
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/338504.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      DCU_-_Comicverse
  Relationship:
      Jason_Todd/Bruce_Wayne
  Character:
      Bruce_Wayne, Jason_Todd, Clark_Kent, Jim_Gordon
  Additional Tags:
      emotionally_crippled_billionaire_seeks_dead_sidekick_to_make_him_whole
      again, Bruce's_Issues_Are_Legion, Vampires, Canonical_Character_Death
  Series:
      Part 1 of Bring_on_the_Night
  Collections:
      Porn_Battle_XIII_(Lucky_Thirteen)
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-02-12 Words: 7326
****** Tomorrow For Today ******
by Runespoor
Summary
     emotionally crippled billionaire seeks dead sidekick to make him
     whole again, and succeeds. (Basically, Bruce had a convenient vial of
     vampire blood to inject into Jason's veins when Jason died of
     crowbar. It failed, until three days after the funeral Jason crawls
     out of the grave and stumbles to Wayne Manor.)
Notes
     Warnings: blood, underage, descriptions of violence, character death,
     possible dub-con, disturbing content? (that's a very wholesome story
     I just wrote right there.)
     Canon notes: Garzonas was the son of a diplomat who walked after
     raping and abusing his girlfriend, who killed herself when she
     learned he wasn't convicted. In a fury, Jason went to confront
     Garzonas, and-- the confrontation ended with Garzonas falling to his
     death. The question's never been answered whether Jason pushed him
     or, like Jason told Batman when he arrived, “I guess I spooked him.
     He fell.” And after that, Jason wasn't benched as Robin.
“Bruce. Bruce, what did you do?” Clark sounded stunned, almost awed. Batman
didn't turn to look, even when Clark hovered close enough to send a breeze in
his cape. He wouldn't detach his attention from the boy lying in bed.
Eyelashes resting against his cheeks, the fingers of one hand curled next to
his head, peaceful, he looked as though he were sleeping. Nothing reminiscent
of the terrible, bloody wreck Batman had pulled out of the rubble three days
ago, of the wet, painful breathing wheezing through collapsed lungs, of the
planes of burnt skin, the jagged, distorted angles of broken bones. Nothing but
the scratches on Jason's knuckles.
Tenderly, Batman brushed them. They were fainter now than they'd been only a
couple of hours ago; healing.
“Bruce,” Clark called, forceful. Reluctantly, Bruce allowed part of his
attention to be diverted. Answer him, at least. So he would leave.
“Fixed it. That's what I've done.”
Jason's skin still wore scars, but only those dating back from before Ethiopia.
Watching him, here, now, it seemed Ethiopia was nothing but a bad dream. From
which Bruce would've awakened, and strolled the hall to Jason's room, making
sure he was safe.
It didn't quite fit, even without Clark. When Jason had returned – staggered to
Wayne Manor's iron gate – and crumpled there, Bruce had put him in his own bed,
in the master bedroom. So that Bruce would have no choice but watch over Jason.
The way he should never have stopped.
“Fix?”
It might've been easier if Clark had been able to settle on one opinion. If
he'd been able to make up his mind between disbelief, and the faint tinge of
anger that so often colored his voice when he'd attack Bruce on what he called
Bruce's hypocrisy. And the-- bafflement.
Bafflement was winning.
“Bruce, you--” he broke off, at a loss for words.
“I did what I had to do,” Bruce answered, patient and imperious. He'd said
these words so often, in so many situations. He almost wondered aloud why Clark
would ask. He should know by now, Bruce always did what he had to do.
Clark took a breath. Audibly. “Bruce, he-- Jason was dea--”
“Yes,” Bruce cut him off. “He was.” And whose fault is that?
The accusation hung between them, unasked.
I was supposed to take care of him; I was supposed to protect him. But when I
failed, who of the two of us would have been able to rescue him? Who, of the
two of us, would have heard him dying? Who could have been fast enough?
“He's no longer dead, but I only hear one heartbeat in this room,” Clark said
after a silence. “I hope you know what you are doing.”
A parting shot; Bruce didn't turn around to see a blur zoom out of the room,
through the open window, and replied without raising his voice.
“When have you known my plans to be poorly thought-out, Superman?”
*
It takes until nightfall for Jason to wake up.
“Br-bruce?” He blinks, eyes clearing up, glassy dullness sharpening.
Batman takes a long, shuddering breath.
*
Robin was fast; Jason is faster. Tougher. Bruce wavers on the word “better”.
He's not sure which would be the bigger betrayal.
When Jason turns and smiles, gleaming ivory teeth in Robin's face, Batman knows
there's no betrayal here. Only Jason.
Bruce holds out four days before giving in.
Last time, he held out six months-- no. Last time, Jason was training to be
Robin. Nothing comparable to this. Even if this includes dying. And returning.
Jason never stopped being Robin. Even in the meantime. Last time, though Jason
was impatient, he bore it, knowing the training was necessary. He was taking a
six-month shortcut on a road that Dick had walked his whole life, that Bruce
had been traveling for three decades.
