Carve your name into my arm
Title: Carve your name into my arm
Author: creepylicious / alles_luege
Pairing: Bruce/John
Rating: R
Summary: Prompt: John actually has the past of JGL's character Neil from Mysterious Skin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_Skin): sexually abused as a kid, has neglectful single mom, runs away to Gotham and becomes a prostitute and a petty criminal. Like Neil he also likes older men and having lots of sex with them. Eventually he cleans up his act, enough to become a cop even. But it's all still there...
I ran with it.
The nice thing about John is that John could be anyone. John could be the guy who delivers your pizza, or fixes your TV, or sits in the park and stares at birds. John could also be the guy who sucks your husband’s dick for money.
John is the last kind.
Warning(s): off screen child abuse (rape), messed up characters, Mysterious Skin fusion, canon related, WILL FUCK WITH YOUR HEAD.
Author’s Notes: written for tdkr-kink. I feel like this story needs warnings that aren't even invented yet. Feel warned. John centric, John's pov. You don't have to have seen Mysterious Skin to understand this.
Title: Placebo.
Chinese Translation by wanderingteddy .
Word Count: 3.288
Beta: omletlove
Disclaimer: Don’t know, don’t own, not real
~1~
John hasn’t always been John. But running away is all about inventing yourself and leaving the past behind. So far John only managed to leave his name behind. But then it hadn’t been a hardship; he never liked Neil.
The nice thing about John is that John could be anyone. John could be the guy who delivers your pizza, or fixes your TV, or sits in the park and stares at birds. John could also be the guy who sucks your husband’s dick for money.
John is the last kind.
Back home Neil had been the kid whose mom didn’t much care, who was hooking up with guys way too young for her or guys who, well, who liked kids like Neil.
The funny thing is (or maybe it’s tragic) that Neil genuinely thought that his mom didn’t know. John isn’t that naïve. She has probably sold him out. Or plain didn’t care. Neglected her own child. There is nothing and no one to miss Neil. For all John cares, Neil is dead in a ditch somewhere, his body rotting away.
John has vague ideas of getting his act cleaned up when he arrives in the city and start something real. Do something to, maybe help someone. Maybe to help himself. But it’s just not happening right now.
John has a clean slate. Well, maybe not pristine, but at least not dark. A bit tainted, but whose isn’t a bit crinkled at the corners? Has a small spill or a hastily scribbled note?
John could be anyone.
John is a prostitute and a thief.
~+~
“You don’t look old enough for alcohol. Hell you don’t look old enough to be out on a school-night,” a voice says behind him.
“Is that something that turns you on?” John answers as he turns with his drink in hand.
John has a type, it’s maybe messed up and he has probably some kind of daddy issues, but screw it, he likes what he likes. Guys in their early thirties just do it for John. Mostly they also have the money to pay a pretty kid to suck their dick. To be honest, John would do it for free, but he really needs the cash.
The guy looks him over. John knows that kind of look. That guy is a sure fucking thing.
“Maybe,” he answers and buys John another drink.
Maybe, my ass, John thinks.
~+~
John sees Bruce Wayne the first time at an orphanage. He isn’t one of the boys living there, but Andy sometimes lets him crash there, sneaking him in, when he really doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
The boys are all excited about Wayne, or maybe about the car. John runs a hand over the shinny hood and thinks: everything he is is fake. John knows people, can see behind the masks they're wearing. That’s why he is a good prostitute.
That and because he puts on his own every morning.
“Don’t,” Andy whispers with a glance at John’s hand on the hood of the car. His fingers are leaving prints, smears, already on it. John isn’t sure Andy knows what John is doing for a living, but he sure as hell knows it’s shady as fuck.
“I don’t think he cares about it,” John answers.
~+~
Sometimes when John looks at himself in the mirror he sees Neil. They have the same eyes and lips and hands. John doesn’t have the same bruises. Neil got into fights a lot; John tries to avoid them. When push comes to shove, John runs. He is really freaking fast.
Some of the bruises are similar. Those on his hips finger-shaped, those on his neck and sometimes around his wrists (always pay extra).
The similarities throw him off.
