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He didn’t realize how far it had gone. Jason was, after all, still a boy. A boy with guns and rage and no memories of when it had been any different. Jason had memories, just no kind of life to measure them against.
Bruce would swear to this truth. If there is sin in knowing better, he is well acquainted with sin. The way it’s easy to believe he’s a good guy if he’s always been a good guy, or maybe never really. He can’t really know, in times like these, what good means.
Good means a psychopathic killer’s laughter.
Good means the red blood pouring from the neck of a boy who loves him and knows him better than anyone.
Good means guns and fire and explosions to shake the world.
He’s very familiar with good. It usually feels like the air turning to stone. It feels like laughter.
There’s only satisfaction in evil. There’s a constant. The pleasure of denial. Uselessness of moments like these.
All the wrong in the world in one boy’s name.
Any love he was once capable of escaping in one boy’s name.
Jason.
The world freezes.
He thinks of himself as a good noble person. A hero. A man. Someone deserving. A heart could not be this wrong. The pleasure of Jason’s distraction blinded him. Being so close to the wrong and yet still having the privilege to come back again. The release of going overboard; the release of not going overboard.
Jason was unreachable, untouchable, so Bruce tied him up and took him home and built a fortress of want all about him, through him, until he owned his name, owned his only home, made the other’s life his own and tore it down to pieces.
Bruce will never know what Jason was before him. Jason will be nothing when he is through with him. Jason will end with him. Never be nothing more than all the things he’s taken from him, all the gaps he’s closed in his life. Jason will be gone the moment he sees him.
Bruce thinks this is all because he refuses to give in to the one thing he wants most. He thinks there is such a thing as want. This lie is his life.
His biggest fear is that it is all nothing, that touching him will one day mean nothing but the wrongness, the foolishness, the empty hole feeling that he sees behind every light. They will have both risked it all for a mirage.
Or he will wake up one day and it will be all, everything, and the clarity of that moment will split him in two, load too much on either side, finally weigh them down to the ground to the thing they’ve been running from always.
He’s not afraid of someone else’s hand. He’s only afraid of his own. He’s afraid of finality, of no going back.
Like the day desire dawned on him in the form of a daydream. The way he wanted to place his lips on Jason’s body and slowly, slowly move slowly over his skin in the roaring silence of a vacuum of thought and the moment when their eyes started to meet with an unreadable expression Bruce would spend the rest of his life trying to fill up with half-uttered words and shuddering breaths and smiles when no one’s looking, when he can’t think of a single other thing, when he needs quiet sense and a secret.
He could never touch him.
It could never happen.
He’s knows this. He knew this. He is lying.
He turns on the grainy video again. He remembers to forget the reality of him long enough to watch. Instead of his pale breathing skin reflecting light like copper, there is image, there is erasure.
He watches Jason stab himself with his middle finger, again, again. Watches the muscles on his arm hold up his knees, his legs like folded solid plastic things, unbreakable. Only his voice breaking with his moans, his greasy hair sticking to his temples slicked black and his face creasing when he decides to roll to his side to pull on himself and erratically jab his finger and hold his knees up and jerk his whole body on the bed, the bed Bruce lets him sleep on, the house he surrounds him with, his ever vigilant eyes.
Jason has a picture in his hand. Of Bruce, eyes closed under the shower, half-hard and pale and brown and hulking and blank except for pain.
He can fool himself with how much he means to Jason and all the love he can only imagine.
They only come together in the rain.
They can no longer speak, can no longer fight without hurting each other. They can’t keep going so deep they’ll never come back. But they can’t stop, can’t even move anymore.
He is struck by Jason. Bruce is still at an end he reached long ago, back when broken collarbones and adamant stares seemed to mean the difference.
Now, everything’s different. But he can’t stop it from meaning what it means.
He can’t stop reacting to everything Jason is. The way he still reacts to Harvey, the way they all call him predictable.
So they’ll never stop tempting him, provoking the same reaction, the hard constant unrelenting actions.
It rains in Gotham.
Cold, freezing rains that whip around skyscrapers and cut flesh numb. Grey rains that last two weeks, that make the concrete soggy and slick, that become inevitable only after the third day.
Drizzling morning rains that tap on windows and keep the city sleeping. Quiet, still rains that fall softly frozen, crisping the ground. Icy rains that start at dusk, making mirrors on the pavement for the traffic lights. Hot summer rains to bring out the stink and sweat, to evaporate and hand in the air like living breath.
Bruce finds Jason in the rain. The feel of his cold clammy ass soaked in rain and sweat pale white, exposed in an alleyway. He licks him warm from the inside out.
His face feels like a furnace, red and hot steamed, his tongue and teeth working, pressing and holding back. He sucks at the red hanging skin rubbed sensitive by his rough chin, at the cold soft hair on his cheeks silver-looking in the light, kisses at the center of him, breathes out and presses in with his tongue, presses and holds him open and pushes his back down further when he jerks and tries to straighten, he keeps him down and open, the rain falling over his back.
Bruce finds him in the frozen rain.
Crime Alley is virginal white and still and silent. It makes him think of bones. When he sees the skulking figure colored grey and silver blue his mouth waters and his lips crack. There’s nothing else there until his mouth is wrapped around Jason’s white slick hardness, harder than ice. He keens from the cold, so loud in the snow quiet.
Bruce doesn’t wonder about the pain or the hardness. He knows Jason’s impossible hardness for him; he wouldn’t ask for it otherwise.
Soon, Jason’s hands are wrapped around his head grabbing and holding closer until all he can feel is the wet heat and their bodies melting only to freeze again in the night.
