Chapter Text
“My friend, it is not an arduous task that I bequeath, for our order knows only silken bonds. To be gentle and patient, to care for the riches of the mind, to preside in wisdom and secrecy while the storm rages without — it will all be very pleasantly simple for you, and you will doubtless find great happiness.”
― James Hilton, Lost Horizon
John kept fiddling with his hair in the mirror, waiting for the local officer to come collect him from his hotel room. He told himself that he was not playing with his hair because he was nervous, but rather, because he’d never in his life worn it this long. That, at least, was true. But he couldn’t play a callboy with a cop’s haircut.
He’d had several months to get into character, which he was grateful for now, though at the time he’d gone nearly mad with impatience. There had been delay after delay as they tracked their man all throughout Europe. He was always a step ahead.
It had all been worth it, John reminded himself, tugging at the tight T-shirt he wore as part of his cover. They finally had a solid lead in Kiev. They had theorized that their man was trying to make his way back to the League of Shadows, possibly to aide in the purge of another ‘corrupt’ city.
John settled himself at the foot of his hotel bed, a trendy sweatshirt for his disguise over one arm. All his ID and papers were with his partner, in the safe in his own hotel room across town, just in case their man got suspicious and had a goon search his room. He was even booked under a fake name. No one knew that he was, in fact, John Blake of the Gotham City police, except for his partner and a few key officials.
If this guy led them to the League of Shadows, it would be worth the hundreds of hours John had poured into this manhunt. It would be worth the favors he’d cashed in and the new favors he owed, the sleepless nights, the chases that led nowhere but abandoned safe houses.
There was a light tap on the door and John surged to his feet. It was his ride to his appointment, a man he’d met briefly at the station earlier that afternoon. They nodded at one another and the officer, in plainclothes, led him down to the waiting car.
John was finally going to see the face of the man who’d haunted his dreams for months. One of Talia and Bane’s henchmen. Someone high up in rank, if their sources were to be trusted. None of the man’s code names had led them anywhere, and they still didn’t know exactly who they were following. John just knew one thing: he was going to stop this man. There would never be another Gotham, full of terrified children waiting day by day to die in a fiery blast. The fear in the St. Swithin’s boys’ faces, their terrified eyes in the bus windows when the cops on the bridge refused to let them drive to safety... John clenched his jaw in rage at the memory as he slipped into the passenger seat.
The officer started the small car and pulled out into the late evening traffic, briefing John as they drove. “Mr. Shadow,” the cop began, pronouncing the silly codename for their man in heavily accented English, “contacted an agency twenty minutes ago and asked for a callboy fitting your description.”
John nodded. This had been the man’s pattern over the past several months. They hadn’t received any intel on this quirk of their target until they had been tailing him closely through France. Word came in of an escort service being called, and a ‘young man of slight build with dark hair and fair skin’ had been requested.
They located the escort three days later, alive and unharmed, paying off his student debt with a sudden influx of cash. He claimed not to remember anything about his client or have any information for the police. After several hours of questioning, they were forced to let him go.
It was a pattern that repeated itself over the coming two months. Just before their target left his latest hideout, he would call for a rent boy, always the same description, and leave them with a large tip and an obvious threat of death if they breathed a word about him. He must have been convincing, because the men never cracked.
John buried his hands in the hoodie’s fleece-lined pockets. It was cold, the air hinting of rain. It felt odd to have nothing in his pockets except a wallet containing his fake Ukrainian ID and 20 hryven. Plus a few condoms and lube packets. For authenticity.
He went over the drop-off and pick-up procedure with the officer, and then John was stepping out of the car and heading down into the Kiev Metro. A few stops later, he ascended to the surface once more, and waited in the exact spot specified over the phone. He looked around for the underling that was supposed to collect him, making sure to fidget the way he might if this was really his job and he was waiting for his ‘date’ to show up.
After about five minutes, a woman stepped out from where she had been leaning against the wall across from him, beckoning to him. John started forward as though surprised, though he had clocked her as the henchman the moment he’d laid eyes on her.
They went back down into the metro, taking a different train a few more stops, before emerging into the open once again. She remained silent, motioning for him to follow her with the air of someone sent out to do a particularly annoying errand. She led him to a car, settling into the driver’s seat and leaning over to unlock the passenger side door for John. He slipped in and looked at her in what he hoped was a naturally nervous way. It wasn’t hard to fake. She just clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes, then focused on driving, ignoring her passenger completely.
