FIC: Iconoclast
Fic!!!!!!! Fic!!!!!!!
I guess my Red Hood is a kinder, gentler, more Jason-y kind of guy. I still think this characterization can work. It depends on how much you take his attitude at face value, I guess. Oh, and a big Thanks! to monkeycrackmary for supplying comics fodder and for petronelle for lovely Robinsex inspiration and rubynye for encouragement. I hope this one’s a little bit better than my last few.
And now, I post and go out for drinks.
Iconoclast
by eggblue
Date: July 16, 2005
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Bruce Wayne/Jason Todd (Batman/Red Hood) (I am so OTP)
Summary: Some memories must be understood.
Disclaimer: DC owns, so don’t sue.
*
I knew I’d find him here. Crime Alley. Where we first met.
It’s raining tonight, like on the first night. It always seems to rain here. Tonight’s the anniversary of their death. I grew up here. We all knew about that day. You always look for things to explain. They can’t really mind if I blame them. They’re dead. Some of us have to live here.
So he came back here. The big guy knows how to find me when he wants to. I just stand here, watching, waiting. I don’t know why… I suddenly remember the first time I saw him at my grave. It was… Well, I don’t like to think about it. There are things about him I don’t want to understand, I can’t really think about too much. I don’t always want to know what he means.
The first time he’d looked at me, he’d chased me home. He was already far gone then. I was naïve. I just wanted everything he had to give. I couldn’t say no. I never could.
He’d caught me. He’d tied me to a chair, bound and gagged me. Made me afraid of him. I was never afraid before. I was like him - only afraid of fear.
So I yelled then. I cried. I tried to show him he shouldn’t keep me. He didn’t need me. But I was wrong. I guess he did.
He just stared with those blank white lenses. He got closer, stared harder. It felt like some big black wolf staring me down, sniffing my scent, licking the salt from my skin.
I just went still. Tried to breathe. Didn’t dare to blink. I felt his breath on my ear and I just gave up. I couldn’t know what to think anymore. Everything he was, was beyond anything I’d known. But familiar too. I couldn’t tell the difference between what I could have and what I wanted. I’d never been given the choice before. He gave that to me. I guess I still hate him for that.
Then things got really strange. He stalked off into the darkness and some old guy with an accent called me “Dick” and walked out of a doorway in the sky. That’s when I got really scared. This guy had help. This guy had people who went along with what he did. I was just some kid nobody knew anymore. What chance did I have?
I wanted to have that kind of power. Now, I just want him to know I’m alive. He thinks I’m still dead. He thinks I’m not real. Maybe a part of me wants to be real like that.
I still live here, in Crime Alley. I wait for Bruce to see me. I know he’s aware. But I can be patient. I’d waited my whole life for him. Then, after, I waited for him some more. He never, ever, comes back for me. Not once. Even when he showed up in the Middle East, back… before… it was for a case, not for me. But you learn what to expect from the guy. And what you’re never gonna get.
I think Bruce likes me because I don’t ask any more from him than he can give me. I know better than that. Bruce hasn’t really been the giving type for a long time. Since some time with Dick, I imagine. I used to think that version of Bruce was all in Dick’s head. But then I insulted Dick once and saw something like that version in Bruce’s eyes. He never looks like that for me.
I’m not some lightweight. I’m not some psycho killer. I’m more Gotham than Gotham knows. They’re used to the corrupt, the lost causes, the crazies, the martyrs. I’m something new. I’m something reborn in a city that doesn’t believe in rebirth. I’m undead in a place where death is king. I feel like some alien, some higher being, sent back through time to tell everyone what’s up. But no one’s listening. Not even him. And it bores me to tears. It really is like being undead. Something inbetween.
But there are things about me that make him give in. When he finally sees me in the alley, even though the sunglasses, I see it. Bruce is a physical person. For all his thoughts, or maybe because of them, he relies on his body to save him. He trusts it more than anything else. Tense, maybe a little afraid, I grip the brick walls with my fingertips. He always makes me feel like a kid. No one makes me feel like a kid. I hate that. I want to burn it. He rises from his knees, never taking his eyes off me. I know. I can feel it. For a long moment, neither of us move.