Now, he's been doing nothing but demanding to be able to put on the costume
again. Bruce kept trying to find excuses not to, to keep Jason off the streets
for a while longer. To be able to simply revel in Jason's presence, here and
well. Batman yearned for a reunion with his partner.
Jason is better than he's ever been. Keeping him back makes no sense.
The streets welcome him back like the proverbial beloved son. They spread, a
dark and glittering playground that Batman can hear in Robin's soft laughter,
high above the city. Robin is perched on the granite parapet of the Moxon
building, one foot balancing over the drop and the other under him, looking at
the city. Drinking it in, like Batman is drinking Robin in.
“Fuck, I missed her,” Robin-- breathes, though he doesn't breathe any more.
Batman did, too. Missed seeing Robin in Gotham. He always belongs in Gotham,
always her knight, but there are aspects of her only Robin can reveal to him.
She's always bloody, and beautiful, and cruel, but only with Robin by his side
can Batman truly find her fun.
He aches to have Robin by his side again, out there – down there, where Gotham
isn't so beautiful, and broken needles roll in dry piss when Batman and Robin
break up a gang, and slamming a skel against a streetlight will make the light
flicker.
“Robin,” he says, and shoots his grapple-hook. Behind him, he can hear Robin
follow a moment later.
It's possible Gotham missed Robin, too. The following nights, the job is easier
on Bruce's shoulders than it feels like it's been since. Maybe since the first
time Jason joined him. Better still, as Jason himself is better.
Deep within Batman's dark contentment, Bruce relaxes. He was-- isn't it stupid?
He can admit to himself he was worried, now. As if this was too easy. As if he
couldn't expect this sort of happiness to come by without being paid for with
complications. Clark's uneasiness had left seeds of superstition after all.
They break bones and teeth and gangs, and discover that being faced with
Jason's gleaming, growing fangs is as good an intimidation technique as
Batman's growl.
*
Bruce brings up the issue of education, talks about private tutors. Jason makes
a face.
“Do we have to? It's not like it matters now.”
“Jason,” Bruce chides.
“Not the way the Mission does.”
Steady, he holds Bruce's gaze, and Bruce feels his resolve weakening, his
certitudes shifting. He's never wanted to encourage idleness in either Dick or
Jason.
Even when he wanted Dick to take his money – that Dick wouldn't want to
confounded him – he was happy that Dick went to college. It's not a question of
money; the family fortune withstood the 1929 crash, and it would take much more
imprudent hands than Lucius' to make a dent in it significant enough for his
children's career to be a matter of necessity rather than choice. It's a
question of-- work. Of ethics. Thomas Wayne was raised with very Protestant
morals, and Martha, though she was neither religious nor Protestant, approved
of the values.
When you come down to it, what work is more important than the Mission?
“You should expand your horizons, still. You never know when literary allusions
or a solid grasp on economics are going to come in handy. If the Riddler--”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, Bruce. The Riddler, Hatter, the Penguin's associates, the
drug trade – I know I need to know all that. But I don't see why we need to
bring in outsiders. Why can't you teach me?”
“I...” the sentence drifts off, extinguished by Jason's eyes. Jason's
straddling him. When did Jason straddle him?
“You and me, Bruce,” Jason says, caressing his hand down Bruce's cheek. “That's
all we need.”
Jason's skin is warm with the warmth of the room, calluses three-month-old (-
and the time since his becoming vampire, it's been three weeks) scraping
against the faint stubble of late evening. Bruce had to go to the office today.
“Yes,” he agrees. Jason smiles.
*
The first time Batman finds Jason next to a dead body, it's a scene so familiar
to Bruce's nightmares it's eerie. In a vertigo Bruce wonders if he's been
thrown back in time, to the day Garzonas fell.
Then Jason moves and Bruce's vision clears. They're in a dark alley where
Garzonas fell from a balcony at dawn; the... the body is splayed on the wet
asphalt when then, Garzonas had been hidden from sight, dozens of grounds down.
If he reached out, Batman could touch the body, when all he could catch of the
falling man was his scream.
And, most important, Jason doesn't look away when Batman swoops to the ground.
He's kneeling on the ground, prostrate a dozen feet from the body.
He's heard Batman; since his return, Jason's senses have improved across the
board. Bruce originally wanted to make a complete study of the differences
before Robin re-entered the field, but Jason convinced him it would be done
just as effectively while Robin was active.
He doesn't look away, as he did when Batman faced him on the site of Garzonas'
fall.
Now, his face lifts to face Batman, and his voice stretches painfully on an
anguished call.
“Batman...”
The lower half of his face is drenched in blood; the yellow blend of his cape
speckled with dark drips. His gloved hands, palms up on his knees, curl when
Batman approaches, useless.
“I didn't mean to,” he stammers, like a child.
It's like a string tied to Batman's chest, drawing him to the body. Checking
for a pulse, a gesture he makes five, ten times a night. Holding a small mirror
in front of the body's mouth, waiting for a breath. Confirming it won't come.
“Bruce, I didn't mean to!” Jason's voice rings, panicked, and Batman turns away
from the cadaver, and to his-- His Robin. His Jason.
