Chapter Text
It’s not a smooth transition, loving four people loudly and openly (when Gar’s spent six years suppressing public displays of affection and queerness, when it took him six years just to love Vic). It’s not a smooth transition, because it means not laughing off Dick’s late-night propositions anymore, not turning every genuine expression of fondness into a joke. It’s not shoving Kory at Dick because they go together easily, in a heteronormative way, in a public way that Jump City or Bludhaven knows how to swallow. Loving four people loudly and openly means saying (aloud) to Raven that he would like to kiss her sometimes, lots of times, anytime she’s interested, and it means admitting how much Gar loves the way Vic talks about Nascar first dates (with Dick once they’re home).
It's not a smooth transition because Gar is nervous in the royal washroom that first night, the way he’s wearing nothing but Tamaranean armor and feels naked in a purple loincloth and bracers, the way he flushes at Dick and Kory already kissing lazily in the open pool, the way they don’t even look up when he knocks. It’s not a smooth transition because he’s too caught up in the memories of loving them separately, too caught up in the imagination of loving them together, and he stupidly thinks that maybe he should leave before they notice he's there.
(They invited him.)
“Hey,” Gar says, his voice barely audible over the sound of running water. His eyes are stuck on the smooth, silvered sweep of Dick’s spine, the damp red hair that hangs over both their shoulders; he’s distracted by the thick, pink bubbles that obscure the breathy inhalation of Kory’s chest.
The royal washroom overlooks a balcony of stars and late-night fog. Arched columns frame the purple mist and distant mountains, but it’s so high up that it still feels secluded. Yellow candles and two moons press reflective light against the three circular tubs, which are arranged in tiers, so that water spills in gentle waterfalls from the uppermost pool. In the bottom bath, Kory and Dick’s low, private words are drowned out. Gar can only guess the contents by the circular shape of her mouth, the white glint of Dick’s teeth against her neck.
Kory’s half-lidded eyes note Gar in the arched doorway, holding one arm over the new scars of his lower belly. She pulls herself up from her seat in Dick’s lap, as water and foam stream down the lean planes of her torso and thighs. “We did not intend to start without you,” she says in embarrassment. “It is only—you remember what Dick is like.”
Dick is nearly nonverbal, flushed pink and sweaty, elbows spread wide across the edge of the pool, but he manages to bring his gaze to Gar. He manages to wave his hand toward the pool in an inviting gesture, though the only sound that escapes his throat is a frustrated moan.
“I remember.” It's not a smooth transition because Gar is vividly, forcibly reminded of October beaches and Kory’s forearms against his and the insistent way she rubbed their wrist bones together. He’s reminded that Dick and Kory have spent the last six months discovering the secret tells of each other’s bodies in confidential moments like this, which Gar was never supposed to discover first. The way Kory likes to hold eye contact as she finishes (foreheads pressed flush), the way Dick prefers to make love against walls and kitchen counters and rarely the bed.
It's not a smooth transition, but Gar walks down the stairs to the lowermost pool, desperately trying to believe he belongs in this moment, that he’s allowed to appreciate the reddened love bites on Kory’s shoulder (did she tell Dick that Gar used to place them there?). He listens to the wet press of his bare heels against the stone flooring and the fast pace of his breath and the warm thud of his heart.
He's loved them separately but never like this, and never with the knowledge (the intention?) that it’s not a one-night stand. It’s not simple needs and available bodies. It’s not solace, or distractions, or friends with benefits while pining for someone else. He has Vic, and Vic wanted him here tonight. Because we’ve both wanted this long enough, Vic said with a picnic basket over one arm and a star chart tucked in the other. He’s probably not second-guessing himself with Raven.
It's not a smooth transition.
Gar doesn’t know what their dynamic is like without him. He doesn’t know if Kory still prefers love slow, deep, and conversational, if she still likes someone to talk her through every second of it in nonsense compliments and explicit promises, but it’s hard to keep overthinking when he reaches the bottom step and she reaches for him, when she rubs her forearm against his cheek and allows her luminescent gaze to memorize the changed inches of his older face (two years since they’ve looked at each other exactly like this).
“Is this a we-have-fun-together-and-I-genuinely-like-you thing?” Gar echoes from midafternoon Octobers back in 2006. He means it like a half-joke, a callback, because he talks too much when he’s nervous. Because his first time with Vic was practically a radio show of back-and-forth banter, because Gar was mildly overwhelmed by the number of prosthetic options, which Vic had spent months developing.
Kory laughs, throat arcing toward the curved ceiling with its mosaic tiles and reflected, watery light, but her expression sobers when he doesn’t laugh too. “We do not have to sleep together tonight, if you would prefer to talk.”
Gar flinches at the sound of water splattering behind him, then startles again at the cool sensation of wet muscle pressing against his back. Dick’s chin settles against his shoulder, while the other hand toys with the ridged scar along Gar’s lower belly. Dick says, “This isn’t us taking you for granted, this time.”
Kory’s hand smacks Dick’s, before it can wander lower. “You are being impatient. Stop it. Let him breathe.”
