Chapter Text
Jon’s fatal mistake is that he forgets to keep his heartbeat steady.
Batboy and Superboy had been sent to track down and make an example of an elusive figure known as the Scarecrow who had been making waves in Gotham’s gang scene. Jon secretly thinks that this is a complete waste of time, but his dad had owed a favour and Bruce is so touchy about perceived threats to his power.
The trail takes them to a warehouse on the docks, supposedly where Scarecrow’s base of operations is, but when they break in there is no sign of the man himself, just hired guns clad in respirators and the hiss of gas being piped through vents as a recording of Scarecrow’s voice gloats about the power of his new “fear toxin”.
It’s not the first time someone has tried to set a trap for Superboy. Usually Jon wouldn’t be concerned; for him breathing is more a pastime than a necessity, and in any case very few things are capable of affecting kryptonians.
But this time, he’s not alone.
Damian does his best to avoid the gas, but there’s only so long he can go without breathing. Once he’s forced to inhale it doesn’t take long for symptoms to start.
Everything seems to happen all at once.
Damian sways on his feet, and pitches over.
As if triggered by the unexpected movement, a man who’d had his gun trained on Damian flinches and pulls the trigger.
No.
Jon moves without conscious thought; he scoops Damian out of the air, easy as breathing, and pivots to put his body in the path of the bullet instead.
It’s chaos after that; smoke fills the warehouse as the rest of the hired guns open fire. Jon doesn’t care about the ricochet of bullets off his skin, of course, but for Damian there’s a real danger of being hit by a stray shot.
That is when Superman arrives on the scene.
Even if Jon were blind and deaf, he would still be able to pinpoint his dad’s location purely by the smell of blood that clings to him like a fine perfume. It’s the work of seconds to clear the warehouse of all enemy combatants; Superman’s brutality is shockingly efficient when he’s not playing with his food.
“I was wondering what was happening when I felt your heartbeat spike–didn’t think I’d find you slacking, Jonno!”
His tone is jovial, as always, but the look in his eyes as he watches Jon and Damian sends a pulse of dread down Jon’s spine.
It’s too late for Jon to put Damian down. He doesn’t know what his dad sees, but he is terrified that he has already revealed too much of himself, demonstrated a weakness that must be excised.
“I see you want him. Taking after your old man, eh?”
As if taking after Superman is anything to be proud of. But Jon just nods in agreement and wrestles his traitorous heartbeat under control, because what else can he do?
“Well, go and have him, then. Bruce won’t mind.” He says this indulgently, like he is doing Jon a great favour. Like Damian, rendered halfway insensate by the gas and trembling in his arms, is something Jon can have.
Jon freezes, searching for something, anything, that would get him out of this scenario. His mind comes up blank. When he speaks Jon is utterly disconnected from the words he manages to force through his mouth, a last-ditch attempt at avoiding this poisoned gift offered in the least free way there is.
“Why would I want someone used up like that?”
Superman doesn’t fall for it.
“Don’t lie to me, boy. I can tell that you’ve been pent up, go get it out of your system.” His eyes narrow, and the air becomes charged.
“Don’t tell me you’re actually attached to a human.”
(Jon has always understood where the line is. Lusting after Damian is acceptable. Liking him is not. Jon had recklessly and stupidly indulged in these feelings anyways, now Damian is the one who will pay the price for his indiscretion.)
“Of course not.” Perhaps his dad suspects that he is lying, but Jon has been an actor all his life. His heart beats steadily at a controlled pace. He keeps all traces of nausea off his face.
Superman seems mollified by this response, flicking his hand in the air in a casual gesture of dismissal.
“Just drop him back at the manor after you’re done. I’ll let Bruce know after he’s done being a grump about the no metas in Gotham thing.”
He leaves, but Jon isn’t stupid enough to think he’s not listening in.
Jon wants to rage. Jon wants to cry. Jon thinks he might become violently ill, despite his superior biology.
He swallows it all down.
Superman’s word is a law that must be followed. What else can he do?
***
He starts undressing Damian, because it is needed for what they are about to do. What he has to do. Damian recoils from Jon’s touch, his eyes glassy with fever. His efforts are kitten-weak, ineffective against Jon’s kryptonian strength, but Jon–
Can’t do this.
He’s been lying to himself for such a long time. He should have known better; there’s a reason the only people he can interact with without fear are his dad and other members of the Justice Lords. Jon has no equal, and this is by design. He was never meant for something as mundane as companionship.
Damian is usually so composed, even as people hurt him. Jon has never wanted to be another one of them. Now he doesn’t have a choice.
He is a child and involuntarily turning a cat to ash with his powers—
He is a teenager and voluntarily turning children to meat under his dad’s approving gaze—
He is in the fortress of solitude and waiting, watching, as his dad finishes up with Damian, pretending he is unmoved by this—
He is on a dirty warehouse floor with the one he loves more than anything in the world and the way Damian sounds as he pleads for Jon to stop shatters something inside him that can’t be fixed.