Batman takes a step towards him, or maybe another, and suddenly he has his arms
full of teenage boy, clinging to him and trembling. His face burrowed against
Batman's armor, gloves raking and sliding into his cape. Batman's own hands
lift to embrace him, closing around his shoulders and sliding in his hair.
“I didn't mean to kill him,” Robin says, muffled. “I don't want to kill
anybody.”
Batman's arms tighten around him. Trying to be comforting in a way they so
rarely are, willing all the complications away, a fortress for Jason against
the world.
“It'll be okay,” Batman says, low-pitched. “We'll find a way.”
Batman shushes him until Jason is no longer freaking out, shivers soothed out
of his limbs. Afterwards, he maneuvers Jason to the car, gently like someone in
shock. Jason tucks his face away so he won't see the dead body as they walk out
of the alley; Batman strengthens his arm around Jason's shoulder to help him
walk.
Bruce didn't bench Jason after Garzonas' death. It happened so long ago – in a
previous life – it's no longer relevant. Bruce didn't know for sure, then. He
didn't know.
There's no such uncertainty here. No comforting space for doubt.
Yet. Tragic as it was. It was an accident.
Merely an accident.
(Jason, twisted over the death of some low life drug-dealing pimp who was
trying to kill him.)
Tragic. Self-defense. Tragic for making Jason tremble, for making Jason cry.
What truly matters now is finding a way to protect Jason.
*
Batman's never had to consider making bodies disappear as more than an academic
issue.
He's disappeared other things: Bruce Wayne is rumored to have mastered the art
of disappearing the neurons of the people he's speaking with, money, and
ladies' underwear. Bruce can disappear people who love him, and considerations
other than the Mission. Batman makes a career out of disappearing criminals'
loyalties, murderers' secrets, the police's scruples, legal niceties, and civil
rights.
“Bodies” were an empty threat.
Theory into practice.
*
Several days (two bodies) later, Jason kisses him.
They're in the Cave, after patrol. Bright-eyed, Jason was watching Bruce update
the files (not with deaths, there were no deaths tonight); out of the corner of
his eye Batman – Bruce; he had his cowl down, it must be Bruce – was watching
Robin's bouncing feet.
He'd failed to send the boy shower, Robin rolling his eyes under the mask and
reminding Bruce that he doesn't need to worry about making curfew anymore, does
he? and adding that besides, watching Batman's post-patrol routine was
instructive – it was part of the job, wasn't it? Batman nodded in agreement,
pleased to keep Jason's company for a while longer. They worked in quiet, but
not complete silence, Bruce taking Jason at his word, asking questions about
the night, checking Robin's memories and his deductions.
“Don't think I don't notice it's training, by the way,” Jason signaled, jumping
down the medical bed.
“The reverse would be bothersome,” Bruce replied. “Training--”
“--never ends,” Jason completed, now standing by Bruce. “Hey, I got this, okay?
You don't need to tell me.”
The familiar lessons aren't the only thing he's got, though Bruce abstains from
mentioning it. Jason's memory has improved significantly over-- since Ethiopia.
Since Bruce gave him the blood. As far as Bruce can judge, he's developed a
photographic memory.
The creatures of folklore Jason shares his current way of existence with are
supposed to be in possession of an extraordinary memory as well. Not for the
first time, Bruce ponders the bits of popular wisdom regarding vampires that
have so far proven untrue. The alleged vampire instinct for neatness hasn't
manifested in Jason – neither by the obsessive-compulsive urge to count all the
grains of rice in Bruce's late-night dinner nor by the more mundane habit to
fold his clothes as he takes them off. He can strew pieces of clothing or
uniform all over his room – or the Cave – as unconcernedly as he ever did.
Bruce is about to remark that as long as Jason treated it as out of the
ordinary, he'd be forced to remind Jason of the necessity of it, when Jason
leans in, one hand on the far arm of the chair for balance, and kisses him.
It's chaste and quiet, a simple press of their lips. They still have the smell
of the night clinging to them, sweat and smoke.
When Jason opens his lips to deepen the kiss, the chair screeches backwards,
shying away instinctively.
Eyes open wide, Bruce and Jason stare at each other. Bruce has to slow his
breathing, as though he's been sucker punched. There's a blush coloring Jason's
cheeks. Neither of them looks away.
“Bruce, come on,” Jason says, very quietly.
Batman's gauntlets seize the arms of the chair.
“I--”
Bruce cuts himself off, voice too weak, none of Batman's mythic command now.
Licks his lips though he'd ordered himself not to. And doesn't leave.
“Are you going to say no to me?” For a second, Jason's eyes look almost sad,
then he inclines his head and the impression is chased away.
His hands are clutching viciously at the arms of the chair, hard enough for
something to pop. Bruce doesn't know if it's to keep himself from standing up,
from throwing a punch, or from reaching for Jay, until Jason, soft and
deliberate, places his hand on Bruce's, and all the tension floods away.
Bruce's mouth shapes the only word they can. “Jason.”
Helpless, his heart drumming in his ears, he watches Jason gracefully straddle
him, one knee on each side of his hips. Robin's brightness is reminiscent of
old myths and preternaturally young gods, and when Jason settles down on
Bruce's lap, one of them smiles engagingly at him through the boy's eyes.