John’s anxiety heightened as they drove east, past the city border. He began to wonder if he had been made, if his driver was taking him someplace out-of-the-way to put a bullet in his head. He squirmed in his seat, not having to try as hard to look like a concerned escort as he had earlier. He shot her looks out of the corner of his eyes as she continued to ignore him completely.
Finally, more than fifty minutes after he’d gotten in the car, the woman pulled off the main road, speeding along the dark backroads until there weren’t any lights visible anywhere among the trees. The car tires made popping noises as they slowed to drive up a twisting, gravel driveway, small stones pinging off the undercarriage. They came to a halt and John tensed. This was it. If she was going to shoot him, she’d do it now. He readied himself, preparing to gain control of the gun, should she produce one from her coat.
Instead, she simply got out of the car and walked around to his side, knocking irritably on his window when he didn’t follow immediately. John swallowed his nerves, and climbed out of the car. He trailed behind her as she wound down a path through tall trees, the damp stones reflecting from the path as she pulled out a flashlight to guide their way. A few minutes of walking and John was shivering in his inadequate clothes. The soft, tight jeans and slip-on sneakers had been a good choice for Kiev, where he hadn’t expected to be outside more than a few minutes, let alone be marched through the woods in the rain.
His teeth were chattering by the time they rounded a bend in the path and a house appeared, the porch light on, casting a warm glow in the darkness. John shivered as he was waved inside the front door, his babysitter shooting him a small smirk before closing the door on him. He assumed she would be staying to stand guard, but he heard her footsteps creak back down the porch stairs and he could see her through the window, heading back in the direction of the car.
John turned toward to the interior of the house. It looked like a very normal, if somewhat wealthy, residence. There was nothing opulent about the furnishings or the design, but it was a large dwelling, well-kept and clean. Ordinary. Much too normal for the nightmare suddenly towering in the hallway in front of him.
John’s mind skittered over itself, as if trying to escape. His thoughts grinding to a halt. The man before him, surrounded by normal sets of furniture and paintings of flowers and dogs, looked so out of place that John wondered if he were still asleep and dreaming. The man was massive, filling up the entire doorway, his arms above his head leaning on the beam. John would have said that he was smirking down at him, except for the fact that he couldn’t see his mouth. His whole lower face was covered by a heavy mask, his breath pulling in through the vocoder before he spoke.
“What is your name?” he asked. John knew that voice. All of Gotham knew that voice. But it was impossible. Bane was dead. He’d seen the corpse, a large man in a mask, burned nearly unrecognizable by the fire that had raged in the city center shortly after Batman’s suicide flight into the bay. The experts had declared that the remains had belonged to Bane.
“Your name?” Bane repeated. It could be no one else.
“Stas,” John said, remembering his cover and his purpose, despite the hammering of his heart.
“Stas,” Bane repeated, the name crackling through the mask. “Do you speak English, Stas?”
“Yes,” John said. Thank god anyone in his position would be expected to be shell-shocked. His fumbling could be easily excused as a nervous callboy presented with a startling employer. Not to mention that they were out in the middle of the woods, alone, and a real rent boy would have been terrified. John swallowed, his throat constricting, pushing back the panic, remembering his mission. It remained the same; was even more important now that he knew who their quarry actually was.
Bane’s eyes flashed to the movement of John’s throat, then met his eyes again. “Please remove your clothing, Stas,” Bane said, his voice calm, though his eyes continued to bore into John’s. He was so much more intimidating in person, in this normal house, than he ever had been on the TV, even threatening Gotham with imminent destruction. Whoever they had planted as his body hadn’t been nearly massive enough, John thought, his mind slithering sideways away from Bane’s command, even as his hands went to the zipper of his hoodie.
He didn’t move very fast, but he also didn’t draw it out. Maybe a real callboy would have done a strip tease for their client but, not only was John way too nervous to try such a thing, Bane’s request had been to remove his clothing, and it had the tone of him wanting it done efficiently, not necessarily seductively.
“Very good,” the surreal voice said, once John was down to his underwear, which were also part of the costume. They weren’t particularly sexy, just black boxer briefs, but they were tight and meant to show off his body.
Planning this outfit, he hadn’t been sure if he’d ever get this far. It had all depended on a variety of factors that John couldn’t control: whether the target would be alone with him, whether he’d be armed. Never once had John planned on being alone with Bane. He could have overpowered or outsmarted almost any other man. But not this man. Not the Scourge of Gotham.
“The bedroom is this way,” Bane said, moving only marginally to the side to let John pass. John took a deep breath, every muscle tense.
