Part viii contains adult situations, please skip that if you are uncomfortable

Cause I'm bad, bred to suffer

in the dark, in this room

i.

The name on his release papers says John Doe, but he knows that isn't a real name. His boss at the butcher's shop calls him Jack, although whether that's a careless error of memory or a real nickname he doesn't know. Still. It's the closest thing he has to a name of his own, so he grabs it with both hands as if he's afraid that someone will notice what he's got and take it away. Maybe he is. He feels like he's living under the shade of a guillotine, waiting for the blade to drop.

He's standing in the window of the place he rents, and his eyes feel heavy and bruised in his skull. He's slept maybe an hour. It would be better if it had been dreams that did this to him, because dreams at least have a substance that you can hold onto. All he has is this frightful feeling that something is wrong, that something is wrong and dangerous and it's coming close now, closer every night, drawing itself up across his sheets to where he lies panting and frozen on his pillows.

He rubs his eye with the heel of his palm. Across the street, blue neon is blinking. It's a cold light, worse than no light at all. This city is so bright and noisy and sometimes he craves true darkness with a hunger that makes him nervous. Cave darkness. Restful darkness.

He pulls on his jacket, steps into his shoes, and leaves. Anywhere is better than here. He briefly entertains a fantasy of just becoming homeless, giving up on beds and on sleep altogether while he's at it. It's a silly fantasy, but it helps. He ducks out into the street and makes his way to Rhine Road, where they've been planting trees as part of Wayne Enterprises' city beautification project. He likes to see their progress. The trees were grown somewhere else, he expects, because their hardy trunks are unspotted by the wear of pollution. Probably most trees that grow in the heart of Gotham would be poisonous to burn, with the amount of joker toxin and fear gas that passes through the air on a year to year basis. He's wondering if you could read that sort of information in the rings of the wood when his eyes light on the figure across the freeway, and he abruptly loses track of anything and everything else.

The golden globes of streetlights turn the median shades of yellow and green, as vibrant as the sky is dark. It's like a patch of gemstone in the cool dimness of the city. Under the light, there is a man staring up into the cloudless night. He's too far away to see clearly, and yet—Jack's heart pounds like a demolition crew, dangerous and heavy in his chest—and yet Jack knows in his bones that this man is the most beautiful man ever born. Cars race past, cutting the vision into snapshots, the end of a reel of film slowing to show the black edges of each slide.

I'm in love again, he thinks. And then he thinks, again?

For the first time in weeks, Jack sleeps out the rest of the night. Jack does not realize until much, much later who he has seen.

ii.

Batman doesn't save the city. The city is saved, but it wasn't Batman. Jack doesn't know the details; some part of him tuned out the moment he heard that it wasn't the bat. He's grateful for all the heroes, of course, but that doesn't mean he needs to track their every move like some celebrity-obsessed gossip monger. In the aftermath, a few days later, he finds Bruce Wayne in the park by the lake again, and realizes all at once that he had expected this when he left his house that evening, and he would have been startled to arrive here and find the bench empty.

"Penny for your thoughts?" he says, watching Bruce Wayne's back as he hunches over his clasped hands, deep in his own mind. The sound of a voice jolts Wayne, causes him to half swing himself up on the seat of the bench as if he's going to launch into the air. He freezes when he sees who it is.

"Oh," he says. "It's you."

Jack's no stranger to lukewarm welcomes and doesn't let it stop him. He points at the other half on the seat, where Wayne's foot is still planted, ready for action. "Mind if I sit?" he asks.

Wayne almost looks like he's going to say yes, but then his eyes drift to the banks of the lake and he makes a small, assenting sound. Jack takes the seat. He thinks about how Wayne had left half the bench open before he arrived, wishes he could know if that empty seat had anything to do with him.

"Why do you bring that bread?" Wayne asks him, eyeing the paper bag in his hands. "There's never any ducks here."

"For the fish, of course," Jack replies. He smiles, lifts a crust of it for inspection. "The bakery next to the shop where I work throws it out once it's too old."