His hand – still locked in Batman's gauntlet – brushes against Jason's naked
thigh. Jason's grin widens as Bruce stares at the filthiness of Batman's hand –
he designed it as symbol of justice, menacing though it was – on the smooth
skin of Robin's shaved leg.
He only tears himself away from the contemplation when Jason closes in for
another kiss, one hand on Bruce's cheek to guide him, as soft as the first but
wet with tongues and parted lips, and releases him.
“Jason, we can't,” he-- says? pleads? As he tries to forget that Jason's lips
are shiny with his saliva. That his body is reacting to Jason above him.
Jason huffs, as if Bruce is being unreasonable, and sits back on Bruce's knees.
“That's bullshit,” he says straight out. “Bruce, you brought me back from the
dead. There is nothing we can't do anymore.”
It's nothing but the truth; Bruce wants to laugh when he realizes, a feeling of
dizzy elation similar to a first kiss.
He meets Jason halfway for the next.
*
When Bruce gives in and penetrates him, the sound that comes out of Jason's
lips is an inhuman wail.
(Not every time. Just the first. In the room where Bruce's parents used to
sleep, with ambient lights just dim enough that a playboy's conquest would call
them romantic, and that Jason calls nightlights - “don't worry, I'll keep the
nightmares away”.)
*
Jason always wakes up at once, now. In the first time of his... change... Bruce
had watched him countless times, how his eyes would snap open as soon as the
last ray of sunlight disappeared behind the horizon, awake and alert. It might
be the biggest adjustment of all, where before Jason would suffer lack of sleep
like any other teenager, and drag himself down to the breakfast table to whine
for coffee.
Waking up is the affair of a second, silent and sudden, and Bruce wonders if
Jason can hear his blood startling when Jason finally wakes up.
His body is only ever as cool or warm as room temperature, and in the darkening
minutes before the sun if well and truly gone, Bruce can feel doubts growing
like the evening shadows, each drawn-out moment a nightmare. Maybe Jason never
returned to him. Maybe it was but the empty construction of Bruce's own sick
mind, and all that happened since then dreams. Maybe, in truth, Bruce refused
to abandon Jason's body under the Earth, and it's an embalmed corpse that Bruce
shares his bed with.
Jason's open, awake eyes are each night a rebirth.
Assuring Jason is up is never the irritating affair it could sometimes devolve
into when Jason was still alive. He gets out of bed as soon as he's awake, in a
blink too short to be anything but meta. He has a better control on his speed
afterwards, which is the only sign that he's not, despite all physical evidence
to the contrary, at his best just out of bed.
Bruce questioned him, idly, about this new quirk; Jason only shrugged, and
replied that lie-ins no longer held an interest to him.
The only exception that can bring back Jason's former habit is when Bruce is in
bed by the time Jason wakes up.
Then, he does so in a manner similar to a human drifting out of sleep, body
adapting in small shifts against Bruce's shape, throat working.
His mouth opens on teeth that Bruce can watch grow into fangs, and his
eyelashes flutter like those of a person in REM sleep or on the verge of waking
up. Snuggling, he nuzzles blindly against Bruce's throat until his mouth finds
the vein.
There's only a prickle of discomfort in the first moment of the skin breaking,
lost away in lazy bliss as Jason starts suckling on the tiny cut. Pleasure is
edged with the sweetest pain, as Jason's tongue laps at Bruce's throat. His
teeth fasten deeper as he starts drinking in, guzzling on Bruce's blood, and
it's an electric sensation that goes to the tips of Bruce's fingers and has his
hips jostle up in a start.
A groan tickles the back of throat, and Bruce bites his lip, clenches his jaw
against the noise, desperate for this.
When a sound finally escape him, he can feel Jason's eyelids blinking drowsily,
though he doesn't stop sucking. Bruce tenses, but relaxes when Jason doesn't
move away.
These evenings always end the same way, with Bruce's conscience erased away in
an orgasm that makes him shout.
When Bruce comes back to himself, he finds Jason smirking down at him a soft,
dirty smile, his lips stained with Bruce's blood, and love such as can't be
expressed by words surges through Bruce, so he tangles a hand in the back of
Jason's hair, and gently tugs him down to catch his lips in a kiss that Bruce
makes long and Jason makes lazy.
*
Most often they're face to face. The intimacy pleases Bruce, the kisses when
they start, melded at the mouths as well as where Bruce is inside Jason, and
the noises Jason makes that Bruce delights in – chanting Bruce's name in time
with Bruce's thrusts, surprised, happy whining when Bruce slams in with enough
force to bruise an ordinary human, begging peppered with curses when Bruce is
in a playful mood. And, always, Jason's eager moans, tender like bruises when
they're being slow, or high and loud and exhilarating.
When they start with Jason on all fours, and Bruce rims him, dipping his tongue
inside the boy's body, in a short time Jason is swearing, rocking back against
Bruce's face. His fists grip at the sheets in a white-knuckled clutch, and fat
drops of sweat dribble down his body. Like the sweat of a normal human, it
tastes like salt when Bruce licks it up Jason's arched back, tongue flattened
into the furrow of Jason's spine.