~+~
He cuts his hair on a Monday morning. Sometimes things just need to change. His name had to go first, and it didn’t make a lot of difference. His hair would do. His body is adapting to the city, muscles forming, and with his hair short he will become John.
Maybe he’s going to give up sucking cock for money next Monday and then when he finds a job he’ll stop stealing and crashing in the store room of the boys’ home.
Start a life (that isn’t a washed up version of Neil’s).
~+~
Gotham isn’t the best city to start a clean life, but it’s not the worst either. Here at least every clean slate has a stain or two. No one judges too hard.
His mom once said to Neil that people would always be in need of hair dressers and bakers.
The equivalent to hair dressers and bakers in other cities are cops in Gotham. Neil never dreamed of becoming a cop in a city like this, but then Neil was pretty messed up over - a lot of fucking stuff. He probably didn’t dream much of the future.
John hadn’t dreamed about becoming a cop either, but it’s better than being on the other side of the bars, he suspects, and if they want him who is he to say no to a job that pays the rent?
~2~
There are all kinds of unspoken rules when you are a cop. True, mostly the city has cleaned up its act, but there are still things you just don’t talk about.
John isn’t exactly pretending to be someone else (not anymore). He is John Blake now. Cop, friend, one -night- stand. He isn’t completely honest either. John would never tell any of the guys he works with that he likes to fuck around with men.
Being a cop is a masculine thing, especially in a city like Gotham, and people have still all kinds of screwed up opinions on how licking to suck dick makes you a lesser man (or person). So John keeps that to himself and indulges in it outside the city limits where no one knows him.
~+~
He’s not that small boy anymore who looks like you could just bend him over, but he still has a pretty face, he thinks. He knows, women keep telling him that. Something about his eyes. John can’t see it; when he looks in the mirror he sees only the mask. Most people don’t really care to look beyond that.
~+~
It’s a bit like getting a fix (Like Neil stepping out of his grave, rattling his bones inside John’s body and mind, demanding his right). He can make it weeks and months without hooking up with a guy, but then it starts to itch and his mind keeps wandering. It’s not good for a cop when his mind wanders; it can cost him his life - and maybe worse, his partner’s life.
So John does the responsible thing. He gets in his car and drives outside the city limits to find someone who’ll be willing to fuck him.
There is never a shortage of men who want a piece of his ass.
~+~
If you look at the big picture here, John thinks, his life is pretty good. A steady income, a small apartment, a few friends he likes to hang out with. Friends who never talk about their wives or girlfriends and never expect anything like that from John in return.
John Blake, John thinks, has the normal life Neil could never have. Neil would be tortured about the things that happened and that he thought were an expression of love. Neil would probably get into some serious shit one day and it wouldn’t end pretty. Good thing then that Neil died in a ditch on the roadside somewhere. John is glad he let Neil die.
~+~
But Neil is like scar tissue - old and pale, but there.
Wendy recognizes him on a Saturday, he is just about to get coffee with Mike when she sees him and she stops. He knows she knows who he is, who he used to be, who he buried. There is this look on her face like she’s seen a ghost. Disbelief, anger, and then relief. She opens her mouth - maybe to call out for Neil, but he’s dead John thinks, he’s dead - and Mike says: “John, get in the car, man!”
John nods, still looking at her. Her eyes going wide and he can see how she thinks ‘of course it’s not him, he would’ve called me, he wouldn’t let me think he’s dead’. And then he turns and gets into the car with Mike to settle some kind of dispute five streets over or something.
She is right he thinks, John wouldn’t let her think he was dead if he weren’t. But Neil would, Neil has done it and that’s why Neil had to die.
He just wasn’t a good person.
~3~
John has a big freaking crush on Bruce Wayne. Something inside Wayne just speaks to the darker parts of John (or the ghost that used to be Neil). And Wayne is just John’s type. He takes a deep breath and rings the bell. Desperate times and all that.
He has a speech prepared. He has a speech he knows will get him Wayne’s attention, will get him Batman’s attention. Neil always used to be a freakishly good liar.
~+~
John’s knees start to protest and the hand in his hair is a bit too tight, but hell if he cares. It’s been too long since he did that.
