DC comics own all: I own nothing. Don't sue, the Inland Revenue (IRS) know my name, so don't expect anything left over.
Usual warnings for homoerotic activity and angst. Might be the first of a few. Don't know.
Accompanied by Rage Against the Machine and William Orbit's Torchsong trilogy.

Fetish
Jay Tryfanstone

Nightwing was unpacking boxes in the warehouse when he found it. He'd been distracted by an old copy of Practical Motorcycle Owner in the stack of old magazines and cutouts: a couple of Lois' editorials and a photograph of a much younger Babs. There were only four boxes, not much for a fifteen-year span. He'd sorted out the toys, put them aside, and spun a small plastic aeroplane across the warehouse until it stuck, gleaming faintly, on one of the beams. Played with the little interlocking Japanese puzzle Bruce had given him when he was..what, eight?

Nightwing had put that memory aside with all the others and found himself a garbage sack, dropping the magazines inside with a sense of cleansing. It had been more symbol than need, to ask Alfred to forward these last of his belongings. There was nothing in these boxes that he wanted, but it gave him a sense of closure, of new starts, to know that there was nothing at the manor that belonged to him.

He peered once again into the box. That was the last - no. In the corner of the box, a scrap of black fabric caught his eye. He reached in, wrapped his fingers round the remnant, and lifted it out. To his touch, the fabric was smooth, closely woven, matt black in the light of the arc lamps that hung from rafters above his head. The edges had been cut, not frayed: the piece itself was long and narrow.

Holding it, he could almost smell the fear, the excitement, his heart skipping a single staccato note.
In his hands he held a piece of Batman's cloak.

Bruce toyed with the narrow stemmed glass of sparkling wine. He was smiling, head tilted to one side, his eyes fixed firmly and with interest on the face of the woman sharing his meal. Self-assured, intelligent, Dr. Aloine O'Connell had asked him out to dinner within fifteen minutes of their meeting and he had accepted. On her own, away from the laboratory where she worked, the Doctor was entertaining company, flirting gently and without intent across the white tablecloth and the excellent food. Bruce gave her Bruce's time and the compliment of listening to what she had to say, but his mind was elsewhere.

Specifically, caught in one small space of loss, a grace note that complimented that other, greater loss. This morning, suited, he had turned the corner at the top of the stairs and found Alfred looking at a small stack of boxes by the library door. Alfred's face was impassive, but his stillness gave him away.

"Alfred?" Bruce had said.

The older man turned to greet him, inclined his head in acknowledgment.

"What is it?" Bruce asked, sliding cuff links into his shirtsleeve and shaking the fabric into place.

"Master Dick's boxes," Alfred said. "He asked for them to be forwarded."

Bruce stopped on the last step. For a moment, the black, winged sorrow within his heart rose, spanned and shadowed a thousand memories that he could not afford to acknowledge.

"Then do it," he said shortly. And had left.

Someone was speaking. He pulled his mind back, with effort, to the woman in front of him. Dr. Aloine was clearly waiting for an answer, her bright eyes fixed on his face.

"I'm sorry," Bruce said. "My mind was elsewhere."

"Never," commented the doctor, with gentle asperity. "Although what you should find so interesting in our resident lovebirds is beyond me." She was smiling, and Bruce followed her eyes across the room to the space where his own, blank, had rested a moment before. In the corner, a young couple was staring into each other's eyes, food discarded and forgotten between them.

"Oh no," Bruce said. "No, I had some bad news this morning." He frowned into his wine. What was he saying? Had he come so far?

"Care to talk about it?" the Doctor asked, leaning back in her chair.

"It's nothing," Bruce said. His hand tightened on the stem of the glass. Too tight: a second's more pressure and it would snap. With haste, he removed his hand and thrust it into the pocket of his suit, leaning back, his consciously easy posture matching his companion's.

"Nothing personal, I hope?" the doctor asked.

"No," Bruce said. "Not at all." He smiled with an effort, forced his mind back into the easy civility that had marked their conversation. "So," he said. "When you were analyzing these rhizome stems.."

In his pocket, his hand found a scrap of paper, fiddling and twisting, a small distraction set against a greater sorrow that, he knew, was best left untouched.

Nightwing twisted the scrap of fabric in fingers that seemed numb and clumsy. It whispered across his flesh, lighter than he had expected, smooth and supple, with a woven fluidity unlike any other material he knew. He could not recall, now, what incident in the past had prompted this unexpected keepsake. There had been so many nights, so many moments marked with a fierce joy in his own speed and strength and with the Bat's sheer force. Remembering, Nightwing let the pride at what they had been sound in his veins. They had been good: they had been the best.