I look like I always look. I wear a t-shirt under my jacket and jeans instead of latex. But my knife is still strapped to my back. I carry a gun in my pocket. I know what he says about image. But to me, images are a joke. You are what you are. Some mask isn’t gonna change much. He is Bat. He is always Bat. And he is always Bruce. I see him, I see them both, always together. When I finally move, when I turn my back on him and start walking, it’s his eyes that follow me. And the Bat’s too. Feet follow me, so fast, so quiet.
Sometimes I feel a cord connecting us. Sometimes I feel it so strong I think I can see it. I think I could cut it if I just knew how. I think it’s what other people describe as family, as close relations. I don’t really know about that. I know it hurts sometimes. It calls me back. But maybe he feels it too. Maybe he’s following me because he has to. Because right now, he can’t think of anything else to do in the whole world. I know I can’t. I don’t have anything else. Except this place. Except him. Except my plans.
I lead him to dark rooms with white walls. It’s just one place, where there are many places. I get around. I move. Every corner of this city is mine. I live all over. I find places to sleep. Anything beyond that isn’t needed. I have stashes, holes. Not homes. This place used to belong to someone else. Someone who is sinking headless towards the bottom of Gotham Harbor. I don’t lose sleep over it. Some people have it coming.
He follows me in through the window, effortlessly. I can see his eyes shine when they turn towards the moonlight. The glasses are gone. I throw my jacket on a ratty chair. Home.
He grabs my head in his hands, his huge, rough hands, and pleads. “Listen to me. Listen, Jason.” My name stings when he says it. I don’t like it. “You can’t get away from this free. You will lose. You will be lost. I know it, I know it.” His thumbs stroke the corners of my eyes and I can’t speak. “I don’t want you lost. I don’t want to see where this will end. It will end badly, Jason. You know this.”
I don’t know what to say. Of course it will end badly. Of course nothing can stay the same. That’s nothing new to me. That’s familiar. His stupidity is touching. I turn my head and press my teeth against his palm. He’s the one who needs comforting. He’s the one who needs to understand. He’s the one who has to meet me here, on my terms.
His eyes flash. I think he gets it. He looks down at me from a high place, over the bridge of his nose, across a great distance, and remembers. He never knew what to do with me. That never stopped him before. It doesn’t now. He moves his fingers back through my hair, presses my scalp, tightens his fingers and pulls. His lips roll over my mouth, devour me, and his whole body presses against mine, pushes me over the bare formica counter. I feel his body like a stone weight. Like a hot blood-filled animal. An alive thing. A moving spirit. I think of what no one thinks about. I think about the absence of this. I think about impossible coldness. His life is swallowing me.
Then I feel the knife rubbing my back. My knife. I smile against his mouth, my teeth sharp on his tongue. I feel my body sharp and strong as a blade. He feels it to. He rips my shirt until I’m wearing shreds around the leather holster. He grabs my jeans and pulls. He starts to fall and I let him go. He grabs my hands and places them on his shoulders, warns me with his eyes to keep them there. Of course I want to argue, but I’m hard and waiting. I remember what his mouth feels like. I feel his mouth on me already. It aches. I grip his shoulders as he asks just to keep my hands from shaking like an idiot.
So, out of all of us, he chooses the formerly dead boy-whore with the knife. Of course, they can’t stand him most of the time. The other two. The Original and The Pretender. I guess I get off on that a little. The way I’m different. But they were never afraid of him. Only of losing him, their lives, what they are. Death, abandonment, betrayal. The Pretender can have the clone. Dick can have… just about everyone. That’s them. Bruce and I’ve got scars. All over my arms like lightning bruises. All over his body like a relief map. In the end, we’ll just have each other.
Everyone thinks it’s wrong. I was dead. I died. He had to live with it. We know. We know. Maybe Bruce wanted to keep me. Keep me safe or keep me by his side, or impossibly, both. I think about the joke that safety is. I take off the holster. I stick the blade deep into the wall.
Bruce’s eyes narrow. He’s curious about people like me. He’s spent years trying to figure it out. What it meant to be someone with choices. He’s obsessed with choices. Always thinking. I know he has choices to make. I know what he thinks deep down. He has choices. He just denies them. I have to take him to them, show him around, lead him where he wants to go. To the street. To the dark. To me.
