Sexual content ahoy!
John spent most of the day dozing. He'd been conscious enough to call out of work with a genuinely rough voice but besides that he'd just laid there. In the afternoon he'd managed to get up and take a piss but he'd immediately sunk down into the couch cushions afterwards. He'd never felt quite like this before. And he'd been on oxycotin for weeks. He couldn't imagine lumbering under this lethargy. It was even more of a mystery as to how Bane moved so fast.
The next time he opened his eyes, the sky outside was a rich royal blue and someone was rooting through his kitchen. It was Bane. He smelled like tar. John knew he should be more suspicious. He knew next to nothing about this person, other than the fact that he had been a convicted criminal in one of the worst places in thr world. The things he couldhave done, couldbe doing…John managed to sit up. Bane emerged from the kitchen. The stove top was making the apartment warm and his shirt was off. Thick leather bands wrapped around his waist. His chest was massive and thick. It was like sizing up a rhino. John tried to get up. Bane pushed him down gently with one enormous hand. It was like being batted by a tiger. John went back down helplessly.
" You are especially sensitive" Bane said in his grim rumble. " I must remember to sleep at your back."
"You're being a little forward." John murmured and Bane walked back into the kitchen. John blinked. Bane was back with a steaming bowl.
" You must eat. You're too small." Bane said. John grumbled at the fawning as Bane lifted him up to lean into him. Those dark eyes were peering down at him curiously. This close to him, John's heart beat started to pick up. This is how you'd hold a girl before you kissed her. Instead Bane started to tip the bowl towards John's mouth. He sputtered and recoiled.
"That's fucking hot. It'll burn me."
"Heat is a luxury." Bane said in annoyance. But he didn't tip the bowl again.
"How do you eat?" John asked and raised a hand to touch the mask. Bane let him, body docile. But his eyes were hard. John dropped his hand away.
" Sorry."
" It is nothing you have done." Bane said and lay John back down, putting the soup on the side table and standing. John felt like a tool.
" If you get a spoon, I can feed myself." John said and Bane left the room. The cabinets and drawers rattled away. He came back with a spoon too fast for John's liking. He was still burning with shame. This person was trying to help him and here he was, butting into his business and rejecting his attempts at nursing.
" I'm sorry," John said, " Is there anything that can be done about the injury? Skin grafts maybe?"
Bane didn't respond, he simply sat down and scooped up some soup into the spoon. Pulling John up again, more roughly than before he nudged the utensil at his lips. It was still pretty hot but John sucked it down anyway. It was rich and salty. Bane didn't say anything more. John was halfway through the soup when Bane spoke again.
" There is nothing to be done." Bane hummed.
" Is it the age of the injury? The cost?" John pressed.
It had to be nearly impossible to get medical treatment when you were a criminal on the run…and essentially an illegal immigrant. That was another thing John didn't want to think about. He was harboring a fugitive, Jesus.
" Ok, we won't talk about that. But you have to tell me. Why were you down there?"
Bane looked at him and John suddenly got the impression that behind those steel mandibles, he was a handsome man. It made a flush rise up in his cheeks. He held that stare until those narrowed eyes relaxed.
" I was given as collateral to pay my father's debt."
John was so shocked he forgot to close his mouth. Bane took the opportunity to shove in a spoonful of soup. Choking, John wiped his mouth and asked in a halting voice
" You didn't do anything?"
" I was offered up before I had a command of language," bane said.
John knew it could be a lie. He'd heard his partner talk about the numerous sob stories the Joker used to break people's guard down. But Bane didn't seem to be looking for anything from the story. Not even sympathy. It was just a fact he was relaying. John relaxed back into the couch.
" You can stay here, if you want." Bane looked at him and John felt like he was being humored.
" You would be hard pressed to remove me. I owe you a debt."
John went back to work the next day. But when he would come home at night, Bane would usually be there. John was usually too tired to do much than make a simple meal and sleep but having a live in guest somehow made him less miserable.
They didn't talk much and they certainly didn't do much sharing but it was like coming home to a loyal Rottweiler who would watch the history channel with him and stand warm at his back while he made goulash. They read together, shared the bed. John kept wanting to talk about it, rationalize it but it wasn't explainable.
Sure, Bane was attractive and John was sex starved, that could be it. Growing up homosexual might have been more difficult if he'd had the time to pursue it. But he'd been in survival mode for a long time. He'd been hyper alert for sexual misconduct from foster parents, so much that he'd flown by his formative years of sexual exploration and become a cynical virgin. In fact, the only reason he knew his attraction was because of Bruce Wayne. The CEO had come to the orphanage to inspire hope and he had. But he'd also unconsciously shared with John two secrets. Bruce Wayne was Batman and John wanted to put his mouth on his collar bone. It was only now, sleeping with a massive man curled around him at night, that desire touched him.