“Hey,” he says. There’s a buzzing in his ears. It takes a while for him to recognize the sound of his own voice. It sounds off. Flat. (An outsider would be able to identify it as a catastrophic lack of hope. Jon is beyond self reflection at this moment.)
“Stop fighting. Just go to sleep, yeah?”
His hands close around Damian’s neck. He can feel the blood pulsing beneath the delicate veins and arteries, hear the beating of Damian’s hummingbird heart.
He fights it, of course, hands scrabbling uselessly at Jon’s grip, but there is no give.
Jon’s hands are perfectly steady.
He knows exactly how much pressure to apply so that the result is a blood choke, not a crushed windpipe.
He’s had a lot of practice.
(Necks break so easily. So do hearts.)
The handful of seconds before Damian goes limp feels like an eternity. Jon gives it thirty more seconds before he lets go, so Damian won’t regain consciousness too soon.
Jon breaths in.
He breathes out.
What does he need to do here? What will his dad be satisfied with?
He goes back to what he was doing before. Undressing a limp body is easier than undressing a struggling one. (Not that either is hard, for Jon. But he’s never let himself care before.) Jon can’t look away as Damain’s skin is revealed inch by inch. His hands trace the areas his eyes map out. He is overwhelmed by sensation; it is so much more than anything he could have imagined. He can’t stop himself from savouring the moment. (He knows it won’t come again.) Even pale and splayed across on the floor of a warehouse with dark shadows under his eyes, Damian is so beautiful. It doesn’t take long before Jon is shamefully aroused, obscenely tenting his uniform with his desire.
He quickly shucks his own clothes off and makes room for himself between Damian’s thighs.
Even here, Damian’s skin bears the marks of violence. Is it better or worse, that Jon is not the first to have him this way?
His hands do not shake as Jon lines himself up and pushes in. It’s so warm and tight. Too tight. Jon knows if he were to look at where they are connected he would see blood. He doesn’t look, because if he does that would make everything real in a way that he knows he won’t be able to deal with.
(The last thing Jon wants to do is to hurt Damian. It’s too bad his wants have never mattered. He is never going to get the smell of Damian’s blood mixed with concrete dust and mildew out of his mind.)
Jon’s thrusts rock them back and forth in a cruel parody of intimacy. The physical sensations of Damian around him, under him, is so good that it is easy to lose himself in the moment. (If he loses himself in the moment he doesn’t have to think about what he is doing. About what comes next.)
The crash back down to reality comes when Damian starts waking up. It begins with a quiet hitch of breath, the fluttering of eyes beneath paper-thin eyelids. The twitch of Damian’s limbs that Jon knows will herald further movement. The way his muscles tense up involuntarily under the violation Jon is inflicting upon his body. Jon needs to finish this. He doesn’t have enough time.
If Jon were at liberty to talk without being overheard he would whisper reassurances into Damian’s ears. Shh, sweetheart, he’d say. You’re doing so well. Just relax, it’ll be over soon.
Instead Jon pets at Damian’s face and hair, attempting to offer what little comfort he can. He knows it’s not enough, will never be enough, but Damian lets out a soft whimper and stills under his hands. His hair is so soft. His eyes are closed. Does Damian understand what is happening? Will he remember this? For Jon these memories will be seared into his mind until the day he dies. (If he’s lucky it won’t be that far off. There are some people he wants to take with him before he goes, though.)
It’s not long before Jon reaches his climax. He pulls out and collapses next to Damian and breaths in Damian’s scent and pretends just for a while that he is wanted.
***
Time slips by.
Damian starts to shiver. The warehouse must be cold, though Jon doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel anything at all.
Jon gets up and starts mechanically gathering the parts of his uniform that he had taken off. When he picks up his cape he does nothing but look at it for a while. The white fabric is pristine, in stark contrast to the self-revulsion that Jon can feel creeping into the edges of his consciousness.
He unclenches his fingers from the fabric and drapes it over the body he’d left on the floor. It falls around Damian like a funeral shroud, covering up the evidence of his crimes. At least this way Damian will be warm. It’s the least of what he deserves.
Jon needs to take them back to Bruce’s manor. He picks Damian up, making sure to keep the cape between his hands and Damian’s skin. If anyone asks, he would say he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. The truth is that he can’t bring himself to sully Damian further with his touch.
Despite everything Damian still fits perfectly in the cradle of Jon’s arms, like he belongs there. Jon lifts off smoothly, taking care not to jostle his passenger, and starts to fly towards his destination. There’s no need to rush. He can take his time.
(Jon is glad to leave the ruin of the warehouse behind. The ruin inside himself is something that he’ll need to learn how to live with until he can do what needs to be done.)
***
When Jon gets to the manor he is confronted with another problem. Damian isn’t in a state to let him in. Jon could probably just dump him on the front steps, and go. It’s what Bruce would probably expect, and he doesn’t need to be nearby to keep tabs on the situation with his senses. It would be the safer thing to do, but Jon doesn’t want to let go until he has to.