He looked down. It was done, gone and buried and over. Decisively, he let the scrap fall to the floor and stood, stretching. Outside, visible in the high windows of the loft, night was calling.

Leaving, collecting his coat with a smile and a crisp note for the bellboy, Bruce wondered what he had been doing. Were the lines between Bruce and the Bat blurring? How could he have allowed himself to be so distracted that it had been noticeable? The Doctor had smiled his abstraction away, but the gentle invitation in her eyes had gone.

Bruce shrugged the thought aside, making a mental note to send the woman flowers in the morning. He would be careful in future, he thought to himself, digging his hands back into his pockets. Encountering once again the screwed up piece of paper he'd been fiddling with during a dinner that had become interminable despite the company, Bruce pulled it out, unfolded it.

It was only when the driver laid a careful touch on his shoulder that he realised he'd lost himself again. In his hands, softened and crumpled with many folds, he held a copy of Dick's lading bill.

With an address.

Dispatching with seemly and efficient haste a pair of opportunistic hoodlums, Nightwing found half his mind distracted. The accustomed black of the sky above `haven's streetlights seemed to sheen with a reflective glow no night had worn before, and the twisted chimneys of the old town hid a lifetime's worth of crannies where a single, black-clad figure could stand and watch a city at rest. When he flew, for the first time in years, he found himself marking two landing sites and two trajectories, the ghost of a man he had rejected silent at his shoulder. Once, he found himself turning with the tight grin of anticipated pleasure already pulling at his lips. Turning to a man who was not there, who would never be there again.

'I thought I was over this,' Nightwing thought to himself in half-amused deprecation. How could he be? His life had been shaped and molded by the black gloved hands that even now held some other jumpline in some other city, the hands that had soothed his forehead and tousled his hair and struck a desperately hidden need into his bones.

There was no need to ask what had gone wrong. He knew. He knew what was said in the silence between them, in the slow, inexorable diminution of the intimacy that had formed a team. When Bruce had become a cipher and when Batman had stood alone at his shoulder. When he had become frightened to touch the man who was his guardian, terrified of his own betraying body and his errant thoughts: when training had become a breathless hell and simply being together a space of unsaid words and thoughts that seared his mind. And Bruce had known, that was the worst of it: had tolerated the silence and the mood swings and the flat moments of despair. Known and done nothing.

A very old desire. A desire he had thought burned away in Starfire's light, buried under a history Bruce did not share, stored and ignored and found wanting: a boy's infatuation.

He had forgotten. But tonight, memory flew beside him.

Batman, driving down the freeway (no, don't think it!), with the car on automatic pilot, cursed himself for a fool. He knew, none better, that what lay between him and his ward had been sundered beyond redemption. Twisted out of a partnership that had been immutable, glorious: spun with invisible threads of barbed steel by his own stained hands..Batman remembered, with the bile rising in his throat, the bright eyes that had lifted to his own in laughter, in hope, in despair - in desire. In a desire that, shared, could not be acknowledged, a black and guilty desire that had soured any hope of reconciliation.

In his car, alone, Batman stared at the starred lights of oncoming traffic and held, in one gloved hand, a single scrap of paper. How foolish could one lonely man get? How could he imagine that the shadow of the Bat would fill that empty space, when that shadow itself was, knew itself to be, paired?

Across the rooftops, the faint light of false dawn coloured the sky. Somewhere, under that pale light, people stirred: woke themselves and their lovers, dressed their children, made coffee and breakfast and packed lunches, set washing machines and found car keys and walked into their own lives.

Somewhere, under the darker sky still faintly dusted with stars, a single man fought the both ghosts of his own demons and the very real nightmares that stalked the streets of his claimed city.

Lying on his back, staring at the sky, Nightwing allowed himself, finally, to take out and assess the memories he had chosen to lay aside. So much of it was good. He remembered picnics in the park and ball games, visits to friends (oh, that awed small boy's hero worship Clark had indulged and Bruce tolerated) dinners and theatre and breakfasts gulped down in the anticipation of a bright new day. He remembered setting up the cave's trapeze, the pleasure of being teacher, not student, with Bruce attentive at his side. He remembered what it felt like to fly paired, with laughter.

There were other memories.