Now Bane lived with him, quietly cohabitating and John was confused. He'd stopped using his alarm as Bane had taken to gently waking him in the morning like a heavy boned cat. And he would find himself occasionally helping Bane while he read, some words even forcing him online looking for definitions. It was a comfortable life until one night.
He'd had to break up public sex that night, the two twined together wet in the humid park. They'd been flushed still shuddering toward each other's rotation, too hot for shame. John wanted to go home, get in the shower and jack off but Bane was in there, doing whatever it was that took him so long. He'd lay down on the bed to wait him out, flushed and irritated and had fallen asleep.
In the dream, he'd been in the park, near the same cluster of trees where he'd broken the two men apart. They were there in front of him shining with sweat, the smaller man curved to the larger's chest, grinding back on him sweetly. The larger man had dark eyes and his bug mandibles were feeling all over his partner's face, tearing the skin off bloodlessly. John wanted to be afraid. He was instead pulsing with arousal. The skin slipped away to show a black cowl. Bruce Wayne keened and offered his mouth up that clicking monstrous mouth.
John woke up with a huff. For a moment, he just laid there, shuddering. He hadn't come, and he was so hard it was buckling him forward, slicking his thighs where his cock was trapped. The lights were off and Bane was behind him. But he wasn't breathing like he was asleep.
A heavy hand settled on John's hip. He whined.
" Do you permit it?"
" Fuck, yeah," John whispered back.
The hand slid down. It covered most of his pelvis. God, he was close. The hand nudged past his pants and closed around him, hot and tight. He couldn't catch his breath. Bane rubbed his forehead against John's slick neck. The hot flesh and cool leather made a drop of precum roll into Bane's fingers. Bane's breathing didn't pick up. He seemed, in fact, to get calmer.
" Look at me," he said.
John turned his head and moaned. Bane's eyes were liquid fire. He could dismember John as easily as a hyena. But he wouldn't. John shuddered with pleasure, as Bane dragged a thumb under the sensitive head.
"I wish I could kiss you." John grunted and Bane dragged the cold metal mask against his shoulder. John came so hard, it was almost too much, like a wave that sharply bowls you into the sand and then withdraws. The orgasm left him shuddering; Bane pulled John's shirt off in order to wipe his hand clean and throw it away. John suddenly felt like an asshole. He reached out to return the favor and Bane caught his hand so hard that the orgasm lethargy vanished. Then he gentled his hand and soothed it by rubbing his thumb over the joint.
" Why?" asked John, feeling weirdly put out. Bane lowered his head to rub their cheeks together like a contented cat. John tried to ignore the fact that only slices of Bane's face were available for this kind of attention. John was really just starting to realize how crippling this bisecting mask and the injury it abated really was.
" My face was not the only casualty of the attack." John's head pounded with shame. It explained the absence of Bane's excitement.
" I'm sorry," he whispered. " You shouldn't have had to…I just assumed."
" It brought me pleasure… of a kind." John put his face into Bane's muscled chest. His body was unbelievably warm. John could sleep like this.
" You must turn over." Bane said, as he rolled him gently away, sealing himself against his back. He settled a heavy arm around John's waist. The adrenaline had woken him up a little. And he was so goddamn curious. He wanted to know his story.
" I didn't think you'd be ok with…someone like me. The stories I've heard of prison…and what's been done to you…"
Bane settled his paw on John's sternum, kneading soothingly. He was clearly trying to put him to sleep. When five minutes passed without John buckling, Bane sighed.
" When I was old enough to be released to the general public, rape was commonplace. The first man to touch me in interest, killed. I was not targeted after that. "
John felt a cold shiver but Bane continued unaffected.
" But as my adolescence came, so did war above. The war lord stopped sending supplies, doctors. Many died. Some men would violate the bodies, which we could not bury, which we could not remove. There was no clean water. The plague nearly emptied the prison. When the war lord again became interested, when supplies came, the survivors reigned in the new comers. Sexuality was correlated to disease and it was not tolerated. It had to be permitted under the public eye. Years passed and an event…changed this view. I was attacked in the first break of this order. At this time, it is all I will say on the matter."
John felt like he couldn't breathe, like he could either scream in rage or crumple into tears. He'd grown up isolated, neglected. But he'd clearly never suffered. This man could easily have come into John's home, raped and kept him. That he accepted affection and gave it…John couldn't fathom that kind of strength. He cradled Bane's hand, brought it to his mouth and kissed his fingers. Bane rumbled pleasantly.
" I've always felt that I was meant to do something great. I think it was saving you." John said. Bane rubbed his stomach, making John chortle at the tickle of nerves, so Bane brought his palm to flatten over the crest of his hip, pulling him closer.
" I don't know about that." Bane said but John was drowsing already. He would turn over the words in his mind later but now he was sated. And for the first time, he felt some spiritual surety. He'd been used to answer a prayer. It had all been worth something. If he ever met his hero again, he could be proud.