When he closes his eyes, which he does, he can imagine Wayne pushing him to his knees, Wayne’s cock heavy inside his mouth, Wayne’s hard breathing. He’s so turned on by it, it hurts. John is glad his mouth is full because otherwise he would have to bite back Wayne’s name as he comes all over his own hand.
~+~
When things start to get bad they get bad fast. Everything falls like dominoes.
John finds himself fighting for his life. Cops aren’t friends with normal people, but cops in Gotham right now are outlaws. Everyone with a gun can just kill John and no one would so much as bat an eyelash.
He can hear Neil’s ghost laughing inside his skin. Rattling his bones. Neil would just do what needed to be done to assure he would survive. John tries to do the right thing. John tries to save the freaking city. Even if the city doesn’t deserve it.
In his weaker moments he gets Bane. He gets Bane completely. If Neil were still around he would be on Bane’s side or fucking his way through Gotham to get what he needed. John could do it too. He still has a skill-set there, he doesn’t use it, but you never really forget something like that.
~+~
He crashes at a place he thinks is abandoned, trying not to think about how the city is going to explode in a few weeks. The winter is hitting hard and the small nagging voice at the back of his mind that sounds like Neil is demanding he do something about this cold and the hard mattress and just fucking use his mouth to suck rich dick (because there are still rich dicks around, there always will be).
John tells him firmly to shut the fuck up. He has given up on sucking dick for money or goods or whatever. He only sucks dick for pleasure now. And not even that. With the city being firmly in Bane’s hand there is no freaking way to release the pent up energy and sexual frustration. At least not with another human being.
~+~
John has faced serious shit in his life (as Neil and later). He has never lost faith in the human race. Not over Commissioner Gordon’s admission of being less than perfect, not over the disappearance (and possible death) of the Batman, but he is losing faith now. Standing on the bridge with a bus full of kids, the bomb ticking away, and facing cops. People who should be on their side, people who will blow that freaking bridge apart because they are afraid, because they can’t make their own decisions.
Suddenly John gets it, how rules can be shackles.
He thought he could do this, live by the rules of society and be a part of it. Neil would laugh at him. Neither of them were part of whatever they thought a real life was. They had always been different, he had always been different.
It is time to look a bit harder at the reflection in the mirror, he thinks.
~4~
In hindsight John probably shouldn’t wonder that Bruce Wayne is not dead. He made it out of that pit Bane threw him in, why wouldn’t he survive an explosion like that?
“You lied,” he says sitting down at the small table in John’s favourite coffee-place.
“Yeah,” John answers, because there is no need to play games anymore. “The city needed you.”
Wayne nods. “The city needed me.” There is something in his eyes John can’t really put into words. He wonders how much Wayne knows. Probably everything. Even though there were no records of the abuse, the thing people would call rape now. Neil didn’t see it that way back then, having been in love with the man. John does. He still doesn’t feel like a victim, doesn’t think that Neil would. Even back then he knew he liked men that way.
“You did too,” John answers.
“Because the city needs someone with more hope than I can muster,” Wayne says. “Besides my doctors say I shouldn’t go heliskiing anymore.”
“That’s a good excuse, should file that one for later.”
“You’re doing good,” Wayne says.
John laughs. “I stumble along.”
“We all learn on the job, John.”
“Good to know you weren’t born a vigilante then.”
Wayne looks at him. “No one is born what they are, what they become.”
John takes a sip of his coffee. “How much do you know?”
“Everything.”
“I honestly doubt that,” John answers. People like to assume all kinds of things. Wayne might be better than most, but he is only human too.
Wayne gives him a look as if he wants to say: what more is there to know? Some pervert raped you when you weren’t even twelve, you’re scarred for life. “You invented another persona.”
“Pot, kettle,” John says. He drains his cup and gets up. “Do you want to hear it from me or do you want to be your uninformed judgemental self?”
“I have a hotel room at-“
“Yeah, no. Let’s go to my place.”
Wayne nods.
~+~
“You live here?” Wayne asks.
“I don’t have a job anymore. Alfred makes meals and stuff. You did leave him in charge of the boys’ home.”
