the shoulder and redirecting all that kinetic energy into the mat. 

Dick went down hard. The mat thudded, echoing off the cave walls. Bruce gave him a heartbeat—enough time to register the hit, not enough to process it—and then advanced, pinning Dick’s ankle to the ground before he could use it as a fulcrum.

“Reset,” Bruce ordered.

Dick scrambled upright. The next attack was sneakier: a jump, a twist, a windmill kick that would have landed in a circus act, but Bruce was a different animal. He stepped in, deflecting the leg, and in the same motion swept Dick off his centre of gravity. This time, Dick managed to roll out, coming up on one knee, breathing ragged but determined. Bruce didn’t praise. He didn’t smile.

He just said, “Again,” and they resumed, bodies orbiting, each step a calculation of angles and consequences.

The next collision was a blur. Dick faked high, then low, then sprang—literally sprang—into a back handspring, aiming to vault behind Bruce’s guard. For a fraction of a second, it almost worked. But Bruce, who must have mapped every permutation in the world, turned with impossible speed, catching Dick by the ankle mid-air and swinging him to the mat in a controlled spiral.

Dick’s back slammed the mat, wind knocked out of him. Bruce was on him instantly, a knee to the solar plexus, his forearm pressing hard across Dick’s chest and pinning both wrists with his free hand. Right above the utility belt. The weight was absolute. It said, unequivocally: you are not getting up. Dick heaved against the pressure, but it was like trying to shift a car with a toothpick. He twisted, tried to lever himself up, but Bruce’s knee locked him down. His small hands clawed at Bruce’s arms, but the disparity in mass was comic. Bruce’s face hovered above, not angry but clinical, eyes tracking every twitch and squirm.

“You need to learn how to escape when someone bigger has you trapped. Because most of the people you will fight are.”

Dick arched, tried to bring his knee up for leverage, but the move was anticipated and countered, his limb immobilised. He lay there, panting, sweat collecting at the hairline, eyes flickering with irritation.

“Find a way out,” Bruce said, and that was it—no tips, no hints, just the challenge and the waiting.

For a few seconds, Dick struggled in earnest. He jerked left, then right, wriggled his hips, rotated his wrists, but Bruce’s hold was inexorable. The sweat from Dick’s palms smeared against the fabric of Bruce’s sleeve. His breathing turned from determined to ragged to, for a flicker, panicked. Then something changed. Dick stopped. He went perfectly still—except for his eyes, which darted from Bruce’s face to the crook of Bruce’s elbow, to the exposed strip of forearm just inches from his mouth. 

A flicker of frustration crossed Dick’s face, then, as if a gear had slotted in, something harder: calculation. 

The silence in the cave went thick, the only noise the faint drip of water and the double-thud of their twin heartbeats. Dick’s chest expanded with a slow breath. His gaze never left that strip of exposed skin, and the corner of his mouth twitched—not a smile, not really, but the prelude to something. Bruce, for his part, didn’t see it. He was too busy monitoring Dick’s hips, his legs, expecting another mechanical escape attempt, missing the bright, dangerous glint in the boy’s eye. Dick waited, coiled, until the exact moment Bruce’s attention wavered—maybe a nanosecond, maybe less—and then moved.

Dick’s head snapped forward in a move so fast Bruce didn’t see it, only felt it: the sudden wet-hot clamp of Dick’s teeth, deep into the flesh of Bruce’s forearm. There was a shock of pain, sharp and bright, more startling than any hit Bruce had taken in a decade. Bruce’s first instinct was to yank away, but years of conditioning kept him still—he would not risk tearing the boy’s teeth out, or breaking his neck. Instead he froze, feeling the full pressure of the jaw, the grinding determination in the bite.

“Dick!” Bruce barked. “Let go. Now.”

But Dick only dug in further, his entire body arching to maximise force. His eyes—clear, blue, unblinking—looked up at Bruce not with fear, but with wild, adamant certainty. For a moment, neither moved. There was just the punctured flesh, the faint, ugly pop as blood welled up in perfect round beads around Dick’s teeth, and the locked stare between two animals determined not to break first.

