Archive of Our Own

Arkham’s new wing wanted to be clean. Stainless. Surgical. Without memory.

Thomas Elliot approved.

There was a particular elegance to being watched in a place that tried so hard not to feel.

The walls gleamed too white, the light too constant—clinical and oppressive, as if sterilization could erase what had been done inside them. The air stung faintly of bleach and control. Every surface gleamed like a secret waiting to be uncovered.

And at the center of it all: his own private glass cell. Seamless. Doorless. Built not just to contain, but to expose. No shadows. No darkness. Only light.

More than a stage, it was an operating theatre. A clean white box with the illusion of mercy stripped out. Designed for observation.

Thomas could almost hear the applause from where he stood inside the four glass panels. He was as immaculate as ever. Especially here. Hands clasped behind his back. Shirt pressed. Shoes polished. No shackles or bruises, and with nothing but time.

It was a room meant for revelations.

They always made it about justice. About containment. But Thomas had always preferred a different version. The one with glass and white light and performance. Because what they really wanted was a monster they could observe.

He closed his eyes, just once. Felt the lights burn against his lids. When he opened them again, the cell looked sharper.

This place didn’t offer absolution. Only attention. And Thomas Elliot had always been very good at being watched.

When the door slid open with its inevitable sigh, he didn’t move to greet his guest. Stillness was power. Presence. And Thomas knew exactly how to wield it. He’d known Bruce would come eventually. Of course he would. Men like Bruce Wayne couldn’t leave a thing buried when it stared back at them with the wrong eyes.

Even through the glass, Thomas could smell the Gotham rain on Bruce. He stepped forward like a thunderclap in the flesh, or gravity made human. No longer a symbol, but a weight so absolute it threatened collapse, dragging the remnants of everything he’d failed to bury like a second skin.

Thomas took him in like a connoisseur appreciating rare art. This version of Bruce seemed quieter, rougher, stripped back to bone.

Curious, that he hadn’t come as Batman, especially as the Bruce who stood before Thomas looked like he'd been living with ghosts.

Thomas had rehearsed their reunion a dozen times. But this slightly greying, fraying Bruce was better than any dream. He liked Bruce better like this. Honest. Raw. A man cracked open by his own absence.

So grave. So noble.

And still, exquisitely, far too late.

The door whispered shut behind him, a breath stitched closed.

Thomas smiled, small and precise. “You came.”

He didn’t bother pretending Bruce had a choice. Bruce had always been the kind of man who had to stare directly into his own ruin. And this time, Bruce hadn’t come for revenge, or his saintly brand of justice.

He wasn’t even here for the man behind the glass. No. Bruce had come for what the glass reflected back at him. The damage. The doubt. The cracks that had appeared so violently in the foundations of his precious legacy.

“Three weeks,” Thomas said, voice easy, warm. “That’s how long it’s been since you crawled out of whatever hole time spat you through. I was beginning to think you might not come at all.”

Bruce said nothing. But his silences were never empty—they gathered. They waited. They warned.

This particular silence tasted faintly sweet, as if spoiled at the edges. Thomas felt the tension vibrate through his teeth. How long since someone let Bruce be angry? How long since anyone dared invite it?

Thomas stepped closer to the glass. “Although you’re not here for me. Not really.”

A pause. Sharp and with purpose.

“You’re here for him.”

There it was.

A twitch in Bruce’s jaw. Small. Contained. But enough.

Dick.

The golden boy. The prototype.

Thomas let the silence settle for just a moment before speaking again, but inwardly, something stirred.

It came easily, the memory of the way Dick used to move: precise, efficient, all that brightness drilled into discipline. Even when in pain, even in shame—oh, but especially then—Dick had looked so damn composed.

“You’ve noticed it, haven’t you?” Thomas murmured, his voice gentling into something almost affectionate. “Since your return. The hesitation in his hands when someone says your name. The way he flinches—not dramatically, just barely—at sudden light. The silence that follows him into rooms now, shaped like something fragile. Something bruised. The way he doesn’t look in mirrors anymore.”

Still no reply. But Bruce’s stillness had a heartbeat now—louder than any words. Such careful, leaden restraint.

“You recognized the signs, how could you not? I left my fingerprints everywhere,” Thomas said. “You always do, when the clay is still wet.”

And Dick—sweet, sturdy thing that he was—had let himself dry that way.

His smile stayed pleasant, while his eyes caught the light with a scalpel’s gleam.

“He didn’t tell you in words. Of course he didn’t.” A near-sigh, fond and cruel. “But you saw it. You knew it.”

Thomas almost smiled again, but this one didn’t reach the surface. It was almost religious, in a way, the realization that flickered through Bruce’s gaze, devotion and grief sharing the same sacred page.

He’d caused that look once before, in a different lifetime, with a different kind of blade.

Thomas’s fingers traced a line through the air, slow and precise.

“His posture. The control. The care.”

His voice thinned to a hush, threading through the sterile quiet like breath fogging the edge of glass.

Across from him, Bruce stood rigid, spine locked, breathing shallow, on the edge of a reflex he couldn’t afford to indulge.

Good, Thomas thought. Bruce should feel it in his bones. The wrongness. The weight. That’s where it lives now, doesn’t it? In the parts you can’t show anyone. The ones Dick mirrors without meaning to.

“I never left,” he whispered. “And that’s what brought you here.”

“I’m not here to play games, Elliot.” Bruce’s voice was low, steady. Flat. The sound of a man already at war.

Thomas’ eyes narrowed, absorbing the shift as Bruce spoke out of turn.

“No,” he said at last. “You’re not.”

He tilted his head, gaze sharpening.

“You’re here because you already know what I did. Not the details, maybe, but the shape of it. And you think I kept proof. Because you know I always do.”

A pause, then a quieter cruelty.

“And you’re afraid of what I might do with it.”

His voice dipped, conspiratorial now.

“Because if there are images—footage—documentation of how your golden boy broke for me, then someone else could see it too. Someone else could know.”