“I left you money,” Wayne answers.
John shrugs. “To be honest I like it here.”
“You re-decorated as well-“
“It was really gloomy,” John cuts in. He boils some water for tea and Wayne waits until it’s done in silence. Looking around the cave. “Do you miss it?” he asks.
“On some days, yes.” Wayne takes the mug and puts it on the small table. John sits down and doesn’t look away from Wayne’s face. It looks relaxed, smoother too. He is still an attractive man, still John’s type. John realises he would still get on his knees for him.
~+~
“I knew from a young age that I liked men. From the first time I saw a guy fuck my mother. I can’t remember his name, but I know I thought he was the most perfect thing. Broad back and muscular thighs. I liked his arms. I have a type, you know?” John takes another sip of his tea. “Older men just do it for me.”
“John-“
“It’s not because my baseball coach fucked me,” he cuts in. “I knew before. I’m not a victim.”
“You are. You gave up your past and your name and became someone else, John-“
“Not because I couldn’t deal, Wayne. It was because Neil wasn’t a good person. My friend Wendy, she said Neil didn’t have a heart, but a black bottomless hole. And she was my childhood friend, she loved me. I don’t want to be that person.”
“Do you ever want revenge?” Wayne asks after a heavy silence.
John smiles at him. “No, I loved him. I was in love with him. He was messed up. I know that, but I still loved him. I wanted him, maybe not like he wanted me, like he used me, but I wanted him.”
“You didn’t know better.”
“The thing people don’t get,” John says sharply, “is that children are capable of falling in love at a young age. The love they feel isn’t different from the one teenagers feel.”
“Children don’t want sex, John.”
“No, I know. I said I knew, he was messed up, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t know what he was doing. I just wanted to be closer to him. I loved him, for me it wasn’t rape. He didn’t make me; he didn’t hold me down and take me.”
“What about the other children?” Wayne asks.
“Neil didn’t care for them. He was selfish.”
“What about you, John?”
“Do I want justice for these kids? Yes. I do. But I am very aware I am not the person for that particular job.”
Wayne nods and John gets it. Wayne wants permission to hunt that guy down. “Don’t kill him,” John says softly.
“I wouldn’t,” Wayne answers.
~5~
Wayne disappears like he appeared, silent and unexpected. John doesn’t have the time to look for him; he has a city that needs him. With everything that’s happened there is more crime than when Wayne first stepped up to the plate.
~+~
He keeps an eye out for his former baseball coach. Wayne has still means and ways to find people and get stuff done. John should probably ask the next time what he does for a living now, what with him being officially dead and all.
It surely wouldn’t be too shady. On the other hand he’s living with Selina. It would be at least a bit shady.
Not that John is in any place to judge. Not that John would.
~+~
Wayne sits down at the table and John doesn’t even look up from the Sudoku he’s doing. Maybe he needs to find a new place to hang out.
“I don’t want to know,” he says.
“I didn’t think you would,” Wayne answers.
“Why are you here then?” John is curious. Wayne gave up being Batman, he gave up being Bruce Wayne, he gave up the city he was born in. Oh, John thinks.
“Because we're alike,” he answers his own question.
“Yes,” Wayne says.
~+~
“And you have no-one else to hang out with?” John asks.
“Selina doesn't have a bat-cave,” Wayne answers.
“It's not a bat-cave anymore, as I am not exactly Batman,” John says.
Wayne smiles. “No, you're not, but I bet they will make action-figures of you soon enough.”
“Oh god no,” John says, “but kids at the orphanage used to have one of you.”
“Did you play with it?” Wayne asks. There is something in his voice John hasn't heard before, but it sounds familiar enough.
“No,” John says, “but if this is your way of asking if I imagined myself on my knees for your? The answer to that is yes. Countless times.”
Wayne crosses the distance between them in seconds. John wants to ask about Selina, but it’s really none of his business, and it's not his problem either.
“Me or Batman?” Wayne asks. John can feel his breath on his lips. This leap of faith, he thinks.
“I'm damaged goods, Wayne. Both.”
“It's good then I am not the jealous type,” Wayne answers and John kisses him, just to shut him up.