"Why?" Wayne asks again.

Jack looks out across the inky expanse of the lake, where the surface is rippling with curious dark bodies. "They're starving down there," he says. "I feel responsible, in a way. I need this place to be peaceful, but without the bugs there's nothing for them to eat. I feel like it's my fault."

Wayne is looking at him. Looking hard. Jack smiles to himself, crumbling stale bread in his hands, alight with the powerful knowledge that Bruce Wayne is looking, for a moment anyway, at only him. He's not sure where the allure of the idea comes from—he's never cared about celebrities (that he can remember) and he's never been one to chase money (that he can remember) and so he's not sure why it matters so much that it's this man, specifically, who is taking him apart piece by piece with his eyes.

If he's going to be disassembled, he's more than happy to let Wayne do it.

"Are you," Wayne starts. He pauses, looks down as if he's not sure where the words are coming from, and then finishes less certainly, "are you getting help?"

"For what?" Jack asks.

Wayne gestures sharply at the place where Jack's gun is concealed. His mouth is a grim line.

"Oh!" Jack says, delighted now, "for that? You're so kind to remember."

"It's a little hard to forget," Wayne says. "Most guys go their whole lives without someone threatening to blow his own brains out in front of them."

"Ah," Jack says. "I upset you. I'm sorry. Don't trouble yourself over it, though, what I do or don't do is no fault of yours. You're just sharing this bench with me."

Wayne's face is a riot of conflicting emotions, none of them pleased. He seems like he's struggling with himself. "No," he says, "no, you're right, it isn't."

"Anyways," Jack says, taking mercy on his companion, "I'm doing much better lately. It feels as if some kind of storm has passed, you know? I'm afraid it's probably only that I've wandered into the eye of it, but I'll take what I can get."

"Good," Wayne says, with a sincerity that appears to surprise him.

"You seem as stressed as ever," Jack continues, lightly. "Still haven't made your decision?"

Wayne looks away. "No."

There are no stars in Gotham, but the lights of the city are bright along the edge of the skyline. They're very nearly stars, for all that it really matters to earthbound humans. Jack split his bread into two and offers half to the billionaire on the park bench beside him.

"Here," he says. "Let me tell you a joke."

iii.

Wayne finds him at the butcher's shop. There's something haggard about him that Jack can't quite put a finger on, underneath the lovely sports coat and the impeccably styled hair. He thinks he can recognize it because he, too, has borne the brunt of awful nights. He smiles from behind the counter.

"What a coincidence," he says.

Wayne gets a blank look on his face that Jack somehow just knows means this isn't a coincidence at all. He's never been so sure of anything.

"To what do I owe the unexpected pleasure?" he asks, leaning forward till he's practically on his toes.

"I," Wayne says. He runs a hand through his hair, only succeeding in making it look more elegantly disheveled. "Honestly, I don't know."

Funny that a busy man like Bruce Wayne would have the time to wander around on a whim, but then again, he did tell Jack that he wasn't running Wayne Enterprises anymore. And Jack understands restlessness. Always in the back of his mind there is the park, and the beautified new roads, and the alien streets of this aggressive, sleepless city.

"Well," Jack says, "my break's coming up. There's a coffee shop across the way I usually walk to. Local, you know, none of that generic disappointment in a cup."

Wayne clearly wasn't expecting to be so easily accepted. He seems to stall out, uncertain, reassessing his assumptions. It's charming. Jack thinks that he probably couldn't stop smiling if he tried, until he abruptly does.

"Jack!" his boss shouts, "get back here, I need you!"

Jack can feel himself curling inward, the smile dead on his lips.

"Jack?" Wayne echoes. He is probably just realizing they were never properly introduced.

For a moment Jack almost tells him that, no, officially his name is John Doe. Officially, he doesn't have a name. That would be the truth, and Jack has never thought of himself as a liar (that he can remember).

