Chapter Text
‘Do you like Earth?', Adam asks as they sit side by side on the rooftop of the Titans Tower, legs dangling over the edge. 'I mean, compared to Tamaran'. His voice has that soft, hesitant quality he gets whenever he's unsure, a trait Koriand'r finds endearing, if a little confusing. Why would someone so powerful hesitate?
'Earth is loud', she tells him. 'But it is also soft'. The glow of Jump City sprawls beneath them, blinking like distant stars. Humans move in patterns she still struggles to understand. 'Tamaran was... structured. Like a song with no mistakes'.
Adam leans back on his palms. 'Structured sounds nice'. His boots scrape against the tower's edge. 'Most of my life has been... well... not'.
She watches the way his fingers flex, alive with restless energy. She wonders if he knows how often he does this, how his hands betray the stillness of his face. The wind pulls at her hair, wild and untamed. 'You miss your home'.
His pause is answer enough. 'Maybe'.
Koriand'r watches dust float around Adam's fingers without him even realizing. The way his power leaks out when his guard is down fascinates her. There's something tragic about the way he holds himself, like a man who's spent centuries learning not to break things, not to break people. His hesitation, she realizes, isn't just uncertainty, but the carefulness of someone who has seen and done too much.
'You do not have to be careful with me', Koriand'r says abruptly. 'I will not break'. Adam's fingers still against the rooftop's edge, but she doesn't let him retreat. She catches his wrist, pressing his palm flat against hers. 'See?'. Her skin hums with contained starbolts, light threading between their fingers. 'Stronger than you think'.
Adam's thumb traces the back of her hand, slow and deliberate. 'I know'.
She's seen the way he fights: precise, controlled, never letting his full strength loose unless the world's ending. 'You hold back. Afraid to touch things. Afraid to be touched'.
Adam sighs. 'I almost killed a man once. Telekinetic pulse'. His fingers curl inward against her palm. 'I was sixteen'.
Koriand'r understands the weight of unintended destruction. She understands the scars left by hands that never meant to harm. Her thumbs trace his knuckles. Strange. For a man who could reshape matter with a thought, his hands feel so delicate against hers. 'You are not sixteen now'. She watches dust motes swirl between their fingers, particles dancing to some silent rhythm only Adam's subconscious directs. 'And I am not fragile Earth-glass'.
His knee knocks against hers. Warmth radiates through her. Tamaranean skin drinks in sunlight, but this... this is different. Human body heat is sluggish compared to her people's, yet Adam burns like a contained star. 'No, you're more beautiful than Earth-glass. You're like... inertron under pressure'. His lips quirk. She recognizes the joke. He's referencing materials she barely understands, from a time so far ahead it makes her head spin. 'I'm sorry if I'm too forward, Koriand'r, but... I've never met someone like you'.
She knows Dick would hate this. Their... break-up, as humans call it, was amicable, mostly, but a wound lingers beneath his civility. Koriand'r misses the ease they once had, the way their bodies fit together without thought, restless nights of passion and endless days of joy, much like twin suns: locked in orbit, inseparable. But the wedding-that-wasn't was never just about them. Bigotry, rushed vows, Raven's actions... too much. Too soon.
Adam... Adam feels different. His touch lingers as if he's afraid she'll dissolve into golden light beneath his fingertips. Would she, if he pushed? Has Adam Blake even pushed against anything without calculating the precise amount of pressure required to avoid collapse? Is this what it means to be evolved: to hesitate when desire burns in your heart like solar flares? She doubts Tamaran's scholars would call this progress, yet Koriand'r finds herself leaning into his hesitation, savoring the way his breath catches when her knee presses harder against his. Something akin to victory thrums through her veins. Finally, after months of quiet tension between them, they have breached the invisible barrier Adam erected between himself and his obvious affection for her.
Koriand'r releases his hand, slowly, only to slide her fingers up his forearm. The fabric of his uniform is thin here, taut over corded muscle. She can feel the rapid flutter of his pulse beneath her fingertips, the heat of his skin through synthetic fibers. Adam's lips part, but no lecture about appropriate workplace conduct emerges. No retreat, no deflection disguised as professionalism. Just that same weighted silence between them, charged like the air before a storm.
'I am flattered,' Koriand'r murmurs, pressing her palm flat against his chest now, feeling the heartbeat there, steady despite the of uncertainty in his eyes. 'But you are not forward enough'. Adam's breathing is heavier now. Less from fear, she realizes, and more from the effort of control. 'You think too much', she tells him, tracing the dip between his collarbones. 'Your mind races ahead, while your body hesitates. This is not balance'.
Adam exhales a laugh through his nose. 'Evolution isn't about balance. It's about adaptation'. His fingers hover near her waist, close enough that she feels the telekinetic pull against her skin. 'But I think you might be right'.
Koriand'r leans into the space between them, her hair catching the glow of bright signs below. 'Then adapt, Adam. Adapt to this'. Her lips brush his, hovering there, close enough to feel the hitch of his breath. Adam's fingers twitch against her waist, sinking her uniform without pulling her closer. She can taste the caution in the way his mouth stays still beneath hers, frozen in that cold calculation of his. The wind shifts, tossing strands of her hair across his cheek.