Water, caught and sliding down the bared muscles of Bruce's back, curve outlined and gleaming, the short black hair sleek and dripping, the long line of black eyelashes closed under the spray. The tuck of muscle at the side of Bruce's mouth that lifted when he was amused. The line of his jawbone, the way his hands moved with such unconscious grace and power. Sweaty, private moments, his own hand on his cock in the shower, his mind guilty and fascinated and shadowed with the wings of an absolute desire. He had not known, then, what it was to feel someone else's hands on his body shaking with need: had not known what his body could do for and with and to him, had not associated love and sex and power in the bleak formula he knew now.

Alone on the roof top, Nightwing felt his blood warm. On his skin, where the last of the night slid a cold breeze of benison, his mind painted an old and never felt alternative, a pair of remembered hands. Touching, feather light, demanding, wanted, wanting. Skin, cool, heating to flame where his own hands touched and molded and begged, the curve of cheekbone turning into his hand, the heat of a mouth he had never touched or kissed softened for him and him alone. Imagined the strength of that beautiful body bent over his, the rasp of stubble on his skin, the power of that first possession. Would he be quiet, Bruce, when he came? Did his back arch, did his hands hold his partner or spread, empty? Would he laugh, afterwards, or would he turn away?

Pain brought him down. His body was hot, so hot, his cock filled and straining at his costume, his hands grasping at the asphalt: the taste of blood in his mouth. Every muscle in his body was taut and aching, his back arched against the unyielding roof: it took a conscious relaxation to bring his mind back.

'You fool.' Nightwing said to himself, groaning: he was no use to anyone with his mind possessed by the strength of his own erection. 'Get home. Have a shower. Go to bed.' He took ten, slow, counted breaths, feeling his body still. And left.

It took Batman twenty sweating minutes to break into the warehouse. The security systems were plain, to his trained eye: he had even designed some of them. But in his gloves his hands had been clumsy, his breath coming short. What he was doing was forbidden, illicit, a last gasp of a long forbidden desire that demanded he not be caught here.

He was..who he was. And on that breath he sprung the last, manual, tumbler on the window lock and slipped in through the windows. There was no-one in the building: he knew that already, had known when he turned the car away from his route home after a severely curtailed patrol that Dick himself would still be out on the streets of his own adopted city.

Silent as a ghost, Batman dropped onto the concrete floor of the warehouse. He took a moment, knowingly unthreatened by any corporeal monster, to orientate himself. There, in the corner, the shelves of tools and stretch of workbench: the clumsy skeleton of a stripped down bike. To his left, the ramps and suspended shells of different cars, the gas cylinders and tubs of oil. To his right, a battered couch and a desk with a computer, stacks of CDs and a discarded mug with a Superman brand. Four empty boxes, one open garbage sack. He could smell petrol, the faint banana tang of high-performance oil: a faint breath of...rosemary? He turned. Behind him, a small kitchen had been built into the far corner. Dick had eaten, then, before he went out.

He walked, slowly, to the kitchen, looked at the stack of plates and mugs, the battered chopping board. Did not touch. On the cupboards, Dick had stuck photographs, Babs, Alfred, some of the Titans, other people he did not know. None of himself. He took one, long look, remembering, and turned back to the workbenches. Safer, this, to see what Dick had been working on: a couple of blueprints, a clean space with a miniature oven and a chilled circuit board, welding wire curled on the side. Part of his mind disentangled the circuits: radar, water borne, judging by the transponders. He left it, checked the lifting apparatus above the shells of car superstructure (a good idea, that, he thought to himself) and the bike, engine still cocooned in plastic wrap. On the shelf above his head, Dick's helmets, the one with the shattered visor Dick had worn at that Dakota meet when he trashed the `ped...he'd been, what, fourteen, and they'd rebuilt it together.

And Dick's gloves, curled and worn to fit the shape of his hands, mudsplashed and torn in places. The red and black pair he'd got with his first bike, a couple of blue and black ones that looked as if they went with Nightwing's guise, the..,

The faintest breath of air. And Batman was gone, across the floor and up to the window on a flung line and a silent catch at the frame, a spin upwards and outwards to a neighbouring roof where he knew he could lie low under the eyes of the security camera.

Nightwing entered the warehouse with haste. His costume was an irritation against his skin and his arousal had been a health hazard on the way home, causing a distracted near miss with an early morning tramcar and a fumbling with the locks minutes from his usual ease. His mind was shadowed, winged with darkness and narrowed to the white glare of a single pair of eyes, his body aching for the touch of another's hands. He stripped, with speed, reaching for the towel that lay on the coach and heading to the small, curtained shower.