"Yes," he says, "absolutely. My name is Jack. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Ten minutes later, they're seated at a table outside the tiny coffee shop where Jack goes to smell sugar and drink caffeine most days of the week. Someone remarked to him in the unemployment office that butcher's jobs are unpopular positions to be placed with—it's the blood, they said, you can't get away from the smell. Drives people crazy. The only time Jack has ever noticed the smell is when he comes back from the coffee shop. The scent of sugar gets all confused with the blood.

"You seem so…" Wayne says, "…so different around other people."

Jack drinks his coffee, understands now why Wayne was staring at him so hard in line while he was placing order with the barista. Smaller, he knows. He feels smaller around people who aren't Bruce Wayne. It's as if Wayne is carrying around pieces of him that were carved off his bones a long time ago.

"They tell me I have trouble connecting to people," he says, peering over the rim of his cup.

"You seem… afraid," Wayne says. He sure doesn't sugar coat it, does he? It's not what you'd expect from a cosmopolitan playboy socialite. Maybe he's different around Jack, too.

"Well what about you," Jack says, "fess up. You look a wreck. What's going on with you?"

Wayne winces. "Things are—they're not going well with Julia."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"God no," Bruce says, with the first semblance of a smile that day. It makes Jack's heart ache.

"You know when you buy a pair of shoes," Jack says, propping up his chin on his hand, "all shiny and new, and you wear them a couple times, and suddenly they look like they've had the hell beaten out of them? And you think to yourself, what the heck, they were just new a month ago. They'll never last the year at this rate."

"Um," Wayne says. He's very handsome when he's confused. "I guess?"

"But they do last the year," Jack goes on, "they last more than a year. And they always look precisely as beat up as they did that first month in, no matter how hard you work them. Like they just needed to get that first bright and shiny layer scratched off, and now they're good for anything."

Jack points lazily with the hand that isn't holding him up. "That's you," he says. "You just need to break yourself in."

Wayne stares at him. "That is quite possibly the least complimentary metaphor I've ever been treated to," he says.

Jack kicks his shoes lightly, amused at the way Wayne freezes up in confusion at the touch.

"Better functional than glamorous," he says. "Don't you think?"

iv.

Jack hovers at the edge of the gate, not quite able to make himself go past that line and on to the rink. Bruce pauses a couple feet out on the ice, quirking his head like a dog suddenly scenting a strange animal. He spins, perfectly graceful.

"Jack," he says, "are you coming?"

Jack gives him a queasy smile. "Actually," he says, "I'm–I don't think this is such a good idea. I'll just wait for you out here."

Bruce frowns, looking honestly frustrated for the first time today despite the various trouble that Jack has already caused (spooking at the sight of buskers in Sesame Street costumes, knocking over a shelf of commemorative flasks on fifth avenue, getting dragged off by fake-Rolex salesmen under the bridge). He's not normally this bad, but with Bruce watching every little mistake seems amplified. Not to mention the people watching Bruce, while Bruce is watching him.

"You've already got your skates on," Bruce points out.

"Uh, Hahahah," Jack says, taking a wobbly step back. "Won't take a second to pull them off-"

Bruce glides back to the gate, his arms crossed over his chest. How does he do everything so gracefully? It's like he knows exactly what muscle is involved in every single motion. Jack doesn't even know how he gets himself out of bed some mornings.

"Are you worried about the crowd?" He asks.

"No," Jack lies.

"Are you worried about being embarrassed?"

"No…"

"So what's bothering you?" Bruce demands. Jack winces. He hates being the bucket of water on a good time, and right now he feels like that's all he ever is. He hardly ever gets to spend time with Bruce, who is a CEO and a philanthropist and a socialite and has precious few mornings to waste with nobodies like John Doe. If he isn't providing a good time, what incentive does Bruce have to come back and see him again?

"Nothing," Jack says, and tries to do a better job of smiling. He grabs the gate, steps off the wood and on to the ice–-and his feet immediately sweep out from under him. He stares up at the sky, icy grey, blankly judging him.

"Okay," he says, from the floor, "so I was hoping I was wrong about this but–-I don't think I ever learned how to skate."