A smile, bright as bleach.

“And you can’t bear that.”

He let the silence stretch, then tilted his head in mock sympathy.

“But if you want to know where it is—where I keep what he gave me—then you’ll have to listen, Bruce.”

A pause.

“You’ll have to hear every word. Because otherwise, what’s in it for me?”

A low growl reverberated in Bruce’s throat, restrained but audible, the sound of a man who understood the unspoken contract. If he wanted the evidence—if he wanted any of it—he had to pay the price. And Thomas, of course, had already set the terms.

For everything he had enjoyed doing to Dick, the thought of sharing all of that with Bruce excited him even more.

Thomas leaned forward slightly, eyes gleaming with something too sharp to be amusement.

“Because it’s not just about the files, is it, Bruce?”

And oh, Thomas was going to savor this. That flicker—brief, bright—of fury in Bruce’s eyes.

“You want to know, don’t you?” Thomas said, a murmur masquerading as mercy. “What I did. How it started. What he let me do.” He turned his palm slowly, offering something delicate and obscene. “But that’s not the question you’re afraid of, Bruce.” He moved a step closer, quiet as breath behind glass. “The question clawing at you is when.”

His voice lowered, thickening with something softer than triumph. “Because if it was recent, you think maybe there’s still a way back. A way to save him from the shape I left inside him. But if it started earlier—if it began before you even noticed the change in his shoulders, the quiet in his voice—then what’s left?”

The silence between them coiled. Bruce didn’t flinch. But he didn’t breathe, either.

“Let me tell you a story,” Thomas said. “About a boy who came home bleeding and proud and too tired to ask for help.”

He savored the opening line like a surgeon savoring an incision. Clean. Intentional. Just deep enough to draw blood.

The memory bloomed behind his eyes, warm as a bruise.

“We’ll start in the cave,” he said, almost to himself. “Of course. Where else would he run to bleed? That place was a mausoleum to you, Bruce—but for him? It was practically a confessional. Except now, atonement was off the table."

He could still feel the weight of the place on his chest—the chill, the silence, the engineered sanctity of it. A monument to Bruce’s grief, dressed up as discipline. The cave didn’t forget anything. That was the point. It catalogued suffering in stalactites and dust.

Thomas had never understood Bruce’s obsession with that tomb of granite and ghosts—hollowed grandeur carved into the earth like a wound. But Dick? Dick had worn its shadows like velvet. Even down there, among the stalactites and secrets, he didn’t disappear. He clarified.

And even here in Arkham, Thomas carried that image like a favorite scalpel—compact, elegant, and always a little bloody.

“None of them had been there in the weeks after your ‘death’. He’d told the others it was too haunted - told himself he didn’t need the cave anymore. And so, he locked it down and ran off to that bright, airy apartment of yours.”

How naïve Dick had been, to think he could simply outgrow a place etched into his bones.

Thomas’ voice dipped—deeper, closer into memory.

“That night was different. He couldn’t go back to Alfred or Damian looking like that—bruises blooming too dark, his breath catching. It would only worry them. And Dick—dear Dick—was already so good at protecting other people from the truth.”

A slow smile tugged at the corner of Thomas’s mouth. He always did admire that kind of restraint. Not just the concealment—but the craft of it. It was like watching a dancer wrap a broken ankle before stepping onstage. Pain turned into poise. Suffering repackaged as grace.

“Even then, he was trying to rewrite his own story. Recast himself from casualty to champion—and if not champion, then at least to only a minor inconvenience. He was always performing recovery before the curtain even rose.”

It was method acting with blood in the margins.

Thomas exhaled softly, gaze unfocused, like watching it unfold again.

“His chest was rising too fast. Blood had soaked through the seams of his suit, trailing down his ribs. He looked exquisite.” Thomas had always liked those things that broke with surgical precision. Each of Dick’s edges felt deliberate, controlled fractures that spoke of purpose instead of incident.

A flicker of something moved behind Bruce’s eyes—tight, quiet, damning.

Thomas saw it, and let it burn.

“He didn’t see me at first, and doesn’t that just say where his mind was at? He was too busy peeling off the suit—slowly, painfully. Ritualistic. Not delicate, but deliberate. His chest rising in shallow pulls, each breath tighter than the last. The kind of breathing you do when pain is background noise.”

Silence followed, and really, Bruce gave Thomas no choice but to fill it.

“His blood was still wet. Still warm, I’d bet. I watched him sit down on the floor, Bruce. So raw and malleable. He was holding himself together in pieces, the way you do when you think no one’s watching. The way he used to watch you, Bruce. Echoing in your silences. Memorizing your grief.”

A slow inhale.

“He looked so young like that. So breakable. It was beautiful.”

“When I finally broke the silence, he turned—sharp and wild, like an animal that hadn’t yet decided whether to run or bare its teeth.” Thomas let the memory curl around his tongue, rich and alive, his voice slipping into a storyteller’s cadence. “He’d been looking for somewhere dark enough to bleed without anyone asking questions.”

He saw the minute tension in Bruce’s jaw, the breath held half a second too long—tells. Always tells.

“And that night, he certainly bled. Quietly. Elegantly. Like he was trying to disappear into the shadows without leaving a mess.”

A pause, almost reverent.

“Tell me, Bruce—how many times do you think he’s done that?”

Bruce’s eyes thinned at the edges. His stillness sharpened. And in that tightening silence, Thomas pressed in.

He had found it—the hairline fracture beneath the myth.

“Do you know what he said to me, once he found his voice?” He smirked, slow and knowing. “‘Go haunt someone else.’”

He tasted the words like an old wine—fermented with resistance, laced with shame. A boy trying to be clever through a throat lined with dust and blood.

“He tried to sound sharp. Tried to bite. But it cracked in his throat, hoarse from pain or silence—I never did ask.”