The pain was old and new, a primal thing. Bruce felt the world narrow to just this—Dick’s jaw, the grind of teeth, the impossible grip of a child on the only advantage he could manufacture.

“Dick, stop! That’s an order!” Bruce tried, but his voice cracked on “stop,” and the panic sounded raw, too human.

Still, Dick held. If anything, he clamped harder, until the skin at the edges of Bruce’s arm blanched white, then purple, then split wider. More blood spilled over Dick’s lips, bright as mercury in the halogen glare. It was not training now; it was pure, desperate survival. Bruce, who could dislocate a man’s arm in four seconds, who had memorised the anatomy of violence down to the sinew, was, for the first time since childhood, at the mercy of someone else’s teeth. He tried to reposition, to lever Dick off using his own leverage, but Dick had wrapped his legs around Bruce’s arm and torso, making himself dead weight, a limpet. Any more force would have broken bones.

“Dick, please—” Bruce heard the plea in his own voice, the shatter of composure, and for a second he hated it, hated himself for giving the boy even this molecule of upper hand.

The standoff lasted five seconds, maybe ten. The pain became a bright, continuous scream, and Bruce’s pulse thundered in his ears. Dick’s eyes never left his, and the message in them was unmistakable: you said use everything.

Finally, when Bruce’s free hand went slack and his jaw unclenched, Dick opened his own jaw, slow, precise. He drew back with a gasp, mouth rimmed with blood, lips trembling from the effort. Bruce tumbled backward, clutching his arm. Blood ran in thin, neat lines down to the crook of his elbow, darkening the fabric. He did not say anything for a long moment—just cradled the wound, breathing through gritted teeth, unwilling to look at Dick.

When he did, Dick was sitting, legs crossed, hands in his lap. His chin was streaked with red, but he looked neither apologetic nor ashamed. He looked, if anything, triumphant—like he had just landed a backflip nobody else could stick.

There was a silence. It went on long enough that Bruce, finally, had to break it.

“You bit me,” Bruce said.

Dick nodded, not quite smiling, but close.

“You said use everything.”

Bruce stared at him, at the blood, at the white pattern of teeth marks already blooming up from his skin. He wanted to be angry, to shout, to discipline—but all he could think of was how proud, how brilliantly alive, the kid looked. He tried to scowl. Failed.

“You’re not supposed to use your teeth,” he said, but it sounded hollow, weak, even to him.

Dick wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Why not?”

“It’s not—” Bruce struggled for the right word, something that could anchor the moment, but it floated away.

He looked at Dick, at the tiny fists and scabbed-over knuckles and the bright, relentless certainty of his stare. He realised the boy would survive anything. He would not just learn; he would adapt, out-think, outfight. No matter what was thrown at him, he’d bite back. Bruce pressed his sleeve against the wound, stood, and watched Dick do a celebratory somersault, landing light as a bird. Dick grinned up at him, half-feral, half-angelic, blood on his teeth.

“So, I got out, right?” Dick said, standing tall, the utility belt hanging like a trophy from his waist.

Bruce nodded, voice not quite steady.

“You got out. Please don’t bite me again.”

Dick’s eyes shone with something Bruce could not name. He skipped once in a circle, then jogged to the far end of the mat, spinning, showing off for a non-existent audience. He cackled, happily, and did another flip. Bruce watched, arm throbbing, mind cycling through the consequences, the pride, the sick joy and fear of it all. He wondered if this was how it started—if this was the moment the world changed, irrevocably, for both of them.

He’d taught Dick too well. Or not enough. Or exactly enough.

The Batcave hummed in the aftermath, the air thick with the smell of sweat and iron and something else, something vital. Bruce stared at the wound, at the twin arcs of teeth, at the drops of blood like medals on his skin. 

He would remember this. He would remember it every time Dick smiled, every time Dick’s eyes flashed that wild blue, every time the kid laughed, every time the darkness tried to teach either of them a lesson. 

The lesson, he realised, was his to learn.