Bruce blinks down at him a couple times, and then he laughs. His laughter is rich and bright and it makes him glitter like something precious and rare. Jack loves it when he laughs. It's worth falling down on a hundred skating rinks just to hear the way it rattles in his lungs. Bruce holds both his hands out, smiling in a way that makes it clear he's not trying to be malicious. That's okay, Jack wouldn't mind it if he was.

"That's all?" he says. His gloved fingers are reaching for Jack, his dark hair haloed against the glowing grey sky."You could have just said."

The haloing sky urges stilted, beautiful, ugly confessions to the tip of his tongue, but what Jack actually says is: "Just trying to keep up with you, superstar."

Bruce's hand closes around Jack's, and although all he can feel is pressure through the wool and leather, gravity might as well have realigned itself around them. He thinks he could just float right up into Bruce's grip.

"Well," Bruce says, with a grin, "would you like me to teach you?"

v.

"Is this a date?" Jack asks, while Bruce Wayne lifts two menus from the concierge's desk. Here in this beautiful room with its real crystal chandeliers, in his careworn white suit, Jack feels as high with the power of Bruce's attention as he does low and out of place, persistently like an intruder. It's a terrible clash of feelings. He doesn't know how his body is containing them both at the same time.

Bruce's hands stop cold over the pretty leather menus. They've been seeing each other, in the loosest sense of the words, for a while now, but this is the first time Jack's put him on the spot about it. The timing has a lot to do with how anxious and off-kilter Jack is feeling in this huge gorgeous reception area.

"Oh, relax," Jack says, preoccupying himself with straitening his jacket, his gloves. "You'd think I just put a gun to your back."

Bruce turns sharply, his eyes skating over the pockets of Jack's suit in a brief but pointed search for anything out of the ordinary. Jack sighs, makes a big show of turning out his pockets. The host comes back to seat them, while Jack's pockets are still on display, and he gets a dourly disapproving look for his trouble. Jack smiles brightly at the host until his back is turned, and then feels his whole expression sour on his face.

It really is an incredibly nice restaurant, for all that it's making Jack feel like a drawn and quartered heretic in some medieval woodcut. Their table is much more private than he expected, but then, Bruce is a more private person than might be expected, too. Jack chatters a bit, just to fill silence, although Bruce doesn't seem to be listening. It's fine. Jack half expects to be tuned out most of the time anyways. He just talks in case Bruce tunes back in.

"Yes," Bruce says, abruptly, cutting into a funny story about a mix up at the meat packing plant earlier that week.

"Yes what?" Jack asks.

"It is a date," Bruce says. His shoulders couldn't be more deliberately squared if he'd been stamped out of sheet metal. "Is that a problem?"

"A problem?" Jack laughs, throwing himself back in his chair. The legs creak a little. "Mr. Wayne, whatever gave you the impression I might have a problem with that?"

The man's lips twitch. "You can call me Bruce, you know," he says. "Most of my dates do."

"Ah ah ah," Jack says, "don't try to playboy me, Bruce Wayne. How many of your dates are beautiful unstable men who work in the glamorous meat processing industry?"

"So far one," Bruce says. He's clearly fighting not to smile.

"Let's keep it that way," Jack says. He flips open the menu, glances over it. He grimaces. "To be clear," he says, "this means you're paying, right?"

vi.

When Bruce takes his arm and introduces Jack as, "my boyfriend, the glamorous meat processing specialist," Jack nearly spits out his champagne.

This is the first event Bruce has taken him along to as a plus one, representing Wayne Enterprises in the three ring circus of Gotham High Society. Jack has spent a fair portion of the night labeling passersby as acrobats or jugglers or elephant trainers—it helps him not succumb to sheer class-based anxiety. Bruce had to hide his unattractive snorting behind a handkerchief when Jack elbowed him, pointed to the mayor, and whispered, "senior clown."

"Boyfriend!" the timber heiress says, her eyes flashing. "What a departure from your usual conquests."