Bruce awakes and wonders about the time. Alfred’s not there to wake him and the room is too dark for day. This was back when Alfred trusted Bruce enough to have him alone with one of them. But he knows the night instinctively now, and he can’t feel it there. He hears the rain falling on the glass softly and the soft breathing of the boy next to him.
An hour passes before he thinks of anything else besides Jason, awake, afraid to be awake.
It takes another ten minutes for his hand to cross the threshold to the other side of the bed. Jason reaches for him back without even seeming to acknowledge him. Jason’s body falls over him and his hands wrap around him with the same promise they always have, that this body will never say no, that all is his and must be taken, that the need he finds will match his own.
Without a word he moves their bodies together, turning Jason around in his arms, holding him there with his right arm until his left arm is ready with his cock, and then just going. Jason’s eyes are still half open and he still moves like he’s dreaming this, wanting to be face down, his hands clawing at the sheets and he pushes back towards Bruce who is still pressing all the way in, stretching, until his stomach feels Jason’s spine.
The rain is a reason to do just what he wants, at least for an hour, at least for two, and nothing else has to exist except this bed. He remembers the feel of Jason’s back, bending down to kiss his shoulderblade, hug his chest, he remembers the underside of Jason’s thighs, wet from the back of his knees, he remembers the softness of Jason’s back on his belly as he ground his hips down, down, down, until he had to come just to find his way back up.
He remembers the blades of the freezing rain.
The red glow of the stoplights on empty streets and the red glow of Jason’s mask. Everything has the quality of black ice, freezing, as if he were going to slide right out of the world.
He knows now there is no holding onto Jason. He knows they would kill each other before acknowledging this again. He knows no matter what they do, it will end this way, despite their tears, despite even their sense of logic, of reason, of intention.
Sometimes you can never have what you have. Sometimes it is given to you anyways. Sometimes you are left along to make sense of it, but maybe that sense will never ever come.
Sometimes he watches Jason touch himself in the dark and he can hear the questions, can hear the bottomless wondering why he was given all that he’d ever wanted just to never ever really have it again, despite all he’d ever done just to get close. Hell’s own personal prescription for them both.
Bruce knows those questions too because they’re all that’s left to him of Jason. Now Jason reminds him of endings, of the worst thing that could happen at any time, of warnings.
He can think of him when he’s alone, only when he’s alone, and so what does that mean?
What frozen piece of Jason is he preserving now? What pieces are he keeping just for himself, separate from the boy or all other boys, preserved in memory?
What is he saving that will end up destroying them this time because it cannot be reconciled, it can never ever, actually be saved?
What do they want that is so wrong, so mistaken, that even the thought of it, even the dream, the idea they’ve broken and killed just as much as they can just to keep even a shade of, is still too much to hold on to?
Why can they never believe in enough wrong to end this?
Age 12 to 15. Then 16, then 18. The way they grow. This is real.
They make him relive the pain of growing up worse the second time, the third. He’s still there, in that place where he runs up against the cold, unforgiving wall of time. Talking about it means nothing. It’s in every second, every broken promise, every disillusionment and expectation and want. The way the rain falls in a windy sky. Old clothes. A lonely stoplight. A silent look across a dining table. Reading a book in a room with someone else, not acknowledging they’re there. Keeping silent when you have a question to ask. Weariness. Grimacing at the floor because of something that will never happen. The smile that stays after he’s left the room. Until he feels like a fool and closes his eyes, turns to a screen.
All the things he does because he can’t do what he wants to. He knows he should stop. Should just give this away to them as his time has passed. They are so much better than he. They can succeed where he has not, without his tortuous thoughts, if he does not give his thoughts to them.
It’s too late though. They already see him much clearer than he’d ever thought.
He cannot choose between love and morality. Desire and responsibility. The first time they kissed. Bruce turned away. Responsibility.
Jason’s eyes shone. The anger in his expressions. Always open, now angry. Defensive. The idea of tears in his glance, and Bruce thought manipulations and Bruce felt like dirt and Bruce felt clean.
The first time Bruce felt his teeth weaken against Jason’s hollow bones, he’d turned his head away. Responsibility.
Games! Jason said.
His eyes looked dangerous, with something to prove. The tears could catch fire, the first time Bruce touched him in the suit. The masks hid it all. The mask absolved him without a word. He knew he was in trouble. Bruce knew all kinds of people. Every kind. But no kind like him. He was made of many parts, but none of it made sense. He was beyond him. Bruce could take a lifetime to figure him out.
The same part of Bruce that craves him above all else, that would promise to keep him safe even above the mission, is the same part of Jason that could be taken in to stay, to believe. He knows this. They can’t live on nostalgia, novelty. They trust each other for three seconds when they’re apart. They trust every second they’re alone together. They never learn if this is a lie. But the possibility is enough.
So there’s surveillance.
Rimming in the car. Making out in car, Jason taking his shorts down. Jason’s knees on the seat, the console balancing, shaking up to meet Bruce’s mouth. Knees wavering. Holding onto everything; needing something more to hold onto; wanting to hold on with his mouth; wanting to communicate when muffled breaths are all he can make.
Kissing in the manor, between the rational and the irrational, the trapped and the free. There is just enough escaped, just enough there.
Because of memory, he can invent himself happy. Because he is love. Because he will never have him. Because he is in love. Because Bruce cannot equal being beside him, holding his eyes, sitting down across the room to keep from touching him. Keep looking at Jason for what he needs, and maybe Jason needs that too, or else he never needed anything Bruce could or should give him.