Author: creepylicious / alles_luege
Pairing: Bruce/John
Rating: R
Summary: Prompt: John actually has the past of JGL's character Neil from Mysterious Skin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_Skin): sexually abused as a kid, has neglectful single mom, runs away to Gotham and becomes a prostitute and a petty criminal. Like Neil he also likes older men and having lots of sex with them. Eventually he cleans up his act, enough to become a cop even. But it's all still there...
I ran with it.
The nice thing about John is that John could be anyone. John could be the guy who delivers your pizza, or fixes your TV, or sits in the park and stares at birds. John could also be the guy who sucks your husband’s dick for money.
John is the last kind.
Warning(s): off screen child abuse (rape), messed up characters, Mysterious Skin fusion, canon related, WILL FUCK WITH YOUR HEAD.
Author’s Notes: written for tdkr-kink. I feel like this story needs warnings that aren't even invented yet. Feel warned. John centric, John's pov. You don't have to have seen Mysterious Skin to understand this.
Title: Placebo.
Chinese Translation by wanderingteddy .
Word Count: 3.288
Beta: omletlove
Disclaimer: Don’t know, don’t own, not real
~1~
John hasn’t always been John. But running away is all about inventing yourself and leaving the past behind. So far John only managed to leave his name behind. But then it hadn’t been a hardship; he never liked Neil.
The nice thing about John is that John could be anyone. John could be the guy who delivers your pizza, or fixes your TV, or sits in the park and stares at birds. John could also be the guy who sucks your husband’s dick for money.
John is the last kind.
Back home Neil had been the kid whose mom didn’t much care, who was hooking up with guys way too young for her or guys who, well, who liked kids like Neil.
The funny thing is (or maybe it’s tragic) that Neil genuinely thought that his mom didn’t know. John isn’t that naïve. She has probably sold him out. Or plain didn’t care. Neglected her own child. There is nothing and no one to miss Neil. For all John cares, Neil is dead in a ditch somewhere, his body rotting away.
John has vague ideas of getting his act cleaned up when he arrives in the city and start something real. Do something to, maybe help someone. Maybe to help himself. But it’s just not happening right now.
John has a clean slate. Well, maybe not pristine, but at least not dark. A bit tainted, but whose isn’t a bit crinkled at the corners? Has a small spill or a hastily scribbled note?
John could be anyone.
John is a prostitute and a thief.
~+~
“You don’t look old enough for alcohol. Hell you don’t look old enough to be out on a school-night,” a voice says behind him.
“Is that something that turns you on?” John answers as he turns with his drink in hand.
John has a type, it’s maybe messed up and he has probably some kind of daddy issues, but screw it, he likes what he likes. Guys in their early thirties just do it for John. Mostly they also have the money to pay a pretty kid to suck their dick. To be honest, John would do it for free, but he really needs the cash.
The guy looks him over. John knows that kind of look. That guy is a sure fucking thing.
“Maybe,” he answers and buys John another drink.
Maybe, my ass, John thinks.
~+~
John sees Bruce Wayne the first time at an orphanage. He isn’t one of the boys living there, but Andy sometimes lets him crash there, sneaking him in, when he really doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
The boys are all excited about Wayne, or maybe about the car. John runs a hand over the shinny hood and thinks: everything he is is fake. John knows people, can see behind the masks they're wearing. That’s why he is a good prostitute.
That and because he puts on his own every morning.
“Don’t,” Andy whispers with a glance at John’s hand on the hood of the car. His fingers are leaving prints, smears, already on it. John isn’t sure Andy knows what John is doing for a living, but he sure as hell knows it’s shady as fuck.
“I don’t think he cares about it,” John answers.
~+~
Sometimes when John looks at himself in the mirror he sees Neil. They have the same eyes and lips and hands. John doesn’t have the same bruises. Neil got into fights a lot; John tries to avoid them. When push comes to shove, John runs. He is really freaking fast.
Some of the bruises are similar. Those on his hips finger-shaped, those on his neck and sometimes around his wrists (always pay extra).
The similarities throw him off.