The shivers breaking over Jason's skin go unheeded, until Bruce is covering
Jason, pressing kisses on the back of his neck as he pushes three fingers
inside the boy. Jason jolts and cries out, then rocks back into it.
He flings his arm back to loop it over Bruce's neck, the other wrapped around
his own cock as they try to kiss over Jason's shoulder, can't not, and Bruce's
own cock is throbbing against the small of Jason's back, his other arm
enveloped around Jason to keep them both mildly upright. Their rhythm keeps
getting lost, kisses and pleas cut maddeningly short in a position that is soon
a hindrance.
Jason's eyes glint when Bruce finally puts him on his back, and he lifts both
arms to pull Bruce down in a kiss that feels like coming home.
“Come here,” Jason says. “Get in me.”
Bruce doesn't shake as he lines with Jason's familiar body. When the head of
his cock parts the tightness of Jason's flesh, Jason throws his head back,
mewling.
“Ah, ah, fuck yeah...” The syllable draws out while Bruce carefully slides in,
and in, bracing himself with his arms on each side of Jason's head, and watches
as each moment – each inch – opens Jason's mouth further, until he's grinning,
breathless, his cheeks brick-mottled and his eyes sparkling. “You feel so-
- god, you feel so good,” he pants, wriggling in a way that make Bruce's
muscles clench to avoid shoving in.
Petting his hair makes him squirm, and squirming makes him whimper for Bruce to
move. “Fuck, fuck, do something, just—use me, please, Bruce.”
As Bruce gives him what he wants, he twists to wrap his legs around Bruce,
mashing his face in the crook of Bruce's neck, licking and sucking, his moans
vibrating against Bruce's skin. Bruce doesn't feel when Jason pierces the skin,
lost in the sensation of their bodies fitting together like they were meant for
it.
He fucks into Jason with Jason's mouth attached to his throat, rocking with the
suction, mumbling love and promises while Jason drinks.
When he comes, he spills into Jason with a groan; Jason's mouth gapes wide over
bloodied fangs in the caricature of a grin, and his eyes roll back, showing the
milky white under the lids. Skimming against Jason's throat, Bruce's thumb
picks up the vibration of a scream inaudible to human ears.
*
The pipe smoke reflects on Jim's glasses, the murky puffs made visible by the
glare of the Batsignal. Hunched in his overcoat, a folder under his arm,
Commissioner Gordon is looking over a city he has at least as much right to
protect than the vigilante he's waiting for.
“Jim.”
Batman slinks down the rooftop's railguard, standing out from the shadows. Jim
doesn't jump, and he doesn't make the semi-usual comment on Batman appearing
out of the dark, when they have time for friendliness, for amicable exchanges
and silences.
Riffling through his mental files – no escape from Arkham, serial murderer or
stirring from known organizations – Batman readies himself for urgency.
It doesn't come. Instead, Jim levels him with a thoughtful gaze.
“I need to talk to you.” His voice isn't louder than a normal conversation, his
words getting lost some short feet beyond the limits of the rooftop, but it
seems to resound as a roar in Batman's mind. Inwards, he steels himself. This
conversation was going to take place one day or another.
Jim taps the stem of his pipe against his lip, like he always does when he's
contemplating something unpleasant or spare time in a negotiation.
“It's about bodies,” Jim finally says. “Two of them.”
Something inside Bruce starts to scream. Batman waits, all impassible
attention.
Holding out the manila folder toward Batman, Jim continues. “We found them four
days ago. Both in the same place, the boiling room of an abandoned apartment
building down the East Side.”
“Why pass the case to me now?” Bruce has reached for the folder, and flipped it
open. Pieces of evidence and typed documents are held together by a paper clip,
photos of the scene where the bodies were found, autopsy reports and various
notes. Both bodies unidentified, one male, one female.
None of which has anything to do with the accidents.
“They were bled dry,” Jim says. He's not accusing in the least. But he doesn't
take his eyes off Batman.
Neatly, Batman dislodges one of the pictures of the bodies, and studies it. The
man's collarbone are dotted in burn marks.
“These don't look like cigarettes,” he says.
Jim nods, hands digging in the pockets of his coat. “Autopsy showed they were
tortured. Seventy hours straight each. I'll let you read the reports for the
thorough rundown.”
“Seventy hours. Any reason I'm only hearing about it now?” He can't quite keep
the anger out of his voice. Unlike almost every other time, this time it's
aimed at Jim, too.
“We think they're illegals.” Jim's tone says enough how much the mayor's policy
of out of sight, out of mind pains and infuriates him. There's also, in the
glimmer behind Jim's glasses, something that might be an apology, one that
reaches deeper than the case he just handed Batman.
Bruce Wayne donated to the man's campaign. That he was at the time the better
branch of the alternative only makes the reality of his politics more bitter.
“I'll look into it.”
Now would be the time to vanish once more into the shadows, but Bruce lingers a
second.