He laughs softly. 'Let me just...'. A gentle pressure envelopes Koriand'r's face, like liquid warmth pouring through her scalp. Strands of her wild hair lift from his cheekbones as if drawn by invisible hands, curling back behind her ears with unnatural grace. His telekinesis feels warmer than she expects, something alive humming against her scalp like a second heartbeat.
She doesn't move. There's tenderness in the way Adam tucks each unruly lock into place, his focus almost reverent. His fingers never touch her. His power moves through the air between them, intimate as breath. 'You're fixing my hair', Koriand'r observes, bemusedly stating the obvious.
'Because it's distracting us'.
Koriand'r realizes with a thrill that his restraint is cracking. 'No'. She catches his wrist. 'Do not fix it'. Her grip tightens, pressing his palm against her cheek. 'Feel instead'.
Adam's fingers twitch, then finally surrender, curling against her skin. The contact sends a shockwave through them both. His telekinesis dissipates like mist, leaving only warmth and weight and the soft touch of a man who has faced gods barehanded.
His thumb traces her neck, tentative at first, then firmer when she doesn't pull away. 'You're softer than I thought'.
Koriand'r's laughter stirs the air between them. 'And you are slower than I expected'.
It is true: she thought Adam would move faster. Many a time, she has seen him react to danger with reflexes sharp enough to split atoms, repelling bullets mid-air with a thought, stopping trains with outstretched palms. Not now, though. Now, he moves like a man wading a fierce current. Koriand'r wonders if this is how he touches things that matter, or if she is just the first thing that has mattered in a very long time.
Adam's fingers finally, finally pull her closer. His lips meet hers properly, with no hesitation left. The kiss ignites something in her, a spark that arcs between their mouths and races down her chest. His telekinesis whispers against her skin, invisible fingertips tracing the curve of her jaw before sliding lower, mapping the dip of her collarbone through the fabric of her uniform. She arches into the touch, starbolts flickering beneath her skin in response.
Why are the first steps always the hardest? No matter how many times Koriand'r has done this, leaned in, kissed, mapped the trembling heat of someone else's skin, her pulse still races like it's the first time, like she's still that girl fresh from the Citadel's chains. Adam is as human as Dick is, but the similarities end there. Where Dick moves with the reckless certainty of a man who trusts his body implicitly, Adam's always hovers, second-guesses, like he's afraid the world might unravel beneath him if he presses too hard.
She breaks the kiss first, grinning when he makes a soft, frustrated noise in the back of his throat. His fingers tighten against her waist, finally, yes, finally, and she revels in the way his control frays. 'You think too much'. She nips at his lower lip. 'Always'.
'Sorry', Adam murmurs against her mouth, fingers flexing against her waist like he's resisting the urge to grip harder. 'Old habit, I guess'. His lips chase hers when she pulls back just to tease, and Koriand'r delights in the way his control fractures, just for a second, before he catches himself. 'You're unfair'.
Koriand'r laughs, pressing her forehead to his. 'I am Tamaranean', she reminds him, sliding her hands up his chest, savoring the rapid flutter of his heart beneath her palms. 'Our ways are...'. She realizes the concept won't translate. No human language she knows has a word for the Tamaranean philosophy of unrestrained passion, of love given and taken without hesitation, without the carefulness humans wrap around their desires like chains. 'We do not waste time'.
Why should she slow down, anyway? Life burns too fast, too bright. Tamaran taught her that much. The Citadel taught her the rest. If there's one thing Koriand'r understands with marrow-deep certainty, it's this: hesitation gets you nothing but dust and regrets. Nothing but empty hands and colder beds. Love, passion, warmth... those are the answers to every question she's ever had. Humans put too much stock in waiting, in denying, in pretending they have all the time in the universe. They don't. She doesn't. That's why the current moment feels far more important than any hypothetical tomorrow.
Adam sighs sharply when her fingers tangle in his hair, tugging gently, and the last of his resistance melts away like morning fog under Earth's sun. 'You're right. I don’t want to waste time either'. His hands slide down her sides, gripping her hips, firm and deliciously sure. Koriand’r shivers at the sensation, at the way his touch burns through her. 'I only want you'.
Koriand’r presses forward until she lies atop him. The rooftop is hard beneath them, but she barely notices. Adam is trembling, so she kisses him again, slow and deep, savoring the taste of doubt vanishing for good. His fingers dig into her hips now, no longer cautious, and the groan he muffles against her lips sends a pulse of heat spiraling through her.
'Let us go inside'. Koriand'r shifts her weight just so over his hips. 'My friends won't arrive until dawn'. She doesn't ask permission, just lifts herself effortlessly, taking Adam's wrist in a grip she hopes conveys certainty as she pulls him upright.
Koriand'r guides him wordlessly past the common area where Cyborg's half-assembled gadgets still glow on the coffee table, past Beast Boy's abandoned cereal bowl, past Donna's forgotten combat boots. Every inch of the tower smells like them, like home. But right now, she wants Adam pressed into the unfamiliarity of her own quarters, where nothing will remind him of boundaries, of caution, of the careful distance he maintains like an orbiting moon. Her room is to be the gravity well that finally pulls him from hesitation into free fall, from calculating trajectory into collision. No more invisible hands hovering inches from connection. Tonight, she wants fingerprints and friction and the sweet surrender of his control. Tonight, even a man born a thousand years too soon will learn what it is to exist inside a single, searing moment.