~+~
He cuts his hair on a Monday morning. Sometimes things just need to change. His name had to go first, and it didn’t make a lot of difference. His hair would do. His body is adapting to the city, muscles forming, and with his hair short he will become John.
Maybe he’s going to give up sucking cock for money next Monday and then when he finds a job he’ll stop stealing and crashing in the store room of the boys’ home.
Start a life (that isn’t a washed up version of Neil’s).
~+~
Gotham isn’t the best city to start a clean life, but it’s not the worst either. Here at least every clean slate has a stain or two. No one judges too hard.
His mom once said to Neil that people would always be in need of hair dressers and bakers.
The equivalent to hair dressers and bakers in other cities are cops in Gotham. Neil never dreamed of becoming a cop in a city like this, but then Neil was pretty messed up over - a lot of fucking stuff. He probably didn’t dream much of the future.
John hadn’t dreamed about becoming a cop either, but it’s better than being on the other side of the bars, he suspects, and if they want him who is he to say no to a job that pays the rent?
~2~
There are all kinds of unspoken rules when you are a cop. True, mostly the city has cleaned up its act, but there are still things you just don’t talk about.
John isn’t exactly pretending to be someone else (not anymore). He is John Blake now. Cop, friend, one -night- stand. He isn’t completely honest either. John would never tell any of the guys he works with that he likes to fuck around with men.
Being a cop is a masculine thing, especially in a city like Gotham, and people have still all kinds of screwed up opinions on how licking to suck dick makes you a lesser man (or person). So John keeps that to himself and indulges in it outside the city limits where no one knows him.
~+~
He’s not that small boy anymore who looks like you could just bend him over, but he still has a pretty face, he thinks. He knows, women keep telling him that. Something about his eyes. John can’t see it; when he looks in the mirror he sees only the mask. Most people don’t really care to look beyond that.
~+~
It’s a bit like getting a fix (Like Neil stepping out of his grave, rattling his bones inside John’s body and mind, demanding his right). He can make it weeks and months without hooking up with a guy, but then it starts to itch and his mind keeps wandering. It’s not good for a cop when his mind wanders; it can cost him his life - and maybe worse, his partner’s life.
So John does the responsible thing. He gets in his car and drives outside the city limits to find someone who’ll be willing to fuck him.
There is never a shortage of men who want a piece of his ass.
~+~
If you look at the big picture here, John thinks, his life is pretty good. A steady income, a small apartment, a few friends he likes to hang out with. Friends who never talk about their wives or girlfriends and never expect anything like that from John in return.
John Blake, John thinks, has the normal life Neil could never have. Neil would be tortured about the things that happened and that he thought were an expression of love. Neil would probably get into some serious shit one day and it wouldn’t end pretty. Good thing then that Neil died in a ditch on the roadside somewhere. John is glad he let Neil die.
~+~
But Neil is like scar tissue - old and pale, but there.
Wendy recognizes him on a Saturday, he is just about to get coffee with Mike when she sees him and she stops. He knows she knows who he is, who he used to be, who he buried. There is this look on her face like she’s seen a ghost. Disbelief, anger, and then relief. She opens her mouth - maybe to call out for Neil, but he’s dead John thinks, he’s dead - and Mike says: “John, get in the car, man!”
John nods, still looking at her. Her eyes going wide and he can see how she thinks ‘of course it’s not him, he would’ve called me, he wouldn’t let me think he’s dead’. And then he turns and gets into the car with Mike to settle some kind of dispute five streets over or something.
She is right he thinks, John wouldn’t let her think he was dead if he weren’t. But Neil would, Neil has done it and that’s why Neil had to die.
He just wasn’t a good person.
~3~
John has a big freaking crush on Bruce Wayne. Something inside Wayne just speaks to the darker parts of John (or the ghost that used to be Neil). And Wayne is just John’s type. He takes a deep breath and rings the bell. Desperate times and all that.
He has a speech prepared. He has a speech he knows will get him Wayne’s attention, will get him Batman’s attention. Neil always used to be a freakishly good liar.
~+~
John’s knees start to protest and the hand in his hair is a bit too tight, but hell if he cares. It’s been too long since he did that.