I move closer. Stalking. I get tired having to convince him of what he already knows. I don’t like it when he denies me what I am. Everything around him gets put onto me. He’s the one that tied me to a chair to make me stay. He wanted me enough. Then he wanted more. So did I. Real bad. It got out of control. But we’re always best when everything’s against us. We’re used to fighting. We’re used to pushing.
I grab at him and push because I want to be on the ground. I like solid things. There’s a mattress in the corner and I half-drag him there. I pull his pants off but I leave his shirts so I have something to grab onto when I ride him. He’s not fighting me, not trying to take the lead. I just go.
Until I’m on him. He pulls my ankle next to his head and I let him shove up into me, his shoulders and feet on the bed. I feel his breath on my leg and it’s hot and heavy and harsh. My other leg’s curled underneath him and I know he’s strong and huge but so am I now but I still react like a little boy or something when he reaches his fingers behind me and rubs at the place where we meet, the skin that can’t get enough touch, and his fingers are hard and dry, like I like it, like scratching an itch that never stops itching. I hear his shirt tear when I moan and shake and start moving faster.
Suddenly it’s all familiar again. I might as well be twelve years old and shooting come onto the headboard and watching Bruce’s face all shining eyes and teeth the way he never ever looks except for me. The way he’s always wanted to look for Dick but can’t. The way he probably doesn’t allow himself to dream about anymore.
I might as well be twelve and hovering over Bruce with his cock balls-deep in me and his body bent in half until his head is blood-red and sunk deep into the pillow and his toes grip the headboard right above my head. And his mouth completely surrounding my sex, sucking my cock bobbing against the roof of his mouth, sucking my balls and rolling them on his tongue, squeezing both tight between his lips and suctioning every drop down his throat until it feels like I’m coming blood. And I’m rocking between his mouth, his face, and his cock so big and growing harder I think it’s going to burst out my belly button if it doesn’t split my ass half up my back. And I don’t know which feels better, we’re so tight and perfect together, so I just keep rocking and grip the headboard between his gripping feet and wrap my knees around his waist and point my toes and squeeze myself even tighter and harder around him. And pant and squeeze and rock until his eyes go so wide and white and rock back up into his head and his hips lift me so far off the ground I might as well be flying. And he comes.
This time I don’t come until he bites my leg and doesn’t let go. I jerk my leg and my whole body jerks and my hips jerk even faster and I come all over the wall and still can’t stop moving. My leg is still caught in his teeth and the pain starts to break through the raw-rubbed pleasure and my nerves are all over the place and I’m moving and moving and shaking and grabbing at him and I groan real long and low until he lets go.
I ask him how he wants it and he just says, “Skin,” and I know what he means. He means mindlessness, sightlessness, ignorance - he means just us. He means my hands and knees on the floor, his body covering mine head to knee, his mouth at my ear. He means shoving, and shoving, and shoving, and rasping in my ear… vows.
I don’t let him this time. I don’t let him make vows to me again, I don’t let him apologize. I just let him say my name. He says it like it huts him. He says it with pain. I shove back hard and make him say it again. Again. Jason, Jason, he says. Jasonjasonjason…
His sweat pours down on me and I feel the hard flesh of his scars rub all over my back. He rocks faster, lifting me up and forward, and my hands slide down the mattress. I know he comes when he bites the back of my neck. He bites me, shoots again. Bites me, shoots again. Bites me, shoots. Bites me, shoots. It’s just that slow. It’s just that slow. I stop breathing. I’m not breathing, I’m just listening to him breathe, I feel it on my back. Then he takes his rough fingertips and touches raw bruises forming there, so soft, so raw. A long line down my spine. He’s whispering but I can’t hear him, I just feel his fingers, his eyes, his whispers, and I come with a cry. We don’t want to remember. But we do. It’s inevitable.
Which is why he dresses and leaves in silence. Which is why I pace and skulk around til he does. I doubt us. I doubt we were ever something good. But I guess we were. I guess it once made sense to dress in short pants and run with my gargoyle across the city. Growing up I used to dream about a giant demon with monstrous black wings who would come and take me away to the black sky above Gotham and we’d look down on the city and it would be ours. It used to feel like that. It still does sometimes, but now they’ve succeeded in taking it away from us. They’ve defeated us.
We’re still working. This will all be ours again. Really ours this time. For keeps. This time, I’m the one with faith. I remember him, remember what faith can do, and I know I’m right.