That abruptly stalls him out. Jack, a conquest. He wants to shudder a little bit at the way that word takes him up and squeezes him, at the idea of himself as a country laid out, ravaged, and subdued under Bruce's unforgiving boot. He's offended on Bruce's behalf, but more than that he's shaken by the seductive power of that one, derisive word. It takes a moment to crank the engine back up, but he manages.

Jack smiles a little too widely at her and says, "Well, even Rome eventually had to tackle Britain."

The heiress's expression falters, her eyes fixed on his grinning lips, but her husband laughs and claps his hands together. "He's right you know," the big man says, "that's history for you. Didn't know you went in for brains, Brucey."

"Ah," Bruce says, shrugging modestly, "if I'm relegated to being the beauty, well then, you know…"

And they all share a hearty titter. Jack watches them through his champagne, feeling as if he's walking in a dream world where nothing is quite as it should be. Their bodies are distorted thin by the curvature of the glass, two dimensional people you could fold up and put away. In one moment he's distantly amused by the whole thing, in another moment he's so seethingly resentful that his own brain rebels against the force of foreign feeling. He tenses. Where is this coming from?

Bruce is smiling this patent-leather smile, shiny and artificial; is that where the resentment is coming from? He loves to see Bruce smile, he tucks each of Bruce's smiles away in his memory with the greatest care, but this isn't what he wants. This isn't at all what he wants.

Jack leans into Bruce, abruptly, placing a hand on his arm. "Ya mind if I borrow him?" Jack asks their fellow guests, with a chipper, secretive grin. "I get kinda jealous when I can't have him to myself, see."

The two of them escape to an unoccupied corner under the grand stairwell, not quite hidden from view but certainly out of sight enough to be, for a while, out of mind. They leave the discomfited heiress and her husband to their champagne. Jack crosses his arms, leans up against the wall.

"Boyfriend, huh?" he says. "Why wasn't I consulted in this decision?"

Bruce blinks at him, has the grace to look apologetic. "I thought it was assumed?"

Jack's lips twitch, and then he thinks, why not. He smiles. "Heck, I don't mind. Gave me a good shock though—are you sure you want all these nice folks to know you throw a party with an open guest list?"

Bruce shrugs, but something about the sharpness of the movement conveys that this is not a matter of apathy. "I won't tell everyone," he says, "just a few people that I trust to have the right reactions. They'll pass the word around as a rumor, and then anyone who wants to give us trouble will have to weigh the benefits against the consequences of publically addressing gossip. Society is a delicate balance between unspoken rules and engagement."

Some people would be upset that Bruce had planned this out for them, on their behalf. Jack can't bring himself to care about anything but how beautiful Bruce looks when he's planning, mapping his wheels within wheels. Bruce is a schemer. Jack supposes they're just lucky he uses his power benevolently.

And still, Jack is troubled. The Bruce standing in front of him is so different from the Bruce of that ballroom—out there, Jack feels like he's been left with an understudy of the man he adores, a dishonest facsimile. Who is that man? Why has he come here to stand between Jack and Bruce, blocking his light?

Déjà vu nauseates him all at once, makes him desperate for something solid to ground himself against. He reaches out.

"I want every part of you," Jack mutters, looping his fingers around Bruce's tie. For a white hot second he wants to hold and pull, to tighten the thing like a noose, and the urge echoes through his muscles even as he fights it down, too uneasy to analyze it. He'll be happy to shove it in a box at the back of his head with all the other disquieting impulses that come over him.

"Every part of me?" Bruce jokes, in that coy knowing way that he does for the ladies of the Gala. It makes Jack twitchy, as if a painting has been hung wrong in front of him and he just needs to straighten the angle. He jerks Bruce closer.

"Where are you hiding the rest of you?" he murmurs, a frown pulling at his lips. "Where have you buried him?"

Bruce's expression flinches, a telltale flicker almost too quick to read, but Jack knows better than to believe the bemusement that settles into place there, the innocent concern. There is something underneath that pretty tanned skin, looking out at Jack through his boyfriend's wide blue eyes, something that Jack yearns to know. It is like being in love twofold, always eating and never satiated.