Batman, lying prone under the coving, considered and rejected leaving. His eyes were fixed on the small mirror that lay tilted on the brick chimney above his head, angled down through the wide panes of the warehouse windows.

Under the shock of the cold water, Dick's body arched in sudden pain, blood beaten back into submission by the stunning chill. He leaned against the chipped tiles, head resting on his hands as the shower hit his back, each separate spray a sharp tingle of welcome pain. 'Enough.' He thought to himself. 'Stop wanting something you cannot have. Gods.' Dick thought to himself with grim humour. 'Let yourself think about it for a few minutes and see what happens...pull yourself together, boy wonder.'

He was shivering, cold beating through to his bones, the rich net of sexual energy dissipating in the shower's chill embrace with the lingering hardness of his erection. Cautious, Dick counted another two minutes before he turned the water off and scrubbed himself dry with the threadbare towel.

Padding barefoot and dry, if cold, across the concrete floor, he turned the computer to face him and switched it on before curling himself into the down duvet he kept on the couch. It was very near morning, and he was due at bar early this afternoon, but it was always worth one last check. One more to the Bat, Dick thought to himself, and clicked on the camera icon to speed through his security film.

Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing except the thread of uneasiness that crept into the back of his mind with a whisper of black wings and heated breath.

Dick knew, with the absolutely certainty of the sadly experienced, that he was being watched. Now. Close enough to make no sign, to continue to flick idly through the cameras as if this was routine. Nothing. But there was something, he was sure of it: there. Yes, there. Where streaks of golden light brushed the dawn sky, something glinted. Reflected, from- yes, a small mirror placed at an angle on the chimney visible, he knew, from his windows, though he did not submit to the give-away urge to check. Batman's partner, he set the next cycle of the camera to record, not interrupting the steady sweep of the lens, and got up with the duvet wrapped around his naked body to make coffee.

Settled back on the sofa, he flicked through a magazine. Six minutes of studiously idle, unseeing perusal, and he leaned back, turned his head to the computer, and reached, with careful casualness, for the mouse. Flicked back through the video. Zoomed in. Zoomed in again. And was met, astonished, by the curved white gaze of the eyes that had haunted his dreams.

There were no words.

No words, but the slow heat rising again through his backbone, shock and fear and irritation and grief and a sudden, desperate loneliness. What would he do, Dick thought, if I got up now and went outside and shouted him in for coffee? Couldn't he just call? And with it another thought - no. He's been here. Really here. Inside.

And at that thought he did look up, gave his space a quick, studied scan, checking. Sure as he was that the man had touched nothing, the sense of space violated was as pressing as...the sense of gratified joy. So he did care, then. Cared enough to check up on his student. Cared enough to slip in, silently, unheralded, cared enough to be watching...now. And that thought itself was enough to send shivers across Dick's skin. What had he seen? Dick thought to himself. Man with urgent hard-on makes tracks for cold shower? Come on, boy, he's probably seen it all and more before. After all, it's not as if he's not been there. Bruce in shower with hard-on. Hm. Good thought. Bruce in shower with self and hard-on...hmm, better thought, Dick mused, aware that his body was warming and firming again under the blessed concealment of the duvet. Bruce in shower with self and hard-on and lots of soap and no guilt. Very much better thought.

And then Dick's eyes opened. Metaphorically and literally, as he acknowledged to himself, staring unseeing at the concrete floor while the thoughts in his head spun in lazy, happy waves.

Why am I feeling guilty about this? Dick thought, astonished, to himself. The man's attractive, available, and yeah, so he looked after me for a few years. So it wasn't your normal father-son relationship. So it didn't work out. So I miss him. Does that mean I can't get myself hot and sweaty over his body in my own time and space? (and in the back of his mind a damp, firmly muscled Bruce let slip a towel from gleaming skin) Voyeur. Dick thought, and in his mind considered the fine, muscled stretch of those broad hands spanning his shoulders, his waist, aware that his body was reacting with a speed that sent the blood spinning through his veins and his cock hard against his stomach.

Fuck you, thought Bruce's former ward. I'll give you something to watch.

On the roof, cramped, Batman was wondering just what the hell he was doing. He'd seen the boy (Boy? That was no boy's body that had undressed with such haste, fine, elegant in its speed, the curve of bone and flesh infinitely familiar and strange enough to set spurs in his heart) safe home, satisfied himself that he was living well, eating well (Alfred, you'd be proud.. if I could tell you) if sleeping on the couch. Why then, stay?