“I missed him,” says Dick, and maybe it’s because Gar can’t see him, that the genuine ache of the sentence flutters his stomach with butterflies. A pinkish hand settles against his green breastbone, then over his heart. A hot mouth settles against Gar’s ear, exhaling. “And we can keep talking afterwards.”
It's not a smooth transition because Gar is less impulsive than he used to be, tempered by months loving Vic long-term, and he doesn’t press backwards into Dick’s hips. He doesn’t remove his bracers or borrowed clothes, and he doesn’t walk into the pool of water without thinking. He says, with only a tinge of insecurity, “You like me for more reasons than sex, right?”
He's never doubted that with Kory, but he needs to hear Dick say it too. April with Dick was late-night messages and riding acrobats in flexible positions, coffee breath and whispered stories of shitty mentors. It wasn’t public. It wasn’t acknowledged outside of their two-person confessions in linen bedsheets and three am hook-ups.
Kory says, “I love you for so many reasons” because she’s not the kind of person to say like instead of love, because she says what she means. Her finger runs along the lower belly scar again with a gentle reverence, tracing the remnants of the Psion lab. “I owe you everything for this.”
She doesn’t have to specify what this means when her finger pads are pressed against the evidence. Gar instinctively says, “It wasn’t your fault,” like he has every time it’s come up, like Vic has.
Dick says nothing until Kory presses closer, sandwiching Gar between the hard lines of their bodies, and this is what makes his voice crack in Gar’s ear. “I’ve loved you since I took off the mask in South America.”
“Fuck,” says Gar, because for some reason the vulnerability has his blood running south, and for some reason he’s imagining a different ending to that jungle conversation. One with Dick’s back pressed against the acacia tree, their belts on the rain-soaked dirt. “That long?”
“Since I told you my name,” Dick says, hugging Gar’s body closer for warmth, shivering in the gentle breeze of nighttime air. “Wish I hadn’t ended things in April. Thought I was never going to be in your bed again, never going to kiss this mouth again.” It’s punctuated with a kiss at the edge of Gar’s lips, which he turns his body into, which is then accentuated with tongue and breath. “Thought I’d never hear one of your bad pick-up lines again.”
Gar can’t think of any pick-up lines when Kory’s tongue has found the thick of his neck, when Dick’s mouth is insistent against his. It’s not a smooth transition, but he shifts their interconnected limbs toward the pool where it’s warmer and stumbles down the steps into it. Kory catches him against her breast as he stumbles and murmurs a question against the pounding vein in his throat. “You know we love you for more reasons than sex, yes?”
“Starting to, yeah.”
Dick has leaned into the curve of Gar’s back again, for the singular purpose of sucking the shell of his ear, tugging at it with his teeth. “You want this?”
“Yeah,” Gar moans, and he means it.
It’s not a smooth transition, loving four people loudly and openly (when Gar’s spent six years suppressing public displays of affection and queerness, when it took him six years just to love Vic). It’s not a smooth transition, because it means admitting to Dick, barely audible through the splash of water and skin-on-skin, that he loves him too. It’s asking Kory if this is how Raven loves (does Raven love like this?) and letting his wrists get slammed above his head in demonstration, letting Dick demonstrate how Raven loves with a twist of his jaw and tongue. It’s sliding into Dick, and detailing all the ways that Vic can do this longer, harder, and vibrating, and it’s Kory’s fingers sliding into Gar with a giggly little confession that Raven can do this with magic.
Loving four people at once is a bit like walking a tightrope, Dick tells Gar several weeks later, the night before they’re headed back to Earth, both of their heads tucked against Vic’s shoulder. If Dick looks down, he gets nervous about messing up, and he loses his footing, and he loses sight of the end of the rope.
“What’s at the end of the rope?” Vic asks him.
“Dunno,” says Dick. “It’s not a perfect metaphor.”
Loving four people at once is creating a series of new routines once they’re home, like helping Kory pack too many moving boxes and arguing over who Silkie would prefer to live with, like realizing that banging it out isn’t productive, like having to flip a coin to decide eventually, like changing their minds and settling on weeks in Bludhaven, weekends in Jump City. It’s making new firsts with Dick in one-bedroom apartments, in all the unusual locations that Dick prefers, and discovering the best take-out nearby with Vic. It’s leaving Dick and Vic alone when they start arguing about the infrastructure of shitty apartments and affordable houses in the area, and it’s finding routine check-ins for the jealousy that still crops up unexpectedly.
“I feel left out when you and Vic go out for dinner and don’t invite me,” Gar tells Raven after a Renoir’s celebratory thing, that he doesn’t quite understand. It’s an ironing out of details that leads to realizations of missing routines, just his and Raven’s, which is how they end up making Monday nights theirs, just theirs, and it’s how he first broaches the topic of her asexuality which is different than Vic’s demisexuality.
