p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Back Home for the Night/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"There was always a certain relief of getting back into the batcave after a long night out. Pulling into the main platform where the batmobile was kept and seeing the seemingly endless ceiling of the cave's stalagtites open up above us after driving the tunnel from the mountain road and under the manor was longer than probably most people ever imagined, if they ever bothered to imagine these things. Who knows what the public ever imagined about us; at any rate, they never knew the half. They didn't know who were even were off-duty, let alone what we did or how long the driveway was into the batcave. It didn't take us long to drive out of it on a call, with power thrusters and horsepower that could catapult a fucking horse to the moon and back, with power the U.S. military only dreamed of having, but on the way back in it always seemed like it was a longer drive to get back home, just like any other suburban commuter. Funny how similar we can be sometimes to actual normal people with real jobs. I never quite get over that, but that's part of the fun. Long as the ride felt, I liked the anticipation, knowing what we would probably end up doing once we got back. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I was always one to hop out before it even came to a full stop. The platform was a turntable that made "the car" (as we sometimes called it) point back out, ready for the next call. It would have cost precious seconds to have to turn the damn thing around, and we couldn't back out a 2-mile tunnel. Even he couldn't do that all that fast. Though few, he had his limitations. Plus the platform turntable was narrow; the space around and below it was deep, dark, and vast. He knew how far it went down, and probably Alfred did, but I didn't bother to ever learn. I was too busy studying everything else he demanded. He always used to protectively wince a little when I hopped out my side on each return, fearing that I would one night leap too high over the door and fall straight down the chasm. Worry wart. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I ran up the short stairs to the main console platform and glanced at the screens and scanners. Not much going on; the surveillance cameras on the giant screens that lit up the whole dark, dank place showed the usually petty thefts going on at 4 in the morning but nothing to really worry about. Let the uni's take care of that, or some poor slob can always buy another laptop he stupidly left on his front seat for some lowlife to smash-and-grab for his next crack hit. One of the screens picked up a likely rape that was about to happen in an alley and I clicked it off by snapping my fingers in the direction of the screen, as it had been programmed to do. No sooner than I did that, mostly to dim the room and create some mood lighting, then he came right up behind me./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What was that?" he said, still using his "work" voice, deep and commanding, with a hint of annoyance, like I just turned off his favorite sitcom re-run. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Usual pastoral, idyllic life in the big city," I said, weary from the evening's combat and simultaneously fed up with the ubiquitous existence of crime in the city, which gave us job security but was still a pain in the ass. We do our job as long as low-lifes do theirs. Unconsciously, I was rubbing my left shoulder with my right hand, my glove already off, while my left one was still on. The left one was harder to get off because it was loaded with more crap: pills, gases, gadgets, primary communicators, backup communicators, tamper defense systems. If I didn't enter the disarm code really carefully, the whole tamper alarm would go off and spray knockout gas for 5-foot vicinity, which I learned the hard way about a month ago when Glove 9.0 was issued to me. "Be careful, Master Dick; the disarm code has been re-set," Alfred had warned me, right as I was getting blasted with the gas and falling to the floor. "It's 225214948," Bruce said as he walked away from the pole he just slid down from the East Library, but kept on walking to "the car" to put some new supplies in the laser battering ram compartment. I heard him say that on the way to the floor and stayed conscious only long enough to say, "Thanks, asshole" in my head and stayed conscious only long enough to feel my noggin hit the black slate floor (why couldn't he just carpet that? Does it HAVE to look like a cave? It could be decorated any way he damn well pleases, art fucking deco, but he likes the "atmosphere", he says. He says it helps him concentrate on the "mission".) Ever since that night, I'd taken that left glove off in my own damn sweet time. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What's wrong with your shoulder?" he said, trying to sound annoyed but the TLC caring shone right through like an inconvenient bat signal right in the middle of our favorite cable shows. Never fails. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"One of Asshole's assholes got in a decent right hook at one point," I said, referring to our nickname for the Joker. He had many that we had given him over the years: Asshole. Putrid Prince. Psycho Sicko. Butt-munch. Clown Cunt (that was probably my favorite). The thing that always pissed me off about that guy was that the old queen wouldn't get up and fight anyone but My Man; his henchmen were always after me and none of them were trained worth a damn. For being the Komic Krime King, he hired shitty help. Maybe that inflated his ego, to deliberately hire shitty help, knowing that he could pull off crimes even with an incompetent staff. But he didn't need much help for what he did, just some supplies and one sick fucking psychotic mind. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Tonight was no exception. We had seen his not-too-cleverly-disguised van driving in the 4/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;"th/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;" District on the monitors right after we got "downstairs" (as we called the batcave) sometime after dinner and knew what he was up to. The assistant D.A. who had put him, formally, into Arkham again a few years ago, before this latest escape (dammit I wish they could lock that place down) had a kid at Gothamette (how cute is that?) Preschool Center, and Asshole was going to try to get his revenge by planting explosives in its basement, triggered to go off when the Assistant D.A.'s kid sat down at his desk the next morning. Nice guy, huh? Just a laugh a minute. Plus taking the entire class with him, and the next three classrooms, and the second floor, and, fuck, the whole 5-story Center building with him. Asshole was always one for "go big, or go home", but he never really ever got past "Go insane." /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"We, of course, had it all figured out from surveillance and actually got there before his van did, and were ready for them. What the public never knew about Asshole was that for all his comic criminal genius, he was one stupid psycho sonofabitch when it came right down to it. All the headlines about "notorious", "unstoppable", and "relentless" were true, to some degree, but he could also be stone-cold fucking stupid just enough for us to only occasionally work hard to send his purple-pimpled ass back to the nuthouse for a while. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"It wasn't a total party, but it was close. There was lots of athletic equipment that seemed to be designed for people much older than preschoolers to play with. At one point I bounced a giant exercise ball across two of their heads before I punched one of them so hard he flew about 4 feet off the ground before hitting his head against a cinderblock wall that I honestly didn't see behind him (I was having too much fun with the ball). I called out "Strike!" (as in bowling) just as I heard his head hit the wall in a kind of sickly satisfying thud. The dude dropped something as he hit that he had been carrying in one hand while trying to hit me with the other, and when I took a closer look in the dark (I had my night-vision mask on then; the whole place was pretty dim) he had dropped a block of C4 that he was going to "install" in the ceiling. Good thing it wasn't wired yet. Close calls like that have been our stock in trade for years. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Meanwhile, Clown Cunt was fully engaged in a good, old-fashioned fistfight with Him. Again. I saw this with my peripheral vision, WITH the night-vision mask on (no small feat), as I had been trained. I could read a newspaper at 50 feet in the dark with that night-vision mask on because He had trained me to as if my life depended on it, or his, and when I think of it, more than once, our lives did depend on it. Goes with the job description. Plus it's hella cool. You gotta test your limits in all things, he's always said, and then you have fewer limits. He's wise and he's well-hung; some guys have all the luck. Being born a billionaire adds some to the fun, too. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"How is it now?" he asked, coming over to get a closer look at my shoulder, though I don't know what he could see behind me, considering I still had my cape, jerkin, and t-shirt on. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"X-ray it, doc," I said sarcastically. I always get annoyed when he pulls that "there, there, kiss the boo-boo" shit. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"That's the other guy," he said, of course referring to Clark. We liked to call him Clark because we knew that would just piss Clark off it he heard it, which we always wondered if he did. I never knew the limits of that super-hearing of his. Everything is always "super this" or "super that" with that guy. That's stupid. What kind of an idiot puts a one-word adjective before every object associated with him. Egomaniac. And Our Boy Clark didn't dare call him "Bruce" back or he would have had a batarang stuck up his Kryptonian ass. (Yes, the rumors are true; they never did get along all that well, but they both – we all – were seriously committed to the mission, especially on joint JLA business. But Metropolis and Gotham are just far enough apart to keep all the family happy. Good fences make good neighbors. Plus it would piss Wonder Woman off if they bickered. See? We always called her by her professional name, out of respect, never "Diana", but the Big Blue Daddy was always 'Clark' to us.)/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Yeah, but you can do things he can't," I said, deliberately egging him on cuz I was just in the mood./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Damn right," he said, coming up closer behind me and putting his still-gloved hands around my waist, and kissing my neck. I could feel the base of the cowl./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Holy overdressed-for-the-occasion. Will you please take that off? That was only kinky like the first, oh, 300 times," I said. I kinda laughed to myself whenever I said things like that at home; little did the press know that I when I was known for my "holy" expressions, it was actually code to him that said, "Dang, I just wish we were home fucking right now," which was an inside joke just for us that we both thought was funny. You gotta have humor in this business, and not just the sick kind that Asshole brings to the cardtable. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He said sighed a hot gust of his breath down my neck and he began the elaborate process of taking off the cowl, which only he could really do. Great Hera help us if I had to get that off him in an emergency; my codes that I punched into recessed buttons in my glove were nothing compared to the routine to follow to unlock his cowl, for obvious reasons. I made a mental note to ask him about the codes again later, but for now I was just tired from fighting and horny as fuck./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"It didn't take him that long to get it off, and I had taken my mask off and tossed it on the nearest console. I knew Alfred would roll his eyes about having to clean that up in a while but years living in Wayne Manor had made me a spoiled brat and I didn't want to deprive the old guy of his sacred duty. Adding more to it, I tossed my cape over the console, too, and over a monitor. That thing was heavy, made of bulletproof Kevlar that was made to look all yellow shiny-satin, partially smothering the equipment. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"That's 12 million dollars' worth of equipment, if you don't mind," he said. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I rolled my now un-masked eyes and went over and picked up the cape and laid it gently across the back of a chair next to the console./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Happy now?" I said, knowing that would also egg him on./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You're still a brat," he said, coming back toward me with "that" look in his eyes. I smirked but I was already getting hard in my under-suit that included a heavily-armored jockstrap./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He turned me around with his still-gloved hand and dove into the back of my neck like a vampire, his scruff already pretty sharp. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"When did you shave last?" I said. "Ouch"./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Before the banquet," he said, referring to a fundraising dinner that he had hosted and spoken at earlier tonight that Wayne Enterprises sponsored at the house (as we called the manor) for some disabled veterans charity. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"That was just a while ago," I said, "How butch."/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"That did it. He shoved me really hard forward with those famously-hard fists and I landed on the daybed we had in the corner that was ostensibly for "pondering" a case but was just as often used as a fuckpad for us./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I landed face down (on purpose) on the daybed, as he walked behind me, deftly punching in the codes that unlocked his gloves and dropping them to the floor, along with his utility belt. He was fast; he could get both of those off in seconds and his utility belt easily weighed 20 pounds; mine was lighter and I had slipped it off (again, the codes) quickly as I landed on the daybed./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He took a little leap on landed with almost his full body weight on top of me. I pretended to bitch, "ow", but he knew I loved it./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"We were quickly down to our lowest layer, basically Kevlar jock straps, our uniforms (we don't say "costumes"; that's stupid) piling beside us on the floor in a heap of black, green, red, and yellow. His yellow insignia (he was using that one lately, for old times' sake) landed on the floor in the way that it reflected the dim light of console screen. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I could feel he was already hard and knocking to get in. He nibbled my neck kinda gently./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"How was it?" he said,/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What?" I asked, as he hadn't done anything yet./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Tonight," he said. "Taking him down again."/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You did most of it," I deferred, which stroked his ego like his cock and seemed to make him harder./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Piece o' cake," he said, "But he took a little extra effort to pin down this time. Asshole is probably taking Pilates or some shit." The public would be appalled if they heard Their Hero talking like that, but this was just between us. I loved those times. Being world-famous and yet having time alone that was just between us was almost better than knocking out Asshole's henchmen. Almost. Nothing really beats that. Which is I guess why we are, at the end of the day, world-famous./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You still got him," I said. "You saved a bunch of kids tonight. That's gotta feel good."/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"WE did," he said, in a rare moment of generosity in sharing credit. "You know what else feels good?" he asked, in a voice so familiar, so comforting, so deep, so famous, and so amazing./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What?" I said, playing along./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"This," he said, as he thrust into me. I never needed much lube, at least not with him, I wanted it so badly. His scruffy cheek scraped along the back of my neck and shoulder and I felt like I was flying on the trapeze again with the Flying Graysons, totally weightless, totally free. He thrust into me hard, as only 225 pounds of solid muscle and Olympic athleticism can do. I loved the way he smelled after a good fight. Getting the tight uniform off his chest let some air get to him and he was hot, still wet with sweat, and ripe, just like I liked him. The smell of his bat-scent combined with the cool damp air of the "office" (as we also called it) made me feel like I was just where I wanted to be. Strange as it was, it was home. The only real home I ever knew, or wanted to know. Right place, at the right time. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"It took him a while to finish, which was fine with me. He blasted with the strength of the bat-ram and I felt all gushy inside like a spring robin's egg that crashes out of the nest onto the ground below. That made me blow, too, and for a split second I felt sorry for Alfred having to change the throw I just came onto when he gets up in a couple hours. It will still be wet then, and then he'll have yet another of the many secrets he has to keep. I gotta use my influence to get him a raise./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He heaved and finally relaxed into me, still on top of me, this time with me facing him, both of us exhausted from the long night of work and play./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You were amazing," I said, looking up at him like it was the first time. Like the time I met him after the whole accident – or rather, incident; it was no fucking accident when my parents were murdered at the circus in the middle of their trapeze act – and I met those eyes, meeting mine for the first of what would be countless times when I came to live here. I don't know why people get all suspicious about us and creeped out; he's only 15 years older than me. Plus anything I've ever done, I wanted to do. If I can live through my parents' murder, I can control my own ass, or direct who gets to control it. You get that privilege when you watch your parents die at the hands of a fucking low-life. And living with him, you get lots privileges. Living at the manor doesn't suck, in our time off. And the job is, well, the job. You can't beat that. Plus I'm fucking legal now, and have been for a while, so kiss my Kevlar-ed ass, Citizens of Gotham. Being a ward had its privileges. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He looked deep into my eyes, those same eyes that usually stare out at me from a behind a thick black mask. Only I could recognize those eyes, because they only shone that way for me. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"That's my boy," he said, for once making me feel that he was proud of me. Those moments are rare and I had to work hard for them. But no harder than he worked himself. That's what I loved about him. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Still, I couldn't let his ego win all the time. No sir./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I pursed my lips as I stared right back at him, trying to suppress the smirk that was gonna crawl across my lips./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Boy WONDER, if you please," I said, rolling my eyes./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Then he tensed his razor-sharp jaw and stabbed into me all over again, as the smirk on my mouth opened to let out my groan of ecstasy. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The night wasn't over yet. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"br /br /p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"- K.B. Howard/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"9/18/14/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"There was always a certain relief of getting back into the batcave after a long night out. Pulling into the main platform where the batmobile was kept and seeing the seemingly endless ceiling of the cave's stalagtites open up above us after driving the tunnel from the mountain road and under the manor was longer than probably most people ever imagined, if they ever bothered to imagine these things. Who knows what the public ever imagined about us; at any rate, they never knew the half. They didn't know who were even were off-duty, let alone what we did or how long the driveway was into the batcave. It didn't take us long to drive out of it on a call, with power thrusters and horsepower that could catapult a fucking horse to the moon and back, with power the U.S. military only dreamed of having, but on the way back in it always seemed like it was a longer drive to get back home, just like any other suburban commuter. Funny how similar we can be sometimes to actual normal people with real jobs. I never quite get over that, but that's part of the fun. Long as the ride felt, I liked the anticipation, knowing what we would probably end up doing once we got back. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I was always one to hop out before it even came to a full stop. The platform was a turntable that made "the car" (as we sometimes called it) point back out, ready for the next call. It would have cost precious seconds to have to turn the damn thing around, and we couldn't back out a 2-mile tunnel. Even he couldn't do that all that fast. Though few, he had his limitations. Plus the platform turntable was narrow; the space around and below it was deep, dark, and vast. He knew how far it went down, and probably Alfred did, but I didn't bother to ever learn. I was too busy studying everything else he demanded. He always used to protectively wince a little when I hopped out my side on each return, fearing that I would one night leap too high over the door and fall straight down the chasm. Worry wart. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I ran up the short stairs to the main console platform and glanced at the screens and scanners. Not much going on; the surveillance cameras on the giant screens that lit up the whole dark, dank place showed the usually petty thefts going on at 4 in the morning but nothing to really worry about. Let the uni's take care of that, or some poor slob can always buy another laptop he stupidly left on his front seat for some lowlife to smash-and-grab for his next crack hit. One of the screens picked up a likely rape that was about to happen in an alley and I clicked it off by snapping my fingers in the direction of the screen, as it had been programmed to do. No sooner than I did that, mostly to dim the room and create some mood lighting, then he came right up behind me./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What was that?" he said, still using his "work" voice, deep and commanding, with a hint of annoyance, like I just turned off his favorite sitcom re-run. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Usual pastoral, idyllic life in the big city," I said, weary from the evening's combat and simultaneously fed up with the ubiquitous existence of crime in the city, which gave us job security but was still a pain in the ass. We do our job as long as low-lifes do theirs. Unconsciously, I was rubbing my left shoulder with my right hand, my glove already off, while my left one was still on. The left one was harder to get off because it was loaded with more crap: pills, gases, gadgets, primary communicators, backup communicators, tamper defense systems. If I didn't enter the disarm code really carefully, the whole tamper alarm would go off and spray knockout gas for 5-foot vicinity, which I learned the hard way about a month ago when Glove 9.0 was issued to me. "Be careful, Master Dick; the disarm code has been re-set," Alfred had warned me, right as I was getting blasted with the gas and falling to the floor. "It's 225214948," Bruce said as he walked away from the pole he just slid down from the East Library, but kept on walking to "the car" to put some new supplies in the laser battering ram compartment. I heard him say that on the way to the floor and stayed conscious only long enough to say, "Thanks, asshole" in my head and stayed conscious only long enough to feel my noggin hit the black slate floor (why couldn't he just carpet that? Does it HAVE to look like a cave? It could be decorated any way he damn well pleases, art fucking deco, but he likes the "atmosphere", he says. He says it helps him concentrate on the "mission".) Ever since that night, I'd taken that left glove off in my own damn sweet time. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What's wrong with your shoulder?" he said, trying to sound annoyed but the TLC caring shone right through like an inconvenient bat signal right in the middle of our favorite cable shows. Never fails. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"One of Asshole's assholes got in a decent right hook at one point," I said, referring to our nickname for the Joker. He had many that we had given him over the years: Asshole. Putrid Prince. Psycho Sicko. Butt-munch. Clown Cunt (that was probably my favorite). The thing that always pissed me off about that guy was that the old queen wouldn't get up and fight anyone but My Man; his henchmen were always after me and none of them were trained worth a damn. For being the Komic Krime King, he hired shitty help. Maybe that inflated his ego, to deliberately hire shitty help, knowing that he could pull off crimes even with an incompetent staff. But he didn't need much help for what he did, just some supplies and one sick fucking psychotic mind. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Tonight was no exception. We had seen his not-too-cleverly-disguised van driving in the 4/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;"th/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;" District on the monitors right after we got "downstairs" (as we called the batcave) sometime after dinner and knew what he was up to. The assistant D.A. who had put him, formally, into Arkham again a few years ago, before this latest escape (dammit I wish they could lock that place down) had a kid at Gothamette (how cute is that?) Preschool Center, and Asshole was going to try to get his revenge by planting explosives in its basement, triggered to go off when the Assistant D.A.'s kid sat down at his desk the next morning. Nice guy, huh? Just a laugh a minute. Plus taking the entire class with him, and the next three classrooms, and the second floor, and, fuck, the whole 5-story Center building with him. Asshole was always one for "go big, or go home", but he never really ever got past "Go insane." /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"We, of course, had it all figured out from surveillance and actually got there before his van did, and were ready for them. What the public never knew about Asshole was that for all his comic criminal genius, he was one stupid psycho sonofabitch when it came right down to it. All the headlines about "notorious", "unstoppable", and "relentless" were true, to some degree, but he could also be stone-cold fucking stupid just enough for us to only occasionally work hard to send his purple-pimpled ass back to the nuthouse for a while. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"It wasn't a total party, but it was close. There was lots of athletic equipment that seemed to be designed for people much older than preschoolers to play with. At one point I bounced a giant exercise ball across two of their heads before I punched one of them so hard he flew about 4 feet off the ground before hitting his head against a cinderblock wall that I honestly didn't see behind him (I was having too much fun with the ball). I called out "Strike!" (as in bowling) just as I heard his head hit the wall in a kind of sickly satisfying thud. The dude dropped something as he hit that he had been carrying in one hand while trying to hit me with the other, and when I took a closer look in the dark (I had my night-vision mask on then; the whole place was pretty dim) he had dropped a block of C4 that he was going to "install" in the ceiling. Good thing it wasn't wired yet. Close calls like that have been our stock in trade for years. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Meanwhile, Clown Cunt was fully engaged in a good, old-fashioned fistfight with Him. Again. I saw this with my peripheral vision, WITH the night-vision mask on (no small feat), as I had been trained. I could read a newspaper at 50 feet in the dark with that night-vision mask on because He had trained me to as if my life depended on it, or his, and when I think of it, more than once, our lives did depend on it. Goes with the job description. Plus it's hella cool. You gotta test your limits in all things, he's always said, and then you have fewer limits. He's wise and he's well-hung; some guys have all the luck. Being born a billionaire adds some to the fun, too. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"How is it now?" he asked, coming over to get a closer look at my shoulder, though I don't know what he could see behind me, considering I still had my cape, jerkin, and t-shirt on. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"X-ray it, doc," I said sarcastically. I always get annoyed when he pulls that "there, there, kiss the boo-boo" shit. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"That's the other guy," he said, of course referring to Clark. We liked to call him Clark because we knew that would just piss Clark off it he heard it, which we always wondered if he did. I never knew the limits of that super-hearing of his. Everything is always "super this" or "super that" with that guy. That's stupid. What kind of an idiot puts a one-word adjective before every object associated with him. Egomaniac. And Our Boy Clark didn't dare call him "Bruce" back or he would have had a batarang stuck up his Kryptonian ass. (Yes, the rumors are true; they never did get along all that well, but they both – we all – were seriously committed to the mission, especially on joint JLA business. But Metropolis and Gotham are just far enough apart to keep all the family happy. Good fences make good neighbors. Plus it would piss Wonder Woman off if they bickered. See? We always called her by her professional name, out of respect, never "Diana", but the Big Blue Daddy was always 'Clark' to us.)/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Yeah, but you can do things he can't," I said, deliberately egging him on cuz I was just in the mood./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Damn right," he said, coming up closer behind me and putting his still-gloved hands around my waist, and kissing my neck. I could feel the base of the cowl./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Holy overdressed-for-the-occasion. Will you please take that off? That was only kinky like the first, oh, 300 times," I said. I kinda laughed to myself whenever I said things like that at home; little did the press know that I when I was known for my "holy" expressions, it was actually code to him that said, "Dang, I just wish we were home fucking right now," which was an inside joke just for us that we both thought was funny. You gotta have humor in this business, and not just the sick kind that Asshole brings to the cardtable. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He said sighed a hot gust of his breath down my neck and he began the elaborate process of taking off the cowl, which only he could really do. Great Hera help us if I had to get that off him in an emergency; my codes that I punched into recessed buttons in my glove were nothing compared to the routine to follow to unlock his cowl, for obvious reasons. I made a mental note to ask him about the codes again later, but for now I was just tired from fighting and horny as fuck./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"It didn't take him that long to get it off, and I had taken my mask off and tossed it on the nearest console. I knew Alfred would roll his eyes about having to clean that up in a while but years living in Wayne Manor had made me a spoiled brat and I didn't want to deprive the old guy of his sacred duty. Adding more to it, I tossed my cape over the console, too, and over a monitor. That thing was heavy, made of bulletproof Kevlar that was made to look all yellow shiny-satin, partially smothering the equipment. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"That's 12 million dollars' worth of equipment, if you don't mind," he said. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I rolled my now un-masked eyes and went over and picked up the cape and laid it gently across the back of a chair next to the console./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Happy now?" I said, knowing that would also egg him on./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You're still a brat," he said, coming back toward me with "that" look in his eyes. I smirked but I was already getting hard in my under-suit that included a heavily-armored jockstrap./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He turned me around with his still-gloved hand and dove into the back of my neck like a vampire, his scruff already pretty sharp. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"When did you shave last?" I said. "Ouch"./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Before the banquet," he said, referring to a fundraising dinner that he had hosted and spoken at earlier tonight that Wayne Enterprises sponsored at the house (as we called the manor) for some disabled veterans charity. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"That was just a while ago," I said, "How butch."/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"That did it. He shoved me really hard forward with those famously-hard fists and I landed on the daybed we had in the corner that was ostensibly for "pondering" a case but was just as often used as a fuckpad for us./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I landed face down (on purpose) on the daybed, as he walked behind me, deftly punching in the codes that unlocked his gloves and dropping them to the floor, along with his utility belt. He was fast; he could get both of those off in seconds and his utility belt easily weighed 20 pounds; mine was lighter and I had slipped it off (again, the codes) quickly as I landed on the daybed./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He took a little leap on landed with almost his full body weight on top of me. I pretended to bitch, "ow", but he knew I loved it./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"We were quickly down to our lowest layer, basically Kevlar jock straps, our uniforms (we don't say "costumes"; that's stupid) piling beside us on the floor in a heap of black, green, red, and yellow. His yellow insignia (he was using that one lately, for old times' sake) landed on the floor in the way that it reflected the dim light of console screen. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I could feel he was already hard and knocking to get in. He nibbled my neck kinda gently./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"How was it?" he said,/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What?" I asked, as he hadn't done anything yet./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Tonight," he said. "Taking him down again."/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You did most of it," I deferred, which stroked his ego like his cock and seemed to make him harder./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Piece o' cake," he said, "But he took a little extra effort to pin down this time. Asshole is probably taking Pilates or some shit." The public would be appalled if they heard Their Hero talking like that, but this was just between us. I loved those times. Being world-famous and yet having time alone that was just between us was almost better than knocking out Asshole's henchmen. Almost. Nothing really beats that. Which is I guess why we are, at the end of the day, world-famous./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You still got him," I said. "You saved a bunch of kids tonight. That's gotta feel good."/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"WE did," he said, in a rare moment of generosity in sharing credit. "You know what else feels good?" he asked, in a voice so familiar, so comforting, so deep, so famous, and so amazing./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What?" I said, playing along./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"This," he said, as he thrust into me. I never needed much lube, at least not with him, I wanted it so badly. His scruffy cheek scraped along the back of my neck and shoulder and I felt like I was flying on the trapeze again with the Flying Graysons, totally weightless, totally free. He thrust into me hard, as only 225 pounds of solid muscle and Olympic athleticism can do. I loved the way he smelled after a good fight. Getting the tight uniform off his chest let some air get to him and he was hot, still wet with sweat, and ripe, just like I liked him. The smell of his bat-scent combined with the cool damp air of the "office" (as we also called it) made me feel like I was just where I wanted to be. Strange as it was, it was home. The only real home I ever knew, or wanted to know. Right place, at the right time. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"It took him a while to finish, which was fine with me. He blasted with the strength of the bat-ram and I felt all gushy inside like a spring robin's egg that crashes out of the nest onto the ground below. That made me blow, too, and for a split second I felt sorry for Alfred having to change the throw I just came onto when he gets up in a couple hours. It will still be wet then, and then he'll have yet another of the many secrets he has to keep. I gotta use my influence to get him a raise./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He heaved and finally relaxed into me, still on top of me, this time with me facing him, both of us exhausted from the long night of work and play./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You were amazing," I said, looking up at him like it was the first time. Like the time I met him after the whole accident – or rather, incident; it was no fucking accident when my parents were murdered at the circus in the middle of their trapeze act – and I met those eyes, meeting mine for the first of what would be countless times when I came to live here. I don't know why people get all suspicious about us and creeped out; he's only 15 years older than me. Plus anything I've ever done, I wanted to do. If I can live through my parents' murder, I can control my own ass, or direct who gets to control it. You get that privilege when you watch your parents die at the hands of a fucking low-life. And living with him, you get lots privileges. Living at the manor doesn't suck, in our time off. And the job is, well, the job. You can't beat that. Plus I'm fucking legal now, and have been for a while, so kiss my Kevlar-ed ass, Citizens of Gotham. Being a ward had its privileges. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He looked deep into my eyes, those same eyes that usually stare out at me from a behind a thick black mask. Only I could recognize those eyes, because they only shone that way for me. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"That's my boy," he said, for once making me feel that he was proud of me. Those moments are rare and I had to work hard for them. But no harder than he worked himself. That's what I loved about him. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Still, I couldn't let his ego win all the time. No sir./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"I pursed my lips as I stared right back at him, trying to suppress the smirk that was gonna crawl across my lips./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Boy WONDER, if you please," I said, rolling my eyes./span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Then he tensed his razor-sharp jaw and stabbed into me all over again, as the smirk on my mouth opened to let out my groan of ecstasy. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The night wasn't over yet. /span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"br /br /p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"- K.B. Howard/span/p
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 107%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"9/18/14/span/p