When he closes his eyes, which he does, he can imagine Wayne pushing him to his knees, Wayne’s cock heavy inside his mouth, Wayne’s hard breathing. He’s so turned on by it, it hurts. John is glad his mouth is full because otherwise he would have to bite back Wayne’s name as he comes all over his own hand.
~+~
When things start to get bad they get bad fast. Everything falls like dominoes.
John finds himself fighting for his life. Cops aren’t friends with normal people, but cops in Gotham right now are outlaws. Everyone with a gun can just kill John and no one would so much as bat an eyelash.
He can hear Neil’s ghost laughing inside his skin. Rattling his bones. Neil would just do what needed to be done to assure he would survive. John tries to do the right thing. John tries to save the freaking city. Even if the city doesn’t deserve it.
In his weaker moments he gets Bane. He gets Bane completely. If Neil were still around he would be on Bane’s side or fucking his way through Gotham to get what he needed. John could do it too. He still has a skill-set there, he doesn’t use it, but you never really forget something like that.
~+~
He crashes at a place he thinks is abandoned, trying not to think about how the city is going to explode in a few weeks. The winter is hitting hard and the small nagging voice at the back of his mind that sounds like Neil is demanding he do something about this cold and the hard mattress and just fucking use his mouth to suck rich dick (because there are still rich dicks around, there always will be).
John tells him firmly to shut the fuck up. He has given up on sucking dick for money or goods or whatever. He only sucks dick for pleasure now. And not even that. With the city being firmly in Bane’s hand there is no freaking way to release the pent up energy and sexual frustration. At least not with another human being.
~+~
John has faced serious shit in his life (as Neil and later). He has never lost faith in the human race. Not over Commissioner Gordon’s admission of being less than perfect, not over the disappearance (and possible death) of the Batman, but he is losing faith now. Standing on the bridge with a bus full of kids, the bomb ticking away, and facing cops. People who should be on their side, people who will blow that freaking bridge apart because they are afraid, because they can’t make their own decisions.
Suddenly John gets it, how rules can be shackles.
He thought he could do this, live by the rules of society and be a part of it. Neil would laugh at him. Neither of them were part of whatever they thought a real life was. They had always been different, he had always been different.
It is time to look a bit harder at the reflection in the mirror, he thinks.
~4~
In hindsight John probably shouldn’t wonder that Bruce Wayne is not dead. He made it out of that pit Bane threw him in, why wouldn’t he survive an explosion like that?
“You lied,” he says sitting down at the small table in John’s favourite coffee-place.
“Yeah,” John answers, because there is no need to play games anymore. “The city needed you.”
Wayne nods. “The city needed me.” There is something in his eyes John can’t really put into words. He wonders how much Wayne knows. Probably everything. Even though there were no records of the abuse, the thing people would call rape now. Neil didn’t see it that way back then, having been in love with the man. John does. He still doesn’t feel like a victim, doesn’t think that Neil would. Even back then he knew he liked men that way.
“You did too,” John answers.
“Because the city needs someone with more hope than I can muster,” Wayne says. “Besides my doctors say I shouldn’t go heliskiing anymore.”
“That’s a good excuse, should file that one for later.”
“You’re doing good,” Wayne says.
John laughs. “I stumble along.”
“We all learn on the job, John.”
“Good to know you weren’t born a vigilante then.”
Wayne looks at him. “No one is born what they are, what they become.”
John takes a sip of his coffee. “How much do you know?”
“Everything.”
“I honestly doubt that,” John answers. People like to assume all kinds of things. Wayne might be better than most, but he is only human too.
Wayne gives him a look as if he wants to say: what more is there to know? Some pervert raped you when you weren’t even twelve, you’re scarred for life. “You invented another persona.”
“Pot, kettle,” John says. He drains his cup and gets up. “Do you want to hear it from me or do you want to be your uninformed judgemental self?”
“I have a hotel room at-“
“Yeah, no. Let’s go to my place.”
Wayne nods.
~+~
“You live here?” Wayne asks.
“I don’t have a job anymore. Alfred makes meals and stuff. You did leave him in charge of the boys’ home.”