Gar chooses the west end of the beach for this conversation, early morning with three-sugars-three-creams coffee for him and English breakfast tea for Raven, on one of those gray March days with the barest hint of rain. The horizon matches the smooth complexion of her wind-pink cheeks; her flyaway hairs are pulled into a low pony with too many bobby pins and (Kory’s) butterfly clips. Gar’s wrapped up in a quarter zip he stole from Dick’s closet in Bludhaven, because it still smells like him, because it’s been a week since they last saw each other, because some superpowered villain at the airport got their flight cancelled. It might just be Gar and Raven on Mondays, but the presence of the others is palpable. It’s one of the ways that he’s figured out how to love four people at once.
“Romance and sex are pretty tied together for me,” he tells Raven thoughtfully, because she wondered aloud about what Gar expected from Vic at the start of their relationship, “but it’s different for Vic. He doesn’t get the hot-for-you feelings until he’s been in love for years, which is one of the only reasons we slept together as early as we did. I wasn’t expecting it, though. I would’ve been fine if it wasn’t possible for us.”
Raven makes a kind of confused hand gesture, her thoughts disjointed as she cuts herself off mid-question. Gar can read the direction of her lavender and woodsmoke mind, though, which he doesn’t mind answering, because Vic prefers when Gar explains it.
“Prosthetics. It took him awhile to figure out a way to make the nerve endings register, but he wanted to find a way for us to feel close like that. Wasn’t really a priority for his STAR Labs at the time of the accident, though, you know?”
“Mm.” Raven blows the steam from her cup of tea, her wind-chapped fingers held tight to the porcelain for secondhand warmth. Without thinking, she leans into him; the scent of her thoughts merges with the aroma of his coffee.
“He’s got a pretty low drive for it, maybe once every few months? It’s more about feeling connected for him—he cares a lot more about spending time together, talking, going on dates. Kory and Dick said it’s different for you?” Gar leaves it open-ended, as he takes another three-sugars-three-creams sip of his drink and allows his free hand to press against the edge of hers.
Raven winds her fingers with Gar’s, allowing their bony joints to sit flush. “I’m mostly neutral to it. It makes more sense, when I’m mind-linked, but it’s a watered-down version of whatever Dick and Kory are experiencing. It’s more about enjoying the way they feel, which then makes me feel. If that makes sense.”
“How’s it make you feel?”
“Loved.” Raven pauses, squeezing his hand, and half-laughs. “If it hadn’t been for Kory, I don’t know that I would have ever”—a hand gesture that encompasses all of it—“you know?”
“Of course it was Kory,” Gar says, smirking. “It was Kory for all of us, wasn’t it? Making this happen, because she’s not the kind of person you say no to. But maybe that’s because she’s hot, and I’m horny.”
Raven laughs fully this time, a dry kind of crackle that reminds him she loves him too, in her own committed way that’s different than their other relationships. “What’s that like? I can sometimes pick up the emotions of it, when I’m mind-linked, but I can’t imagine feeling like that twenty-four/seven.”
“It’s distracting, mostly. And really fucking inconvenient, but I like how close I feel to someone, when we’re together like that. It’s a different kind of vulnerability.” He looks at her, then backtracks. “I like our relationship where it is. There’s no pressure. I’m happy holding hands and kissing. Sparring in the gym when you need it. Letting you look at me.”
Last Monday after sparring, Raven stripped Gar naked with unprecedented intensity, so she could trace every vein and wrinkle, every freckle and stretch line, occasionally allowing her lips to graze his skin’s surface with half-puckered kisses. It was an hour of half-whispered stories about the origin of scars that ended with their ankles interlocked and their eyes looking up at the fluorescent ceiling, reminiscing on their psychological wounds from space.
Raven rolls her eyes, then leans in to press a first kiss against the corner of his mouth, then a second one to his bottom lip which she tugs experimentally. “I’m not trying to be so reserved with you. It’s easier for me when it’s Nevermore. I’m not so caught up in the physicality of it. I can focus on the emotions instead.”
“It would probably be easier for Vic in Nevermore too. His prosthetics are good, but his imagination is better.” Gar bites down on his lip, as blood races to his face. “Kory says you prefer to be the one leading?”
“It keeps me from being overwhelmed by my powers. It means I don’t blow anything up.”
Gar thinks it will take Vic time to let go in the bedroom, because he’s just as control obsessed as Raven, because he doesn’t like to be restrained, and Gar says as much to her.
“I’ll have to think of a compromise,” she tells him, which is better than saying it’s not worth it, because Gar learned to expect that from Steve.
It’s not a smooth transition, loving four people at once, because it’s constant conversations about the ins and outs of their own dynamics, fleshing out the relationships that were left untouched for years, committing to the people they told themselves to forget. It’s Gar sitting down Raven and Vic to understand their overlapped boundaries of touch and compatibility and outlining their first time together. It’s visiting Bludhaven on a weekday because Dick is sick, and Gar makes a great chicken-less noodle soup. It’s Kory asking (on a rare five-way date) how they wish to publicize their relationships, if at all, because she is not subtle with her displays of affection.
“Ah shit,” says Dick, because it’s one of those logistics he’s been avoiding, and Vic draws up a diagram, and Gar spends the night in stitched laughter, loving four people at once.