Thomas tilted his head slightly, as if still watching the moment unfold from the shadows of the cave. His gaze caught on memory—dragged through the press of stone and the iron scent of old blood, heavy with the silence that settles after suffering has run its course. He turned toward Bruce, slow and deliberate, his smile unfurling.

“I told him to go if he couldn’t stomach the company. But this was my house now. And if he passed out, I wasn’t scraping him off the floor.”

Thomas studied Bruce in the silence that followed.

“He didn’t move,” Thomas said, “I’m not entirely sure he could have if he wanted to. Instead, he simply sat there, locked tight into that beautiful posture of his. Breath shallow. Muscles clenched. God, it was exquisite. Like he thought all his careful discipline could cauterize pain.”

And it nearly had. But Thomas had never needed the scream. Just the silence. Just the shape of it. Dick’s defiance didn’t interest him. The stillness—controlled, aching, absolute—that was the show.

He lifted one hand, slow and deliberate, as though the memory hung in the air and he could sculpt it back into being.

“He’d already peeled the suit halfway down. But his undershirt still clung to his skin—sweat-slick, blood-heavy. I told him to take it off.”

“He hesitated. Just a second. The first crack in the glass. So precise I could almost hear it. Then…”

He breathed in, slow as a surgeon preparing the next incision.

“He obeyed. Stripped slowly, careful. Like every inch of fabric carried something sacred—or dangerous. The hem caught on the wound at his side, and when it tore free, it made a sound I still think about. Soft. Wet. Ugly.”

Thomas smiled. Small and self-satisfied.

“He didn’t flinch, because that would have been the same as giving in. He was still playing at being in control, at that point. Thought that if he bled on his own terms, it wouldn’t count.”

His smile deepened.

“I admired that. Always have. The little theatre of it. As if performance could save him.”

He turned back to Bruce, eyes gleaming.

“And now you’re here, hoping I’ll do the same for you. Give shape to the suspicion crawling under your ribs. Maybe even absolution.”

A breath. Almost fond.

“Or I can tell you what he let me do, instead. The choices he made.”

“He let me finish the bandages when his hands started to fail—fingers numb, shaking, losing their grip on the thin thread.”

“He let me cut through the seams of his suit legs. I was very professional, of course. I talked about compression. Circulation. All very clinical. But we both knew.”

His voice curled around the pause like a hand closing softly over a throat.

“Maybe he didn’t choose what came next. Not consciously. But he didn’t stop me, either. Not when I pushed him back. Not when I cracked his skull against stone and the world wavered. By the time the stars cleared from his eyes, I had one hand wrapped around his cock and the other pressing deep into the places that already hurt.”

A hush followed, reverent and awful. Bruce had turned to stone.

“And oh, Bruce. The look on his face.”

Thomas smiled again, as if conjuring it—the intimacy of pain, the breathless edge where resistance folds.

“The moment pain twisted into heat. The moment Dick realized—somewhere deep and unspoken—that this wasn’t just punishment. That part of him wanted it. Needed it. The touch. The surrender. The silence. The relief of not having to hold the reins. Whether he fought in the moments before that shift hardly matters, because when that moment came? He melted around it. Breathed it in like oxygen. Gave himself over not with fear, but with aching, instinctive grace.”

A pause. A beat.

“I don’t know if he saw me then. Or if he saw you. But he gave in. And it was beautiful.”

A soft laugh, shaped like cruelty dressed in silk.

“He made a sound. A moan. Or maybe it was a sob—I couldn’t tell. His mouth was slick, his hips moving without permission. There’s something holy in that, don’t you think? When the body remembers what the mind won’t admit?”

Thomas turned, voice like a scalpel now—precise, gleaming, built to cut. But beneath it, heat shimmered.

“And then he chose to let me choose everything else.”

The image surged back, alive beneath his skin.

Dick—half-undressed, chest slick with sweat, the suit bunched at his thighs. He was breathing too fast. His lips parted like he’d forgotten how to speak. Or didn’t dare.

“He didn’t stop me. When I pulled the suit the rest of the way down, he lifted his hips without thinking. His thighs shook. And I knelt between them like a penitent, hands reverent, mouth dry.”

A breath. A dark smile.

“He was beautiful, Bruce. Tense. Silent. His cock flushed and full, leaking against his stomach—and still, he didn’t speak. Didn’t beg. Just watched me like he was waiting to see who I would become.”

“I touched him. Palmed him. Let my fingers trace down, slow and deliberate, until they slipped lower.”

Thomas’s voice deepened, velvet dragged over something sharp.

“He flinched when I circled his rim. Reflex. But he didn’t close his legs. He stayed open. Waiting.”

A beat.

“I pushed one finger in.”

Soft. Dangerous.

“No warning. No fanfare. Just heat, tight and slick. He gasped—high and broken—but he didn’t pull away. His hands gripped the stone like he needed something to hold him to this world.”

“I worked him open. One finger. Then two. Twisting. Stretching. Curling inside him until his breath hitched and he started to move—just a little. Just enough. He was so tight, Bruce. So fucking tight.”

A flicker of tongue over teeth.

“Every press of my knuckles made his back arch. Every curl of my fingers made him tremble. I could feel him opening around me. Reluctant. Greedy. Like his body didn’t know which it was.”

Thomas leaned forward, voice low and lush.

“And when I found that spot—when I pressed just right—he moaned. Quiet and desperate. He bit down on the sound, but it escaped anyway. His whole body tightened like a bowstring.”

“I whispered to him then. Called him good. Called him perfect. Told him how well he was taking it.”

He closed his eyes.

“And God, he was. He opened so sweetly around my fingers. Clenching, loosening, dripping. I could’ve spent hours there. Ruining him slow. Drawing him out like silk.”

Thomas’s smile returned, cruel and intimate.

“He spread his legs wider when I told him to. Held still. Let me finger him until his cock was weeping, his thighs slick, his whole body begging without a word.”

“And when I pushed in…”

His voice thinned, reverent.