“Why don't you bring the boy, one of these times.” Jim's – Comissioner Gordon's
– inflexion is deceptively calm, and despite the grammar of the sentence it's
not a question. Jim Gordon attended the funeral of Bruce Wayne's adopted son,
once.
Wordlessly, Batman melts back into the night as if he'd never emerged from it,
the GCPD folder secure in his hand.
*
Sunday mornings stretch out like the rays of sunlight lenghtening from the
windows of Wayne Manor, blank and implacable.
There are still golf matches to be settled with similarly dilettante
millionaires, or industrialists Bruce is trying to seduce to Gotham, or
politicians, attorneys into the ear of whom Bruce Wayne may drop a word. There
are always golf matches, or tennis, and there are always more dilettante
millionaires, industrialists, and politicians, as interchangeable in their
self-confidence, in the obscene blandness of their greed-is-good credo, as
Bruce Wayne himself.
Among these people, Bruce can feel himself dissipate, slowly; drop by drop, his
soul dripping away from him, diluting into a puddle of belly-churning
mediocrity. Their eyes, their jokes, their preoccupations are meaningless,
floating and fizzling away like the bubbles in their drink – champagne for
them, Shirley Temples for Bruce Wayne.
In their midst Bruce Wayne becomes as perfectly hollow as Jason's sneer judged
the others.
He's drowning in the sea of these people that look like him, and act like Bruce
Wayne would act, if he were less ditzy and more competent. Their laughters toll
around him in an echo of the Joker's.
Bruce can feel sweat gathering on his brow, his eyes jumping haphazardly from
one person in the crowd to another, catching a furtive movement, a hand
slipping a cigarette out of a pocket, a toss of the head, looking for Jason in
every corner.
Jason is at the Manor, sleeping away the daylight hours.
Jason is dead, to all these people Bruce Wayne is supposed to make business
with, dead, a corpse in the best coffin Wayne grief could buy, resting buried
in a cemetery. Jason is dead, to all these laughing, talking, walking zombies,
rows of uniform teeth in their uniformly white faces, rows of puppets.
Jason is dead, sometimes it's the excuse Bruce can seize to escape from his
obligations. Then the attendants and maybe the tabloids nod gravely and paint
him as a dignified soul in mourning, struck again by unfair tragedy.
Meanwhile Bruce is moping in the Manor, dragging his heavy body from one room
to another, following the hours with the course of the sun on the wooden floors
and Persian carpets.
Sundown finds Bruce staring at the horizon, forehead braced on the hand he's
put on the window.
His other hand – he realizes when he pulls away from the glass – is clasping at
the curtain. It's by no means exceptional that he realizes then the sleeve of
the clothes he's worn all day is that of his dressing gown, and the next few
minutes, the last ones before Jason is awake again, are swallowed by a frantic
rush of activity, to make himself look presentable before Jason and he head out
into the night.
The week, at least, provides Bruce with some activity between nights. The daze
is lesser than on Sundays.
When Bruce comes down for breakfast on Monday morning, Alfred's gaze lands,
purposeful, on the bite marks Bruce Wayne's dressing gown doesn't begin to
hide. But he doesn't mention them, and elusive, ironic comments are something
Bruce knows how to ignore.
*
With time, accidents grow scarce, trickling down to a slow rhythm that (if
Bruce were to look back, to admit that some of his interventions must have
landed thugs into an hospital, that he couldn't get all the hostages safe in
time – if he looked into the death that accompanied him, on top of the one that
chased him) is acceptable.
Jason is getting better – at control, at Robin, roughly speaking at everything.
(When it happens, the thug dies in the ambulance; never in Jason's hands. That
makes it better, too. Jason doesn't have to know. Bruce would rather not study
the question of whether vampires have nightmares.)
Jason has never been better. (Things have never been better.)
And yet the fear twisting his throat is real. Whisper on the street is that the
Joker's back.
Batman and Robin were together when they got the info; Robin didn't miss a cue,
got into the henchman's face and threatened until the man was crying, while
Batman was frozen, his fist clenched in the crook's collar.
“You're not worried about me, are you, Batman?” Robin inquired, flipping over a
gargoyle, as they made their way back to the Batmobile.
Batman had cut patrol short. His gauntlets were filling with sweat, every
spring Robin made mirrored by a painful flinch of his heart. He needed-- he
needed to think. He needed peace.
“We're not talking about this,” Batman replied, curtly, and plunged down to the
Batmobile.
“Seriously, Bruce, don't sweat it,” Jason adds, later that night, back in the
Cave.
“I--” Bruce's words died in his chest.
“Look at me,” Jason said; pushing Bruce's face with his hand until Bruce had no
other choice but look at him. “Stop beating yourself over it. We'll deal with
him, okay?”
Jason sounded so certain. Bruce closed his eyes and leaned in a kiss. His hands
slipped under Jason's shirt, roaming, and when Jason nipped his lips he leaned
deeper into it. Tried to silence the disquiet in his heart, and drowned the
impulse to hide Jason away in the sweet tang of Jason's mouth.
The world is on fire when they catch up with the Joker.
The scorching fumes swelling from the vats of bubbling, opalescent chemicals
burn at Bruce's throat, his breather destroyed by the ricochet of a bullet.