He wonders if he should just break a window and let himself in, repercussions be damned. (The worst thing Bruce can do to Jon is to make him listen to Bruce’s posturing, and they both know this. Bruce cannot physically touch him. Any consequences from Bruce’s anger would likely fall upon Damian, however, and Jon doesn’t want that.)
A circuit around the manor reveals what appears to be a servant’s entrance, discrete and tucked out of the way. Jon can’t imagine that Bruce would ever lower himself to pass through a servant’s entrance, dramatic and full of himself as he is, but Damian’s scent lingers around the area. He must use it at least somewhat frequently.
Jon can tell that there are hearing protections built into the walls of the manor, but he doesn’t feel the telltale drain on his powers that come when kryptonite is involved. Whatever stash Bruce has managed to get his hands on must be reserved for his basement man-cave. The lock in on the entrance looks sturdy by human standards, but won’t do anything to stop Jon. If he trips some sort of alarm he can probably manage to fry the circuits with his heat vision before it goes off? He doesn’t usually have to think about things like this, since his targets usually end up too dead to care.
The lock tears like tissue paper under his hands and Jon slips inside. The room he finds is spartan, but if Jon looks carefully he can see traces of Damian’s presence scattered about. (A set of pencils, sharpened down to various lengths. A tattered paperback book. A first-aid kit hastily strewn to the side. Damian’s ever-present scent in the air that Jon cannot forget or escape from.)
Most of the space in the room is occupied by the thin, worn cot that Jon places Damian onto. He doesn’t react, gazing blankly at the ceiling. There is salt drying on his face. His breathing is raspy. Jon forces himself to look away from the bruises in the shape of fingers beginning to develop on Damian’s neck. Damian doesn’t look at Jon. Jon doesn’t blame him. He doesn't want to look at himself either.
An alarm goes off.
Jon is struck with a wild surge of resentment at the prospect of having to deal with Bruce, of going back to playing the role of what Superman expects him to be. Perhaps it's a side effect of having his self-delusions stripped away, but he is so tired of pretending.
The anger drains out of him as quickly as it comes. Ever since his actions in the warehouse Jon has felt increasingly detached from his current plane of existence. Nothing feels real through the haze descended on his emotions; his body moves on autopilot.
He doesn’t know how the confrontation with Bruce will go. Jon is off-balance, off-script, out of control. For the first time in his life he could do anything, because none of the consequences matter anymore.
The seconds turn into minutes, and Bruce still fails to materialize. What’s taking him so long?
Pulling back the scope of his hearing reveals to Jon the sounds of fighting coming from beneath him, which must be where Bruce’s man-cave is.
Is he dealing with intruders?
Something must be happening, because under normal circumstances there’s no way Bruce would have ignored the alarms going off like that.
Jon could leave, since it’s not like he gives a fuck about Bruce’s security issues.
But.
Anyone who dared attack Batman on his home turf must either be confident in their victory or recklessly suicidal with nothing else to lose. The fact that the intruders had managed to get into the manor in the first place spoke of intent and planning that favoured the former. It’s been so long since there’s been a challenge against a Justice Lord like this, and Jon wouldn’t mind seeing Bruce get taken down a peg or two.
Damian is so vulnerable right now, and anyone driven enough to orchestrate such a move against Batman would be unlikely to extend mercy to his son. Jon can’t risk that.
The prospect of impending violence is tempting. His hands itch with the urge to rip and tear and destroy. He can almost taste the blood on his tongue, and he doesn’t particularly care who it comes from.
Soon, Jon tells himself. There are things he needs to do first.
The camera Bruce left in the room is easy to find and destroy. Bruce has bigger things to worry about than a broken camera, anyways.
Now that they are alone, Jon climbs into bed and pulls Damian up against him for the last time.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against Damian’s ear, the barest hint of sound leaving his lips.
Jon doesn’t want to be overheard. His words are meant for Damian and Damian alone. Even though he knows that there is soundproofing in the manor walls and he is speaking too quietly to be picked up by bugs, it still feels like a transgression. Apologizing goes against everything Jon was raised as, but here he is learning how to do so anyways. If only he had tried to go against his upbringing sooner. Maybe he could have spared Damian this pain.
(Maybe he could have spared himself this pain.)
It doesn’t matter anymore.
Jon gently turns Damian’s face to the side to steal one last thing before he goes. It’s nothing more than a fleeting brush of lips, over before it really began.
He’s fucked a lot of people, but this is his first kiss.
It’s nice.
Tender, in a way he didn’t think he was capable of. It’s too bad he won’t get to do it again. (He already wants to, but he won’t. Jon has been selfish enough.)
Maybe in another life they could have been happy.
But Jon is what he is, and there’s no changing that. The only thing left for him now is the hunt.
He goes, leaving behind the last remnants of a dream he once had.
***
Jonathan Kent was raised by the apex of all predators; there is no room in him to be anything else.
He should have known better than to hope for anything more.