“He made one sound. One breathless, broken thing. He tilted his head back. Exposed his throat like a man being offered up.”

Thomas hadn’t moved at first. Just stayed there, buried to the hilt, watching the way Dick’s body trembled around him—clutching and resisting, breath shivering against the stone floor.

“He was so fucking tight, Bruce. Hot. Alive. And silent.”

A breath. Measured. Deliberate.

“He didn’t ask me to stop. Didn’t say my name. He just braced himself, like he’d already decided what he could survive.”

“I started slow. Deep, dragging thrusts. I wanted him to feel every inch. Every stretch. Every choice he hadn’t made—but hadn’t stopped either.”

“He clenched when I found his prostate. Gasped again. A sound like he didn’t want to make it, like it hurt to be known that way.”

Thomas’s voice softened, almost fond.

“I praised him again. Called him beautiful. Told him he was doing so well. And he listened. I could feel it—every word settling under his skin, right where he thought no one could reach.”

“And then he started to move.”

It hadn't been elegant.

“He rutted back into me. Shallow at first. Then more. Then deeper. Until he was meeting my thrusts like he couldn’t help it.”

Thomas’s breath caught—just slightly—as he said:

“He came without touching himself. Just from being fucked. Just from me. It hit him like it hurt.”

A pause.

“He shuddered under me—hips jolting, cock spilling, mouth open and wet with a sound he didn’t mean to make. And when it passed…”

Thomas’s voice gentled, eerie in its intimacy.

“He turned his face away. Like he couldn’t bear to be seen after.”

Silence stepped into the space between them—thick and clotted.

Thomas exhaled. Not regretful. Not proud. Just full. Like memory had taken up the space inside him and left no room for shame.

“You want to talk about choices?” he said quietly. “He let me decide everything. Where to touch. When to push. How to break him open until he bloomed.”

His gaze narrowed.

“And he did bloom, Bruce. So delicately. So precisely. He didn’t fall apart. He offered himself—petal by petal—because he trusted me to take him apart without losing shape.”

It had been so easy to lose himself in the memory. Dick beneath him, skin fever-hot, breath catching, hips lifting without thought or permission. The taste of sweat and surrender still lingered on Thomas’s tongue, vivid and sweet. He could almost feel the tremble of those thighs again, the silence stretched thin around a breath that never fully came.

But now—

His gaze sharpened as it slid back into the present. Blurred reverie burned away in the face of something heavier.

Bruce.

The figure standing across from him had once been flesh and grief and foolish sentiment. But now?

Now he was stone.

More Batman now than he ever was in costume: judgment and fury pressed cold, forged into something ancient. His eyes didn’t just burn—they carved. His mouth was a line of iron, lips bloodless. Every inch of him wound tight in restrained violence.

“You are small,” Bruce said. His voice was hoarse, cracked at the edges, but it held. “Insignificant.”

Elliot flinched.

It wasn’t the insult—it was the certainty behind it. Bruce had peeled him open, found his rot, and dismissed it as unremarkable.

Not monstrous.

Just pathetic.

He covered it with a smile—thin, bright, too precise. But something raw pulsed beneath the surface.

“If you think,” Bruce said, voice low and guttural, “that for even a second I believe—”

“What?” Elliot snapped, too sharp to control. “That your dearest, oldest friend might have—?”

He caught himself. Smoothed the air around him like pressing wrinkles from silk.

“Or that your son—are we calling him that today? I lose track. Son. Soldier. Toy.”

He let the quiet stretch, taut and aching.

“Oh, Bruce. Half of what I said was probably a lie.”

His smile turned gleaming, intimate.

“But which half brings you peace?”

He watched Bruce now with clinical interest, hungry to see where the scalpel landed.

Bruce didn’t speak. Didn’t move. But something shifted. A flick of tension at the corner of his jaw. A narrowing behind his gaze—measured. Controlled. Utterly damning.

Elliot almost sighed.

“What matters more to you?” he asked, softer now. “That he consented? Or that he fought back?”

The silence held its breath.

“If he chose it—if he gave himself to me—then he remains whole. Human. But weak. You taught him to be a blade, and he turned himself into a sheath.”

A pause.

“But if I took it—ripped it from him—then he’s innocent. Violated, but easier to mourn. Easier to love.”

Elliot’s voice dipped low, velvet over glass.

“And you?”

He tilted his head, just slightly.

“Then you get to keep the myth of the father who shaped him. You get to cry for the boy you failed, without ever admitting that maybe, just maybe, he walked into the fire and came out burned.”

He leaned closer, until his breath was nearly touching memory.

“So tell me, Bruce. What’s easier to grieve—his agency?”

A smile, slow and merciless.

“Or your failure?”

Bruce’s mouth parted—lips pulled taut, something forming in the depth of his throat. A word, maybe. A threat. A name.

But Thomas lifted a hand, casual as a flicked switchblade.

“Don’t,” he said lightly, almost bored. “It’s too early for that.”

He leaned back, spine loose, gaze bright with the high of control.

“There’s still more you need to hear.”

A beat, and the smile curled inward.

“Much more.”

He said it as though savouring something rare, decanted and left to breathe for years.

“Because, of course, he came back.”

His gaze drifted—outward, inward, elsewhere.

“Things must’ve gone wrong again. The Titans couldn’t fix it. Damian couldn’t hold him. And you—” a glance, glinting, toward Bruce, “—were still trying to save a version of yourself that never existed.”

He didn’t wait for a reply.

“I didn’t go looking for him. I simply waited. That’s what you do with wounded animals. You don’t chase after them, you leave the door open and let them find you.” Dick’s predictability had always been one of his better traits.

And Thomas could still feel the quiet of that day, the way the Manor held its breath. “It was a Tuesday. I remember because the air in the east wing didn’t move. The staff were gone. No team in the cave. The walls sounded the way they do when grief’s gone stale.”

A blink, caught halfway through thought and memory.