He had always known, given the nature of his cover, that he might have to go through with the bluff and have sex with the target. He was no blushing virgin, and he’d slept with plenty of men. No one very recently, it was true. While Gotham had been held hostage and, later, during his pursuit of their target across Europe, there had been no time for indulging in something as basic as sex. He had done a bit of prep on himself, figuring that would be a normal thing to expect from a callboy, but that had been in anticipation of a normal-sized man.
John stepped forward, obeying Bane’s implied order that he should walk toward the bedroom. He had to squeeze past Bane’s body, unyielding as he slid by, barely enough room for John to wiggle past him. He was warm. John realized just then how cold he was, skin and hair damp from the rain, wearing nothing but his underwear. He made it past Bane and looked over his shoulder, hoping that he was still enough in character that Bane wouldn’t suspect anything was amiss.
“The last door,” Bane said, and John walked forward into the dim corridor, heading for the door he could just make out down at the far end of the hallway. Except for the porch light and the lights in the living room near the entryway, the house was completely dark. John could feel, as well as hear, Bane’s bulk shifting behind him as he followed him down the hall.
He made it to the last door, his heart jackrabbiting, and to his dismay, he saw that this room, too, was dark. The only light was from the large windows looking out onto a small yard ringed by tall trees. Everything was lit gray and blue, shapes blurring but not quite invisible as his eyes adjusted.
He spun around as he heard the click of the bedroom door closing. The full weight of his situation hit him just then. He was almost naked, locked alone in a bedroom with the Terror of Gotham, and no one knew where he was. This was his mission, he’d pushed for this, wanting to find the League of Shadows so desperately that he would probably die for his determination.
So be it, he thought, his resolve hardening. He would find out all he could, and if he got away alive, then he would use that knowledge. If not, then… well, he had tried. He may not be Bruce Wayne, may not be that strong or that tenacious, but he would go out fighting like his hero, if it came to that. For now, he had a role to play.
“Where do you want me?” he asked, his accent carefully rehearsed ahead of time. If asked, he would say that he had gone to an American school, but was living back with his family, paying off his loans as a callboy. He didn’t really expect to be asked.
Bane was looking at him. John could see his dark eyes glinting in the pale light from the windows, his head tilting to one side as he seemed to consider his answer. He wondered how well he could see him. Didn’t they say he had better night vision than even Batman himself?
“On the bed,” Bane said, after nearly a minute had passed. “On your hands and knees.”
John moved forward shakily, not wanting to show an abnormal amount of reluctance, though any callboy in this situation would be worried, surely? He kept reminding himself that he just needed to make it out of this situation alive. That was it. That was the goal. Bane hadn’t killed a single one of the men he’d had delivered to him. None of them had even had any visible marks.
He would perform as well as possible, make Bane as happy as possible. Bane would bribe him with a large tip and threaten him not to tell anyone. Then he’d be driven back to the city. He’d report in immediately. He’d call Jim Gordon in Gotham and let him know the unthinkable: Bane was alive. He was alive and he was heading for the League of Shadows.
John got on the bed, still in his underwear, as Bane had yet to tell him to take them off, and he was pretty sure that he was supposed to wait for Bane to instruct him before he did anything. This game was oddly familiar. Too familiar. He ignored the flair of heat in his stomach as he adjusted his weight on his elbows in the middle of the large bed.
John had gotten on the mattress facing away from Bane. All his instincts told him that it was a suicidal thing to do, but a callboy would have taken this position. He knew that Bane had meant for him to be facing the headboard. He repressed the urge to swing back around when he heard Bane moving, nearly silent in the dark room. The feeble light from the windows blinked in and out as Bane walked in front of them, coming around to the side of the bed. The mattress dipped under the weight of one heavy knee. Bane was close, his breath rasping through the mask, heat radiating from his fully-clothed body.
John’s breath hitched and caught in his lungs. He looked over his shoulder, taking in the unmoving form, one knee making a small valley on the bed, the other foot still firmly planted on the floor. His eyes raked over John’s body. John shivered involuntarily at the scrutiny, and Bane’s eyes flashed up and caught his gaze. John dropped his head forward, staring at the duvet below him, his breath coming faster than before, his mind slowing, slipping sideways…
No. He absolutely could not lose himself right now. This was the worst time and place to slip into subspace. Bane hadn’t even touched him yet and he was feeling all the signs of going under. He tried to focus, tried to remember who Bane was, why he was here. This man was a murderer. He’d killed men with his bare hands-
A huge, warm palm was placed on John’s back, right between his shoulder blades. Gently, slowly, it exerted pressure, until John realized that he was meant to rest his weight on his chest instead of his elbows. He sunk down, his arms slipping to the sides, until he was pinned to the bed by the weight of Bane’s hand.