"This is me," Bruce says, and Jack doesn't believe him.

Jack touches Bruce's cheek, draws him down into a kiss that's deep and slow and full of a yearning so powerful it borders on pain. If only he could see the rest of Bruce. If only he could see what Bruce was holding back, no matter how monstrous—perhaps, he thinks, it would put his own monsters to rest.

vii.

Alfred doesn't approve of him.

Jack lights up when he sees the man—he recognizes him immediately, although they've ever met. That's exactly what the Wayne family butler ought to look like. Jack couldn't have pictured it better if he'd had a whole day to sit down and sketch out ideas.

"Pleased to meet ya," he says, throwing out an open hand. "Unsung hero, the man who raised our darling Bruce Wayne!"

Alfred takes one look at him and goes rigid. Jack's hand remains empty, extended, for a moment before he reluctantly tucks it away into a pocket. "Yeesh," he mutters, "tough room."

"Master Bruce," Alfred says, turning sharply, "this is who you're seeing?"

Jack shrinks back, probably couldn't be more hurt if he'd been physically kicked. He looks at Bruce too, and Bruce is pinned under the twin points of their equally anxious glares. Song as old as time, eh? The family and the boyfriend.

"Is there a problem?" Bruce says, with an edge that no one who knew him could mistake.

Alfred purses his lips and takes a moment to say anything at all. Finally, he replies, "Not—precisely. I'm sure he's… a fine… What did you say your name was, sir?"

"Uh, Jack," Jack says. He licks his lips. "Doe."

Whatever else he might be Alfred clearly isn't stupid. He knows. He sees right through the flimsy fantasy of "Jack" and right into the ugly truth of John Doe. On the day that Jack finally stumbles up the steps of the Pearly Gates, he hopes he doesn't get a look half as scorching as the look this manservant is currently giving him.

"And where did you meet," Alfred says, "Jack?"

"Alfred, I assumed you'd be happy to see me doing well with someone."

Alfred looks away. "What about Jules," he says, but quietly, "you were happy with her."

Bruce gets this pained, bloodless look on his face. Jack can see his hands clenching in his pockets. "Me and Jules," he says, "it doesn't—work, it's not what she needs, not with what I am—"

"What you are?"

"What I was," Bruce hisses.

Jack has turned his head so that he's making eye contact with the doorknob, staring resolutely at it without blinking. "Should I give you two some space?" he asks, both terrified and hopeful that the answer will be yes. He hates being excluded, not knowing this clearly vital secret, but he's not sure how much longer he can stand in the presence of Alfred without spontaneously combusting.

"Yes."

"No!"

The two men, a family of a sort, stare each other down. Jack gets the feeling they're communicating on a level that's almost entirely eye movements. It appears to be an eloquent language; they're certainly silent long enough to have exchanged a full conversation.

"Look," Jack cuts in, uneasily, "can we just establish whether this is a gay thing or some other kind of thing?"

"It is certainly not a gay thing," Alfred replies. He still won't look away from Bruce.

"Well then what's the problem?" Bruce says, picking up the slack like a seasoned interrogator.

Alfred's worry lines could scrub linens. "What do you know about him, Bruce? Really?"

"His favorite movie is Casablanca," Bruce says, in a tone that could grind granite. "He's an assistant butcher at the oldest practice in Gotham. He speaks fluent French. Do you want me to go on?"

"I mean," Alfred says, "who are his family? Where does he come from? What does he want with you?"

"Why are you talking to me like I'm a fifteen year old going out on their first date?" Bruce demands. "I'm not a teenager and you're not my father."

Alfred says nothing. He stands as still as if rigor mortis had crawled up his sleeve and shut him down. Bruce is already sagging back, pale, as if he'd been the one who was figuratively slapped. Jack remembers—a feed of commentary his brain is supplying in real time—that Bruce can recall almost nothing after the age of twelve. Although Alfred had raised him alone in this drafty old house, Bruce is unable to remember those years, unable to touch that bond. Guilt persists in Bruce every time he looks at those family photos, the ones he had pointed out on the stairwell, of Bruce smiling with Alfred and a young man in the sunlight, in the countryside.