The End
I guess my Red Hood is a kinder, gentler, more Jason-y kind of guy. I still think this characterization can work. It depends on how much you take his attitude at face value, I guess. Oh, and a big Thanks! to monkeycrackmary for supplying comics fodder and for petronelle for lovely Robinsex inspiration and rubynye for encouragement. I hope this one’s a little bit better than my last few.
And now, I post and go out for drinks.
Iconoclast
by eggblue
Date: July 16, 2005
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Bruce Wayne/Jason Todd (Batman/Red Hood) (I am so OTP)
Summary: Some memories must be understood.
Disclaimer: DC owns, so don’t sue.
*
I knew I’d find him here. Crime Alley. Where we first met.
It’s raining tonight, like on the first night. It always seems to rain here. Tonight’s the anniversary of their death. I grew up here. We all knew about that day. You always look for things to explain. They can’t really mind if I blame them. They’re dead. Some of us have to live here.
So he came back here. The big guy knows how to find me when he wants to. I just stand here, watching, waiting. I don’t know why… I suddenly remember the first time I saw him at my grave. It was… Well, I don’t like to think about it. There are things about him I don’t want to understand, I can’t really think about too much. I don’t always want to know what he means.
The first time he’d looked at me, he’d chased me home. He was already far gone then. I was naïve. I just wanted everything he had to give. I couldn’t say no. I never could.
He’d caught me. He’d tied me to a chair, bound and gagged me. Made me afraid of him. I was never afraid before. I was like him - only afraid of fear.
So I yelled then. I cried. I tried to show him he shouldn’t keep me. He didn’t need me. But I was wrong. I guess he did.
He just stared with those blank white lenses. He got closer, stared harder. It felt like some big black wolf staring me down, sniffing my scent, licking the salt from my skin.
I just went still. Tried to breathe. Didn’t dare to blink. I felt his breath on my ear and I just gave up. I couldn’t know what to think anymore. Everything he was, was beyond anything I’d known. But familiar too. I couldn’t tell the difference between what I could have and what I wanted. I’d never been given the choice before. He gave that to me. I guess I still hate him for that.
Then things got really strange. He stalked off into the darkness and some old guy with an accent called me “Dick” and walked out of a doorway in the sky. That’s when I got really scared. This guy had help. This guy had people who went along with what he did. I was just some kid nobody knew anymore. What chance did I have?
I wanted to have that kind of power. Now, I just want him to know I’m alive. He thinks I’m still dead. He thinks I’m not real. Maybe a part of me wants to be real like that.
I still live here, in Crime Alley. I wait for Bruce to see me. I know he’s aware. But I can be patient. I’d waited my whole life for him. Then, after, I waited for him some more. He never, ever, comes back for me. Not once. Even when he showed up in the Middle East, back… before… it was for a case, not for me. But you learn what to expect from the guy. And what you’re never gonna get.
I think Bruce likes me because I don’t ask any more from him than he can give me. I know better than that. Bruce hasn’t really been the giving type for a long time. Since some time with Dick, I imagine. I used to think that version of Bruce was all in Dick’s head. But then I insulted Dick once and saw something like that version in Bruce’s eyes. He never looks like that for me.
I’m not some lightweight. I’m not some psycho killer. I’m more Gotham than Gotham knows. They’re used to the corrupt, the lost causes, the crazies, the martyrs. I’m something new. I’m something reborn in a city that doesn’t believe in rebirth. I’m undead in a place where death is king. I feel like some alien, some higher being, sent back through time to tell everyone what’s up. But no one’s listening. Not even him. And it bores me to tears. It really is like being undead. Something inbetween.
But there are things about me that make him give in. When he finally sees me in the alley, even though the sunglasses, I see it. Bruce is a physical person. For all his thoughts, or maybe because of them, he relies on his body to save him. He trusts it more than anything else. Tense, maybe a little afraid, I grip the brick walls with my fingertips. He always makes me feel like a kid. No one makes me feel like a kid. I hate that. I want to burn it. He rises from his knees, never taking his eyes off me. I know. I can feel it. For a long moment, neither of us move.