Several minutes passed, during which John fought against slipping under all the way, trying desperately to keep his wits about him. He knew this feeling. He had experienced it with a few very talented doms before, but it had never happened this quickly, and never when he didn’t trust the man dominating him. This simply shouldn’t be happening.
Bane waited a moment longer, then smoothed his broad palm down the curve of John’s spine. “Do you want this?” Bane asked, and again John’s mind raced, looking for words he couldn’t find. He was supposed to be a prostitute. Did it matter if he wanted this? Was Bane giving him a chance to back out?
“Yes.”
“Are you sure of your answer?” Bane asked.
“Yes,” John said again, trembling.
“Beautiful,” he said, in what must pass for a whisper with the vocoder. John shivered again and Bane made a shushing noise. It was menacing through the grill of the mask. “Don’t move,” Bane said, before withdrawing from the bed.
John stayed in place, straining to hear what Bane was doing. He heard noises he couldn’t place, and then Bane was back at the side of the bed. John heard something metallic being set on the bedside table. A gun? It hadn’t sounded right…
The mattress dipped again and then two hands were running up John’s flanks, brushing his skin and making him break out in goose flesh. Bane must have taken off his shirt, because, as he draped himself over John’s back, he felt the warmth of bare flesh. Bane enveloped him, John’s body easily fitting in the space beneath.
John gasped when he felt a mouth at his neck, hot and wet. The mask. He’d taken off the mask. Would he be weaker like this? Somehow vulnerable? John moved against him to test his strength against Bane’s. It was like pushing against a brick wall. Bane grunted at him and gathered his wrists in one hand, much too easily, then stretched John’s arms forward, above his head, his upper body pulled taught as a bowstring under the massive man.
He had no leverage like this, no way to move away or take any sort of control. He moaned when he realized how compromised he was. This man could break him, but he wasn’t. Neither was he allowing him an inch of freedom. He was caught. Trapped and at Bane’s mercy. He should be terrified. A normal person would be terrified.
The mouth descended again, warm, uneven. John could tell he’d been injured, he could feel the jagged shape of Bane’s lips. John squirmed against the hold on his wrists, unable to budge. Bane chuckled darkly against his nape. His voice all gravel and velvet. So it wasn’t just the mask that made him sound that way. John slumped, not done fighting, not entirely, but biding his time. Saving his strength.
Bane went back to kissing him, almost reverently, John thought, confused. He was being so tender in his attention, still gripping him firmly around the wrists but not hurting him. Bane gently took the tendon at the side of his throat between his teeth, and John moaned. Ashamed, for so many reasons, he hid his face against his arm, burning up with self-loathing. If he had come to Bane in any other way than posing as a sex worker, the man wouldn’t have been able to exploit him. Kill him, maim him- yes. But not break him. Not like this.
It was almost as if Bane knew. As if he’d researched him- John froze. No. Bane would have killed him outright if he knew who he really was. Or maybe fuck him and then kill him. But why this tenderness? It made no sense.
Bane bit him gently again, slightly higher on the side of his neck and his thoughts shattered. “Mmmm,” he hummed into the duvet, squirming again, pulling against Bane’s grasp. He could feel Bane through the man’s cargo pants, hard against the swell of John’s ass. He would not buck back into him. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t.
As though reading his mind, Bane’s hips pressed forward, just a bit, seating Bane’s erection along John’s crack, the heat of it making his hole clench. He tried to escape by flattening his body to the mattress, away from that pulsing cock. Bane wouldn’t let him, wrapping a tree trunk arm around his waist, across his stomach, pulling John back up on his knees so he could grind his erection against him. John’s pulse fluttered, his cock drooling at the treatment. He was trapped, being used for this huge man’s pleasure, and it was good. So good. He felt the rising tide of chemicals, the ones that would take him under, pull him into subspace. His body was begging to go under, it had been so long, so long since a man had been able to do this to him. John knew he was already so far above his head in all this. His target had turned out to be Bane himself, and there was no escape, not without Bane letting him go. So he might as well give himself over, right? Was his logic sound? He didn’t know, didn’t know…
Bane’s hand slipped down his stomach and palmed John through his underwear. He cried out and bucked against the hold on his arms. Bane gave a pleased sounding hum at finding him straining against the cotton briefs. His thumb rubbed back and forth over the wet spot covering John’s leaking slit. Bane groaned, the sound reverberating all through John, trapped beneath him.