But his eyes, caught in guilt and desire, did not leave the stretched form under the duvet. Not when the man opened his eyes and sat up, clearly thinking, the mess of damp black hair sliding down the muscles of his back in a slow fall that was infinitely seductive. Not when that man closed his eyes and leaned back, allowing the duvet to fall back from his skin, pale in this light, firm and supple and tactile: not when the man moved, one hand (Still callused? Did the thickened scars roughen that smooth skin with the barest edge of pain?) caressing his chest, fingers gliding over the curve of breast and the pale pink of a nipple the Bat knew would be puckered by cold: not when the other hand slid under the concealing edge of duvet, sliding the cover further down, letting the Bat's avid gaze see the dark shadow of sparse body hair arrowing down to a cock that would be tight and hard.
Like his own.

Allowing his own hands to glide over his body, one at the puckered nipple, the other teasing around the tight, soft skin of his balls, Dick had his eyes closed. In his mind, it was not his own hands that slid with such slow, anticipatory desire across his body: the hands that touched him were older, broader, firmer: the body that lay next to his own heavily muscled in its grace, the lips that teased his throat and neck thin and elegant, loosened for him, the teeth strong and white, nipping at the pressure points on his collar bone. Dick groaned, arching his back into that imaginary caress. Half his mind thought, like that, Bruce? - half his mind conjured an urgent grasp across his hips, placed an insistent heat behind him, spoke into his ears with a dark chocolate growl that was for his ears only.

"I'm going to fuck you raw," said Bruce's voice to Dick, caught in the spirals of a desire so powerful that it seemed to conjure the man himself. "Going to come for me, Dick? Going to call my name when you come?"

On the roof, Batman groaned involuntarily as the duvet slipped further, down, down and off the couch, revealing Dick's hand on his balls, his cock hard and beautiful, his back arched, head thrown back: a image that sent five years of suppressed, possessive desire straight to the Bat's own cock. He wasn't thinking. What he wanted, with all the blood and bone and muscle of his body, was to have that limber body spread under his own with his cock inside it.

Sliding down the couch, Dick's knees met the fallen duvet as he braced himself upright, one hand stoking the ridge of his cock, the other skimming his buttocks in a light, absolute possession that did not belong to his own hands. Dick's eyes were still closed, his mind reeling through a lifetime of images: Bruce naked, Bruce smiling, Bruce caught staring at him with a heat that neither of them could deny, Bruce's voice in his ears, hands on his body, the taste of Bruce's cock hot and heavy in his mouth (Dick ran his tongue across dry lips, panting now) Bruce's body on his, his cock (as Dick spread his legs for that phantom possession) pushing slowly into Dick's arse.. fingers..

Batman could hear the sound of his own breath in his ears. His eyes were fixed on that small mirrored image, his thighs shaking with the strain of holding himself still: in the gloves, his hands had curled with the suppression of desire. Dick naked, Dick kneeling with his legs spread and his head back and his hand on his cock, moving faster now, where the Bat's hand should be: Dick spending passion with profligate generosity, an image to last him years of denied lust. His hearing was going, his sight: his body could almost feel the stretched muscle beneath him, the heat and power of that beautiful body that was his, taken, owned, protected, cradled in his own hands and kept safe.

Then Dick's hand moved, sliding down between the perfect globes of his arse, pressing, moving, and the Bat's blood thundered in his ears: this he knew, had done for himself in the silent shame of an empty bed: yet in front of him Dick, shameless, impaled himself on his own fingers, thrusting onto them, the curve and sweep of his body containing a frantic grace that, finally, arched his back and sent his seed spilling across floor and skin and heart.
And with that the Bat came too, silent, harder and darker than he had ever come for anyone before, man or woman or nighttime ghost with black hair and devilish grin.

When Dick could think again he was sitting on the floor in a tumble of duvet and sticky fingers, the smell of sweat and sex heavy in the air. He leaned his head back against the seat of the couch, smiling, tired, the muscles of his thighs sore with strain.

Like that, Bruce? Dick thought, grinning to himself.

He rolled himself up onto the couch, cleaning away the creamy residue of his release with a scrap of black material. Tired now, contentment counterpointed with a mischievous, happy glee, he pulled the duvet over his body, curled his head into the arm of the couch and slept.

In his own dark and empty bed, Bruce slept, his body lax with the relaxation of a second, frantic, arousal that had peaked the moment his hand touched his straining cock. In one hand he held the scrap of black fabric that had sent his senses spinning into that dark and possessive lust, the smell of Dick's body rubbed into the stiff folds.

Fin