Shooting pain in his thigh, his glove comes away with blood when his hand
presses against it.
“But— I killed you!”
The conflagration of a machine exploding almost drowns the Joker's cry. An acid
coughing fit rips Batman's lungs, which he swallows with a hand before his
mouth. His knees hit the metal walkway in a noise that he can't hear over the
surrounding ruckus, vibration reverberating into his bones.
Clutching at the railway, he peers helplessly into the fumes, down at the
walkway Joker and Robin are face to face. (Hostages rescued, Robin already
rescued them while Bruce – no, Batman, had to be, went after Joker.)
Robin came back. (Batman didn't gave him orders not to. Robin would've returned
anyway.)
And he's advancing on Joker, threatening. (Not the little pixie of a child
Batman stole from Crime Alley. Batman has to blink away the superimposition,
suddenly aware of Robin's relative size compared to Joker. Joker's not short,
and Robin's shoulders are rounded in menace, the fumes and lightheadedness
obscuring Batman's vision, and above all Robin's twice as big. Like the chassis
of a powerful motorcycle. And he'll never get any bigger or taller, but he--
) he's making the Joker stumble back.
“I killed you!” Joker screams.
The panic in his tone would be like ambrosia to both Batman and Bruce, who've
been dreaming nothing else since his tears cooled on Jason's broken corpse. It
sings of vengeance, of justice purer and more final than Batman can carry out,
than Bruce lets himself contemplate. It's righteous.
But it's Jason down there, Jason again, facing his murderer, Jason-- Jason who
saved himself from a life of crime, whose first thought is always to the people
crushed by the criminals they stop, Jason who doesn't deserve to have his hands
sullied by blood.
Robin throws his shoulders back, and laughs. Echoes of it bounce to Batman's
ears. “Yeah? I'm feelin' fine.”
He takes another pixie-booted step toward the Joker (how did it escape Bruce to
redesign the costume, how did he not do this – bare, unprotected skin – he can
still see the puzzle of torn flesh and ripped skin Jason's legs had been) and
Joker, as if pushed away by some magnetic reaction, takes another one back.
“Maybe that crowbar came from a joke shop.”
Robin's grinning. It's in his stance and his voice.
The Prince Clown of Crime isn't.
“It's not funny,” Joker says.
“I dunno. I think that shit's hilarious. But you know me, I've always been more
the puns type, not so much the slapstick.” Robin pauses, pensively taps his
chin. “'Cept for the falling. There's just something about a guy falling down,
cracks me up every time.”
Robin, Batman tries to call, but he can't push the word out. His throat is on
fire, and he moves as sluggishly as if his body had been replaced with the
viscous liquid down there, vision swimming.
“Say,” Jason's voice calls, bright and menacing, “you have a banana peel?”
Batman's grip on the rail slips. His hand falls on his knees, useless.
“Batman doesn't kill,” Joker says. His voice is the twin to that of the
negotiator the GCPD sent to try and talk him into releasing the hostages.
“Yeah.” Robin's satisfaction pierces Batman to the soul. “He doesn't.”
He doesn't know if the shudder that just blurred the Joker's shape is the
Joker's or his own.
“Batman doesn't kill!”
Another explosion fills the plant, blowing a puff of heat in Batman's face,
sickly heady, but not brimstone. The blaze dwarfs Joker's protestations. In the
chaos he's unleashed, he's not a force of chaos, but a reedy man whose
vociferations don't matter.
Joker starts running, away from Robin (futile, Jason is faster than a human),
toward the break in the walkway – the gap is nine feet long, the walkway hangs
over vast vats of boiling chemicals, Batman's muscles won't obey him, his legs
can't carry him.
Jason whips out a batarang, and faster than Batman's eye can follow, Joker's
fallen on the metal walkway with a clang and a shout, his legs tied together.
There are over six feet to spare between him and the gap.
Then he walks to the prone figure, and stands over the struggling form.
“Batman doesn't kill. Know why I didn't? You never killed Batman, I'm clearly
not dead, but you still don't get it, do you, shitbrain? You can't hurt us.”
*
The Cave is empty when they return after taking the Joker back to Arkham,
Alfred since long gone to bed. It's become a ritual, sometime since Jason
became Robin, that they take care of each other's wounds. Jason would only call
Alfred down for something requiring more than incidental surgery.
When Jason's finished sewing up the gash on Bruce's thigh, Bruce lets his hand
run down Jason's back, grabbing Jason's ass.
Jason arches an eyebrow at him, and glances meaningfully at Bruce's thigh. “You
up for that?”
Wordlessly, Bruce gives a squeeze to Jason's buttock, and sneaks his hand lower
and in, until his fingertips are brushing against the place that makes Jason's
breath hitch, and his hips cant subtly. “Yeah, okay,” Jason agrees, voice a
little breathless though he doesn't need to breathe.
They discard Jason's shorts, and push down Bruce's boxers. Bruce is only half-
hard, but that changes when he sees Jason's cock filling, and he pulls Jason
over him, so Jason is straddling his thighs.