John could feel himself slipping, closer and closer, his stuttered gasps turning into small moans, the thumb still teasing the head of his cock, back and forth, back and forth, his arms still trapped in the vise-like grasp. He tried to shift forward, to get more of Bane’s hand on him. Anything but this maddening lick of flame burning and burning but not enough to get him to orgasm. If he could just come, maybe he could think clearly.
He groaned when Bane stopped moving his thumb against him, punishing him for resisting. John couldn’t stand it. He bucked wildly, trying to free himself, trying to get friction, something, anything. Bane leaned down, caging him tighter, biting his neck in the same spot as before, only slightly harder. And, just like that, John was gone, subspace enclosing him in a woolen chemical blanket.
He was somewhat aware of Bane slowly loosening his grip on his wrists, testing to see if he was going to try and get away. When John didn’t move, just laid there, docile, he must have been satisfied, pulling away and reaching for the mask. Once it was back in place, he began shifting John’s body so he was lying on his back. Bane switched on a small lamp on the nightstand, the dim light blinding in the dark room.
“I didn’t know you would go down so easy for me,” Bane said, as softly as the vocoder allowed. “You had so much fight in you, yet, under my hands, you slipped into it like a dream.” He seemed wondering, his hands trailing down John’s arms to his fingers, checking to see if his circulation had been cut off while he had been restraining him. He rubbed John’s slightly cold fingers until they were warm. “I would kiss you but for needing the mask again, as it was getting quite painful being without it.”
John gazed up at him, his eyes unfocused, listening to that rumbling voice, his cock twitching every time Bane touched him, even innocently rubbing his hands back to life. But then Bane began stroking him softly with his fingertips, all over John’s face, his hair, his ears, down his throat. John mewled and thrashed his head when Bane got to his nipples, so Bane twisted them gently, getting slowly rougher, until John was drooling precome again, his cock jumping in his briefs.
“Let’s fix these, shall we?” Bane said, reaching for the elastic band of his underwear. John moaned out his hearty consent, needing Bane’s hands on him again, wanting to come, needing to come...
“Uh, uh, uh,” John grunted incomprehensibly, as Bane pulled his briefs down just enough to trap the head of his cock against his stomach, stroking it again like he had before, barely-there touches, this time slick, with no fabric in between, just the slight hint of Bane’s calloused skin. The tight elastic under the head acted as a sort of cock ring, trapping the blood at the tip and making it pulse with sensitivity. John glanced down and it looked dream-like, the head so crimson and shiny with his own precome that it didn’t look real. And still, Bane’s patient thumb rubbed back and forth while he watched him, his eyes dark even in the light from the lamp.
“Do you think you could come like this?” Bane asked, speeding up the tiniest bit. He pushed down on John’s glans, too soft, but John’s eyes rolled back in his skull. “I think you could, don’t you?”
John was crying now. Tears slipping down his cheeks silently, his legs twitching, the muscles in his stomach spasming. “Please, please, please…” he mumbled, half-coherent.
“Shhh,” Bane crooned. “Just let go, little bird. Let go.” Bane made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and slipped around the head of John’s cock, so that he was encircling the entire glans, twisting the slick ring around it, back and forth, around and around. All of the most sensitive nerves lit up, his entire cockhead felt like it was on fire, and then he was coming and sobbing. He hiccuped, his arms moving up to cover his head and he was still coming, his thighs trembling uncontrollably.
It wasn’t until he felt Bane stripping his briefs the rest of the way off him that John realized how deep he’d gone under, and that his orgasm was finally over. He slumped on the bed, still under, but closer to the surface than before. Bane, shirtless, but still wearing his cargo pants, shifted closer to him, pulling him against his huge body, warm and solid. He arranged John so his shoulder was tucked into Bane’s armpit, and his head was resting against Bane’s massive neck. Bane kept his own head tilted away so as not to graze him with the mask.
John breathed deeply, trying to get his bearings. Trying to surface. He was pulling up slowly, like trying to swim through molasses. All his limbs felt heavy. Did Bane need to get off now? He needed to get Bane to pay him, threaten him, and let him go. He needed to get back to headquarters, needed to-
Bane was searching for something in one of his cargo pockets. John used the distraction to pull away a bit. “So, I should probably get going…” he said, barely remembering to use the accent, his voice a broken whisper, shaky and unreliable. “Unless you’d like me to-” John gestured at Bane’s crotch.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Oh, okay then. I’ll just get my things and-”
“I’m sorry John,” Bane said, and all of John’s blood ran cold as Bane pricked the skin of his neck with a needle. He could only catch Bane’s concerned eyes for a moment before the room went dark, like a heavy curtain falling into place.