Chapter Text
Crane walked into the darkened bedroom.
It was pitch-black inside the little room, but Crane had lived here long enough to know where everything was; he skirted around a chair, and moved silently towards the bed.
It had been a long, unpleasant day, and he was looking forward to a chance to sleep. The only difficulty facing him now was laying down and getting some rest without waking Jervis— who had retired to bed some time ago.
A sound made Crane pause on his way to the bed. A whimper, filtered through Jervis’s teeth; then the soft shuffling of the bedding.
For a moment, Crane thought he had caught the man by surprise in an intimate moment, and considered simply turning around and coming back later; it was when there was silence- and no acknowledgement of Crane’s presence- that he realized the man was still asleep.
Jervis’s head shifted on the pillow, and there was the telltale jerk of sleep-paralyzed movement underneath the covers. Crane’s mind put all the pieces together:
Nightmare.
He ought to wake Jervis. He really should. There was no reason to let him suffer through bad dreams when Crane could be waking him—
But it was only a harmless little dream, after all.
Crane stood there for a moment, deliberating over a mostly silent Jervis. His neurons were throbbing with interest, piqued by the idea of Jervis’s fear; somewhere, in the worst part of Crane’s mind, he wanted to amplify it with a little fear toxin… the hatter’s tiny whimpers and restrained twitches were disappointingly small in comparison to the dopamine-deluge of a properly toxined subject.
But everyone had to… appreciate the smaller things. The subtler things. An independent art film with a shoestring budget could be better than an opulent Hollywood CGI-fest; should the simple beauty of the common nightmare not also be admired?
Crane’s eyes gradually adjusted to the dark; revealing the outline of Jervis’s body through the slats of moonlight coming in through the blinds. He had a sickly white pallor, and Crane thought he could spy a light sheen of sweat. His eyes flickered wildly underneath his eyelids, rolling in REM.
Crane was at half-mast already.
He started at the realization; eyes flickering down to confirm the traitorous bulge was making its interest known.
What a… disturbing, inconvenient thing. Crane had always known he did, perhaps, derive more pleasure from fear than he ought- maybe enough to make the accusations of “fear-fetishist” not ring entirely false- but this was… heinous.
This was Jervis Tetch— he was no common citizen, he wasn’t Batman or his helpers—! He was a friend, a partner—
And yet, when the hatter’s face scrunched slightly and a whimpery sound left him, Crane’s cock twitched in interest.
A short, internal battle took place; a tiny courtroom prosecuting him for the crime of getting off to Jervis’s nightmare, with a lone defendant arguing that this was accepted and expected, and besides, who cared what he did so long as he wasn’t hurting anyone? Crane had never cared much for being restrained by flimsy things like taboos and societal expectations.
He would wake Jervis up after; it wasn’t hurting Jervis any to wait, not really. And, could he really wake the poor Hatter up with a visible erection? Of course not.
Now that he had made the final deliberation, speed was of the utmost importance; he didn’t want Jervis to wake up, or have the dream be over before Crane finished.
It took him less than thirty seconds to quietly scrounge up some lubricant, pound it into his palm, and pull his cock out of his trousers.
Crane watched Jervis, rigidly; as soon as a mumbling moan was coaxed from the hatter by his nightmares, Crane began a loose-fisted pumping of his cock. There was no ceremony or sophistication to it; he sagged, slightly, leaning into his own touch, and shamelessly jerked off to the sight of Tetch’s sweating, pale face and the shake of his limbs as he was tossed about by his night terrors.
It took a few minutes. A few minutes of muffled swearing, leaning up against the bed for support, and the obscene slide of his jellied hand running over his dick, all seeming gunshot-loud in the tense darkness. He, too, began to sweat; a hot, feverish burn as his mind ran wild with fantasies of Jervis’s terrified face and frightened, muffled exclamations.
He bit down on his knuckle with a shameful yelp and came into his fist; after the aftershocks of orgasm had left him, Crane wobbled towards the nightstand to take a fistful of tissues. Clean-up was quick, and, he decided, be shameless. Jervis was too proper to inquire about the nature of damp tissues in the bin.
Once he was satisfied with the clean-up job, he tucked his cock away, and turned back to the sleeping Hatter.
Crane shook him, none too gently, and called: “Jervis.
Jervis!”
Jervis sat up quickly, one hand clapping over his mouth and the other fisting in the sheets; a muffled swear left him, and he quickly shot his frightened gaze to Crane, who stood over him as innocently as the situation allowed.
“... Jonathan?”
Oh no, he sounded like he was about to start crying. Guilt knotted Crane’s stomach; the tiny defendant in his head seemed to have opted to rest.
“I’m here, Jervis,” Crane assured him, placing a knee down on the mattress and, tentatively, reaching his arms out to offer an awkward embrace. “It looked like you were having a nightmare…”