I look like I always look. I wear a t-shirt under my jacket and jeans instead of latex. But my knife is still strapped to my back. I carry a gun in my pocket. I know what he says about image. But to me, images are a joke. You are what you are. Some mask isn’t gonna change much. He is Bat. He is always Bat. And he is always Bruce. I see him, I see them both, always together. When I finally move, when I turn my back on him and start walking, it’s his eyes that follow me. And the Bat’s too. Feet follow me, so fast, so quiet.
Sometimes I feel a cord connecting us. Sometimes I feel it so strong I think I can see it. I think I could cut it if I just knew how. I think it’s what other people describe as family, as close relations. I don’t really know about that. I know it hurts sometimes. It calls me back. But maybe he feels it too. Maybe he’s following me because he has to. Because right now, he can’t think of anything else to do in the whole world. I know I can’t. I don’t have anything else. Except this place. Except him. Except my plans.
I lead him to dark rooms with white walls. It’s just one place, where there are many places. I get around. I move. Every corner of this city is mine. I live all over. I find places to sleep. Anything beyond that isn’t needed. I have stashes, holes. Not homes. This place used to belong to someone else. Someone who is sinking headless towards the bottom of Gotham Harbor. I don’t lose sleep over it. Some people have it coming.
He follows me in through the window, effortlessly. I can see his eyes shine when they turn towards the moonlight. The glasses are gone. I throw my jacket on a ratty chair. Home.
He grabs my head in his hands, his huge, rough hands, and pleads. “Listen to me. Listen, Jason.” My name stings when he says it. I don’t like it. “You can’t get away from this free. You will lose. You will be lost. I know it, I know it.” His thumbs stroke the corners of my eyes and I can’t speak. “I don’t want you lost. I don’t want to see where this will end. It will end badly, Jason. You know this.”
I don’t know what to say. Of course it will end badly. Of course nothing can stay the same. That’s nothing new to me. That’s familiar. His stupidity is touching. I turn my head and press my teeth against his palm. He’s the one who needs comforting. He’s the one who needs to understand. He’s the one who has to meet me here, on my terms.
His eyes flash. I think he gets it. He looks down at me from a high place, over the bridge of his nose, across a great distance, and remembers. He never knew what to do with me. That never stopped him before. It doesn’t now. He moves his fingers back through my hair, presses my scalp, tightens his fingers and pulls. His lips roll over my mouth, devour me, and his whole body presses against mine, pushes me over the bare formica counter. I feel his body like a stone weight. Like a hot blood-filled animal. An alive thing. A moving spirit. I think of what no one thinks about. I think about the absence of this. I think about impossible coldness. His life is swallowing me.
Then I feel the knife rubbing my back. My knife. I smile against his mouth, my teeth sharp on his tongue. I feel my body sharp and strong as a blade. He feels it to. He rips my shirt until I’m wearing shreds around the leather holster. He grabs my jeans and pulls. He starts to fall and I let him go. He grabs my hands and places them on his shoulders, warns me with his eyes to keep them there. Of course I want to argue, but I’m hard and waiting. I remember what his mouth feels like. I feel his mouth on me already. It aches. I grip his shoulders as he asks just to keep my hands from shaking like an idiot.
So, out of all of us, he chooses the formerly dead boy-whore with the knife. Of course, they can’t stand him most of the time. The other two. The Original and The Pretender. I guess I get off on that a little. The way I’m different. But they were never afraid of him. Only of losing him, their lives, what they are. Death, abandonment, betrayal. The Pretender can have the clone. Dick can have… just about everyone. That’s them. Bruce and I’ve got scars. All over my arms like lightning bruises. All over his body like a relief map. In the end, we’ll just have each other.
Everyone thinks it’s wrong. I was dead. I died. He had to live with it. We know. We know. Maybe Bruce wanted to keep me. Keep me safe or keep me by his side, or impossibly, both. I think about the joke that safety is. I take off the holster. I stick the blade deep into the wall.
Bruce’s eyes narrow. He’s curious about people like me. He’s spent years trying to figure it out. What it meant to be someone with choices. He’s obsessed with choices. Always thinking. I know he has choices to make. I know what he thinks deep down. He has choices. He just denies them. I have to take him to them, show him around, lead him where he wants to go. To the street. To the dark. To me.