“And there he was. In your library. Sitting in your chair. One ankle crossed. Elbows braced. Posture loose, but not at ease. He knew what he was doing. He always did.”

Thomas let the image ripple through the silence.

“He wasn’t there for you.”

Humor lined Thomas’s voice.

“He had rules, Bruce. Beautiful, tactical little rules. No marks where someone might see. No code names. No kissing. No questions. And above all—no one could ever know.”

A breath, almost warm.

“He added one more. Said it last. Stared straight ahead like he was reading the words off glass.”

“‘If I say stop, you stop.’”

He laughed. Low and dark, effortless.

“Oh, Bruce. Would you like to know how long it took before he was on his knees? Three minutes. Maybe four.”

Thomas hadn’t touched him, not at first. A hand on his shoulder. A brush of knuckles beneath his jaw. And Dick had opened his mouth with only the barest hint of shame. He didn’t describe that part to Bruce. It would’ve been redundant. The heat of it. The grace. The way Dick moved like someone trying to perform obedience so perfectly he might vanish inside it.

That memory was his, and he kept it.

But the desk—ah, that, Bruce would understand.

“I bent him over your desk once we were both bare,” Thomas said, voice velvet smooth. “You know the one. Mahogany. End of the room. Worn just slightly at the edge from your hand.”

Amusement curled in his voice like smoke rising from coals.

“He kept his arms beneath him at first. Elbows locked, fingers splayed against the desk, as if poise alone was a substitute for control.”

“It almost worked,” he mused. “But his legs gave way after a few well-placed thrusts. Always the legs with him—graceful until they break. They were still trembling when I sat down in your chair.”

His voice quieted, but lost none of its edge.

“It still held your weight, and the leather creaked like it knew him.”

Thomas drew in a breath through his teeth.

“I pulled him back onto me. He was bent at the waist, braced between your desk and where he sat on my cock.” His voice caught faintly on the image. “And the second he sank down, it drove me deeper into him than I thought possible.”

The memory didn’t settle, it seared.

“You’d have to imagine it, Bruce. His back flush against my chest, head tipped, lips parted. Not quite kissing distance, but close enough to drink every breath he spilled.”

A shudder ran through him, too quiet to name.

“And still—I couldn’t get deep enough.”

He exhaled like it hurt.

“I wanted more. I took more.”

No gesture this time, no flourish—just a soft, ruinous certainty.

“I pressed two fingers in beside my cock. Just to feel him stretch around it.”

Dick had jolted, his head snapping back against Thomas’s shoulder, thighs trembling, eyes wide and unfocused. The memory burned bright beneath Thomas’s ribs, all heat and pressure. That fierce, breathless grip around him, the impossible stretch, the tension drawn so tight it hummed through both of them. He hadn’t meant to go that far, not yet, but once he felt the way Dick’s body caught and held him, resisting without closing, raw and vulnerable and utterly open, there was no stopping.

And then came the cry.

It rose without warning, dragged from somewhere deeper than breath. Raw and wet, pitched with the desperate agony of a body split in too many directions at once. The sound clung to him, still did, folded inside memory like a pearl too smooth to name. It didn’t waver. It didn’t ask. It broke open and poured out, pure as suffering made sacred.

Dick had frozen. Tight, trembling, mouth slack, his whole body locked in the unbearable moment before meaning. Speech hovered there, Thomas could feel it, ready to tear something clean and final into the air.

He was going to say something. Something real. Something that might change everything.

Thomas couldn’t allow it.

So Thomas kissed him. Tongue deep, teeth dragging, he took Dick’s mouth, reshaping breath into submission and swallowing every word before it could live.

When he spoke again, Thomas’s voice was low and thick with memory, slick with hunger.

“It wasn’t a kiss you’d recognize. I held him open with my mouth and fucked the words out of him. Every thrust stole the air between us until all he had left was noise. He sobbed into it, Bruce. From the pressure. From the stretch. From the sheer, unbearable fullness of having nothing left inside him but me.”

He leaned forward.

“I fucked him until the chair shuddered beneath us. Until his chest arched. Until he reached one hand back behind him and clutched at my thigh like it might anchor him.”

“And all the while, that chair smelled of you. I half expected your hand to land on his shoulder, or mine.”

Thomas laughed. Quiet and awful.

“It was practically a threesome.”

The ruin that flickered across Bruce’s face—fleeting, almost beautiful—told Thomas everything. He softened his voice to meet it, slow and indulgent.

“You really believe someone else could’ve held him the way I did?”

His tongue flicked briefly against his teeth, voice lowering.

“Superman, maybe? All trembling reverence and self-denial. He’d touch Dick as if he were made of glass, terrified of leaving a mark. Every stroke an apology. Every breath a permission slip.”

A hum curled at the back of his throat, full of false pity.

“Dick would try to accommodate him, of course. Would straddle him obediently, say please and thank you, and ride him like it was a mission. But he’d clench through the stretch, press his face into Superman’s chest, and pretend his thighs weren’t shaking from the effort of swallowing all that expansive pain.”

Thomas’s breath sharpened.

“Or perhaps Jason. The stray. The half-built ghost you stitched together from your own regret.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened, just slightly. Enough.

“Now that,” Thomas murmured, “would be violence dressed up as mercy. Jason would fuck him against a wall—rough denim and gun-oil smeared across his spine, gravel under his boots, hands locked on Dick’s hips. He’d fuck Dick like he wanted to break every part of him that ever loved you.”

His eyes glinted, almost fond.

“He’d shove spit into Dick’s mouth and call it affection. Call him names. Make it ugly. And Dick, ever dutiful, would take it. Not out of desire. Out of penance.”

Thomas flicked his wrist, irritated.

“But that’s merely friction. That burns out.”

No.

“It had to be me. I didn’t come to break him, Bruce. I came to remake him. Thread by thread. I reached into the hollow places you left and filled them with something he couldn’t name.”

A pause, thick with satisfaction.

“None of you could.”