Jack sympathizes, as much as he can. There was no one waiting for him on the other side.

"I'm sorry," Bruce says. If the look on Alfred's face is any indicator, this is no less startling than the preceding insult. "I didn't mean that. I'm just—hurt, that you won't give someone I love a chance."

"Someone you love?" Alfred echoes, even as Jack is mouthing the same words.

Bruce loves him? There's never been a doubt that Jack is drowning in love, as if that night on the freeway someone had injected heavy liquid into his lungs and left him to gasp onwards, but he hadn't dared to hope. He had been too afraid of having still more to lose in a life that always feels one missed step away from catastrophe. And yet, now that he has it, happiness consumes him. Lurking near the doorway of this room he is a wildfire raging completely unnoticed.

"Look," Bruce says, shifting uncomfortably, "we can talk about this later. Jack and I have a reservation at seven."

Alfred hesitates, and then he reaches out, stops Bruce. He gently turns his employer and adjusts his tie, tugging it just a fraction of an angle to the right.

"No," he says, without looking up, "if you love him, then there's nothing to talk about. I'll stand with whatever makes you happy."

Bruce relaxes just a little bit. "Thanks, Alfred."

Alfred offers him a wan smile, but as Bruce turns away, the expression sobers. He looks right at Jack, his eyes full of hard warning. The wildfire sputters and dies, the temperature around Jack seems to drop several degrees. Jack is suddenly, unpleasantly certain that Alfred has killed men before, and wouldn't be opposed to doing it again. When he and Bruce are standing at last on the front step of the manor, underneath the pale specter of stars—just far enough from Gotham for the sky to peer through—Bruce lets out a heavy breath.

"I wasn't expecting that," he says. "I'm sorry you had to experience it."

"Eh," Jack says, "people don't usually like me much. I'm used to it."

Bruce narrows his eyes at the gates in front of them. "You know that's not fair," Bruce says. "There's nothing wrong with you."

"From your lips to God's ears," Jack remarks, even as he tries to drown the cold feeling of dread that washes over him. Oh, there's so much more wrong than he likes to think about.

"I'll have to have a talk with him," Bruce is saying. He sounds like he'd rather be dipped in hot oil.

Jack looks up. Bruce is crumpled with worry, his shoulders hunched, his lips turned down. Blue and grey in the moonlight, beautiful despite the tension of his features. Here is the thing: Jack wants him to be happy. Jack wants him to be the person he is now, not—not whatever he used to be, what he imagines to be some amalgam of Gala Brucie and estranged son, a distant and unhappy creature. That Bruce could never have loved Jack. He would kill to protect this Bruce, to keep him. He thinks he might even really mean that. In that thought, he feels a delicate thread of kinship with Alfred Pennyworth.

"Hey," Jack says, "Hey. You need your family. Family is the most important thing, right?"

"Yeah," Bruce says, scrubbing his hands across his face, "but this is important to me too."

"You don't have to choose," Jack says. He reaches out, takes Bruce's hands into his own. He offers the best reassuring smile that he can manage and kisses Bruce's wrists, one after the other. The skin there is warm.

He says, "I wouldn't ever want to make you choose."

viii.

It's deep into the night on an evening when things have been going well. So much so that Jack has made the mistake of assuming they will continue to go well forever. He forgets that he is living in the eye of a storm. He gets caught up in the pleasure of having what he wants, of being indulged. Happiness consumes him.

They're in Jack's apartment. Maybe this is the problem.

Bruce doesn't have his back to anything, he's supporting both their weights at once, effortlessly. Overwhelming desire screams through Jack, urging him to press closer, spread his thighs wider—perched on Bruce's lap with his tie undone he feels so much lighter than he should, like a doll you could toss effortlessly against the wall. He doesn't know why you would throw a doll against anything, but he can't help but imagine himself tossed, shaken by Bruce's powerful hands.