“I left you money,” Wayne answers.
John shrugs. “To be honest I like it here.”
“You re-decorated as well-“
“It was really gloomy,” John cuts in. He boils some water for tea and Wayne waits until it’s done in silence. Looking around the cave. “Do you miss it?” he asks.
“On some days, yes.” Wayne takes the mug and puts it on the small table. John sits down and doesn’t look away from Wayne’s face. It looks relaxed, smoother too. He is still an attractive man, still John’s type. John realises he would still get on his knees for him.
~+~
“I knew from a young age that I liked men. From the first time I saw a guy fuck my mother. I can’t remember his name, but I know I thought he was the most perfect thing. Broad back and muscular thighs. I liked his arms. I have a type, you know?” John takes another sip of his tea. “Older men just do it for me.”
“John-“
“It’s not because my baseball coach fucked me,” he cuts in. “I knew before. I’m not a victim.”
“You are. You gave up your past and your name and became someone else, John-“
“Not because I couldn’t deal, Wayne. It was because Neil wasn’t a good person. My friend Wendy, she said Neil didn’t have a heart, but a black bottomless hole. And she was my childhood friend, she loved me. I don’t want to be that person.”
“Do you ever want revenge?” Wayne asks after a heavy silence.
John smiles at him. “No, I loved him. I was in love with him. He was messed up. I know that, but I still loved him. I wanted him, maybe not like he wanted me, like he used me, but I wanted him.”
“You didn’t know better.”
“The thing people don’t get,” John says sharply, “is that children are capable of falling in love at a young age. The love they feel isn’t different from the one teenagers feel.”
“Children don’t want sex, John.”
“No, I know. I said I knew, he was messed up, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t know what he was doing. I just wanted to be closer to him. I loved him, for me it wasn’t rape. He didn’t make me; he didn’t hold me down and take me.”
“What about the other children?” Wayne asks.
“Neil didn’t care for them. He was selfish.”
“What about you, John?”
“Do I want justice for these kids? Yes. I do. But I am very aware I am not the person for that particular job.”
Wayne nods and John gets it. Wayne wants permission to hunt that guy down. “Don’t kill him,” John says softly.
“I wouldn’t,” Wayne answers.
~5~
Wayne disappears like he appeared, silent and unexpected. John doesn’t have the time to look for him; he has a city that needs him. With everything that’s happened there is more crime than when Wayne first stepped up to the plate.
~+~
He keeps an eye out for his former baseball coach. Wayne has still means and ways to find people and get stuff done. John should probably ask the next time what he does for a living now, what with him being officially dead and all.
It surely wouldn’t be too shady. On the other hand he’s living with Selina. It would be at least a bit shady.
Not that John is in any place to judge. Not that John would.
~+~
Wayne sits down at the table and John doesn’t even look up from the Sudoku he’s doing. Maybe he needs to find a new place to hang out.
“I don’t want to know,” he says.
“I didn’t think you would,” Wayne answers.
“Why are you here then?” John is curious. Wayne gave up being Batman, he gave up being Bruce Wayne, he gave up the city he was born in. Oh, John thinks.
“Because we're alike,” he answers his own question.
“Yes,” Wayne says.
~+~
“And you have no-one else to hang out with?” John asks.
“Selina doesn't have a bat-cave,” Wayne answers.
“It's not a bat-cave anymore, as I am not exactly Batman,” John says.
Wayne smiles. “No, you're not, but I bet they will make action-figures of you soon enough.”
“Oh god no,” John says, “but kids at the orphanage used to have one of you.”
“Did you play with it?” Wayne asks. There is something in his voice John hasn't heard before, but it sounds familiar enough.
“No,” John says, “but if this is your way of asking if I imagined myself on my knees for your? The answer to that is yes. Countless times.”
Wayne crosses the distance between them in seconds. John wants to ask about Selina, but it’s really none of his business, and it's not his problem either.
“Me or Batman?” Wayne asks. John can feel his breath on his lips. This leap of faith, he thinks.
“I'm damaged goods, Wayne. Both.”
“It's good then I am not the jealous type,” Wayne answers and John kisses him, just to shut him up.