Bruce stood rigid, spine strung tight, a weapon in waiting. His throat shifted once—dry and deliberate—and when he spoke, the sound dragged from somewhere low and feral, more predator than man.

“Whatever you think this gets you—” Bruce’s fingers curled into fists, knuckles leached white. “You’re wasting your breath.”

Thomas watched him a moment longer, gaze sliding across the fine angles of Bruce’s cheekbones, the tension carved deep around his mouth, the growing hollowness beneath his eyes.

Then he smiled. Slow. Bright as a scalpel.

“Mm,” he said, folding one leg over the other. “Shall we talk about the gala?”

His eyes half-lidded as the present fell away.

The ballroom gleamed.

Light spilled from chandeliers in liquid gold, catching on glass and silk, on upturned champagne flutes and polished teeth. The crowd blurred in wealth and performance, sequins and lies.

Thomas had already begun to misbehave.

It started with a glance. A smile too knowing. A hand placed just a touch too low on the back of a woman who clearly knew Bruce Wayne—and tonight, perhaps, would learn a little more.

Dick crossed the room before the first whisper had time to breathe.

His hand closed hard around Thomas’s elbow, firm enough to bruise. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed around a brilliant smile as he maneuvered Thomas toward the nearest exit. “You’re supposed to be pretending to be Bruce, not some drunken dilettante who preys on teenagers.”

Thomas let himself be led. Dick was always so much fun on days when he came to play.

“You mean I’m not supposed to be myself?” he murmured, lips curving. “You wound me.”

“Stop it,” Dick snapped, his voice honed to a blade.

Thomas rolled his eyes. “Oh, that’s right. Tonight is important, isn’t it? It’s the last one Bruce signed off on before he died. You want it to sparkle. I want a drink."

They slipped into a side hallway, the noise of the gala thinning behind them. Marble underfoot. Gold-veined wallpaper. A door.

The guest bathroom.

It clicked shut behind them.

“You wanted to wear his face?” Dick said coldly, turning on him with narrowed eyes. “Then wear it. Stand up straight. Shake hands. Smile like you mean it. If you humiliate him—”

Thomas stepped in close.

“What?” he said softly. “You’ll punish me?”

Dick didn’t answer, but his body did, shoulders locking and every line gone rigid. It was a signal Thomas recognized, a stillness born of calculation, not strength.

"You forget," Thomas murmured, voice dropping to a thread, “this isn’t your show. You don’t pull the strings here. You’re not him.”

"No," Dick said, quiet but iron. “But you’re only here because I let you be.”

Something in Thomas’s face shifted. Flickered. Then froze.

He turned Dick sharply—one breath, then marble at his chest. The edge of the counter caught Dick’s hips, anchoring him.

“Then let me remind you,” Thomas whispered, hand already finding the curve of Dick’s lower back, “what that costs you.”

Dick flinched as the pressure of Thomas’s body pushed flush against him.

“You don’t speak to me like that,” Elliot said, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “Not when I’m wearing him.”

“You can’t—” Dick started, voice low, rough.

“I’m already doing it,” Thomas breathed. “Unless you plan to stop me.”

Then, a beat. A murmur, silk-soft.

“Or should I go back out there?” His teeth grazed the curve of Dick’s jaw. “Fuck her in a broom closet with his face on?”

Dick stiffened. His breath hitched.

Thomas smiled. “Didn’t think so.”

He yanked Dick’s trousers down unceremoniously and freed himself with one practiced movement, cock already stiff from earlier—there had been too much perfume, too much skin, too much fun playing Bruce the wrong way. Dick was just the nearest, prettiest place to spend it.

“This is better,” Thomas acknowledged as his palm skimmed over bare skin. “Society is so uptight about old men fucking sixteen-year-olds these days.”

He aligned himself without fanfare and pressed in.

Dick gasped, the sound catching high and sharp in his throat.

“Don’t move,” Thomas growled, rolling his hips forward. “You want to play at being strong and all powerful? Fine. Hold yourself up.”

Thomas moved indulgently as Dick’s body adjusted, tight and reluctant, trembling through the strain. He watched how Dick’s reflection twitched with every thrust, one ripple at a time, the mirror fractured into something unholy.

“You see that?” Thomas said, voice velvet-thick. “That’s mine now.”

He drove in deeper, a deliberate snap of his hips, and the sound of skin on skin cracked through the quiet.

Dick flinched. His knuckles whitened. The glass trembled.

Thomas leaned forward and caught a fistful of his hair. Forced his head up. Turned it—just enough.

“Look at yourself,” he whispered. “Go on. Look.”

Dick’s gaze drifted sideways and caught the edges of his reflection.

And what a sight he must have found there.

Bent forward. Mouth parted. Eyes wide and wrecked. A flush rising to the throat, blooming with every breath.

“You hate this,” Thomas said, dragging his cock in and out with devastating precision. “And you’ll still come for me.”

He thrust again. And again. Each movement slower. Sharper.

“Won’t you?”

Dick didn’t answer. His breath broke against the mirror—fog and glass and the faintest sound, too soft to be defiance.

Thomas smiled against the curve of his neck.

His thrusts lengthened, each one dragging Dick forward, forcing him to brace harder. His spine bowed under the pressure. His arms trembled with the effort of holding himself upright.

“You wanted to be in control,” Thomas murmured, voice low and pleased. “Is this what it feels like?”

He leaned over Dick’s back, mouth grazing his shoulder. The rhythm built—steady, brutal, unrelenting.

Thomas tightened his grip and gave a particularly sharp thrust that knocked Dick's chest against the marble.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “Let’s see you like this.”

Dick reflection shivered in the glass—jaw clenched, cheeks flushed, lips parted around a breath that wouldn’t come. One of his hands slipped on the edge of the sink. He caught himself, barely.

Thomas smiled against his skin. “Still trying so hard,” he said, fingers skating down to wrap around Dick’s cock. “But you’re already mine.”