His knees are on either side of Bruce's hips but he wants to push himself closer, smear his whole being against that body. He kisses down into Bruce's mouth, panting and messy, and takes anything Bruce will give him. He grabs at everything, unable to keep his hands still, leaves four finger-shaped bruises over the bare skin of one pectoral. There's a heart there, he thinks in a daze. There's a heart in there.

"God," he says, into that mouth, "I want to—tear you open—touch this—touch—"

This room is a terrible place, a nightmare place, with blue neon lighting up the slats of the blinds and the shadows at the corners of the ceiling swarming over their bodies, a place that won't allow him to sleep. This room is the nest of bugs beneath the surface of a lake, this room is the bottom of the abyssal plain, and Jack has filled it with evil for months. It's seeped out of him while he slept, sunk beneath the bed and hid there. Yes, obviously. He should have realized sooner.

What is Bruce saying? It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, as long as he's here with Jack in this awful room in the dark and the blue neon, things that suit Bruce Wayne better than any bespoke tailored piece.

Jack pushes him down. There's a flash of surprise on Bruce's face—Jack shouldn't be able to do that, he isn't strong enough, shouldn't be—that's swallowed up by desire, and that. That long awaited confirmation that Bruce wants him, wants only him, he's dreamed of this since before he was born, came into the world hungering to sit in the white hot spotlight of Bruce Wayne's desire. He moans, desperate for more, spreads his legs so wide that his hips ache beautifully.

He's terrified by his own hunger, how good it feels, how it makes him say things that any reasonable person would die rather than say. He's invincible, all powerful, sitting atop this man.

"Je t'aime," he mutters, wretchedly, "je te hais—"

"Jack," Bruce says, and Jack is just barely present enough in his own mind to register tones of worry. He ignores them. He kisses everything he can get his mouth on, dipping down to reach neck and shoulders with his teeth. "Jack," Bruce says again, "wait—"

Jack finds his chin in the strong grip of Bruce's fingers, immobilized. He licks his lips as he finally pauses in his frantic motion.

"Where are you?" Bruce says.

I'm here, Jack wants to say, but of course that isn't true. He's here and not here, a ghost possessing his own trembling frame, two page-flicks upwards in the book of the universe where this room is the dark cavern of the sea, similar and not, and he feels that if he could look up fast enough he would catch the silver tails of deep sea monsters as they swam through the walls.

"I don't know," he whispers.

"Tell me what you're feeling right now," Bruce says, softly, taking Jack's face in both hands. Jack leans into them, his eyes fluttering closed.

"Uh," he says, "I'm, I'm pretty turned on right now. Distant. Afraid? Dizzy?"

"I don't think we should go any farther," Bruce says, gently. "You're not yourself."

"No," Jack whines, desperately, nails biting into flesh. "No, please. If you stop now I'll—"

If you stop now I'll die, he doesn't say. He's irrationally, horribly certain of this, but he's just self-aware enough to know that it might sound like a threat. So he doesn't say anything, he just chews his lip until it splits.

Bruce at least looks like he's taking Jack's terror seriously. After a moment, he reaches up and carefully pulls Jack down, onto the bed. When Jack's back is flat against the sheets, he comes slipping over and lies half on top, rests the flat of his hand against the sharp dip of pelvic bone.

"I'm here," he says. And he is. His body is heavy, solid and hot over Jack's oversensitive skin, his weight is the only anchor holding Jack down to this city. In moments like these, Bruce is the only real thing in the whole cardboard world.

"I have got to get a new apartment," Jack manages, cracking a pale smile to show that this is, trying to be, a joke.

Bruce looks around. "Is the room upsetting you?"

"No," Jack says. "Yes," Jack says. He stares at the ceiling, uncertain if he's smiling or not. He thinks he is. "I'm afraid it's not the room."

"Why?" Bruce asks, ever patient.

Jack swallows. He is certain now that he's smiling. "Because if it's not the room," he says, "then it must be me."