His thumbs dipping in the crooks of Jason's hipbones, Bruce watches as Jason
reaches for the lube, and opens himself up, brow furrowed in concentration.
When he removes his fingers, Bruce lowers him onto his cock, in one long,
smooth slide that makes Jason's neck arch up. Bruce catches his breath,
drinking in the sight of Jason transfixed with pleasure. His hands are curled
on Bruce's stomach, but he doesn't push or scrabble for friction, staying
entirely still, except for the shivers over his skin.
“Damn...” he breathes.
The tightness encasing Bruce quivers, an invitation to move. Tightening his
grip on Jason's hips, he coaxes them into a slow, rotating movement.
“Fuck, fuck, Bruce...” Jason calls-- pleads. “Oh god, you're--”
“Don't move,” Bruce tells him. It's hardly necessary; Jason likes it better
when he can feel Bruce using him. He likes being on his knees, and pressed
against a gritty wall with the brick snagging against fabric, and the sensation
of being filled, and sometimes, played with. It gives him something to push
back against, and tempt. This would never be a position he'd choose.
But the sensation of being moved—manhandled, almost, that throws him off enough
that he's panting. He lowers his head, cheeks flushed brick.
Bruce makes him ride him, leaning up so he can lick the sweat off Jason's
chest, feel the clench of Jason's muscles around him as his angle change. The
sensation of Jason's hardened cock rocking against his abs with every move they
make spurs him on, racking his teeth on Jason's chest.
Jason bucks. Settling him with one hand, Bruce slips his right hand back
behind, cupping down Jason's ass, and in, until his fingers nudge at his own
cock pumping in and out of Jay, and the swollen ring of muscle holding him.
Jason was generous with the lube; it's smeared there. With the next thrust,
Bruce crooks two fingers inside him.
Writhing, Jason gasps. Between Bruce and him, his cock gives a spasm.
“God,” he moans.
His eyes are glazed over, his lips heavy with lust and parted. Ivory gleams
wetly in the shadows beyond.
Bruce rolls them over, the bed barely large enough for it, Jason's shoulder
twitching over nothing, and burrows himself deeper. Jason's legs scrabble to
wrap around him.
“Jay,” Bruce breathes.
Eyes crinkled shut, breath stuck in his throat, Jay doesn't answer. Only the
corner of his lips shivers, into the hint of a smile.
Carefully, without stopping his driving into him, Bruce removes his hand,
catching a whimper from Jason. He wraps his fingers around Jason's cock, and
works him, relentlessly pounding – feeling the way the interval between Jason's
flexing becomes shorter and shorter, timed as Bruce's hips snap back into him–
until Jason comes. The sudden clenching of Jason's muscles around his cock –
Jason's teeth sinking into his shoulder – pull the orgasm out of him.
In the aftershocks of orgasm, as they lay together, casually stroking the
places they'd like to revisit, Bruce's heartbeat pounds loud enough to drown
the last soft panting leaving Jason's lips.
*
Last time the League tried to request Batman's presence, his reply was frankly
annoyed. “What part of part-time member don't you understand?”
Don't call me; I'll call you.
Ordinarily, the League doesn't begrudge Batman his independence. Despite what
he thinks, they are perfectly aware that he's part-time. They call him only
when they need him (to be fair, they managed just fine without him every time
they thought they wouldn't), and they have divergences in mood that means it's
best if they don't work together too often. And Gotham needs all the attention
it can get.
But it's been a long time now since Batman didn't not turn them down. Since
Jason's death. Clark's been worried – about his friend, about the situation,
about a great many things. He's tried talking Diana into this, on the grounds
that she knows Bruce as well as he does so there's no breach of secrecy, and
that with the exception of Dr Fate, she'd be in the best position to see the
breaches to the laws of nature and balance Bruce committed. Instead, she
refused to take sides.
“I was molded from clay, Clark, and instilled the breath of life by my sole
mother,” she told him, calm-eyed. “Does that fit into the paradigm of natural
order as you would have it?”
Diana was an Amazon. Magic and Greek mythology, Clark was forcibly reminded.
“It isn't the same,” he protested. “This is death we're talking about. Even
Orpheus didn't get to rescue Eurydice!”
She hummed in agreement. “But Hades got to keep his Persephone half the year as
his queen.”
“Persephone wasn't dead,” Clark pointed out.
She weighted him with a look he found almost pitying. “Neither is Jason. And
until something happens to prove he's no better than the monsters of myth my
sisters slay, I won't interfere.”
So now Clark is flying to Gotham, with enough anxiety for two. He doesn't
linger over the city, which sounds no better and no worse than it always does,
and heads for the Manor.
He calls Bruce to let him know he's coming, knowing how unpleasant Bruce
becomes when his territory and his privacy are infringed upon without
forewarning. If they are to have a talk, better to put all the chances on his
side.
“In the Cave,” Batman tells him.
Clark rushes into the tunnel leading to the Batcave, and settles in his usual
place, behind the seat facing the computer.
Jason is sitting on the edge of the computer close to the chair and waves a
hello; Bruce swivels round to face Clark, his fingers into a steeple.
Besides Clark's, there's no heartbeat in the Cave.
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