He stroked once—slow, possessive. Dick’s hips jerked despite himself.

“Fuck,” Thomas breathed. “You feel how hard that makes me?”

Another stroke. A tighter grip. Dick’s legs shook.

Dick's moans grew more broken, breath catching in ragged gasps. The tempo quickened again —ruthless, and desperate. Thomas gripped his hip with bruising force, rutting harder, deeper, until the sound drowned everything else.

“You’re going to come for me,” he said. “And when you do, I want you to look at yourself. I want you to remember this mirror, this sink, this room.”

Dick made a soft, broken sound—more breath than voice.

“That’s it,” Thomas said, pleased. “You’re almost there.”

The door clicked, and a shadow spilled through, half-frozen on the threshold.

Oh. Oh.

Wonderful!

And Thomas didn’t stop.

Dick’s eyes flew open, breath catching sharp and panicked against the glass. But Thomas only leaned in closer, grinding forward with cruel precision, his hand still stroking between them.

“You see that?” he breathed, voice thick with delight. “They’re watching you. Watching Bruce Wayne fuck his golden boy raw.”

Dick flinched, tried to turn—Elliot caught his jaw, forced him to look forward.

“Don’t,” he hissed. “You don’t want them to miss the best part.”

A breath from the doorway—shallow, trembling.

Then another. Quicker. Wet.

Elliot’s smile deepened, obscene.

“You hear that?” he murmured. “They’re getting off on it.”

His hand moved faster—slick, merciless, coaxing sound from Dick’s throat that he couldn’t swallow down.

“All those whispers,” Elliot went on, rhythmic now, cruel. “What Bruce does to you. What you let him do. Tonight they get proof. They see how filthy you are for him.”

Dick gasped, half in pain, half lost in a deep-rooted shame, as Elliot rolled his hips forward again, forcing a fresh cry against the mirror.

“He’ll talk about this for weeks,” Elliot breathed, the words silk-wrapped in poison. “The sounds you made. The way you took it. The way you never said no.” His voice coiled around them, thick with triumph. He licked sweat from the back of Dick’s neck, slow and mocking. “Oh, most probably won’t believe him, of course. Bruce has such an outstanding reputation after all.  But some of them?”

From the threshold, the shadow didn’t move—but a shaky breath scraped out of them.

His hand sped up, slick and practiced, dragging another choked moan from Dick’s throat.

Dick’s reflection was barely recognizable—glassy-eyed, flushed, jaw slack around whatever breath he could hold onto.

Thomas thrust again. Deep. Hard enough to jolt both their bodies forward against the mirror.

“You’ll remember this,” he murmured. “Every time they look at you. Every handshake. Every polite smile you exchange with them.”

“And they’ll remember, too,” Thomas said. “What you looked like coming apart for me.”

He pressed a kiss to Dick’s temple. “That’s the performance, darling. Now smile. Let them finish.”

From the doorway came a desperate, stuttering breath. A belt clinked.

He drove in harder. A punishing thrust.

Dick broke.

His body convulsed, hips snapping forward as a cry cracked loose. His release hit the porcelain in a shuddering, helpless spatter, a soundless apology buried in breath and glass. The mirror caught it all—the twist of his mouth, the flutter of his lashes.

Thomas held him through it. Fucked him through it. Slow, savoring the ruin. Until Dick collapsed, spine slack, head bowed, hands trembling on either side of the sink.

Thomas pulled out.

Zipped up. Adjusted his cuffs with the care of a surgeon.

Dick’s hand dragged across the counter.

“You always make such a mess,” Thomas said, stepping around the evidence like it bored him.

He met the eyes still watching from the door.

The man looked shattered. Rigid. Eyes wide, pulse high in his throat. One hand still wrapped around his cock where it jutted out through the open vee of his trousers.

Thomas offered a faint smile—gracious, almost amused—and walked past him without a word. He left the door open.

Dick stayed.

His reflection blinked back at him through a fogged mirror—smeared, sweat-damp, and quietly, completely broken.

The memory receded, but the silence thickened.

“Or something like that,” Thomas said, waving a hand through the air, idle and dismissive. “It’s hard to remember, really. Which days your boy whimpered like a prayer, and which ones needed a bit more force. They start to blur, you understand.”

Bruce stood rooted, his spine drawn taut and his fists clenched at his sides. It was practically poetic. Rage coiled through him, yes—but beneath that: the shiver. The ache. That rare, wounded hush Thomas had always longed to see. This wasn’t fury, but the aftermath. The bruised, breathless softness no one else ever touched.

And God, he wore it so well.

“You’re shaking,” Thomas said, soft as breath, savoring the gift meant just for him.

No one else got this version. No one else saw Bruce like this: edged with grief, cornered by memory, trembling in the wreckage of a control he couldn’t reassert through fists or mission reports.

Thomas stepped closer to the glass, his voice almost tender.

“I always wondered what it would take,” he murmured. “To unmake you. Turns out, I never needed bombs or mind games. Just the truth—and the right arrangement of details. And suddenly…”

He tilted his head, eyes gleaming. “You look almost human.”

His fingers traced the air between them. Nothing. Everything.

“Does he know?” he asked. “That he’s the only thing strong enough to break you?”

The comment shook something free in Bruce. When he spoke, his voice came low. Steady. A slow blade in the dark.

“The only thing you’ve ever broken is yourself, Elliot. Everyone else walks away stronger.”

The words landed with medical precision. A flick of something ugly surfaced beneath Thomas’s skin. His fingers curled, nails biting into his palm.

Stronger.

As if Dick hadn't—

He smiled too quickly, too sharp.

“You don’t see him,” Thomas said, voice thinning. “You never have. Not really. Not the way he’s wired. What he needs. What he chooses.”

But Bruce didn’t answer, and this time the silence that followed wasn’t victorious—it was surgical.

And the scalpel wasn’t in Thomas’s hand.

“Where are the files?” Bruce asked, demanded. “I’ve played your pathetic little game long enough.”