I move closer. Stalking. I get tired having to convince him of what he already knows. I don’t like it when he denies me what I am. Everything around him gets put onto me. He’s the one that tied me to a chair to make me stay. He wanted me enough. Then he wanted more. So did I. Real bad. It got out of control. But we’re always best when everything’s against us. We’re used to fighting. We’re used to pushing.
I grab at him and push because I want to be on the ground. I like solid things. There’s a mattress in the corner and I half-drag him there. I pull his pants off but I leave his shirts so I have something to grab onto when I ride him. He’s not fighting me, not trying to take the lead. I just go.
Until I’m on him. He pulls my ankle next to his head and I let him shove up into me, his shoulders and feet on the bed. I feel his breath on my leg and it’s hot and heavy and harsh. My other leg’s curled underneath him and I know he’s strong and huge but so am I now but I still react like a little boy or something when he reaches his fingers behind me and rubs at the place where we meet, the skin that can’t get enough touch, and his fingers are hard and dry, like I like it, like scratching an itch that never stops itching. I hear his shirt tear when I moan and shake and start moving faster.
Suddenly it’s all familiar again. I might as well be twelve years old and shooting come onto the headboard and watching Bruce’s face all shining eyes and teeth the way he never ever looks except for me. The way he’s always wanted to look for Dick but can’t. The way he probably doesn’t allow himself to dream about anymore.
I might as well be twelve and hovering over Bruce with his cock balls-deep in me and his body bent in half until his head is blood-red and sunk deep into the pillow and his toes grip the headboard right above my head. And his mouth completely surrounding my sex, sucking my cock bobbing against the roof of his mouth, sucking my balls and rolling them on his tongue, squeezing both tight between his lips and suctioning every drop down his throat until it feels like I’m coming blood. And I’m rocking between his mouth, his face, and his cock so big and growing harder I think it’s going to burst out my belly button if it doesn’t split my ass half up my back. And I don’t know which feels better, we’re so tight and perfect together, so I just keep rocking and grip the headboard between his gripping feet and wrap my knees around his waist and point my toes and squeeze myself even tighter and harder around him. And pant and squeeze and rock until his eyes go so wide and white and rock back up into his head and his hips lift me so far off the ground I might as well be flying. And he comes.
This time I don’t come until he bites my leg and doesn’t let go. I jerk my leg and my whole body jerks and my hips jerk even faster and I come all over the wall and still can’t stop moving. My leg is still caught in his teeth and the pain starts to break through the raw-rubbed pleasure and my nerves are all over the place and I’m moving and moving and shaking and grabbing at him and I groan real long and low until he lets go.
I ask him how he wants it and he just says, “Skin,” and I know what he means. He means mindlessness, sightlessness, ignorance - he means just us. He means my hands and knees on the floor, his body covering mine head to knee, his mouth at my ear. He means shoving, and shoving, and shoving, and rasping in my ear… vows.
I don’t let him this time. I don’t let him make vows to me again, I don’t let him apologize. I just let him say my name. He says it like it huts him. He says it with pain. I shove back hard and make him say it again. Again. Jason, Jason, he says. Jasonjasonjason…
His sweat pours down on me and I feel the hard flesh of his scars rub all over my back. He rocks faster, lifting me up and forward, and my hands slide down the mattress. I know he comes when he bites the back of my neck. He bites me, shoots again. Bites me, shoots again. Bites me, shoots. Bites me, shoots. It’s just that slow. It’s just that slow. I stop breathing. I’m not breathing, I’m just listening to him breathe, I feel it on my back. Then he takes his rough fingertips and touches raw bruises forming there, so soft, so raw. A long line down my spine. He’s whispering but I can’t hear him, I just feel his fingers, his eyes, his whispers, and I come with a cry. We don’t want to remember. But we do. It’s inevitable.
Which is why he dresses and leaves in silence. Which is why I pace and skulk around til he does. I doubt us. I doubt we were ever something good. But I guess we were. I guess it once made sense to dress in short pants and run with my gargoyle across the city. Growing up I used to dream about a giant demon with monstrous black wings who would come and take me away to the black sky above Gotham and we’d look down on the city and it would be ours. It used to feel like that. It still does sometimes, but now they’ve succeeded in taking it away from us. They’ve defeated us.
We’re still working. This will all be ours again. Really ours this time. For keeps. This time, I’m the one with faith. I remember him, remember what faith can do, and I know I’m right.
The End