Thomas blinked, once, slowly. Then tilted his head.

“You’re no fun at all,” he said, voice pitched toward disappointment. “I thought you’d ask about the yacht. At least. That was one of my better orchestrations. He hated the sea, you know. But near water, he was always... pliant. Especially when the fog rolled in and he thought no one could hear.”

Revulsion shot through Bruce’s gaze.

Thomas pressed on, more intimate. “A balcony, then. Geneva. Snow fell in curls through his hair while he held the railing. Pink wrists, slippery knees. He believed I might let go.” A pause. “I almost did.”

Still nothing. Just the set of Bruce’s jaw and the unmoved weight of his silence.

Thomas’s lips parted—another story ready to bloom—but Bruce cut through it without looking at him.

“Where.”

That one word sliced cleaner than any story.

Thomas sighed, the performance unraveling at the edges. “Storage unit,” he muttered. “Crossover and Diamond. Number 318. Left wall. Box labeled Blueprints. You’ll want gloves. And a blacklight. Not just for the mess.”

Bruce turned without a word, steps sharp and final as a closing vault.

It was a dismissal that stung.

“That’s it?” Thomas asked, voice curling into a sneer. “You’re done with me already?”

Bruce didn’t stop walking.

“So clinical,” Thomas called after him. “So detached. I always admired that about you—especially now, when it’s his name in the dirt.”

That landed, if barely. Bruce’s shoulders pulled tight, a subtle shift that betrayed more than he wanted to give.

Thomas smiled, brittle and sharp.

“It’s tidy, isn’t it? Whatever story you’ve decided on. Easy to file. Easier to bury.”

He leaned toward the glass, voice dipping low.

“But I wonder—have you really heard me, Bruce? No, that’s not quite right, is it?” Thomas corrected. “I think you’ve done more than listen. I think you’ve lived every word. Let each one rot inside you.”

That was closer. That was almost satisfying.

“Do you really think it ends for him,” Thomas asked, soft now, "just because you need it to?” He let the words hang, sticky and low. “And do you think it will ever end for you, now that you know how beautifully your son breaks?”

Bruce was about to start walking away again, but Thomas didn’t give him the chance.

“He was eight, wasn’t he? The first time I saw him. You introduced us. Little tie, big eyes, grieving and grateful. You handed him over like a gift.”

And Bruce froze.

“You gave him everything. And he gave you back every soft, broken thing he had—his grief, his shame, his trust. All of it. You held him like he was sacred. Like you’d earned him.”

A pause.

“How cruel.”

Bruce turned then. Slowly.

Thomas’s eyes lit with something electric and mean.

“You really believed you saved him, didn’t you? When all you did was dress the altar and leave the knife behind.” Bitterness edged into Thomas’s voice. “He didn’t even understand what he was being given. Or what delicious things he had to give away.”

Across the room, Bruce moved—sharp, sudden. Rage flared like a match to oil.

“You bastard—” Bruce’s voice came hoarse and low.

But Thomas’s voice only dropped further, tender and sharp.

“Don’t worry. He wasn’t interesting at that age. Still snarling. Still breaking things. But fourteen?” A glimmer of memory passed behind his eyes. “That winter. You were overseas. He was persistent about going to the Tower instead. I said no. You said nothing.”

His gaze found Bruce’s.

“Fifteen. A sprained wrist. I picked him up from school at your request. Waited with him at the manor. You found us on the couch. He was warm and soft and drowsy, and you asked if he was alright. And I said yes.”

Thomas’s breath hitched on a smile.

“You didn’t ask anything else.”

He met Bruce’s eyes, gaze glinting with amusement now.

“You were also so trusting in the most interesting ways.”

Something twisted darker in his voice as he continued.

“Eighteen,” Thomas went on. “After his graduation. You were late again. He needed someone. I was someone. You walked in, and he turned too quickly. Pupils blown. Mouth red. You should’ve known then. I always thought that might be the moment.”

Silence. Thin and lethal.

“I wonder why it wasn’t.”

Bruce’s fist clenched. His breath came wrong in his chest, each inhale too shallow, too sharp.

Thomas’s gaze softened, mockingly tender.

“And Dick—well. He always knew it was wrong. But he was young enough to hesitate. Young enough to wonder if the problem was him. That’s what made it work.”

His voice dipped, intimate.

“And still, he always fought. Quietly. Fiercely. Every time. Until he didn’t.”

The smile that followed wasn’t cruel. It was worse.

"Until he started coming to me instead.”

The silence cracked—

Then Bruce moved.

Surged forward, hand slamming flat against the glass. The impact cracked through the sterile quiet, sharp and final.

Thomas didn’t flinch.

“There he is,” he said, almost lovingly. “The father. The failure.”

Bruce’s breath stuttered. His voice, when it came, was wrecked stone.

“You don’t get to speak about him.”

Thomas smiled.

“Oh, I’ve done more than speak. And yes—there are videos from the early years. From the moments you missed. The ones he doesn’t even remember.”

Bruce’s chest rose once, violently.

“You’ll find them eventually,” Thomas said, lazy with triumph. “Or maybe you won’t. That’s part of the game.”

Silence descended. Too full. Too sharp.

Bruce’s eyes burned, and Thomas drank it in.

That was the tell. That silence. That look.

The truth had landed.

Like father, like son.

“You could always ask,” Thomas said, tilting his head. “You did well with the first batch. Storage unit, box marked Blueprints. Clever boy. It’s not like you don’t know the rules.”

He waited.

Bruce closed his eyes.

Breathed in. Deeply. Painfully.

When he opened them again-

Well.

Thomas smiled the smile of a man about to unwrap a gift he’s saved for last.

“Let’s start with when he was thirteen,” he said thoughtfully. “You remember what he was like. So mouthy. So wild. Always running ahead.”

He breathed the next words.

“Always coming back.”

His eyes gleamed.

“Teenagers, right?”